> and the goal from the other countries perspective is to throttle the US. Like the Paris Accords.
Which is not inherently a bad thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Which is not inherently a bad thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
It would be a lot fairer to display tons of CO2 per inhabitant I think.
And that's before taking into account imported CO2.
Cheaper before the incentives?
California has got really good at building giant batteries - At peak times they provide 30% of the state’s electricity (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/22/californi...) - The Economist.
California is the 4th largest economy in the world by the way. A bit larger than a “small demonstration”.
When I log into my utility account, I can opt into solar generated power for X $/kwh more, not less.
My utility just adopted time of use billing and by my napkin math a battery system with one day of capacity will pay for itself in 5 years. And that’s without solar at all. The additional solar panel cost would pay off in under 3 years. And I have cheap electricity.
California is famous for green initiatives and my state of Washington trades clean energy with Canada. I’d be shocked if we are unique in that.
These agreements have been in place for generations. It’s obvious they have voter approval.
America deserves the dig. Pulling out of the Paris accords. 22% renewable usage compared to the 60% of Germany. And now climate change denial.
> The United States does work with India to develop green energy.
lmao.
> It’s obvious they have voter approval.
I mean they did just vote in the guy who calls climate change a hoax.
The United States already supports clean energy in India. India is not “poor”. It has a larger economy than the United Kingdom. 46.3% of India’s installed capacity is renewable and that mix is growing.
It's not a contradiction. Increasing consumption today will mean increase of greenhouse emissions. Any increase of consumption today still involves some increase in fossil fuels for many reasons like grid stability.
> The United States already supports clean energy in India.
They work together on projects. AFAIK the US doesn't subsidise anything for India or other countries.
> India is not “poor”.
It is. Its per capita GDP is $2,878. The US is $85,809. Thats a 30x difference. It is an incredibly poor country.
> It has a larger economy than the United Kingdom.
Philippines and Norway have the same total GDP too. It's silly to consider them equally rich.
> 46.3% of India’s installed capacity is renewable and that mix is growing.
Hell yeah! Hopefully it keeps growing. It's kinda hilarious that India is one of the few countries who will meet the Paris accord commitments. The US is still stuck at 23% and isn't even close to meeting its commitments.
Please stop. By your logic any country with a lot of people is rich. I already pointed out Norway vs Philippines for you. It is dirt poor by all numbers. Their extreme poverty rate just dropped recently. Their annual budget is 1/10th of the US with 5x more people. Energy needs per person will grow by over 10x in the next few decades to match the US. There is a long way to go.
> The Indian government has resources to build out renewables as evidenced by them doing exactly that.
I'm actually very impressed to see India sticking to the Paris accords. What exactly is the excuse of the worlds greatest superpower? Maybe a century of polluting the world isn't enough.
> The United States does not provide much direct funding but you are the only one suggesting that is necessary.
You're right. It needs to first fix itself lol. Maybe ask India for help :p Then again if you don't understand why the rich countries need to try and incentivise the world to move faster to renewables then you don't understand the urgency of the matter.
Take your position to something of an extreme -- the Vatican could open up 200 coal power plants for its holy Bitcoin operations and still be sufficiently less impactful to CO2 than the US that nobody would target them during climate talks. Rephrased from the other direction, each US citizen would blow their CO2 budget by buying a shirt per decade to get down to the Vatican's levels.
That's a common mental failure mode, analogous to the sorites paradox. Countries are made up of many small actors and decisions, and pretending otherwise is unlikely to help you achieve your goals.
[0] Mostly -- transitive effects like one country generating all the goods another country uses are harder to account for. Assuming we could measure perfectly though...
I live in the Northeast. Solar reduced my grid demand by 40%. That translates to a full recoup of the investment in 60-65 months with subsidy, 100-110 without. The unsubsidized payback period is 1/3 of the projected useful life of the panels.
You know it’s a good idea because opponents big argument is safety of rooftop installers and future workers disposing of solar panels, topics that these folks DNGAF about in the least.
Europe has a relatively high carbon footprint per unit of output for things like animal husbandry compared to the US, they just don't do enough of it for it to add up.
This also works in reverse, eg. US importing goods from china and therefore not being on the hook for emissions generated by those goods. ourworldindata has another page that compares the difference between consumption based emissions and territorial emissions[1]. Looking at that page, consumption based emissions are 11% higher for the US vs 27% for the EU. That makes the US look better, but it's not enough to cancel out the fact that the US is 63% more carbon intensive than the EU.
perhaps 12% for 5% of the global population is too high. But you dont want to relate it to population. Relating to number of countries is rather non-sensical. Some are big (by productivity, area, population, etc.), some are tiny.
Making it relative to people, IMO, only serves to obscure the fact that the US/China/etc are by far the biggest producers of emissions.
Writing climate policy with them in mind makes more sense than pushing for somewhere like Monaco to reduce emissions, even if their emissions per person are high.
Which is just too hard, and too open to change assumptions to fit a desired result.
Because in reality, much of the globe's economy is waaayyyyy too interconnected, and the arrows don't just point one way. Feedback loops without end.
That whole "this/that country..." just does not work, except to fill comment sections. The systems are global.
>Which is just too hard, and too open to change assumptions to fit a desired result.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45762344
No, it's pretty straightforward. Count where a given good is consumed rather then where it's produced. It has to be estimated, but that's also the case for territorial emissions or other economic figures like GDP, but we don't throw our hands up and say "well it's too hard and too prone to fudging so we might as well not bother".
>Because in reality, much of the globe's economy is waaayyyyy too interconnected, and the arrows don't just point one way. Feedback loops without end.
What "feedback loops" are you talking about?
>That whole "this/that country..." just does not work, except to fill comment sections. The systems are global.
Ok but surely you must recognize that the US, where the average person drives a pickup/SUV to work is emitting more carbon than something like India where the average person gets around by walking or using motorbikes? That's the concept that conversations like "US emits more carbon per capita" are trying to capture. "The systems are global" sounds like an excuse to continue driving a F-150 to work because of some spurious arguments about how hard it's do to do carbon accounting 100% accurately.
It doesn't really make much of a difference. For US specifically there's about a 10% difference.
Do you really honestly believe that the USAID spent $5M a year telling Sri Lankan journalists how to use non-gendered language?
That was a front for US-lead initiatives in a moderately opposing country. It was to funnel funds to destabilize what the USA didnt like.
And to be fair, good. The USA rested on its laurels for too long. Bout time they have to face the democracy they 'spread' is just fascism.
In no case will anyone ever say "Well, I am not happy it is gone but I am grateful for all the work they put in to help out of a desire to be good guys" so soft power isn't a thing.
To be clear, I have no quarrel with you on the belief that they're fronts. I only mean that they do not develop power of any sort.
- U.S. greenhouse gas emissions peaked around 2007, then declined by roughly 18% from that peak.
- 1990–2022: Emissions fell about 3% compared to 1990 levels, despite population and GDP growth.
- 2005 Benchmark: Emissions in 2022 were 17% below 2005 levels, largely due to cleaner electricity generation and efficiency improvements.
- Transportation: Consistently the largest source, accounting for ~30–35% of CO₂ emissions.
- Electric Power: Significant reductions—down 41% since 2005—due to coal-to-natural-gas shift and renewables growth.
- 2024: Energy-related CO₂ emissions totaled 4,772 million metric tons, down from 4,940 MMt in 2022.
- 2022: Total U.S. GHG emissions were 6,343 million metric tons CO₂e, or 5,489 MMt after land-sector sequestration