After that it will be "welp it's too late now".

It is interesting that you term me as a climate denier, when in no part did my comment imply I deny the effects and future impact of climate change. I made a point about how global policymaking can and will realistically react to the situation.

Why is that unreasonable? US emissions are actually lower than in the past.

But the US could go to zero and if China and India don't lower emission it won't matter.

Tragedy of the commons and all.

Because accepting the potential demise of modern complex society and the collapse of ecosystems and biodiversity world wide and a mass exctinction event because "Fuck it China and India are bad so lets just party until the end." Is fucking stupid.

The proper framing is we need to reduce emissions and so does China and India so how do we facilitate that. The answer is to 1.) Reduce our own emissions to have the moral basis to push other countries to reduce their emissions. 2.) Tax imported goods based on the emissions created in their production. Incentivizing foreign countries to reduce their emissions to be competitive in US markets. 3.) Lobby other countries to do the same using the diplomatic means we have at our disposal.

Sure we “need to do that” but you know it won’t ever happen right?

Scientists have already said if we stop all emissions tomorrow, across the globe, we’re still hitting catastrophic climate change.

The boat to fix this left decades ago.

That's complete bullshit. Global warming isnt a binary of either we're fucked or we're not fucked. It's a gradient of more fucked the look get we wait to phase out emissions. It's never too late because it can always be Made worse by continuing to emit more.

It's funny how reactionaries have gone from "it's not really happening", "it's not man made" to "it's too late anyways" in no time. The same goal remains; to keep doing nothing.

If by “reactionary” you mean “realist” then I agree.

Beyond the point of no return now. Time to start moving to higher ground.

There are many points of no return. There is a difference between 5 degrees of warming and 10 or 20.

Moving to higher ground only considers the first-order effects of climate change - floods and severe weather. Potential further effects include reduced agricultural output/efficiency, massive migrations of climate refugees, and the destabilization or collapse of national governments. If we do nothing, natural disasters will be the least of our concerns.

It depends how it goes to zero. US is a significant importer from China. If they go to zero through enforcement of produce-or-import-at-zero laws, it would also push China to improve or lose lots of business.

> US emissions are actually lower than in the past.

> But the US could go to zero and if China and India don't lower emission it won't matter.

Because if the US cut its emissions by half, the standard of living of US citizens (and its associated carbon cost) will become about the same as in China, and will still be a whopping 3.5 times better than India.

Looking at total emissions is actually meaningless, as reducing emissions (significantly) necessarily involves lowering the standard of living - less meat, less transportation, more expensive electricity, less stuff, less construction, less heating etc. The US and EU have a lot of place for reducing our CO2 by reducing our standards of living than India (which produces less CO2 per person than Sweden or any other country in the EU).

Sure, there is some amount of CO2 reduction that can be achieved by green power, but nowhere near enough at the scale and speed needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

We don't need to reduce our standard of living. We need to change our energy sources to renewables and nuclear. Incentivizing density over sprawl would be good too. As well as efficiency. The only people arguing we need to drastically reduce energy usage are people arguing against doing anything. It's a strawman.

We will have to. I know it can seem like an argument against doing anything, but that is not where I'm coming from. I'm also not arguing in favor of self flagellation or individual action in the face of huge social forces.

But, given how grave and urgent the situation is getting, there is no way to convert all curent energy generation to green energy AND increase energy generation capacity to keep up with normal economic growth AND increase it many times over to electrify all transportation AND electrify all heating. And even if we were to succeed in all that, that only covers about half of US emissions at best - the other half is coming from agriculture, industry and residential emissions. Not to mention the massive emissions that are happening in China but ultimately serving the US market.

It's simply not possible to achieve the necessary time frames (net 0 in 20 years) without significantly reducing economic activity and standards of living in the short term - then growing back to current activity and standards of living in the longer term.