They are not going to let the hangups of the West be a roadblock on that march.

Neither, for that matter, will India.

These types of worries are strictly for the West, and third world nations participate in the global warming outcry because they see an opportunity for obtaining subsidies from this project.

The moment there are costs instead of subsidies, and third world nations are portrayed as perpetrators deserving of fines instead of victims deserving of subsidies, you will see the developing world rapidly lose interest in this project of curtailing carbon emissions. It will be absolutely hilarious when people in the West realize that none of these nations are their allies in the fight against global warming, that everyone in the developing world is far more interested in improving their economy once the spigot of subsidies is cut off.

China is worried about technological progress, employment, and social stability. Everything else is nice-to-have. I don't blame them.

For once, the developed world is at the mercy of decisions made in the developing world, and suddenly they have to try and appease instead of ignore or bully. That cannot be a comfortable realization.

One thing you can see them doing is trying to move people out of very old coal heated housing and into apartment buildings...

Some of my relatives in law live in these old buildings, here's their kitchen: https://travel.devonwinrick.com/images/IMG_20191215_111655%2...

Of course China is serious about environment, it affects Chinese people before everyone else. We have been improvements in many ways in China.

Well, that is certainly one way of looking at things. I have never encountered anyone who actually believes that, until now. The fact of the matter is that most people don't care a whole lot about global warming one way or another. Not in the U.S. Not in Europe, and certainly not in China. To be clear, I'm not saying that, if asked, "Do you care?" that they respond "No, I don't care." People like to view themselves as caring about things. The answer to "Do you care about X" is usually "Of course I care." - at least when you are asked by a stranger. But if asked "How much are you willing to spend", the answer is usually "very little.". So the revealed preferences in the US are not too different from revealed preferences in China.

68% of Americans wouldn't pay more than $10 a month to combat climate change. That's to "combat", not even "solve".

So I don't think most people are unsettled or even surprised at China ignoring climate change. If we are only willing to pay less than $120 per year, then you would expect a nation with 1/3 our income to be willing to spend very little. Think of all the ridiculous things Americans spend $10 a month on. Then draw a line and put global warming below that line. So an objective assessment doesn't lead to any uncomfortable truths other than there is only a minority that is truly concerned about this issue, and that such concern appears to be a luxury good even in the West, and therefore will not be a major factor in the developing world. An even cursory awareness of what's going on in the world would have made this very clear a long time ago to anyone who was willing to look outside their own social circle.

In the more extreme slivers of speculation, climate change might be the thing that undoes the very concept of nation state sovereignty, when the model of absolute freedom to do whatever runs into the reality that we have the technology to affect the entire earth. On the other hand this model wasn't all that old to begin with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty

I think you're absolutely right, but would argue that the majority in developed countries do not realize it whatsoever. Instead they simply take for granted that they are the problem so that they may imagine themselves the solution (c.f. carbon taxes in Canada, rich cities declaring climate emergencies they pretend they can help solve, etc.).

For developing world, it sucks both ways, with or without global warming.

Now that they are developed, it is unjust and unfair of them to say, "Hey we polluted the world in the first place, and became developed. Now you must put climate before development and remain underdeveloped".

As I see it, developed nations should reduce emission much below their goals so that countries like China, India, Indoneshia, and Brazil can prosper.

You cannot just say- remain poor because climate. We are rich and we brought this situation.

No, all it shows is how selfish China is. It's a textbook tragedy of the commons. They get all the benefit of polluting but make us take on most of the cost. If there were somehow a way to make it so that all of China's pollution affected only China, they'd be taking it much more seriously, developed or undeveloped.

Ne'er have truer words been spoken. Welcome to the real world outside of the HN bubble.

because if every one of the 32 million canadians reaced zero emissions, woudl the world even notice?

Look, i am all for "green" programs, but over-taxing us isnt the answer, our contribution is minimal.. we would be far better off helping others get off coal.

