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Comment by pier25 | Hacker News Reader

All of this is great but it doesn't change the fact that our emissions are ridiculously high and we are entering the most perilous time for humanity.

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The sea level rising by two centimeters is not more perilous than nuclear annihilation.

The wars caused by crop failures precipitated by climate inaction increase the risks of nuclear annihilation exponentially.

Yeah, but they said "most perilous time". It's hard to argue that nuclear annihilation is more likely now than in 1950~1990.

Humans didn't launch any global nuclear offensive but they have "launched" climate change.

Even if a miracle happened and we reached zero emissions today there are still 40 years of warming from current emissions in the atmosphere plus unstoppable feedbacks that have already been triggered (Arctic ice, methane in the permafrost, etc). Nobody really knows how much warming these feedbacks will add or for how long.

And even in the best case scenario we won't get to zero emissions in at least a couple of decades.

Last I checked crop yields and global food production is going up, not down.

For now, but changes in weather will change the places where we can grow crops. This change will happen fast, the question is if our adaptation can keep up with the change.

Don't forget that the high yields are caused by the crops being highly optimized for current conditions..

Sea level rise is the least of our problems.

I know, people are stupid. There is no way to give our children their childhoods back, in this era of Trump, and when a child from Sweden asks him how he can do that for her he starts a cyber bullying war with her. The world is literally dying right now.

And by “we” I presume you mean Asia and South America [1]. By blaming the US and European countries, Greta & co are barking the wrong tree. What we really need is to get China off coal to make a dent. The EU and US have been doing some decent progress already.

[1] https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Global...

No, by "we" I mean humanity.

Edit: Also that graph doesn't show emissions per capita which is the metric that really matters.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Also see this about cumulative emissions:

https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/uploads/cumulati...

The US is still the country that has emitted more CO2.

It’s not the consumption per capita that matters to the climate.

You shifted the conversation to responsibility by country/region.

That’s a breakdown, not a ratio.

Americans consume way more than the average person in S. America or China and produce way more CO2 per capita.

The EU and the US have not made decent progress if you measure it by likelihood of staying under 2° of warming. Both have goals that are incompatible with the Paris agreement, and they're not even meeting those weak ambitions.

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