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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.

Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries.

There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC so that they can feel good about making a negligible effect on carbon emissions. So I think you have it opposite, how much pain do rich countries have to endure before they realize that their efforts are in vain.

And before you say "that's because the West outsources all the dirty production to China", even trade adjusted emissions are down considerably and continue to be down.

Please do some research if you're interested in this topic, it's not hard to do. Just follow the logical steps.

1. What causes global warming

2. Who produces most of these chemicals

3. Are there any global trends over the last 20 years in production of these chemicals

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europes-crusade-against-air-co...

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> It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries.

This is just a naive take. You'd obviously expect chinese emissions to be higher (than the US) assuming similar industrialization, because you are counting emissions for like triple the amount of people.

What you conveniently fail to mention: US citizens still emit over 50% more CO2 each, and China basically just caught up to emission levels of developed countries (EU, Japan), while still being significantly below US levels. High income countries combined still emit more than China, too (richest ~15% globally).

If your argument would make any sense, then the obvious solution would be to split China into 3 countries, making the emissions instantly negligible compared to the EU/US. Problem solved?!

There is no reality where we make good progress toward climate change without the "main culprits" (=> nations with highest historical and per-capita emissions) making the first steps.

Why would a country like India pay/sacrifice to reduce emissions while western citizens still pollute at much higher levels after reaping all the spoils from historical pollution?

You could argue that wind/solar is a huge success story in this regard already, with western nations driving lots of the research/development/commercialization efforts (over the previous decades) and now indirectly causing much bigger nations like China to transition onto those very quickly instead of basically fully relying on fossils for decades to come.

> Why would a country like India pay/sacrifice to reduce emissions while western citizens still pollute at much higher levels after reaping all the spoils from historical pollution?

To avoid their country having large regions become uninhabitable?

Even for a giant country like India you control <20% of global population, and you are responsible for much less than 20% of the effect (climate change).

So why would India take more expensive and painful steps than say, the US or EU, or Japan? India both indisputably affects and controls climate change less then the US or EU, so why would they put in completely outsized amounts of effort to fight it?

Because much more of their land will become uninhabitable.

And also we should be helping them.

Which leader do you think is more likely to get elected by the populace? The one who tells the destitute Indians they must suffer more, lest their home be lost, or the one who says it’s America’s fault, and that they should pay in MANY ways for what they’re doing to the Indians’ home?

And besides, what do you think they’re going to do? Give up their highly efficient motor bikes? Destroy their personal businesses and starve? How far do you think we could push them? Maybe we could convince them all to just die to make room for our pollution and their nuclear-backed army will agree happily.

I swear half the arguments I see are just completely lacking in regard for the fact that this is happening in the real world, and not a vacuum.

Air pollution (from smog) in India is already at a "seasonally deadly" level. If you haven't been to India during late autumn, it's hard to imagine how bad it is. Your eyes burn and every breath stings, you literally taste the acrid smog all the time.

India is working hard to get that down. It's a much more tangible and immediate problem there than the thought some parts of the country may become so hot as to be unliveable. Addressing thst, in India, is a side effect / a benefit of cleaning up the air, as much as energy autarky via Solar PV has the benefit of becoming independent of oil imports. India has coal. Lots of it. It's cheap to them. It doesn't particularly want to use more of it because of the associated air pollution and also because cooling water for thermal power plants competes with drinking water for people in some places.

Personally I think India is rather pragmatic here. Battery banks for scooters in the cities? tick. Buildout of PV? tick. Electric car charging stations? tick. Replacing wood, coal and other dirty cooking fuel by gas? Also tick. India just doesn't bother fighting some internal culture wars about how great fossil fuels or renewables are. They just move ahead more or less silently.

> US citizens still emit over 50% more CO2 each

The problem the US has per-capita is lower population density. The majority of the US population lives in suburban or rural areas without mass transit and changing that on the relevant timescale is not feasible. It also has major population centers in areas that experience winter and thereby have higher energy costs for heating, exacerbated by the lower population density (more square feet of indoor space to heat per capita), with the same infeasible timescale for changing that.

As a result, the only way to fix it is to switch to other forms of energy rather than having any real hope of significantly reducing consumption in terms of GWh. Use more electric cars and hybrids, generate electricity using solar, wind and nuclear, switch from fossil fuels to electric heat pumps for heating, etc. But that's largely what's happening. The percentage of hybrid vehicles goes up, despite Trump's posturing nobody actually wants coal, ~100% of net new generation capacity in recent years is solar and wind and even when new natural gas plants are built, they're displacing old coal fired ones, which results in a net reduction in CO2. It would be nice if this would happen faster, but at least the number is going in the right direction.

The problem China has is that they've been building brand new coal fired power plants at scale. WTF.

You listed out a whole lot of excuses for America, suburbia this, heating that, etc etc, etc...

Now an assignment - you are Chinese and you have 1.5bn people in your country, lets hear it? You think you can't reasonably list 100x "excuses" for their "issues" and "reasons" for CO2 consumption?

