So what are we going to do about China?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
China is building clean energy for a good chunk of the world, including itself.
A better question may be: What is the US going to do to make up for its historical emissions? The US got wealthy by creating far more emissions than China, and all those historical emissions are now a problem for the rest of the world.
If people in the US try to turn climate action into a blame game, it will end very very poorly for the US.
Pure fantasy. What will happen to the US and who will do it to us?
If the US starts trying to force other countries into climate action without taking into account its own contributions, the US will likely cut out of the global economy, and become far poorer as the rest of the world surpasses its wealth through vigorous trade.
The US was the sole remaining superpower, but has recently decided to only occupy a much weaker position with a mere "sphere of influence" and ceding leadership in other parts of the world to others. The US is signalling to allies in Europe that it will no longer lead, that the prior world is over and the US is bugging out, meaning Europe will gain far more influence.
The more that the US attacks others without providing any leadership, the less that the US will be able to take from the world. Up until recently, the US's position of massive economic strength was largely due to it's dominant position among nations and the goodwill that others had towards it. Turning the climate problem into a blame game on other countries would further weaken the US's position and options.
You seem to think these solid critiques about the inherent weakness of Trump are somehow mere partisanship, rather than the actual unwinding of US leadership around the world.
I'm not part of global academia, I'm just a consumer of news that is willing to listen to things outside of a partisan bubble. The world is shifting away from the US, to the US's detriment. We have an exceptionally weak president who acts like what a weak person imagines a strong person is like, and it's scaring off all our allies.
> In a way it’s understandable because you all seem to believe in your “right” to pick winners and losers. The world doesn’t actually work that way.
I do not know whatyou mean by this, you think I'm picking winners and losers? The US is picking winners and losers? Global academia is picking?Picking either antecedent does not allow me to find any meaning in your sentence.
TDS inspires people to blurt out the types of statements you’re making.
The clear facts are that the US has cheapened its word and made itself an embarrassment around the globe. China has completely dog walked Trump on tariffs and trade, devastating US farmers, and leading to far stronger ties between China and the rest of the world, not just with our former tight trading partner Canada, but with all the emerging economies around the world. The US is cutting itself out of the new economic order that is emerging from the energy transition to cheaper renewable energy, which will leave the US with sky-high energy prices while the rest of the world runs their economies cheaper, and with less inflation-inducing price shocks, on solar and grid storage.
I respond with these basic facts not because I think that you will believe anything, but because the obvious falsehoods that you are repeating should not stand unanswered by the reality that we can all see in the world.
> There may be some politicians that want to choose the US as “the loser”. But that’s just not really an option given the size of our economy and the size of our military.
The only politicians that wants to choose the US as the loser are those following the dictates of Trump, by weakening our gloabl position. The size of our economy and military are not enough of a draw to keep us as the leader through sheer domination. And in fact pretending that "domination" is what made the US strong is the exact sort of weak person's idea of a strong man. The US is handing away all its leadership and power by trying to force what it does not have the ability to force, trying to force what would instead be freely given! It's utter insane behavior of a nation, and indicates just how little the Trump administration understands of US power around the world. The US is not a mob boss, we are (were?) a leader that attracted support because we were a shining example of what a country could be. When we act like bullies we throw away all that power, because we can not fight the entire world with our military, and our economy is not nearly big enough to overcome bullying behavior.
Edit: an as for an example just this morning of how Trump is making the US weaker, the UK is not allowing the US to use bases for attacks on Iran, which is leading to other threats from Trump that further push the UK away and make the US weaker on the global stage. Nearly every single day the US is becoming weaker because of this sort of weak behavior. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/trump-chagos-is...
While China is still very reliant on fossil-fuels, and particularly dirty coal, they're at the same time working on dominating the post-fossil age at astonishing speed. After they already dominate solar and batteries, they're working on doing the same for a number of other future green industries. They are already dominating future technologies like Green Methanol that most people in Europe or the US have never heard of.
It's logical to start with the king of greenhouse emissions if you want to stop global warming.
