The US Is the Biggest Carbon Polluter in History (nytimes.com)

Justin Gillis, and Nadja Popovich, writing for The New York Times: The United States, with its love of big cars, big houses and blasting air-conditioners, has contributed more than any other country to the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is scorching the planet. "In cumulative terms, we certainly own this problem more than anybody else does," said David G. Victor, a longtime scholar of climate politics at the University of California, San Diego. Many argue that this obligates the United States to take ambitious action to slow global warming. Against that backdrop, factions in the Trump administration are engaged in a heated debate over whether to remain a party to the 195-nation agreement on climate change reached in Paris in 2015. President Trump promised on Wednesday to announce his decision at 3 p.m Thursday in the White House Rose Garden. A decision to walk away from the accord would be a momentous setback, in practical and political terms, for the effort to address climate change. Several news outlets, citing people in the administration, reported on Wednesday that the US is likely to pull out of the agreement.

Comments

Re:Bullshit propaganda

[PopeRatzo]

The US is also one of the first countries to establish the Environmental Protection agency to explicitly DO something about getting emissions down.

And the first country to have a jackoff in the White House who turned the EPA into the enforcement arm of the fossil fuel industry and prohibit it from performing its core function.

Re:LOL more fake news from the NY Times

[religionofpeas]

The Sun's activity is actually down, while temperatures have soared.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

Re:And the USA is also one of the worst per capita

[AmiMoJo]

Those are factors, but for example lots of European countries have fairly big temperature swings over the year but still use a lot less energy because their homes and buildings are well designed and insulated. In fact many European governments had some kind of scheme,either tax or industry funded, to get homes properly insulated at little or no cost to the owner.

Europe also has requires appliances to be much more efficient. That really helps combat the "bigger = better" mentality that consumers have, e.g. vacuum cleaners with 3000W motors that generate a lot of heat but don't clean any better.

All that and several EU countries have higher standards of living and quality of life compared to America, so it's not an either/or choice.