They are working a lot harder than pretty much all other countries combined to usher in renewables and many other things while we elect people who don't know what wind is/does and stare at the Sun during the eclipse.

What excuse actually is there for building new coal plants instead of directing the same labor to building more nuclear or renewable generation? There is no reason to build coal, Trump is a schmuck for proposing it but China have been the ones actually doing it.

> What excuse actually is there for building new coal plants

Just that they're still 'developing' and aren't even close to the historical contributions of the US?

Assuming you're American, it's a bit rich to have contributed more in absolute terms and then tell other countries what they can't do.

Explain me why the average car in the US is a tank with horrible fuel economy? In rural I can sorta see it. But in cities, why drive a truck? These are all choices that America makes.

> Just that they're still 'developing' and aren't even close to the historical contributions of the US?

This is a sham excuse. Building coal power plants before solar or nuclear were viable or even existed is not the same as choosing to do it in modern day.

> Explain me why the average car in the US is a tank with horrible fuel economy?

The "best selling" light vehicles in the US are pickup trucks because the sales numbers aren't divided out into personal and business purchases and businesses buy a lot of trucks. The best selling non-pickup is the Toyota RAV4, which gets better than 30 MPG in the non-hybrid version and better than 40 MPG in the hybrid version.

Come on. This is bullshit and you know it. There's >10M light trucks sold each year and <3M passenger cars.

This is not because most of those trucks are used by some business, this is because people like to drive around in them.

The 40+ MPG Hybrid Toyota RAV4 is a "light truck" in those numbers.

> This is a sham excuse. Building coal power plants before solar or nuclear were viable or even existed is not the same as choosing to do it in modern day.

My friend, they're building the most nuclear and solar in the world... And yes, coal too. The US right now is actively trying to block renewables (at the federal level at least)

As to fuel economy, the US is the only country where 40 MPG for a hybrid might be brought up as a win. It's just all big inefficient cars over there. You can look up how much the car industry in the US fights increasing fuel economy standards.

⬆ what he said

Chinese demand is increasing just like everyone else's, and they're both retiring older less efficient plants and using fossil fuels as both peaker and baseline generation. But coal utilization overall, despite massive growth in energy demand, is basically flat in China. There's plenty of reason to build out coal capacity to keep grids stabilized while you transition to solar and wind (China finished their 2030 1200GW solar capacity target 6 years early in 2024 and continue to grow that number at an incredible rate).

I agree that new coal sucks but it's a very easy talking point for westerners like us to latch onto when our own contributions to emissions remain way over 50% higher per capita - despite much of the manufacturing and such not happening in our countries.

> But coal utilization overall, despite massive growth in energy demand, is basically flat in China.

"Basically flat" only after running up an exponential curve so that coal consumption is now higher per capita in China than it is in the US and China is generating ~60% of its electricity from coal compared to ~16% in the US.

> I agree that new coal sucks but it's a very easy talking point for westerners like us to latch onto when our own contributions to emissions remain way over 50% higher per capita

You don't even get to say "westerners" anymore. CO2 emissions are higher per capita in China than they are in Europe because they burn such a disproportionate amount of coal, and are only lower than the US and Canada because the US and Canada burn more oil per capita from being so spread out.

Sure but they don't burn oil because they don't have oil. So focus on fossil fuels in general, or emissions rather than just coal specifically - again it's not good to add new coal plants but they're growth negative. And EU has done an admirable job of reducing their emissions, with help of course from Chinese manufacturing of pv cells etc.

The difference in coal power for china is basically purely from them using coal instead of gas, see comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47276338

Despite higher carbon intensity (for now), they still emit less Co2 per person on electricity than the US (because they need/use less).

They are also building more solar panels and wind turbines than the rest of the world combined, and are the biggest investor in renewables. Their emission of CO2 just recently peaked. But they need a lot of power, and most of the new coal plants are there for days when there’s neither sun or wind.

> They are also building more solar panels and wind turbines than the rest of the world combined

All the more reason they have no excuse for building coal. Yet they're also burning more coal than the rest of the world combined.

> most of the new coal plants are there for days when there’s neither sun or wind.

If that was actually the case they wouldn't need to build new coal plants because renewable generation at 40% of normal plus the existing traditional power plants that used to be enough to supply 100% of power by themselves would be more than sufficient. More to the point, if that was actually the case then their emissions would be way down because they'd only be burning coal for something like one week every two years.

They are building coal for things that cannot yet be handled by renewables because coal is the fossil fuel natural resource they have the most of.

It's the same reason it was the dominant fossil fuel for electricity in the US until the shale revolution made natural gas cheap and abundant.

The reasons Trump is a schmuck for pushing coal are (1) he wants it instead of renewals rather than as a way to help fill the gap between renewables and what we need until we can build enough renewables and storage, and (2) in the US that makes no sense because because natural gas can fulfill that role and is better in pretty much every way that coal.

