Comment by jokoon
13 hours ago
Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.
And I don't think it's going to hurt enough in 10 or 20 years.
The pain will come slowly, people won't see it.
It's like going back to the middle age so slowly, that the population don't realize or feel it.
And honestly, wars and trump are making climate concerns so difficult to think about.
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.
Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries.
There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC so that they can feel good about making a negligible effect on carbon emissions. So I think you have it opposite, how much pain do rich countries have to endure before they realize that their efforts are in vain.
And before you say "that's because the West outsources all the dirty production to China", even trade adjusted emissions are down considerably and continue to be down.
Please do some research if you're interested in this topic, it's not hard to do. Just follow the logical steps.
1. What causes global warming
2. Who produces most of these chemicals
3. Are there any global trends over the last 20 years in production of these chemicals
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europes-crusade-against-air-co...
> It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries.
This is just a naive take. You'd obviously expect chinese emissions to be higher (than the US) assuming similar industrialization, because you are counting emissions for like triple the amount of people.
What you conveniently fail to mention: US citizens still emit over 50% more CO2 each, and China basically just caught up to emission levels of developed countries (EU, Japan), while still being significantly below US levels. High income countries combined still emit more than China, too (richest ~15% globally).
If your argument would make any sense, then the obvious solution would be to split China into 3 countries, making the emissions instantly negligible compared to the EU/US. Problem solved?!
There is no reality where we make good progress toward climate change without the "main culprits" (=> nations with highest historical and per-capita emissions) making the first steps.
Why would a country like India pay/sacrifice to reduce emissions while western citizens still pollute at much higher levels after reaping all the spoils from historical pollution?
You could argue that wind/solar is a huge success story in this regard already, with western nations driving lots of the research/development/commercialization efforts (over the previous decades) and now indirectly causing much bigger nations like China to transition onto those very quickly instead of basically fully relying on fossils for decades to come.
> Why would a country like India pay/sacrifice to reduce emissions while western citizens still pollute at much higher levels after reaping all the spoils from historical pollution?
To avoid their country having large regions become uninhabitable?
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You miss the fact that China's GDP per capita is 1/6th the US. So to produce 1/6th per person they emits 2/3rds the CO2. Which means in total, the thing that matters, is that china produces 4 times the CO2 with no end in sight. They are 99% to blame for the current situation.
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> US citizens still emit over 50% more CO2 each
The problem the US has per-capita is lower population density. The majority of the US population lives in suburban or rural areas without mass transit and changing that on the relevant timescale is not feasible. It also has major population centers in areas that experience winter and thereby have higher energy costs for heating, exacerbated by the lower population density (more square feet of indoor space to heat per capita), with the same infeasible timescale for changing that.
As a result, the only way to fix it is to switch to other forms of energy rather than having any real hope of significantly reducing consumption in terms of GWh. Use more electric cars and hybrids, generate electricity using solar, wind and nuclear, switch from fossil fuels to electric heat pumps for heating, etc. But that's largely what's happening. The percentage of hybrid vehicles goes up, despite Trump's posturing nobody actually wants coal, ~100% of net new generation capacity in recent years is solar and wind and even when new natural gas plants are built, they're displacing old coal fired ones, which results in a net reduction in CO2. It would be nice if this would happen faster, but at least the number is going in the right direction.
The problem China has is that they've been building brand new coal fired power plants at scale. WTF.
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> Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so.
Our economies are built on oil burning somewhere else in the world. You can try to point the blame at China, but the wealth generated in the middle east selling them oil is a major part of the reason why US stock markets keep going up.
If you forced China to use less fossil fuels you would personally feel a much larger hit to your quality of life.
We in the developed world love to outsource the violence and environmental damage we cause. It's one thing to wash your hands, but quite another to then try to point the finger.
That's a bit out of date, it's likely that China has already peaked. And it's not oil but coal that they tend to burn.
Renewables are cheaper than coal and oil energy, so we will see an increase in quality of life as China electrifies, at least for those of us that import Chinese manufactured goods.
Oil is mostly for people's cars, for an unsustainable transit system that locks us in little boxes and kills all our salmon and is one of the greatest threats to the lives of our children. Getting rid of oil and coal is going to be a loooot easier than getting rid of our car infrastructure.
> If you forced China to use less fossil fuels you would personally feel a much larger hit to your quality of life.
America imports more from Mexico, Canada, and the EU than China which ranks as #4 when you consider EU as a single entity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...
Imports from China are a small fraction of GDP and offset by exports to other countries. OECD countries are largely exporting labor not the kind of heavy industry associated with heavy CO2 emissions. Which makes sense as China has relatively cheap labor, but they don’t get a discount on Oil.
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> Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007
OECD countries' past emissions are causing the warming we see today.
> and continue to do so
China's emissions declined last year. The US's increased.
> It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries.
China used their emissions to make solar and batteries the cheapest source of electricity today.
> OECD countries' past emissions are causing the warming we see today.
China passed EU's cumulative emissions in 2014, if I remember correctly. It's totally fair to blame industrialised countries for their share in causing global warming, irrespective if that happened in the early days of industrialisation and was propped up by dirty energy sources. Though, it's morally much harder to give a pass to countries polluting now using the same sources.
