Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by mitthrowaway2 on Monday August 24, 2026 @05:56PM
(#49426380)
Solution to save the environment: China should separate out Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia as separate independent countries. Hong Kong and Macao too. And then split north-south so that Shanghai and Beijing become their own capitals. Continue this process and eventually the population and emissions of each individual country will be low enough that they can be ignored, thus solving the problem once and for all.
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by edflsafoiewq on Monday August 24, 2026 @06:31PM
(#49426755)
That is the opposite of what GP said. The point is only the total emissions matter, the climate does not care about "fair" allocations over either people or nation-states.
That's a pointless point, because any system to actually control emissions requires allocating them to nation-states, because it is nation-states that actually enforce things on people.
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by onraglanroad on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @01:10PM
(#49437313)
No, it's exactly what the GP said: per capita doesn't matter, it's just the size of the country.
So split the country up fixes the problem. Yes, it's dumb, but you agreed with it...
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by piva00 on Monday August 24, 2026 @06:27PM
(#49426717)
The EU has more people than the USA but emits 1/3 of the USA's, what's the exceptionalist excuse for that?
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by drnick1 on Monday August 24, 2026 @08:14PM
(#49427567)
> what's the exceptionalist excuse for that?
What is Europe's excuse for having such low wages and output despite having more people?
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by piva00 on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @02:11AM
(#49429684)
Did I offend you by asking a question?
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by phartenfeller on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @03:22AM
(#49430195)
We have a meltdown, maybe we can extract clean energy from here
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by toddy_flogsit on Monday August 24, 2026 @06:29PM
(#49426738)
well, yes we're overfed and over-commercialized. But we also vastly out build, grow and produce Europe. (and you have more people)
Re:Oceans hit highest temperature on record
by piva00 on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @05:23AM
(#49431050)
If using simple metrics like GDP growth, I'm more in the camp of Paul Krugman's argument[0] that such comparisons with simple naïve metrics are insufficient to analyse it.
I agree the USA has grown more steadily than the EU and the American software/tech industries have a leg up but the devil is in the details.
I travel a lot for work to the USA and I do not experience what this GDP growth has brought to the US in the past 10-15 years: infrastructure in general is worse (worse airports, worse roads, etc.), urban life is worse, rural life is worse, quality of food is worse.
[0] https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/europe-v-america-whos-rea...
We don't care about that notion of "fair": the cold hart truth is that China has 1.4 billon people.
Another way to put it: China has one billion more people than there are in the US.
Or another way to put it: 4.1x more people.
Which means China is emitting nearly 3x more Co2 than the US.
Our only hope is that China is using coal and fossil fuels only has a mean to sustain its insane growth while they transition to solar and nuclear (which they also do, at an amazing speed).
Hillbillies and redneck with their gigantic pick-up trucks in the US are really the least of worries.