That's kind of a childish argument to make - "why should we do it when x doesn't anyway? Hmph!"

The US has always presented itself - through media, propaganda, etc - as exemplary, greatest country in the world, home of the free / brave, leaders of innovation, technology, economics and warfare. So why not be better than the others at reducing emissions? It's a huge financial opportunity too, as exemplified by e.g. Tesla that sells cars, batteries, battery technology and solar all over the world, bringing a lot of money back to the US (in theory, assuming it's not whisked off to a tax haven like e.g. Apple and Google do).

What I'm saying here is that someone has to take the moral high ground. The US already pretends to do this, but they have the means to put it into practice.

> That's kind of a childish argument to make - "why should we do it when x doesn't anyway? Hmph!"

Well it’s a _global_ problem. The US isn’t the only party here. Emissions in the US have been going down and in India and China they’ve been going up[1] like crazy. And yet the US is constantly harangued about reducing emissions and concerns about India and China are hand waved away.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_fossil_carbon_dio...

So to be fair, it makes much more sense to talk about per capita in this context as there is also just more consumers in China than the US [0] And then it is also important to look at Consumption-based vs. production-based emissions. Ultimately less emissions are less emissions even if others don't follow.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

Per-capita is great and all but two things:

1. There’s 3x as many people in China as the US but the US emits about 2x as much per capita as China (and decreasing!). So it isn’t that far off in per capita terms. What will the talking point be once that changes?

2. When it comes to pollution it absolutely does matter who the largest overall polluter is. If the world were two countries and one was responsible for 90% of carbon emissions and the other was responsible for 10% at a higher per capita rate, who would it make more sense to go after first?

This is really where climate alarmists lose me. Too many contradictory policies. Harass the US, who has both a declining birth rate and declining CO2 emissions while giving a pass to other countries who are exploding in population and total emissions. And don’t even get me started on how we in the west are told to have fewer children but are simultaneously told that we must import enormous numbers of third world immigrants, who by the way will have their carbon footprint boosted dramatically.

> who would it make more sense to go after first

Both as the effect is global, and if the differential is 2:1 both have much room for improvement. Though you must not conveniently forget that much of China's emissions stem from being the world's manufacturer. A hell of a lot of European and US emissions have been globalised to China, rather simply a billion Chinese adopting a Texan lifestyle. I'd be interested to see per capita global emissions after someone accounted for globalisation of manufacturing and services, and brought all those imports back home, emissions wise.

Yet even after outsourcing all that heavy industry and manufacturing, the US has, by far, the worst per capita emissions on the planet. It is completely beyond my understanding when numbers sometimes come up on HN, how they are able to use so much for a family. The lifestyle isn't 2x UK, France or Germany. Not just CO2, but water use too. It beggars belief to be so wasteful for so little gain.

Everyone should be doing more, whether tiny or the largest. It really should be a race to the bottom - for national, and global pride.

I'd encourage you to harass my country all you like - decidedly mid tier on climate action and emissions, precisely because they are mid tier on a globe that is not doing nearly enough. Complaining it's worse elsewhere just reeks of trying to evade or ignore the issue.

>That's kind of a childish argument to make - "why should we do it when x doesn't anyway? Hmph!"

Whoa there, settle down. That’s not the sentiment behind the argument.

> That's kind of a childish argument to make - "why should we do it when x doesn't anyway? Hmph!"

That is not my argument at all.

To spell it out, I'm saying that the US alone lowering emissions will not solve the problem, as the name implies, Global Warming can not be solved locally.

From the rest of your comment, it sounds like solving the problem isn't really your main concern. You're more focused on your country being seen as a moral leader. That might explain our differences.

If India and China want to continue to export to the US & Europe than we have lots of power to make them.

https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/

87% of Chinese emissions are attributable to domestic consumption. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

But without the 13% much of the 87% would disappear. Each dollar received from an export ends up getting spent 5 to 10 times internally.

...as opposed to Yuan, which is spent once and then immediately destroyed?

If our spending includes researching sand scaling low-emission technology, that will affect India's and China's emissions.

When electric cars are competitive, and solar and storage cheaper than coal, no one's going to keep throwing away money on the dirtier alternatives..

China isn't building coal because it's hip. They do it because it's cheap, so long as you don't account for its externalities. If solar + storage were significantly cheaper and met demand just as well, why would they keep throwing away money on coal?

As late as 2012, 800 billion people in India were choking on the flumes of biomass stoves[1]. They aren't exactly in the position to stop global warming. The best we can do is to provide a framework to achieve a comfortable standard of living without completely destroying the environment.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945541/#B1-ije...

Turns out India and China will be more affected by climate change than the US so they're actually doing something about. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18164816