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Don't do the AC thing, it is a stupid trope under blogfluencers. There are no restrictions (besides positioning the outer unit in such a way that you cause your neighbors to lose sleep). As the summers get more extreme in Europe, more residents decide getting one is starting to pay off, so you see more AC's, but many people think they are doing fine without.
Yeah, never heard of such a thing. The restrictions are placing the units in common areas of the buildings -- in that case you need permission -- and external walls are usually common parts. Placing them in the façade may have additional restrictions.
But, if anything, energy efficiency standards for new construction are so strict that heat is becoming less of a problem.
I can easily google restrictions and share them, and I have in other comments but let me throw it back at you.
Why do 90% of Americans have AC while only 20% of Europeans do?
Why does US have ~4 heat related deaths per million while Europe has ~235 per million?
Do you think it's just stupidity (Europeans don't know the relationship between heat and AC)? Or poverty? Any other explanation?
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766
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> 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC
Please don’t repeat this anti-Europe myth. Anyone applying a bit of common sense should realize how improbable that claim is.
China is some years behind our industrial development then undevelopment, and is building an entire USA of solar panels every year or whatever - can we expect them to quickly reduce emissions soon?
A year ago, the IEA thought China's emissions had peaked:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-fuel-demand-m...
And this recent assessment puts emissions from China at "flat or falling" for the past 21 months:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
I thought the world and civilization would collapse because of carbon emissions. It's either serious or it's not. If it's serious then it doesn't really matter right?
It's like you're on a boat that sprung a leak and everyone grabs a bucket. But a few people choose to not help because it's not fair for whatever reason.
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> can we expect [China] to quickly reduce emissions soon?
They did, last year.
they continue to build more solar, more wind, but also more coal power plants.
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The "Our World in Data" citation cuts off right as China's emissions started to decline. More recent data [1] indicates that China's emissions have been flat or falling since the beginning of 2024, and falling fast in the last quarter of 2025 (1%, which is huge on a quarterly basis).
China's decarbonization & renewable efforts have been paying off in a big way. EVs now have a 51% market share among new vehicles [2], exceeding every single major city in the U.S [3] (though the SF Bay Area comes close). Likewise, renewables are 84.4% of its new power plants in 2025 [4].
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
[2] https://electrek.co/2025/08/29/electric-vehicles-reach-tippi...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/06/climate/hybri...
[4] https://en.cnesa.org/latest-news/2025/11/4/chinas-newly-inst...
> There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC so that they can feel good about making a negligible effect on carbon emissions.
Which restrictions on AC? I know that Europeans don't use AC as much as the US because of a mixture of historical and cultural reasons, but I wasn't aware of any restrictions. What prevents someone in Europe from buying and installing an AC unit in their own home?
Here in France, where you need a bureaucrat to sign off some paper for another bureaucrat, and where we levy taxes on taxes, I'm not aware of any restriction on AC from the state. Sure, the politicians say we should put up with sweltering heat, unlike them who have reasons to run their cars' engines for hours while they sit around in useless committees inside air-conditioned historical buildings. But there's no law against AC yet.
What usually happens, is that most people live in cities. And in cities, they have to get a permit from the HOA and from the city, lest the outside unit deface some historically significant square concrete building (yeah, I know there are actually historically significant buildings, ugly concrete ones built after 1950 aren't among them, though they're where the majority of the people live).
> Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so
Any idea what percentage of this reduction is due to offshoring manufacturing?
Keep reading the comment, pretty much the same.
> https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
The IEA says China’s CO₂ emissions rose by 565 Mt in 2023 to 12.6 Gt, which it states was a 4.7% increase from 2022.
So any emission reduction done by developed countries is offset by China.
And then China's emissions declined in 2025. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292
> There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC so that they can feel good about making a negligible effect on carbon emissions
Where in Europe are ACs restricted because of carbon emissions? Even in France with very strong building codes (you can't just plop an AC on your own, you need approvals), ACs are the standard in the south where they are needed for long periods of the year.
> There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC so that they can feel good about making a negligible effect on carbon emissions.
What restrictions are there on AC?
Several EU countries have mandatory temperature limits for air conditioning in public buildings. Spain, Italy, and Greece have all announced that A/C in public buildings cannot be set lower than 27C (80F) in summer Some exceptions allow up to 25C like restaurants and some work places.
The EU's F-Gas Regulation creates significant restrictions on refrigerants used in air conditioning
There's significant red tape when installing AC due to building regulations
90% of US homes have AC while only 20% of European homes have it, I don't think that's by accident.
Fun fact, some EU countries even have laws telling you how much you can open your windows! In the UK, there is a law that in any public building, windows must not open more than 100mm (about 4 inches).
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Euro intransience about AC is confusing.
As for PRC, they brrrted out enough solar last year to replace about 40 billion barrels of oil over their life time, or about annual global consumption of oil @100m barrels per day. They have enough renewable manufacturing capacity to displace global oil, lng and good chunk of coal.
PRC is basically manufacturing the largest carbon displacement, i.e. emission avoidance system in the world, and if not for them, global fossil consumption would double+.
It's even more retarded accounting that taxes PRC manufacturing renewables as generation emissions while fossils extractors, i.e. US whose massively increased oil/lng exports do not count towards US emissions.