Compare to China which is putting vast amounts of resources into building renewables, storage, and also a nationwide UHV distribution network (currently 40-50000 km compared to ~0 in the US) which means local variations in solar/wind can increasingly be covered by non-local renewables, which should reduce the need to fire up those new local coal plants.

> They are building coal for things that cannot yet be handled by renewables because coal is the fossil fuel natural resource they have the most of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

The US grid is 18% nuclear, 10% wind and 6% solar. China is 5% nuclear, 9% wind and 6% solar.

The UK is 34% wind+solar. Uruguay Greece, Spain and Germany are all >=40% wind+solar. Lithuania and Denmark are >50% wind+solar.

How is it that nuclear, wind and solar can handle a higher percentage of the grid in all of these other countries?

> he wants it instead of renewals rather than as a way to help fill the gap between renewables and what we need until we can build enough renewables and storage

The only thing Trump wants is to shore up votes in coal-producing swing states for the midterms. He's going to slightly delay the shuttering of some coal fired power plants that are just going to close anyway for a ridiculous and purely political reason and the real-world consequences of it are going to be negligible, because this:

> in the US that makes no sense because because natural gas can fulfill that role and is better in pretty much every way that coal.

And not only that, renewables are now the cheapest form of new generation until the grid gets above something like 40% renewables and you have to start actually doing something about the intermittency. Neither the US nor China have that much yet and in neither case do they need the percentage of fossil fuels that they currently have.

But the argument for continuing to operate existing plants is that you still need electricity while building new renewables. The argument for replacing coal plants with natural gas is that conversions are cheaper than new plants and natural gas is better than coal. There is no argument for building new coal when your grid is <40% renewables -- just build new renewables.

> Compare to China which is putting vast amounts of resources into building renewables, storage

Then why is their number lower than the US one, never mind countries in Europe?

> and also a nationwide UHV distribution network (currently 40-50000 km compared to ~0 in the US) which means local variations in solar/wind can increasingly be covered by non-local renewables, which should reduce the need to fire up those new local coal plants.

The US is covered in 100+kV transmission lines. Even higher voltage transmission lines have lower losses, but you're talking about going from a single digit percentage to a lower single digit percentage. It's basically a cost trade off between building all new transmission towers or using the same money to build slightly more renewable generation capacity -- and the latter benefits you more on the normal days when you're not trying to supply power to someone hundreds of miles away and can just use the extra power locally.

China needs some form of dispatchable power and is basically using coal instead of gas because they have none. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47276338 for numbers/more detail.

Japan, Spain and France also have negligible oil and gas production and didn't go all-in on coal as a result. Spain is 0.32% coal and 22.5% natural gas. France is 0.31% coal and 5.7% natural gas.

All those countries grew relatively wealthy much earlier than China, so simply buying ressources like gas is much more feasible for them.

If you want a fair comparison, I would suggest looking at countries in similar economical positions (good growth, but still playing catch-up with wealthy nations) and with big coal reserves (France never really had enough in the first place, which is why going "full coal" instead of full nuclear was not even an option).

Two very good examples would be pre-1980 Germany or Poland a few decades ago, and both of those were very reliant on coal for electricity as well (even Spain was at ~40% coal for power up into the 1990s).

It's not interesting to pick countries from the time before renewables and nuclear were realistically available and ask why they didn't use them.

If you want a country with less than China's GDP per capita, how about Ukraine?

Moreover, you keep talking dispatchable power, but nothing needs that to be 60% of total generation. Daytime load is generally around twice nighttime load. That implies something like two thirds of total generation is baseload (i.e. 50% of peak load for 100% of the day), and can use nuclear for anything up to that entire amount. Only one third needs to be dispatchable/intermittent, for which you can use renewables on most days and cover the large majority of that. You should only need coal/gas/hydro/storage on days when renewable generation is low -- which should be less than half of that one third, not 60% of all generation. China has enough for that in just hydro already, but then they're burning coal anyway.

Again, I'm not arguing that China is doing extremely well regarding CO2 intensity of their electricity. My point is that they perform pretty on par with most comparable countries.

Looking at CO2 per kWh (a much better metric if you want to boil country comparisons down to a single number) you will find that they are not doing significantly worse than most nations in their weight-class (GDP wise), and in fact doing better than quite a few.

Australia, South Africa, Poland, India, Indonesia and basically all of the middle east is doing worse than them. Even rich nations with heavy renewable commitments like Germany are barely 40% lower, and this is frequently negated by higher per-capita electricity use (like it is with the US).

In my view, not many wealthy western nations are actually in a position where they can demand significant improvements from China in this metric without getting laughed at (except France, Scandinavia, Spain). If you look at nations with more than twice the GDP per capita (and a headstart in development) it is more than reasonable to demand that they be at least below 50% of (current) Chinese CO2 intensity (in my view).

