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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

There's absolutely nothing the US can do to stop that.

You could drop US emissions to zero tomorrow and it wouldn't stop it. China's extreme emissions growth is guaranteeing this only ends one way.

And that's just one entity.

Next is India. And then after that is Africa. Those two will add 1.5 billion people (another China) over the next 50 years and they will want to emit and consume like everybody else. India will end up with emissions growth that looks a lot like China, with hundreds of millions more people than what China has today.

If you believe in the existing projections on global climate change and what it will do, the end is already settled.

The US reducing its emissions by eg 1/4 or 1/3 is entirely meaningless against the increases elsewhere. It's not like we could just go hyper green and be spared, it doesn't work that way. It's global climate change.

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No, the US is responsible for 15% of global CO2 emissions. China emit around twice as much (with around 4x the population), but their emissions aren't growing over the last 10 years. In fact, they have increased their energy consumption by a lot in that decade (commensurate with becoming much richer), partly with renewables and partly by replacing bad uses of fossil fuels with better ones. Neither is their population growing. India and Africa together emit less than the US for around 6x the pop. They have a lot of population growth ahead of them, and a fair amount of getting wealthier, before they start to eat up a 1/4 drop in US emissions.

A bit ridiculous to claim that global warming is caused by the dirt poor and the not yet born 'wanting to consume like Americans' when it's obvious that at least half of Americans are determined to continue consuming like Americans whatever the cost.

Your argument basically seems to boil down to "the most polluting country can't reduce use of its most polluting energy source because other countries exist and emit anything at all".

>Your argument basically seems to boil down to "the most polluting country can't reduce use of its most polluting energy source because other countries exist and emit anything at all".

It's more like your argument forgot to account for fossil fuel demand elasticity and the reason why the developing world emits less CO2 per capita. It's not because they are enlightened minimalists who care more. It's because they are being outbid by the developed world.

For every amount the developed world cuts fossil fuel usage, it makes it cheaper for everyone else to buy. Price goes down, demand goes up. Usage doesn't go down, it shifts. This is a self defeating strategy. Your theory of global emissions reduction only works if no one changes their behavior in response to supply/demand changes.

Yes, I'm sure that demand for West Virginia's coal is perfectly elastic between US power plants also located in the Midwest and ones in India and Africa that haven't been built yet.

Fossil fuels are priced on a global futures markets. Did you think Canadian oil producers exist in a vacuum where Qatari production, or Indian demand, has no effect on them? Whether Canadian oil actually makes it to India doesn't matter.

You clearly know nothing about the coal trade.

Hey, could you please review the site guidelines and stick to them when posting to HN? I'm afraid your comment here broke them rather badly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you know more than someone else, that's great, but in that case please share some of what you know—without putdowns or snark—so the rest of us can learn:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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