At the end of the day, PRC's balance of emissions vs how much they displace via renewable manufacturing makes their emission contribution net negative, by a large margin. OCED countries reducing their emissions don't even compare in terms of contribution, it's borderline performative. OCED need to be reducing emissions and generating equivalent displacement to be net negative. It doesn't have to be domestic net negative, simply export/fund enough renewables to developing countries whose power consumption and downstream emissions will increase by magnitudes... you know subsidize them like OECD was suppose to do. Reality is rich countries don't want to do shit about the "global" emission problem, at least PRC selling renewables at commodity pricing to displace velocity of fossil consumption increase. Ultimately, 4 billion developing people going to 10/100x their energy consumption, which like AC is net moral good over net emissions. The real battle is how to keep new power use as emission free as possible, and only PRC is doing that in numbers that matter.
Wanking over OCED reducing their emissions is overlooking OCED was suppose to help developing countries minimize (not reduce) as they grow. All OCED has to do is give PRC renewables the 100b they once pledged on to help developing countries transition for PRC to run renewables manufacturing at 100% utilization (or even expand) so significant % of new power generation is renewables. 100b at current PRC prices of $0.1O/watt buys about 1000GW of panels (enough to power all of Africa & India and more). Or OECD can manufacture at sell at/below cost themselves.
A reminder that reducing emissions isn't enough. We actually need them to be net-negative.
Eventually we want to get there, post 2050, but at a very low rate compared to our net emissions right now. Still, it's far cheaper to avoid emitting now than it is to pull it down later, so every time you drive your kids to school remember the debt you are saddling them with.
To add to this, no matter what countries do, we can make our local environments nicer to live in by reducing pollution but across the globe, solar activity has exponentially more, and the ultimate impact. With the magnetic field weakening, it's going to continue going in this direction as it has throughout history.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do what we can to make our local environment better and protect and Preserve what we have. We absolutely should. I'm just stating that this is not the first time the Earth has heated or cooled and nothing that we do will ultimately stop it from this cycle from continuing.
You’ve been misinformed. Yes solar activity fluctuates. Human induced climate change is still real and affecting temperatures much more rapidly.
The initial pain will be diffuse and not obviously caused by global warming.
For example, destabilization of equatorial countries due to wet bulb temperatures, through multiple causal paths: worse education outcomes (many days off school during hot months), worse economy (can't work outside), worse life satisfaction -> more autocracies, more water scarcity.
Then you get more emigration to the colder north, more conflict and more suffering. But not much of it is easily and directly attributable to temperatures.
Much of it is foregone upside, like GDP growth that's 3% instead of 5%.
That's the sum of climate change. "GDP growth of 3% instead of 5%."
Severe enough to be noticeable, but not severe enough to warrant radical climate action. Not an extinction threat. A "slow trickle of economic damage, some amount of otherwise preventable death and suffering, diffused across the entire world, applied unevenly, and spread thin across many decades" threat.
And stopping the GHG emissions demands radical, coordinated global action. Major emitters would have to pay local costs now - for the sake of global benefits many decades down the line. And those emitters are not the countries that face the worst climate risks. Global superpowers can tolerate climate change - it's countries that already struggle as it is, that don't have the resources to adapt or mitigate damage, that can face a significant uptick in death and suffering rather than damage in the realm of economics.
That makes climate action a very hard sell for the politicians. Thus the tepid response.
By now, I'm convinced that the only viable approaches to climate change lie in the realm of geoengineering. Which does not require multilateral coordinated action against a "tragedy of commons" scenario, and is cheaper than forcing local GHG emissions into negatives.
Even non-permanent geoengineering solutions offset impacts here and now - thus buying time for fossil fuel energy to succumb to the economic advantage of renewables. And geoengineering measures can be enacted unilaterally by many powers - as long as the political will is there to absorb a few strongly worded condemnation letters.
And then when the GDP finally collapses, there will have been nothing that could be done about it for the last 50 years and they'll ask wtf we were doing in 2040, why we didn't stop it then.
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I am not sure how not directly linked to global warming. I am currently on the phone but I remember a study that mentioned that Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh would see a deadly heat (wet bulb temperatures) from basically 0 as it is right now to 30 days/year by 2050 or 2060. I can't remember right now.
If that is not linkable to global warming I am not sure what is. And that is a huge event. In Europe we are struggling with accomodating perhaps 10M people. What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?
Chapter 1 of "The Ministry of the Future" describes a fictional wet bulb event. It's grisly and horrific and I highly recommend you read this chapter, it changed my view on climate change.
https://books.rockslide.ca/read/780/epub#epubcfi(/6/14!/4/2/...
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> What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?
We sink the boats.
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There are also statistics showing that mortality because of cold is much higher than mortality because of heat.
About 9 times higher.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254251962...
"What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?"
More taxes go to ammunition for autonomous border guard systems.
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Patricia Anthony published a novel about this in '93. Cold Allies. It's good military sci fi. Doesn't pretend to offer answers.
> What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?
Like let them build few of those sci-fi domes and let them keep buying disposable bottled oxygen? I don't get the pessimism. India makes its own rockets. Pakistan has nukes. Why are they supposed to be incapable of holding the nation together on Mars-like Earth?