China's emissions were 10 billion tons CO2 in 2017 and have increased every single year to 12.29 billion tons CO2 in 2024. Meanwhile, US decreased from 5.22 to 4.9 in the same time
China has only produced significant CO2/capita in the last decade. The US and Europe are responsible for the accumulated GHG that have gotten us into the current mess. We blew nearly the entire CO2 "budget" for keeping us under 2C of warming, just by ourselves, so it's kinda odd to be pointing fingers at the foreigners who are just now halfway catching up to what we're emitting now.
US emissions icreased by 2.5% https://rhg.com/research/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2025/
China's emmisions have decreased by <1% https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-emissions-decline
Also, you don’t want all the low-population countries to each start contributing as much to global warming as the US.
If China were to split into 10 countries each emitting 10% of what they do now it'd be the exact same emissions, but according to you it would be much better.
Similarly if the EU would become one country, that country would be high up on the list, much higher than member countries now! Oh no!
Looking at per capita emissions is much more fair.
Anyway, China's emissions are falling since last year ( https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha... ). What's the US doing?
But policy is where real change needs to be made, and the effects of policy still scale with population in most cases.
But per capita is more informative when thinking about policy for curbing emissions, which is how we actually change our effect on the climate.
The climate "cares" about cumulative emissions. On that score the US is by far the leader. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions It's not even close.
Pretend China is 20 countries. Each country now has lower emissions than the US. Anyone can play that stupid game. Give up the games, think about solutions. China is working hard. Are we?
That’s a real problem, because China, and all the poor countries in Asia and Africa aren’t going to stop increasing their CO2 output per capita until they reach western standards of living.
Edit: Ah ok an IP ban. I guess time to use a proxy. Moderation has rules. Censorship does not.
Censorship is bad dang mmmkay?
Editing again to post later cause you nuked replies for some reason:
Sorry I don't conduct in personal attacks. I think you're confused. Feel free to list whom I attacked and where.
No, censorship doesn't change definitions based on who uses it. Unless you want to pretend like you're not censoring. You seem to have convinced yourself that your censorship is a form of moderation, very sad. You're free to censor whom and what you want, it's your site. Don't pretend it's moderation though.
Your guidelines are meaningless if censorship is so heavy handed and moderation non-existant. It's hard to moderate. It's easy to censor.
Anyway you have curated, through censorship, a place where people are afraid to share valid opinions that break no guidelines (except those magical ones you can produce in order to censor). You can congratulate yourself on that if you want. You've got a ghost town, whether you like it or not.
> Censorship is bad dang mmmkay?
It's one of those words that mean different things depending on how people want to use it. I wouldn't personally use that word as opposed to moderation, curation, etc., but then I would say that wouldn't I. In any case, HN isn't an anything-goes site and never has been. If we didn't do some version of moderation/curation/censorship/befugioning, it would be an entirely different place. Probably not one even you would enjoy—I don't suppose you like ghost towns or scorched earth any more than the rest of us.
Your guidelines are meaningless if censorship is so heavy handed and moderation non-existant. It's hard to moderate. It's easy to censor.
Anyway you have curated, through censorship, a place where people are afraid to share valid opinions that break no guidelines (except those magical ones you can produce in order to censor). You can congratulate yourself on that if you want. You've got a ghost town, whether you like it or not.
As of today, solar and batteries are the cheapest source of electricity. All the "poor countries in Asia and Africa", except the ones that have oil and gas, will leapfrog straight to renewables. It just makes good sense, unless your politicians are paid off by the fossil fuel lobby.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4y159190go
https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
I hope we steal their playbook.
PRC solar power production last year conservatively will diplace ~45 billion barrels of oil, or 10%-20% more than total global consumption per year. It's just retarded eco accounting that attributes emissions to renewable manufacturers while fossil exporters don't get any penalties for extracting emissions.
Every year of PRC solar prevents doubling of oil, basically they're like the only significant country whose net contribution is negative for how much carbon sinks they manufacture. So the answer for US+co is obviously stop exporting oil and lng, and start exporting renewables.