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We don't have to trust their numbers, we have satellites that can monitor the emission levels. The US pollutes at roughly twice the amount on a per person basi

We don't have to trust their numbers, we have satellites that can monitor the emission levels. The US pollutes at roughly twice the amount on a per person basis as China. In addition we "outsource" some of our pollution to them by them doing our manufacturing. It's tough to both raise the standard of living (reduce poverty) while also reducing pollution but China has a lot of initiatives to be more green; for examples 150 new nuclear reactors planned in the next 15 years. They benefit from the better air quality so it's a goal for them.

bluGill 3y ago
The trends are the US is reducing emissions. I'm not sure what China us doing (I know they build a lot of solar, but i'm not clear if they are also building coal power plants)
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  They are building, buying, and using a lot of coal, but that's mostly a temporary regression in their environmentalism from a significant economic reduction. Remember, at one point they were literally closing their airports because it's too smoggy to operate safely. China will reduce their fossil fuel usage even if global warming was not a concern, simply because they don't like the lost productivity and societal happiness that comes from breathing so much smog.
  - dirtyid 3y ago
    >temporary regression ... >China will reduce their fossil fuel usage even if global warming was not a concern Pretty much, security enviroment has changed. So indigenous energy security = short/medium term coal is back until electrification proliferates.
anonym29 3y ago
We do have a worse starting point, but as another commenter has pointed out, we're trending in the right direction and China is trending in the wrong direction. Part of the solution is necessarily going to be temporary reductions in American energy consumption, writ large, until we can produce technology to sustainably remove carbon emissions from the environment at scale. I'm all-in, for instance, on banning SUVs and "light" trucks for personal ownership, which categorically require more energy input (regardless of whether gasoline, hydrogen, electric, etc) than sedans and compact cars - to say nothing of the pedestrian safety risks, no less. Hell, I'm open to considering energy quotas for residential homes, to be reduced to a level sufficient only for the sustainment of life past a certain threshold, to disincentive wasteful use of electricity. These are all tiny steps in the right direction, and all insufficient alone, but our progress in saving the climate is a vector value, not a boolean value. A bunch of little improvements in the right direction do help, but we cannot accept them as a "complete" solution on their own.
- scottLobster 3y ago
  "to be reduced to a level sufficient only for the sustainment of life past a certain threshold," Wow, do you hear yourself? Who decides what "threshold" is acceptable, you? You think you should be able to determine whether my infant daughter freezes in the winter or swelters in the summer? Oh I'm sure your theory involves some utopian government that never gets anything wrong. What you're proposing is a dystopian police state where the government decides how warm or cold your house should be on any given day. Of course the rich will be able to just pay any fines to keep the power/gas on, so they can blast their AC all summer while the poor swelter or go into debt to pay fines, because their house unfortunately isn't built in the shade and gets hotter than the ones around it, so the government weather stations think their house is cooler than it actually is. Or the government will have to put thermostats in literally every house to accurately monitor internal temperature, and decide what's good enough for you. Why not grocery rations while we're at it? The government will assign you the number and type of foods you're limited to, namely the ones that produce the least carbon emissions to produce and with the caloric and nutritional profiles determined by the government to be ideal. Would cure obesity as a side effect! Also housing will be limited to a certain number of sq ft per person, any existing property with a footprint exceeding that number will be seized and turned into multi-family housing, with government-determined "fair" compensation to the existing property owner of course. Both of those ideas follow the same priorities and rationale as your energy quotas. Shit like that is the real reason why the second amendment exists. You're probably just wealthy enough that you assume you'd be among the ruling elite that maintains its personal freedom, or you really haven't thought these ideas through. I'm far less worried about climate change, something we can at least potentially adapt to at cost, than I am about rhetoric like this. It's akin to the Chinese Nationalists opening the Yellow River dam in 1938 in an attempt to slow the Japanese advance. The resulting flood killed between 400,000-900,000 civilians directly depending on who's counting, made millions more homeless, and ultimately did little to slow the Japanese advance. But I guess it was a "tiny step in the right direction" from a war-fighting perspective, right?
  - Shaanie 3y ago
    The alternative is that we do nothing until it's too late, and then the consequences will be much worse. Don't worry though, society is terrible at preventive action, so I'm pretty confident we're going for the reactive action once it's too late.