I strongly believe that we see so few actual demands in this regard (and so little progress in more direct CO2 taxation schemes) because most nations realize that they live in a figurative glass house. E.g. if the whole EU was at french emission levels, we'd be much more likely to see import tariffs linked to metrics like this, effecting improvement all over the world. Pointing the fingers at China on the other hand is neither accurate nor effective.

> new coal plants

3 cents per kwh

> more nuclear or renewable generation

20 cents per kwh

> What excuse actually is there

A sevenfold price difference is a pretty significant excuse, don't you think?

Assume the avg. home will last 50 years. Limit construction on new suburban developments, problem solved in 50+ years. It would be unpopular, but you claimed it wouldn't be possible, very different. The latter is denying agency in the situation.

We're kinda doing that, through zoning requirements and NIMBY politics. It is, as predicted, very unpopular, and has a number of unfortunate side effects like rising homelessness, declining fertility, and increasing inflation.

On the plus side, we're going to have many fewer people in 50 years, which will lead to correspondingly less CO2 emissions.

> Assume the avg. home will last 50 years. Limit construction on new suburban developments, problem solved in 50+ years. It would be unpopular, but you claimed it wouldn't be possible, very different.

The impossible part of "problem solved in 50+ years" is the 50+ years when you need it to be solved sooner than that, and it can be solved sooner than that by doing something else, namely electrifying heating and transportation and using renewables and nuclear to generate electricity.

You miss the fact that China's GDP per capita is 1/6th the US. So to produce 1/6th per person they emits 2/3rds the CO2. Which means in total, the thing that matters, is that china produces 4 times the CO2 with no end in sight. They are 99% to blame for the current situation.

... so if you are some poor rice farmer, you should be forbidden from even heating in winter, but if you're rich enough, flying around the globe all day is a-ok?

I'm not sure exactly how this sounds like a good argument to you, but I can assure you most certainly that less wealthy persons will not find it convincing.

If total matters then it's historic total per capita where US is (far) ahead, "current" is 100s of years on climate scale. Unless one insists on only stats that makes PRC to blame. All per capita GDP vs per captial emissions reflects is PRC gdp per capita (btw PPP is 1/3 US) is massively underreported, i.e. comports with other proxy indicators like how PRC consume a lot of goods at per capita rates higher than 1/6 nominal and 1/3 per capita would suggest.

No they're 15% to blame for the current situation: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-...

The EU-27 is 17% to blame.

The US is 24% to blame.

Yesterday's CO2 emissions cause today's problems. Today's CO2 emissions will cause tomorrow's problems.

> Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so.

Our economies are built on oil burning somewhere else in the world. You can try to point the blame at China, but the wealth generated in the middle east selling them oil is a major part of the reason why US stock markets keep going up.

If you forced China to use less fossil fuels you would personally feel a much larger hit to your quality of life.

We in the developed world love to outsource the violence and environmental damage we cause. It's one thing to wash your hands, but quite another to then try to point the finger.

> If you forced China to use less fossil fuels you would personally feel a much larger hit to your quality of life.

America imports more from Mexico, Canada, and the EU than China which ranks as #4 when you consider EU as a single entity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...

Imports from China are a small fraction of GDP and offset by exports to other countries. OECD countries are largely exporting labor not the kind of heavy industry associated with heavy CO2 emissions. Which makes sense as China has relatively cheap labor, but they don’t get a discount on Oil.

> Mexico, Canada, and the EU

Do you want to take a wild guess as to which country is a top 3 importer to all of these countries/regions?

Here's a clue: it's the same country that is a major exporter of oil from GCC countries, and the wealth from those GCC countries is a major contributor of investment to US industry/financial sector.

The correct answer, is of course: China

The global is economy is very tightly interconnected and still very much driven by oil and fossil fuels in general. You can do all the accounting tricks you want, but developed Western lifestyles, especially in the US, are entirely supported and made possible by growing global fossil fuel usage.

> Do you want to take a wild guess as to which country is a top 3 importer to all of these countries/regions?

Canada imports 377 Billion from America and only 88 Billion from China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...

So you clearly don’t actually understand global trade if you think being top 3 trading partner somehow drastically changes the equation here. China is a massive economy with 1/6th of the worlds population and a top 3 economy, so yes it does a lot of trade but economies are a lot more than just trade.

I think you're missing the point. A large part of the things we import from those countries indirectly come from China, so it's disingenuous to claim that China is not a major contributor to the US economy based solely on what we import directly from them.

For example the US's top product imported from Mexico are vehicles, electrical equipment and machinery. But those things are assembled from parts produced in China. So if you reduce China's use of energy you not only impact the direct trade that we benefit from but also the indirect trade.

And you still haven't addressed the way the global financial system is so tightly interconnected. GCC countries invest an estimated $1 trillion in the US, but a large chunk of that wealth comes from oil being sold to Asia, with China being one of the major purchasers.

The point stands that you can't meaningfully disconnect US energy usage from Chinese energy usage. If, for example, we were to stop GCC export to China (and not sell that oil in order to fight climate change) the US economy would ultimately collapse (this is in fact one of the major strategic levers that Iran has right now).

tl;dr The amount of fossil fuels it takes to make stuff is not nearly as big as the amount of fossil fuels we use to transport ourselves in cars.

Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions is harder than production-based accounting, but it allows us to see more clearly what the CO2 cost of our lifestyle is. It's been ~5 years since I looked at one of those in detail, but I don't think it's changed much since then. The big takeaway for me was that for the US, which has massive emissions compared to Europe countries, urban/suburban design and land use was by far the biggest determinant of CO2 consumption, followed by income/wealth. Despite their higher wealth and ability to spend more, residents of urban areas have for lower emissions than suburban residents.

See, for example, https://coolclimate.org/maps

There's a tendency to think of consumption in zero-sum terms, but it turns out that energy efficiency has a massive impact on emissions, and also that intuition about quantities of emissions is really hard to gain without a lot of study.

> A large part of the things we import from those countries indirectly come from China

88B can’t be a particularly large part of 377B even before you consider that 88B is largely used domestically not for exports to the US and Canada also exports to China.

Fundamentally something that costs 1$ can’t require more than 1$ of fossil fuels to produce without someone losing money on the transaction. Most goods do embody some carbon, but US agricultural goods being exported actually embody a much larger fraction of CO2 than most goods due to the nature of farming and the vast agricultural subsidies. This alone offsets the trade imbalance rendering US trade very close to carbon neutral.

As to your specific point, product from Canada, Mexico etc, may have parts from China. But Canada isn’t simply redirecting 100% of its Chinese imports to the US. Further Canada, Mexico, and the EU and the US are also exporting goods to China directly and indirectly.

Again, calculate the actual CO2 involved trade with China is basically irrelevant from a CO2 perspective relative to domestic emissions.

> global financial system is so tightly interconnected

We’re talking actual emissions which sums to 100% of global emissions. The environment doesn’t somehow double count pollution because it’s the result of the financial system. Thus the impact of the global financial system and everything else is already being accounted for.

That's a bit out of date, it's likely that China has already peaked. And it's not oil but coal that they tend to burn.

Renewables are cheaper than coal and oil energy, so we will see an increase in quality of life as China electrifies, at least for those of us that import Chinese manufactured goods.

Oil is mostly for people's cars, for an unsustainable transit system that locks us in little boxes and kills all our salmon and is one of the greatest threats to the lives of our children. Getting rid of oil and coal is going to be a loooot easier than getting rid of our car infrastructure.

> Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007

OECD countries' past emissions are causing the warming we see today.

> and continue to do so

China's emissions declined last year. The US's increased.

> It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries.

China used their emissions to make solar and batteries the cheapest source of electricity today.

> OECD countries' past emissions are causing the warming we see today.

China passed EU's cumulative emissions in 2014, if I remember correctly. It's totally fair to blame industrialised countries for their share in causing global warming, irrespective if that happened in the early days of industrialisation and was propped up by dirty energy sources. Though, it's morally much harder to give a pass to countries polluting now using the same sources.

> China passed EU's cumulative emissions in 2014

Not yet according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-....

> it's morally much harder to give a pass to countries polluting now using the same sources

Developed countries should subsidize their use of cleaner energy sources. That balances things out, morally speaking.

Don't do the AC thing, it is a stupid trope under blogfluencers. There are no restrictions (besides positioning the outer unit in such a way that you cause your neighbors to lose sleep). As the summers get more extreme in Europe, more residents decide getting one is starting to pay off, so you see more AC's, but many people think they are doing fine without.

Yeah, never heard of such a thing. The restrictions are placing the units in common areas of the buildings -- in that case you need permission -- and external walls are usually common parts. Placing them in the façade may have additional restrictions.

But, if anything, energy efficiency standards for new construction are so strict that heat is becoming less of a problem.

I can easily google restrictions and share them, and I have in other comments but let me throw it back at you.

Why do 90% of Americans have AC while only 20% of Europeans do?

Why does US have ~4 heat related deaths per million while Europe has ~235 per million?

Do you think it's just stupidity (Europeans don't know the relationship between heat and AC)? Or poverty? Any other explanation?

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766

> Why do 90% of Americans have AC while only 20% of Europeans do?

Because Rome is further north than New York and Paris is just south of Ottawa/Montreal.

Raw latitude hardly tells the entire story.

> Why do 90% of Americans have AC while only 20% of Europeans do?

Maybe because the majority of Europe is closer to Canada, latitude-wise, than to Phoenix, AZ, and there is simply less demand? Less wealth is certainly a factor, too, especially considering how the warmest nations in Europe all tend to be weaker economically.

> Why does US have ~4 heat related deaths per million while Europe has ~235 per million?

Maybe its just the higher life expectancy increasing susceptibility? Everyone has to die of something at some point.

> Maybe its just the higher life expectancy increasing susceptibility? Everyone has to die of something at some point.

Ah yes, heat death, essentially "natural causes". Never mind what's obviously in front of your face.