Tokyo is already hitting 40C/100F at >90% RH during summers. It's already mildly unsurvivable. Nobody cares. Maybe in 10-20 years we'd be wearing spacesuits, but do anyone seriously think the equatorial regions will be uninhabitable and land prices on northern Europe is going to skyrocket???
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"Migration to the colder north..."
Maybe that's why the Trump regime wants so badly to invade Canada and the Groenland?
Wasn't a drought originally part of the cause of Syria's collapse into civil war? Climate change is already causing unrest in equitorial countries, mass migration and a corresponding rise in authoritarianism / right wing populism in Europe.
You're making the "It's snowing there can't be global warming" argument in reverse.
One local drought can't be attributed to or be proof of global warming.
It's like smoking causing lung cancer; (the following numbers are made up) 5 in 100 non-smokers might get lung cancer but 20 in 100 smokers do. 5 of those smokers would have gotten lung cancer anyway and 15 wouldn't have but there's no way to know which individuals are in which cohort.
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Developed rich countries are hurting. See the wildfires across North America, massive amounts of flooding across Europe, etc.
Nothing will change until many of the global electorate stop burying their heads in the sand. These people don't change their minds until things affect them specifically. Then they change their mind, and all their former fellows tell them they're brainwashed.
This doesn't change until nearly everyone is affected, and by then we're so far into the catastrophe that the consequences don't even bear thinking about.
I have a different take: Things will change once a big part of the electorate no longer feels like climate change policies will hurt their pocket. A lot of the opposition to the policies are from people who aren't in the richer percentiles and probably work in a field that's related to fossil fuels (like heating engineers, car mechanics, etc.). They fear job losses and that their commute and heating bills go up.
I have a different different take. It's not the electorate's pocketbook that matters, it's the political donors pocketbook that matters.
"Drill baby drill" will be echoed so long as petroleum companies and petroleum rich nations dump billions into propaganda outlets, politician campaigns, and in the US, PAC groups to support "drill baby drill" friendly politicians.
So long as that dynamic exists, it doesn't matter if 80% of the electorate screams for change. So long as the incumbent advantage exists forcing people to vote mostly on social issues, these sorts of economic and world affecting issues will simply be ignored.
There's a reason, to this day, you'll find Democrats talk about the wonders of fracking, clean coal, and carbon capture.
IDK how to change this other than first identifying the issue. Our politicians are mostly captured by their donors. That's the only will they really care about enacting.
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The universe was not built to cater to our desires. We can't have our cake and eat it too.
Virtually all economic activity consumes resources and energy, directly or indirectly, and in the process creates ghg emissions.
If we want to curb climate change and our emissions, it necessarily means we're going to take an economic hit.
We either do that willingly with some degree of ability to exercise control along the way, or be forced by physics to take an even worse economic hit and face vastly more death and suffering without our hands on the wheel.
There's no option where we don't get our pockets hurt.
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Not responding to climate change is hurting everyone's pocket. Home insurance premiums are obscene in some places. Energy insecurity due to reliance on fossil fuels sourced from overseas (particularly relevant right now with the US war on Iran and Russian war on Ukraine). Extreme temperatures mean we either spend more money on heating/cooling our homes or, if you're not wealthy enough to pay, you pay by having to endure the temperature extremes.
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Until climate plans align with short-term personal incentives, I don't see how there's going to be any serious persistent fight against climate change.
People might feel benevolent one day and do something good, but the next day when they are faced with a problem and the environment is a convenient trash can or resource bin, they'll go right back to those bad habits.
The only way things will change is if everyone's life gets made miserable by the effects.
Eh, until “owning the libs” stops being a very valid electoral strategy, I think that’s optimistic.
Not sure how we fix that either.
Wildfires across North America really scare me. I live in a valley in the west where wildfire smoke from not only our state but surrounding states comes in and settles, leaving an AQI over 150 for most of late July through September.
Not only climate change, but aggressive firefighting over the past 50 or more years has caused a lot of material low in the fire ladder to accumulate, which in natural or at least pre-Columbian forests would be cleared out by routine fires. Brush and deadfall for example. The larger trees in healthy forests don't succumb to fire, but these fires have been decimating whole stands of trees. Pair that with almost zero snowpack this year, the only positive thing I can say is that I'm glad I can enjoy spring a bit earlier this year.
I agree. Also, we already tried to rely on the goodwill of the people and here we are with warming speeding up.
We need some mechanism that penalizes polluters, benefits low emitters, and stops/limits/taxes/... worldwide shipping when local alternatives are available to avoid these [1] abominations.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1e4zl...
The problem is humans are really bad at perceiving externalities at this scale, cause / effect between small actions and large effects, and effects that play out over the span of their lifetime rather than the span of their day. The denialist rationale shifted over the years from doubting the very basis of the science, to claiming its just a short term blip, to its natural long term cycles, to … everything that involves not looking up.
I think the truth is we won’t really take this seriously globally until the changes are so severe that it’ll take generations to undo if ever.
The wild fires are entirely because of lack of management. This is why insurance companies noped out. The crazies believe it is an environment impact to manage the lands and then it all burns down. At least someone can blame the fires on something else. I guess it’s a win?
Politicians, at least freely elected, are a symptom of given population at given time. Don't blame trump for trump, he made it painfully obvious to whole world who he is and who he certainly is not, sort of kudos to him for being consistent.
