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Comment by ttiurani | Hacker News Reader

As am environmentalist, I've talked to many people not living in the US who are losing hope on humanity because of this kind of constant stream of news coming out of the US.

I understand how it happens, but I'd hope people understood that Trump's USA is not the world. Just like people in general know not to extrapolate what Putin's administration is doing in Russia, they need to be able to do the same for the USA. At the moment, in my opinion, both administrations are lost causes, and you can just choose to follow, support and advocate many other positive signals around the world.

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Social media is overwhelming and dominated by the U.S.

A lot of people in countries that are making positive steps are losing hope unnecessarily because of this.

The U.S. is 25% of the world economy and declining.

Growing economies are ripe for growing with more climate friendly policies, not just because of the environmental impact (both from an AGW and local environmental perspective) but because of energy security and sovereignty perspectives, but also to reduce dependence on the petro-dollar.

Even absent US involvement, getting China and India away from oil and coal is critical.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#what-sources...

https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/india#what-sources...

China is decreasing the percentage of fossil fuels in its total mix over the last 15 years (while still growing total energy generation).

India... less so.

Without US involvement we lose a lot of our ability to pressure others to do it.

It might be in China and India's national interests to do so unilaterally.

China at least seems to have come to the conclusion that (a) they need to continue to expand total electrical production for economic reasons, (b) decreasing dependence on external fossil fuel producing countries is preferred, (c) there are cost advantages to generation from renewables, and (d) there's geopolitical mileage with other countries to be seen as ecologically forward.

The real story is the US ceding economic leadership in emerging markets like green energy, and instead encouraging its energy and automobile companies to pursue strategies not actually aligned with long term growth.

Even in the US the vast majority of new power generation is clean energy. EVs and Hybrids are about 20% of new car sales and climbing. Even if there’s a short term road bump with oBBB, battery innovation and costs continue to drive cost down.

The US economy will suffer by not trying to compete in these markets, and will need to depend on other economies more and more.

> Just like people in general know not to extrapolate what Putin's administration is doing in Russia, they need to be able to do the same for the USA.

One is in a box and can't really reach anything else without nukes. The other has his nukes in everybody's backyard, and the entire world economy depends on the world order that has him at the top.

The USA got to the top quickly, and might fall just as quickly. China is taking a wide lead already on many areas. The USA is still definitely controlling world order, but the system that put them at the top is already being challenged by the "global south" and you can see how the USA has noted that and is already actively trying to interfere with it (which just validates the effort as it shows they're taking it seriously).

I think this is a good video to share to that end https://youtu.be/242pqLSFzh4

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