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Many Nations Pin Climate Hopes On China, India As Hopes For Trump Fade (reuters.com)
Twelve readers share a Reuters report: Many countries are pinning their hopes on China and India to lead efforts to slow climate change amid a growing sense of resignation that U.S. President Donald Trump will either withdraw from a global pact or stay and play a minimal role. Delegates at the May 8-18 negotiations in Bonn on a detailed "rule book" for the 2015 Paris Agreement, the first U.N. talks since Trump took office, say there is less foreboding than when Washington last broke with global climate efforts in 2001. Trump doubts global warming has a human cause and says he will decide on a campaign threat to "cancel" the Paris Agreement, the first to bind all nations to set goals to curb emissions, after a group of Seven summit in Italy on May 26-27. "The time when one big player could affect the whole game is past," said Ronald Jumeau, climate ambassador for the Seychelles. "There would be a void without the U.S., but China and India seem to be increasing their effort." Big emitters led by China, the European Union and India have reaffirmed their commitment to Paris, which seeks to phase out greenhouse gas emissions this century by shifting to clean energies. By contrast, Trump wants to favor U.S. coal.
You know, I remember the 60s and early 70s in the US, before the Clean Air Act was amended to empower the federal government to regulate emissions.
If you are under 50, you would not believe how bad things got. Look at pictures of Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago. Hell, even Salt Lake City was barely recognizable. It wasn't just big cities, either; small cities like Birmingham looked like this.
When you look at an old movie or TV show from the late 60s early 70s and everything in the distance looks hazy, that's not the film. That's what cities actually looked like on a good day.
I bring this up because the decision to to do something about air pollution was a sign of how healthy our democracy used to be. There was a problem that was costly and complex to tackle, but we did it. And as today there were people who profited by the status quo, that allowed them to externalize their waste management costs. The difference is that their hold on politicians was a lot less, and there was more independent media. Had we not done something about air pollution in 1970, we'd be where Beijing is now, and we'd be just as powerless to do anything about it today.
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Do us all a favour and go bathe downstream of one of your Utopian unregulated chemical plants.
Well, per capita, the US emits far far more than the rest of the world. But the U.S. is a small fraction of the world.
The US also feeds more of the world per capita, Protects more of the World's people from aggression per capita and provides more of the World's people with heavily subsidized medicine per capita, than any other country in the world.
If some other country wants to take a turn being the lightning rod for the World's anger, then have at it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The US has already cleaned up its act FAR more than the leading polluters in the world have done, so why not hang back and bit and let's see if China really means what it says on this commitment.
The US is 2nd overall in CO2 output (7th per capita). If you've done a lot to clean up your act, it's because your act was pretty fucking bad to begin with. Wielding that as an excuse is akin to banks paying a few million in fines after bilking billions out the populace.
Making changes in those countries will have the greatest impact overall.
CO2 emissions per capita (2015):
US: 16.1t
China: 7.7t
India: 1.9t
The US has 4% of the population but produces 14% of the CO2. Seems to me that the US could make a pretty big impact if they stopped trying to find excuses not to.