You should call your political representatives and ask for a carbon tax with tariffs on imports then.

Sure thing, and whose carbon numbers should I tell them to use when they calculate the tariff? The figures reported by the PRC’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment?

There are people who determine whether other countries are price dumping to advise setting up protective tariffs. Why don't you believe that there are people who can produce reasonably accurate estimates for the amount of CO2 it took to produce something? I'd assume that politicians would start by asking domestic producers of stuff what they think. The tariffs are for their protection after all.

ahahahahahahahahah, you're a riot

Which part of by comment do you find so amusing?

both part, that I have access to my political representation (which is a very American thing, not so much around here) and that a single government has nowaday the agency to impose tariffs irregardless of what wto, eutc and whatnots allows

Is this China you speak of located on another planet?

no, and that is the point, until we put pressure there, all effort done here is worthless.

How well do you think it will work to try to pressure China into cutting their emissions before you've made at least some effort to clean up your own? Effort done here is not worthless at all.

I've been recycling, downsizing and cutting waste the last thirty years, all the while industry just moved around to sidestep legislation, in a two punch combo of increasing the local cost of living and destroying the local economy, so fuck that, effort done here had been worthless globally and damaging locally.

The "you" in my comment is intended at country level. It basically means: your elected representatives.

It's true that individual actions to help the climate may not help a lot, immediately and in practical terms, if there's no bigger policy movement.

Then again, seeing that people are willing to take costly individual actions is a strong signal to elected representatives that their electors care about this stuff. So it still may not be worthless.

Sure, let's ignore China.

China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Exceeded the Developed World: https://rhg.com/research/chinas-emissions-surpass-developed-...

I'm not ignoring China. I'm saying: if you're asking China to change its behaviour, I doubt you'll get very far unless you begin by showing willing to change your behaviour too.

Let's take some other anti-social behaviour as an analogy. Imagine person A is in their car, idling their engine, outside an elementary school at pick-up time[1]. Now imagine person B comes up and asks them to stop. How well do you think that works if person B gets out of a car which is also idling its engine when they come and make the request?

Your argument seems to be that person B's car is smaller. I don't think that helps much, but it's also not in any meaningful way true. China's emissions are large only because China is large. Per-capita emissions are what matter here (otherwise it would solve the problem of China being a large emitter if China were to split itself into a dozen smaller countries — which is clearly nonsensical). China's per-capita emissions are less than half those of the US[2], and some of them are emitted in producing goods for export to the US.

[1] I live opposite an elementary school, and this is sadly not unusual.

[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC

I guess it is complex issue, especially as most of the goods we import from Chine so in the sense we have outsourced our CO2 to China, it would be excellent if they could switch 100% renewable, and recently I read news that they are close with Thorium reactors... so, I guess they working on it but as everywhere else progress is not as fast as we need it to be...