Blame fully the people who saw all this and voted for him twice. At least if you care about root of the problems and not just venting off. I am not offering a solution to educating half of US population which clearly doesn't care about facts, or lacks any basic moral compass... I don't have a practical solution.
US 'special' form of voted democracy failed and failed hard, lets see how far this gets in next 3 years and if any actual lessons learned happen afterwards (I don't hold my breath since reality doesn't behave just because it would be nice and viable time to act is gone I think).
> Blame fully the people who saw all this and voted for him twice
Thrice actually
Aren’t all these developed countries voluntarily self-depopulating by way of having birth rates below replacement? Seems like the problem will sort itself out if we can resist the urge to invite the entire third world to come in and instantly raise their carbon footprint to first world levels.
That effect is much too slow.
What have you done? Why is it someone else’s problem?
It's a collective problem that we all have to solve together. I'm doing my part. What have YOU done?
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I've voted for parties that care about addressing the climate catastrophe.
It's obviously someone else's problem if that someone refuses to accept there's a climate catastrophe.
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> What have you done?
Made a shitload of sacrifices, how about you?
The top three emissions sources are industry, electricity, and transportation. There have been important federal and state-wide attempts to address these, but Trump guts regulation every time he's in office. Chevron is dead, SCOTUS repeatedly rules to let big business do whatever they want, and we're now burning even more coal to meet AI energy demand.
Compare this to China, where the government is aggressively promoting green energy and electric car tech.
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How does he has the power to change it?
What an odd question. Is this just the "and yet you participate in society" meme trying to act as insightful conversation, or did you have something to actually say?
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> See the wildfires across North America
I asked Gemini, "How long have wildfires across North America happened and are they truly any worse now?"
"Wildfires have occurred across North America for millions of years, predating humans entirely." It also had some very detailed information backing that up.
I then asked, "Were any of those fires in the past 20 years started by arsonists?"
"Yes, arson is a significant factor in North American wildfires, though it is often overshadowed by accidental human causes (like downed power lines or unattended campfires) and natural causes like lightning."
Well if Gemini says fires have existed, that's enough proof!!!!
I've been mentally tabulating a list of reasons rich (and/or older) people should care about climate change, even if you're only looking out for your own interests:
- Your children and younger family members will have to deal with this
- Climate change is causing increasingly worse turbulence for airplanes
- It will disproportionately affect your favorite vacation spots
- Probably something about stock markets and pensions - a world constantly wracked with increasingly severe natural disasters isn't the most economically productive one
"Your children and younger family members will have to deal with this."
If my 50 years on the planet has taught me anything, it's that this is not a sufficient motivation the current generation in power.
Yeah, they’ll just close their eyes and say our kids will figure something out.
- The availability of food that you use often to get through your day, such as Arabica coffee and chocolate.
Wildfires have to be a big one as well, the time range and geographic range is growing on a seemingly yearly basis.
Related, home insurance cost increases (and, in places, unavailability) from wildfires & worsening storms hits the pocketbook directly.
You should consider it's much easier rich people to deal with the fallout from climate change (or living in a failed/failing state for that matter) than for poor people. Plus they often have interests in the things that are causing the issue(s) in the first place. Additionally, the children argument is probably the most powerful, but they would probably expect their children to be rich too. All in all I'm doubtful the arguments you are providing have any effect.
I think there is a level of working class poor where it hardly makes a difference what goes on to the world around your life as you are working paycheck to paycheck with much of your available time regardless. How worse it could get doesn’t look appreciably different than how bad it can get already.
A little higher up the economic pole is who stands to lose the most. Those are the people who will see actual quality of life reductions and not be able to afford to return to old norms.
> - Climate change is causing increasingly worse turbulence for airplanes
Cutting out air travel is the single most accessible and impactful thing an individual can do with respect to climate change. You can stop turbulence from getting worse, but since you won't be flying in the first place...
None of that would matter. Farmers are going bankrupt and losing family land and yet...
There are a certain number of people who just cannot change. There are large numbers of diabetics who die despite an enormous number of warnings.
Climate change is not the main cause for turbulence.
In an indirect way it kind of is though. At the end of the day there’s more energy trapped in the atmosphere (stronger jet streams, more frequent and stronger frontal weather)
As you are probably aware, the op didn't say that it was
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This is why I think the middle strength Global South countries, who hurt the most in the near term and have the necessary resources, will unilaterally start albedo modification. They don't need permission of rich nations and it will become an existential issue that they might risk sanctions and war over. That's when it will become "our problem" (in the eyes of the extremely selfish and/or stupid members).
I think it'll start hurting sooner than that. We're already seeing property insurance rates spiking, and in some places it's even impossible to get property insurance. We could well be up for a 2008-level real estate crash. That should get Americans' attention.
I feel like the possible real estate crash could be really interesting.
Even different parts of a city would likely be affected very differently, where the edges near the fire risks crash, and the even mildly safer areas boom with high demand
Soon, we'll have millions of climate change refugees, battles over resources, regular once-in-a-century storms, more wars. We're close to the point where we'll be too busy thrashing to address the root cause.
This isn't a powerful motivator to people who think they will win those wars.
No one wins in a protracted war.
