> China emits 10 billion tons of CO2 annually, compared to the UK’s 358 million. That means whatever the UK does just matters very little to the overall problem of mitigating climate change.

I don’t think it follows from that that “the actual climate change problem isn’t getting people in the UK to use less“. China has 31 provinces, so if you look at China’s emissions by province, there will be quite a few that are at the level of CO2 emissions of the UK or below it. By your logic, that would mean the actual climate change problem isn’t getting people in those provinces to use less.

If so, who has to do something?

> It’s figuring out how to accommodate western standards of living in Asia and Africa without a massive increase in CO2 emissions.

If we can do that, we can cut the UK’s emissions, too.

I also think it’s not about ‘raising’ the world to what the west currently does, but about changing western standards of living. I think there’s substantial room for decreasing CO2 emissions without decreasing well-being (thought experiment: would people be less happy if the airplane hadn’t been invented? If we had run out of oil in 1980?)

What does a 1980 without oil look like in your imagination?

I think most people would rather live in a world that is 5 degrees hotter than one without oil.

You are ignoring the important part of why he divides people into "China" and the "UK". It's not an arbitrary distinction it's the unit with which laws get enacted and have affect. And China can set laws that affect all provinces. If the UK cuts climate change by enacting local laws it'll make the UK worse off, and the rest of world marginally better off. So the smart thing to do from the UK side is not to focus on local laws that reduce carbon footprint but on items that have global reach, such as treaties and technology.

I think it’s easy to say that before the world is 5 degree hotter than after, and will vary greatly based on impact and how much benefit you saw from what made the world 5 degrees hotter. I think almost anyone but people who are long oil production and ICE technology would rather see a world without oil though. It’s a super useful high density energy source that’s cheap and portable and requires low tech to make use of. But it’s filthy and finite. Beyond CO2, I think no one likes air pollution, high particulate counts, acid rain, soot covering everything, noise pollution, and all the other legacies of the age of fire. I for one welcome the age of maxwells equations.

I think the logic is a bit skewed from another angle. How much of the goods used in the UK are produced in China? If so, surely we should reallocate and attribute the CO2 in that production and distribution chain to the UK? If widget X is going to be produced somewhere and consumed in the UK, why does the producer get the attribution? It could just as well been produced in the UK - supply is just reacting to demand, and CO2 is a demand problem. (Not entirely true as production in one locale is likely cleaner than another due to regulation and environmental consciousness, but I think my reattribution model is closer than what we do today).

Re: well being, I think it’s a losing argument. Efficiency and better technologies are more likely to happen than mass enlightenment. I think it depends on what you mean by well being. I suspect people are generally happier for the progress that’s been made in reducing extreme poverty globally, which couldn’t have happened without a cheap and efficient portable energy source like oil. If you’re only measuring western upper middle class educated folks, I’ll wager their well being is worse. But I think you can’t separate the two - the lifting of billions out of extreme poverty and the enshittification of middle class life in the west. But whether you can or not, oil bootstrapped us to this point. But I think we’re demonstrably past bootstrapping and we absolutely must do something different.