Nations make their own policies based on their own interests. The Paris Accords are essentially meaningless. While we have higher per capita CO2 emissions than China and India, that only means that we have a much higher standard of living and they will be catching up to us (i.e. their per capita emissions will increase while ours are flat or possibly decreasing). As nearly 3 billion Chinese and Indians continue to increase their standard of living, they will continue to be the long poles in the tent. The US can put whatever national policies in place that the current administration and Congress choose but as a nation we will continue to be largely irrelevant when it comes to global CO2 emissions. Choosing national policies that put us at a global disadvantage compared to other nations while we have a marginal impact on global CO2 emissions is questionable. The US has already done a good job of turning the curve down.
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Originally Posted by blueash
It really is not fair to look at CO2 per nation as some nations have a whole lot more people than the USA. A fair comparison would be how much CO2 does each person in that nation produce, or tonnes per capita production:
China 6.18
India 1.64
USA 17.5
So each American produced triple that of one in China and 10x that in India. In fact we have the worst, highest, CO2 per person of any developed country
So whatever all those other countries are doing is making each nation more CO2 responsible than each of us.
China is still burning too much coal but has stopped issuing any new permits. It also has invested heavily in clean energy.. you know all those solar panels they make. Additionally a lot of Chinese manufacturing which produces CO2 is making stuff for us.
Which gets back to the assertion that because we "only" make 15% of the pollution what we do is unimportant. Every step in the right direction helps. Just like more fuel efficient cars, water efficient showers, LED lights instead of incandescent (remember all the screaming by some about how we needed to keep our old light bulbs), every act of kindness or charity. Every step helps so why would anyone fight it? But people do. |