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China creates about 30–35% of global emissions. India about 8% but it is climbing fast.
What rich countries do is they just export their factories to other countries and say: look we do not pollute.
CA buying gasoline from Bermuda, shipped via the Panama Canal, because it refuses to allow new refineries is the perfect demonstration of this.
That's also kind of a pigovian tax though, right? By making gasoline more expensive they discourage its use. I guess they're chicken to make it an actual tax
Also why wouldn't it come from other US states? Seems easier
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Just for reference China has about 17% of the world's population, and India has about 18%.
China has also been deploying lots of renewable and nuclear energy, and their carbon emissions actually falling.
Solar and wind have gotten so cheap we should be able to forgo more fossil fuel deployment in developing nations.
China CO2 emission increased a lot over the last 20 years and it is growing every years. Not decreasing but increasing. The IEA estimate says China’s CO₂ emissions reached 12.6 Gt in 2023, up 4.7% from 2022.
On the other hand U.S. CO₂ emissions decreased slightly between 2022 and 2023. About 2–3% (from 4.79 to 4.68 Gt)
[1] https://www.iea.org/countries/china/emissions
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Would someone like to explain why the Chinese (if as you say produce 30-35% of global emissions) don't appear to see a problem or at least if alluding to it as they do, fail to do much about it as major contributors of emissions? And then of course there are the countries proud of a relative lack of emissions who are merely exporting the problem to somewhere else, often enough, China.
They absolutely are. You just haven't paid any attention.
Yes, they're still burning coal and gas but China are making huge strides in non CO2 intensive electricity generation
China are the reason solar has become so affordable for the rest of the world
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Exactly, this was the whole point of Trump calling climate change a hoax to benefit China, but somehow this got twisted by the media into not denying climate change being an anti-Trump position.
The base then started demanding this from their reps and Trump almost picked up on this himself. It took years to undo that damage and even now we're barely back at a pro-clean air, pro-solar and pro nuclear position...
This is why politicians are usually expected to choose their words carefully. Most of them know that what they say matters and has effects on the real world.
US is the largest historical emitter… responsible for something like 25% of all man made CO2 emissions
The entire west world contributes 28.8%. US is about 11%. [1]
[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-em...
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.
There are two clear parallel points to this:
Disclaimer: none of the above is saying we should or shouldn't take a particular course of action about warming, just to speak to the way people deal with very slow-moving issues.
The bottle is half full: https://youtu.be/CFyOw9IgtjY?list=PL3A647D3FD57E0F96&t=205
A lot HAS changed. Europe even has a tax on CO2 emissions.
It's just not enough and it's very hard to convince the public to accelerate when the US not only gave up but it actively reversing to fossil fuels.
At what European tax rate will China and India work on reducing their CO2 emissions?
China has now had flat CO2 emissions for two years, and experienced a decline in overall CO2 emissions during 2025[1]. Part of this is that they're deploying way more renewables than basically any other large economy [2].
They've also pivoted their industrial strategy so that basically the entire green energy sector depends on Chinese supply chains. This is significantly contributing to their economic growth [3].
I don't know to what extent taxation in Europe contributed to China's decision making here, but it presumably created an market for green energy and therefore helped solidify the economics.
This is of course not to say that there's nothing to criticize in China's environmental policies; there certainly is. But the trope of "why should we do anything because China won't" turns out to be spectacularly ill-informed. Indeed I think it makes more sense to ask the opposite: what are the likely consequences now that China has positioned itself as the global centre of green energy, and what should other countries be doing to ensure that they're not left behind?
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha... [2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/g7-falling-behind-china-as-world... [3] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-drove-more...
Look at the Colorado River situation to see how it's affected the US already. Now that hasn't really impacted consumers per say other than through indirect water conservation and higher consumer grocery prices (slightly not a primary driver on the latter). But it's a massive deal that will ripple out more and more in the coming years.
>people won't see it.
You are correct because it's happening already (massive wildfires burning down cities, 100 year floods every year, mass migration out of hot, dry climates) and the news will state something like "scientists are 85% certain this fire was accelerated by climate change" and then will move onto the next story. Climate change is all around us, but we refuse to see it.
Not even countries, but rich/influential people on them. And they must be hit hard to be concerned enough about it.
If some extreme weather event hits you you may lose your only house, your savings, your health, maybe a good percent of the population of rich countries are vulnerable ot that. In the other hand if someone rich and powerful in those or even somewhat poorer countries, they may buy another house, have more already, lose some money and goods but that's it.
Until those extreme weather events, floods and so on affect enough of the people those people have around, to eventually affect their business and them. But by then it will be far too late.
> The pain will come slowly, people won't see it.
I'd argue that many lower and middle class folks already feel the effects of GW, even if they may not be able to articulate it. The flip side is that developed rich countries will hurt because of this but the people in power won't care because it probably only (visibly) affects the lower class, and they can always take their jets and rockets to countries (and eventually planets!) that haven't been fucked.
And they'll spin it to blame it on immigrants somehow.
> (and eventually planets!)