Most of Europe simply doesn't need an AC. Spain, south of Italy, south of France, parts of the Balkans. But in countries like UK, the Nordics, Germany, etc. you'd need something more than "open windows" for mere days of the year, if that. The people who live in the places that need AC usually have AC. It's actually pretty damn simple.

Got it, it's cooler, no one needs AC. Next question, why are there a lot more heat deaths per capita. I mean, a lot more (4/million vs 235/million)

Should be simple

Because 'global warming has accelerated significantly'?

then it wouldnt be cooler would it

Could be lot of reason. Older European cities with high-density stone buildings and less green space often trap heat more effectively than typical U.S. suburban layouts. Europe has a larger proportion of elderly residents (aged 80+), who are the most susceptible to heat stress. You just picked a data and are trying to fit your narrative on top of it without really considering all possible aspects.

> Older European cities with high-density stone buildings and less green space often trap heat more effectively than typical U.S. suburban layouts.

Doesn't that mean that they would need AC, then? At least for those specific buildings.

However, as a European living in Paris, one of the densest cities in the world, I only feel the need for AC like 2-3 weeks a year. I think the issue is that most people dying of heath are already very old and much more sensitive to it.

But if you live in any kind of share building, you can't just go and set up a split. If it is outside the building, you need permits, both from the architects, so that you don't deface your ugly concrete building, and from your fellow residents, who usually vote "no" by default.

You make a lot of great points. You know what would be great for helping those elderly residence prone to heat strokes living in high-density stone buildings with less green space? Air conditioners! In face, I think EU should mandate air conditioners in every home.

It is a statistic, 'treacherous' is a word often lurking around the corner.

No healthy person all of a sudden dies from heat, I am sorry to tell. If that would be the case, everyone would be as panicked as you are. Europe has comparatively older demographics. Heat risk mainly affects infants and the elderly.

Most EU countries have free health care, so even people not caring enough for themselves will have a comparatively higher chance to survive into an old age. But also those who didn't die because of a bad lifestyle are part of this demographic. Like I said, treacherous, because you should look at this demographic and start to ask how many hours of life expectancy is lost. Healthcare keeps finding that the elder people just don't drink enough during these warm days.

I guess that if you want to win back these hours, you have to convince those elderly people to install AC or get them to drink enough during hot days. At this age people have a certain flexibility of mind, complicated by the fact that heat waves these days are really more severe than in their lived past.

Let me assure you: if people think it is too hot for them at home and they don't see an alternative, they will install AC. It is affordable enough. But there might be a cultural difference, people don't think of AC as the first line of defense against the hot days. Environmental awareness is higher; AC's contribute to global warming. Anecdotally, looking around I see there is a preference for sun protection over AC's.

China is some years behind our industrial development then undevelopment, and is building an entire USA of solar panels every year or whatever - can we expect them to quickly reduce emissions soon?

I thought the world and civilization would collapse because of carbon emissions. It's either serious or it's not. If it's serious then it doesn't really matter right?

It's like you're on a boat that sprung a leak and everyone grabs a bucket. But a few people choose to not help because it's not fair for whatever reason.

What?

The point is that China is the only thing that matters at this point. It's a lot bigger, has surpassed OECD and is growing quickly. Every decline of emissions by developed countries is more than made up for by growing China emissions

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

Chinese emissions have peaked and are now falling.

Emissions in China are not growing, and Chinese manufacturing is largely responsible for falling emissions in developed countries

> It's a lot bigger, has surpassed OECD and is growing quickly

Please stop lying. It hasn't cumulatively emitted as much as the OECD [1], and cumulative emissions are the cause of our current predicament.

It's also doing the opposite of growing.

1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-...

Are you a climate change doesn't matter guy or a china is the climate change causer guy? You can't do both at once.

I'm pointing out the hypocrisy and the focus people have on developed countries is just signaling. A weird anti-west sentiment from people who almost exclusively live a wealthy life in the west.

I'm not an expert, but from what I have read I believe humans do have an effect on climate. However this doesn't mean that any draconian measure that would essentially impose one world government and population control (which is the inevitable outcome of all of this) is preferable. But more importantly I'm anti stupid measures like restricting air-conditioning because they make a negligible impact and literally kill 100k+ people a year.

China has roughly .4 AC units per person while the USA has roughly 1 AC unit per person. You are simultaneously arguing everyone should have an AC, and that China should stop expanding their usage of AC.

I'd argue everyone should have an AC if they need one (probably China needs more than they have.) But we shouldn't build any more fossil fuel extraction, people who need AC should figure out how to do it with batteries and renewable energy. (Nuclear is fine, if it makes sense economically.) We don't need population control, we just need to add sufficiently large taxes on things we want less of. AC isn't a thing we want less of, it's carbon emissions.

>I'm pointing out the hypocrisy and the focus people have on developed countries is just signaling.

It's not. Many/most people who live in developed countries live lifestyles which use outsized amounts of resources and put lots of carbon into the atmosphere. They're also well-positioned to use their wealth to stop doing that.