bluGill 3y ago

The trends are the US is reducing emissions. I'm not sure what China us doing (I know they build a lot of solar, but i'm not clear if they are also building coal power plants)

mrguyorama 3y ago
They are building, buying, and using a lot of coal, but that's mostly a temporary regression in their environmentalism from a significant economic reduction. Remember, at one point they were literally closing their airports because it's too smoggy to operate safely. China will reduce their fossil fuel usage even if global warming was not a concern, simply because they don't like the lost productivity and societal happiness that comes from breathing so much smog.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  >temporary regression ... >China will reduce their fossil fuel usage even if global warming was not a concern Pretty much, security enviroment has changed. So indigenous energy security = short/medium term coal is back until electrification proliferates.

anonym29 3y ago

We do have a worse starting point, but as another commenter has pointed out, we're trending in the right direction and China is trending in the wrong direction. Part of the solution is necessarily going to be temporary reductions in American energy consumption, writ large, until we can produce technology to sustainably remove carbon emissions from the environment at scale. I'm all-in, for instance, on banning SUVs and "light" trucks for personal ownership, which categorically require more energy input (regardless of whether gasoline, hydrogen, electric, etc) than sedans and compact cars - to say nothing of the pedestrian safety risks, no less. Hell, I'm open to considering energy quotas for residential homes, to be reduced to a level sufficient only for the sustainment of life past a certain threshold, to disincentive wasteful use of electricity. These are all tiny steps in the right direction, and all insufficient alone, but our progress in saving the climate is a vector value, not a boolean value. A bunch of little improvements in the right direction do help, but we cannot accept them as a "complete" solution on their own.

scottLobster 3y ago
"to be reduced to a level sufficient only for the sustainment of life past a certain threshold," Wow, do you hear yourself? Who decides what "threshold" is acceptable, you? You think you should be able to determine whether my infant daughter freezes in the winter or swelters in the summer? Oh I'm sure your theory involves some utopian government that never gets anything wrong. What you're proposing is a dystopian police state where the government decides how warm or cold your house should be on any given day. Of course the rich will be able to just pay any fines to keep the power/gas on, so they can blast their AC all summer while the poor swelter or go into debt to pay fines, because their house unfortunately isn't built in the shade and gets hotter than the ones around it, so the government weather stations think their house is cooler than it actually is. Or the government will have to put thermostats in literally every house to accurately monitor internal temperature, and decide what's good enough for you. Why not grocery rations while we're at it? The government will assign you the number and type of foods you're limited to, namely the ones that produce the least carbon emissions to produce and with the caloric and nutritional profiles determined by the government to be ideal. Would cure obesity as a side effect! Also housing will be limited to a certain number of sq ft per person, any existing property with a footprint exceeding that number will be seized and turned into multi-family housing, with government-determined "fair" compensation to the existing property owner of course. Both of those ideas follow the same priorities and rationale as your energy quotas. Shit like that is the real reason why the second amendment exists. You're probably just wealthy enough that you assume you'd be among the ruling elite that maintains its personal freedom, or you really haven't thought these ideas through. I'm far less worried about climate change, something we can at least potentially adapt to at cost, than I am about rhetoric like this. It's akin to the Chinese Nationalists opening the Yellow River dam in 1938 in an attempt to slow the Japanese advance. The resulting flood killed between 400,000-900,000 civilians directly depending on who's counting, made millions more homeless, and ultimately did little to slow the Japanese advance. But I guess it was a "tiny step in the right direction" from a war-fighting perspective, right?
- Shaanie 3y ago
  The alternative is that we do nothing until it's too late, and then the consequences will be much worse. Don't worry though, society is terrible at preventive action, so I'm pretty confident we're going for the reactive action once it's too late.