This particular point is remarkably optimistic on the part of our ruling elites who genuinely seem to think they'll be abandoning Earth like the Titanic and running off to Mars or whatever. I wonder if it's just wishful thinking or if they genuinely believe living off-terra would be a luxury experience, and not what it far more likely would be, which is hurtling through a void separated from instant death by nothing more than sheet metal, and after months of that, living inside a specially pressurized biosphere on an alien world that is, at all times, trying to kill them. And is almost guaranteed to succeed if nothing else by attrition.
I wonder if any will think as they prepare to die whichever death comes to them first that maybe just paying taxes and not having a private jet wasn't that steep of an ask after all.
Lol. Yeah I actually hope they aren't serious about it and are just using it as an excuse to send things to space because it's cool. Because I do not foresee us colonizing Mars in our lifetimes. I'd be happy for them to test the waters for us though.
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I initially supported this comment but no, I think it's worse than this. As rich countries cut back, dirty energy becomes cheaper and developing nations just use more. They'll need to use more just to fight the climate. India, for instance, is going to need a whole lot of air conditioning just to survive.
Sure, blame developed nations for getting us here, but the path forward isn't solely in the hands of those developed nations.
it depends where you live... I live in Japan now. One comment I hear often and see reflected in old TV shows is how different summers are already. 20-25 years ago it would have been considered a hot summer day around 30c.
Now every summer day is 30c+.
Also, a comment I hear often is that people didn't really need air conditioners back then. You definitely cannot get away with living in Tokyo without an air conditioners these days!
Same with Los Angeles. In the 1950s, when my parents were young, you didn't need AC in LA. You just opened a window on the few hot days, and those were like high 70s/low 80s.
By the 1990s, you didn't need AC, but your home/rental was more appealing if it had one, because there were a few hot days a year that were pretty uncomfortable otherwise.
Now, you can't not have it. There are far too many hot days to live without it.
Additionally:
- cherry blossoms have been consistently blooming earlier each year
- some areas have been breaking historic high temperatures over the past 3 years (e.g. 伊勢崎市)
- even this year, there were several 20C days in Tokyo where the climate felt more like spring than winter
- 気象庁 is surveying for a new word to describe days with temperature exceeding 40C, since they are now becoming common in some areas.
Lastly, one joke my friends say is "In Japan there are four seasons: rainy season, summer, midsummer, and winter."
Same thing here in Vancouver. I took a picture of my car's dash display reading 43*C during the heat dome in 2021!
We are already seeing it in Colorado. Record low snowfall, record heat, record winds; which are a very bad set of conditions for fires.
The power company is now preemptively shutting off our power. Which is really fun in the winter.
I’m honestly not sure about the future of my hometown Boulder. The odds of it fully burning to the ground seem to increase significantly every year.
It will take a few fires like the one in LA, but eventually even the USians will learn it's not a good idea to build cities out of wooden houses.
Get your own solar and batteries.
I think it will change when the people that don't believe in global warming die off, ala 'Science progresses one funeral at a time'. For the US, that's basically Boomers and Gen X [1], so I still think your 10 - 20 years estimate is decent (they don't have to _all_ die, but as more pass away I expect progress)
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/05/26/key-findi...
> until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.
Well Spain, 12th largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest in Europe, isn't exactly poor and yet seems to hurt quite a bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Spain#Impact... ... but I bet the wealthiest Spaniards have air conditioning, heating, bottled water delivered at home by staff, etc to isolate themselves. That does include politicians.
So... IMHO until the richest of the rich countries hurt, then nothing will change. They (we?) are very sheltered precisely by leveraging their wealth to abstract away from the lowly difficulties of life, like the weather.
TL;DR : yes, but the more insulated feel it less and consequently, rationally, think they have more time thus postponing the process.
I don’t know, was in Haiti a few months ago and they burn all kinds of shit there. Gotta get them on solar and wind. Whatever happened to the Clinton foundation’s billions?
Nothing will happen until the super rich who define policy begin to hurt. And they won't hurt because they can exploit the situation to become even richer.
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.
The EU reduced their emissions by over a third from their peak. Their emissions per capita is less than that of China (not meant to be a dig at China who is the leader the development of renewables). Even Americans reduced their CO2 emissions by 15% in absolute terms and by about 30% per capita as well.
Why is it so hard to understand that individual people, let alone hundreds of millions of people in aggregate, can have multiple priorities? This whole doomerist attitude doesn't help anyone. If anything, it contributes to the erosion of the good things we already have. Nobody gave a damn about USAID saving millions of people until it could be weaponized against Trump/Elon for taking it away.
It's going to cause slow, constant refugee crises, which will affect everyone.
I wonder if the current war will significantly accelerate the roll out of non-fossil energy. If the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for a few more weeks there's going to be significant pain, not just for energy but things like fertilizer etc. Once you deploy a solar panel it works for 20+ years, conflict doesn't cut you off from energy.
Nothing will change until billionaires start losing money over it. Then it will be a national priority.
It's also why I've sort of resigned myself to a cynical optimism that the worst won't come to pass. The rich are not going to tolerate losing money. They will force through geoengineering stopgap measures that will save us from catastrophic warming, at the cost of unknown consequences.
This is why I vehemently disagree with those who say we shouldn't be conducting research on geoengineering. It will be done. The only question is, will we have done enough research to understand the potential consequences, or not?
Don’t get cynic. The good news is: the worse it gets, the more impact every single .1 degree of prevented climate change has.