>A weird anti-west sentiment from people who almost exclusively live a wealthy life in the west.

Not exactly from people who live a wealthy life in the west. More educated people in general are more likely to understand the complicated issue of climate change. Wealth and education have a close relationship.

>I'm not an expert, but from what I have read I believe humans do have an effect on climate. However this doesn't mean that any draconian measure that would essentially impose one world government and population control (which is the inevitable outcome of all of this) is preferable.

If multiple nations collaborating is your definition of one world government then okay, but no it wouldn't lead to that lol. What?

>But more importantly I'm anti stupid measures like restricting air-conditioning because they make a negligible impact and literally kill 100k+ people a year.

I sorta agree that that's the wrong approach. The issue here is generally large industrial producers and corporations who produce most of the carbon. That said, they are responding to demand from consumers, so attacking demand is a valid way to approach the problem.

To deniers both arguments are valid - just use whichever one is more convincing to the person you're talking to. The objective is continue using fossil fuels no matter what.

To alarmists both arguments are valid - just use whichever one is more convincing to the person you're talking to. The objective is stop using fossil fuels no matter what.

Im not sure what is this type of debate good for.

What "both" arguments are so-called alarmists using? What's an alarmist, exactly?

And yes, the objective is to stop using fossil fuels. That's not exactly a secret agenda, it's the whole fucking point.

What is denier, exactly?

Seriously, there is no debate with this rethoric.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

You didn't answer either of my questions. Even though I asked first.

You missing the point, again.

Do you have a point? Please communicate better. I may well be speaking to a bot.

Stop using labeling and listen other opinions better. Your rethoric could be used by other side with switched words - this type of debate does not bring anything new that others could learn from. You belive in something, others don't or vice versa.

> Your rethoric could be used by other side with switched words

Yawn. "Both sides are equally valid" is a tired argument. Truth and lies are not the same.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell

Better stupid and right than intelligent and wrong.

To "alarmists" both "climate change does matter" and "China isn't the only problem" are valid arguments because that's a logical AND: "it's a problem and we're causing it, so we should do something". When you inverse it you use DeMorgan's law and you have to disprove one, either "it's not a problem" or "we can't do anything to stop it" but they typically do it in a way where one purported disproof invalidates the other, for some reason. They argue both "it's not a problem" and "it's a problem but we can't do anything to stop it".

Did you mean to respond to the other person who responded to me?

Yes

To your metaphor, their point is that if everyone is grabbing buckets while someone else is working to spring more leaks, maybe someone needs to set aside their bucket & stop the person springing leaks

Nah, the analogy for your argument is:

Two Americans and ten Chinese are on a lifeboat. The Americans are each eating two sandwiches a day and the Chinese are eating one. Supplies are low. You do the math and note that the Chinese sure are eating a lot of sandwiches.

they continue to build more solar, more wind, but also more coal power plants.

China is also replacing old, inefficient coal power plants with new ones.

No, they are not building new coal fired power plants at the same rate they are expanding renewables. This is several years out of date.

A year ago, the IEA thought China's emissions had peaked:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-fuel-demand-m...

And this recent assessment puts emissions from China at "flat or falling" for the past 21 months:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

> can we expect [China] to quickly reduce emissions soon?

They did, last year.

> 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC

Please don’t repeat this anti-Europe myth. Anyone applying a bit of common sense should realize how improbable that claim is.

The "Our World in Data" citation cuts off right as China's emissions started to decline. More recent data [1] indicates that China's emissions have been flat or falling since the beginning of 2024, and falling fast in the last quarter of 2025 (1%, which is huge on a quarterly basis).

China's decarbonization & renewable efforts have been paying off in a big way. EVs now have a 51% market share among new vehicles [2], exceeding every single major city in the U.S [3] (though the SF Bay Area comes close). Likewise, renewables are 84.4% of its new power plants in 2025 [4].

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

[2] https://electrek.co/2025/08/29/electric-vehicles-reach-tippi...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/06/climate/hybri...

[4] https://en.cnesa.org/latest-news/2025/11/4/chinas-newly-inst...

> There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC so that they can feel good about making a negligible effect on carbon emissions.

Which restrictions on AC? I know that Europeans don't use AC as much as the US because of a mixture of historical and cultural reasons, but I wasn't aware of any restrictions. What prevents someone in Europe from buying and installing an AC unit in their own home?

Here in France, where you need a bureaucrat to sign off some paper for another bureaucrat, and where we levy taxes on taxes, I'm not aware of any restriction on AC from the state. Sure, the politicians say we should put up with sweltering heat, unlike them who have reasons to run their cars' engines for hours while they sit around in useless committees inside air-conditioned historical buildings. But there's no law against AC yet.

What usually happens, is that most people live in cities. And in cities, they have to get a permit from the HOA and from the city, lest the outside unit deface some historically significant square concrete building (yeah, I know there are actually historically significant buildings, ugly concrete ones built after 1950 aren't among them, though they're where the majority of the people live).

> Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so

Any idea what percentage of this reduction is due to offshoring manufacturing?

Keep reading the comment, pretty much the same.

> https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

> There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC so that they can feel good about making a negligible effect on carbon emissions

Where in Europe are ACs restricted because of carbon emissions? Even in France with very strong building codes (you can't just plop an AC on your own, you need approvals), ACs are the standard in the south where they are needed for long periods of the year.

> There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC so that they can feel good about making a negligible effect on carbon emissions.

What restrictions are there on AC?

Several EU countries have mandatory temperature limits for air conditioning in public buildings. Spain, Italy, and Greece have all announced that A/C in public buildings cannot be set lower than 27C (80F) in summer Some exceptions allow up to 25C like restaurants and some work places.

The EU's F-Gas Regulation creates significant restrictions on refrigerants used in air conditioning

There's significant red tape when installing AC due to building regulations

90% of US homes have AC while only 20% of European homes have it, I don't think that's by accident.

Fun fact, some EU countries even have laws telling you how much you can open your windows! In the UK, there is a law that in any public building, windows must not open more than 100mm (about 4 inches).

Are you claiming there are restrictions on installing ACs, or there are restrictions on how those installed are used? The two are quite different arguments.

And 27C is a completely normal temperature. When it's 35C outside, you're better off with a minimised thermal shock with a small difference, instead of going at it the US South or Dubai style where inside it's 18C, so all everyone does is move from one air conditioned place to another (home to car to office to car to mall to home).

Newer refrigerants with lower GWP are great actually. That’s not a restriction on installing AC.

Your mentions PUBLIC building policies are irrelevant

> Spain, Italy, and Greece have all announced that A/C in public buildings cannot be set lower than 27C (80F) in summer

So?

The IEA says China’s CO₂ emissions rose by 565 Mt in 2023 to 12.6 Gt, which it states was a 4.7% increase from 2022.

So any emission reduction done by developed countries is offset by China.

And then China's emissions declined in 2025. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292

The stats for 2025 are yet official.

The quote from your link:

> China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole

So, increase of 4.7% and then (likely) decrease of 0.3% is a great progress?

I would rather wait for official IEA data before claiming victory: https://www.iea.org/countries/china/emissions

Euro intransience about AC is confusing.

As for PRC, they brrrted out enough solar last year to replace about 40 billion barrels of oil over their life time, or about annual global consumption of oil @100m barrels per day. They have enough renewable manufacturing capacity to displace global oil, lng and good chunk of coal.

PRC is basically manufacturing the largest carbon displacement, i.e. emission avoidance system in the world, and if not for them, global fossil consumption would double+.

It's even more retarded accounting that taxes PRC manufacturing renewables as generation emissions while fossils extractors, i.e. US whose massively increased oil/lng exports do not count towards US emissions.

At the end of the day, PRC's balance of emissions vs how much they displace via renewable manufacturing makes their emission contribution net negative, by a large margin. OCED countries reducing their emissions don't even compare in terms of contribution, it's borderline performative. OCED need to be reducing emissions and generating equivalent displacement to be net negative. It doesn't have to be domestic net negative, simply export/fund enough renewables to developing countries whose power consumption and downstream emissions will increase by magnitudes... you know subsidize them like OECD was suppose to do. Reality is rich countries don't want to do shit about the "global" emission problem, at least PRC selling renewables at commodity pricing to displace velocity of fossil consumption increase. Ultimately, 4 billion developing people going to 10/100x their energy consumption, which like AC is net moral good over net emissions. The real battle is how to keep new power use as emission free as possible, and only PRC is doing that in numbers that matter.

Wanking over OCED reducing their emissions is overlooking OCED was suppose to help developing countries minimize (not reduce) as they grow. All OCED has to do is give PRC renewables the 100b they once pledged on to help developing countries transition for PRC to run renewables manufacturing at 100% utilization (or even expand) so significant % of new power generation is renewables. 100b at current PRC prices of $0.1O/watt buys about 1000GW of panels (enough to power all of Africa & India and more). Or OECD can manufacture at sell at/below cost themselves.

A reminder that reducing emissions isn't enough. We actually need them to be net-negative.

Eventually we want to get there, post 2050, but at a very low rate compared to our net emissions right now. Still, it's far cheaper to avoid emitting now than it is to pull it down later, so every time you drive your kids to school remember the debt you are saddling them with.

To add to this, no matter what countries do, we can make our local environments nicer to live in by reducing pollution but across the globe, solar activity has exponentially more, and the ultimate impact. With the magnetic field weakening, it's going to continue going in this direction as it has throughout history.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do what we can to make our local environment better and protect and Preserve what we have. We absolutely should. I'm just stating that this is not the first time the Earth has heated or cooled and nothing that we do will ultimately stop it from this cycle from continuing.

You’ve been misinformed. Yes solar activity fluctuates. Human induced climate change is still real and affecting temperatures much more rapidly.

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