Slashdot Mirror
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.
Australia (per capita), a country that faces a similar geographic situation.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The US is also one of the first countries to establish the Environmental Protection agency to explicitly DO something about getting emissions down. Which is why things like smog in Los Angeles is much less a problem today than it was before and we didn't need a worldwide treaty to do it. But I guess the EPA did nothing according to these guys. Nor do I suspect they've bothered to really look into China's carbon emissions or Russia's (which I'm sure China and Russia's governments are open about sharing information and that the information is actually... y'know... factual)
"...longtime scholar of climate politics..."
And there's yer problem right there.
Climate Science is subsumed by politics.
The "science" is tainted by politics.
The "solutions" are tainted by politics.
Oh, and BTW, Thanks mostly to less coal use at power plants, emissions in the first half of 2016 were lowest since 1991
To clear that up...cheaper Gas, enabled by Fracking, has been replacing coal.
To make it even more clear, Fracking has happened mostly on Private Land despite widespread opposition from the Greenies and attempts by the last Administration to regulate and limit its use.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.