I’m with you in the billionaires. Research has shown again and again that people do care about climate change and want it to be stopped - but only if they have the socioeconomic status to actually care.
If, as so many people on this planet, you are living paycheck to paycheck, and the social security nets are being dismantled by the uber rich, you instead switch into a „protect what’s mine“ mindset. This further exacerbates the tragedy of the commons.
So I am of the following opinion: fix wealth inequality; which will give people their actual lives back; and will reduce the political power of the sociopathic billionaire class.
Then, the rest almost takes care of itself.
Yeah just fix that already, how hard could it be?
The problem is human, not society, I don't any any -ism can fix human.
Why would something "change" because "developed rich countries" hurt? Why wouldn't those leaders just roll with it and see it as inevitable, or a purification of their degenerate populations, or just another day in the end times, or whatever?
I expect "change" when people form unions or union like organisations and withhold or redistribute their labour, both waged and in more subtle forms, such as attention, and unwaged but socially important labour (e.g. women refusing to be servile homemakers and instead get guns and start soup kitchens).
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.
More specifically, nothing will change until the politicians and billionaires personally get hurt.
The negative effects of climate change need to come for them personally for them to care.
>Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.
They already are. China does whatever it wants en mass meanwhile.
> Nothing will change
Things have already changed!
They are already in pain but are blaming immigrants instead of trusting science.
True or false: a person in a third world country has a lower carbon footprint than someone in a developed country.
Also true or false: an immigrant from a third world country will have a higher carbon footprint if they emigrate to a developed country.
Maybe they are part of the problem.
Chaos is extactly where fascism thrives. Expect to see more trumps, not less.
Rich countries will never feel it. Look at the middle east. Already scorching desert, they build indoor ski hills...
On the plus side, I think we'll solve global warming, with technology, in a few generations.
> And honestly, wars and trump are making climate concerns so difficult to think about.
These are all related. All of them are connected to humans pushing the planetary resource limits from various directions. We're attacking Iran now in part because climate change has dramatically increased the water stress conditions making the population more susceptible to political collapse. It's also happening because it puts energy stress on our geopolitical adversaries (same with Venezuela). Trump emerged in the first place because declining American prosperity (despite GPD numbers) drove a large portion of the population to nihilism.
Well, most deforestation happens in poor underdeveloped countries. Yes, they hurt, but keep doing it.
For the UK at least, this must be in a large part because we already cut our forests down. We simply couldn't deforest at a high rate, because there aren't enough trees left to go at.
> Nothing will change.
Fixed
The energy situation is actually changing very quickly precisely because renewables and storage are so cheap. Building a new natural gas plant today is really hard to justify in most places in the world.
Capitalism will actually save the day, because a bunch of capitalists advanced renewable technology to the point where it was cheap.
The biggest impediment to change right now is actually political interference in deployment of cheaper renewables. You see this all across the US both in intentional and unintentional ways. Trump explicitly cancels permits for wind, tries to ban solar on federal lands, and forces coal plants to keep running even when they are super expensive and raise the cost electricity.
Unintentional political impediments are also endemic in the US; permitting and interconnection of residential solar makes it 5x-6x more expensive than places like Australia, even in places like California that should be accelerating residential solar and storage.
There's a lot to be hopeful about when it comes to climate change, in addition a lot to be scared about.
> Capitalism will actually save the day, because a bunch of capitalists advanced renewable technology to the point where it was cheap.
That "bunch of capitalists"... why are you avoiding the true word: "China"?
That's not the true word though, is it? It's an effort of capitalists the world over. And crucially, German government incentives when solar was still very expensive.
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The majority of pollution is caused by 3rd world/ eastern countries.
Do you want to go to war with China to enforce an environmentalist agenda?
Over the past century, the US has produced more cumulative carbon emissions than any other country, and it's not even close.
China is in the middle of a massive expansion in wind, solar, and electric vehicles. The US is burning even more coal to support AI, and has gutted much of its federal emission reduction efforts.
This changed on the last decade or so. It's close now.
Of course, China has 5 times more people than the US, so they get a little bit of leeway. But they are close, and their emissions are growing.
That said, yes, they are investing more than anybody else. And they are improving the technology we need more than anybody else. People talking about military intervention are full of shit, but we could use some diplomatic collaboration.
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If this was the stated rationale and goal of the trade war, I'd be all for it. This is exactly the kind of situation tariffs are for.
Tariffs on goods the world pays China to make which drives up emissions?
I don't see why war is necessary. There could be something like the Space Race, where nations flex their technological skills at producing solutions to environmental problems.
That race already started, but China is the only one participating at the moment. The US has been running backwards, though.
China produces a lot less carbon per capita than we do
Global warming doesn't care about 'per capita'.
Edit: Individuals do not build coal power plants, utilities (and therefore, governments) do. India and China are continuing to build fossil fuel power generation. Global warming does not care about 'fairness', global warming cares about co2 PPM in the atmosphere. When we address climate change, we have to do so at the government level, or we mine as well not bother.
The whole idea that we should look at 'emissions per capita' or 'historical emissions' in the interest of fairness is simply giving a license to governments to kill genuinely poor people in the third world.
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And they make most of the stuff we buy, including the climate emissions involved in making them.