1. Qatar

2. Kuwait

3. UAE

4. Saudi Arabia

5. Luxembourg

6. Australia

7. USA

8. Canada

9. Estonia

10. Kazakhstan

https://www.statista.com/chart/20903/countries-emitting-most...

All of that and yet we are supposed to be comfortable telling people in China one generation removed from levels of poverty Westerners could not even fathom: "no, no cheap electricity for you! You're the ones who need to sacrifice!"

This is both the moral and practical solution, it's just not what people want to hear.

The climate doesn't care for borders and sovereignty either. "China" is just an arbitrary set of people and businesses- you could as well calculate the emissions of the US + Europe + Middle East, or that of companies with a name starting by a letter from a to k, or that of bald people.

If you want to talk about responsibility, instead, then you need to take in account population, and there the US are much worse offenders.

But there's nothing fair about requiring people or groups to equalize their emissions, in general.

If you drive a semi tractor trailer, and I drive a car, then we both may need to reduce our CO2 emissions, but equalizing them makes no sense if you in fact need to transport a lot more stuff than me. The whole reason you drive a truck that gets lousy mileage is because it's more efficient per pound of goods transported than if they were loaded into passenger cars.

If we want to reduce global CO2 emissions, then the only rational and reasonable way to do it is to treat every kg of CO2 equally, and not get sidetracked into other notions of fairness.

I'm aware that carbon taxes, cap and trade, etc. may have a lot of problems, it's just that the practical problems of doing the right thing don't change what the right thing is.

Like the saying about looking for your keys under the streetlight when they aren't there.

It would make more sense to blame China for having such a high population density- four times that of the US. However, reducing the population is a pretty harsh demand, and in fairness China has already taken tough measures in this respect with the one child policy.

Check your math again: this isn't true. Per the article we're discussing, China is responsible for 27% of emissions and the US for 11%. Half of China's emissions is more than all of the US's emissions.

I used data from 2018, which I understand can be outdated now. But then you can split China in four parts, the argument doesn't change. If the problem is the total amount emitted by any political division of people, then splitting it in multiple parts should solve the problem. It doesn't.

But why would you? They wouldn't be the worst emitters, after all. The US would be a worse emitter than each of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

Per capita resource consumption dominates raw population to a surprisingly large extent.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/science-proves-kids-ar...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/give-up-having...

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/14/...

Fertility at a single moment in time is meaningless, which is why you look at the total population.

And further, it would be interesting to see how much of the emissions are driven by products and services for developed nations.

This gets much more complicated but it would draw a fair picture.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...

This is the article belonging to these graphs (you can choose countries yourself and have all graphs in the article be change according to your choice):

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Exports aren't a gift - they get something in return for them, just as for other economic activity. So why would you not consider their emissions?

Emissions are an external cost, meaning its information is lost in the price of making something.

If a country produces a lot of goods that are carbon intensive and export them, the country who import those goods cannot really calculate the carbon emission of those goods with precision. They can do estimates.

This is why accusing china of being a large emitter is wrong for several reasons:

* they are the factory of the world, they export a lot of stuff

* their emission per capita is lower compared to developed countries

Even though it's true that China could switch to nuclear energy, although they already have a lot of it.

But it's not. In this scheme, the emissions get assigned to the people driving, and not to the oil companies (except the emissions produced during oil extraction).

The "don't count exports" scheme is easy to fool. Focus your economy into products that require high emissions to produce (and don't bother trying to reduce these emissions, that way you can undercut foreign markets better), export them, import low emissions products, and you get the moral high-ground that, once your exports are ignored, you're producing little emissions, even as those exports enrich you.

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/11/02/paris-climate-d...

China |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| US |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| India |||||||||| EU-27 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Indonesia |||||||||||||||||||||||||| Russia |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Brazil |||||||||||||||||||||||||| Japan ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

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...looking at emissions per-capita is unfair to resource-rich countries that have reeled in their population growth and pulled themselves out of the mud. /s

Industry is made up of and serves individuals, so it's not very difficult to assign its emissions to individuals.