Comment by bko
12 hours ago
> 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?
Even for a giant country like India you control <20% of global population, and you are responsible for much less than 20% of the effect (climate change).
So why would India take more expensive and painful steps than say, the US or EU, or Japan? India both indisputably affects and controls climate change less then the US or EU, so why would they put in completely outsized amounts of effort to fight it?
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Which leader do you think is more likely to get elected by the populace? The one who tells the destitute Indians they must suffer more, lest their home be lost, or the one who says it’s America’s fault, and that they should pay in MANY ways for what they’re doing to the Indians’ home?
And besides, what do you think they’re going to do? Give up their highly efficient motor bikes? Destroy their personal businesses and starve? How far do you think we could push them? Maybe we could convince them all to just die to make room for our pollution and their nuclear-backed army will agree happily.
I swear half the arguments I see are just completely lacking in regard for the fact that this is happening in the real world, and not a vacuum.
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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.
No they're 15% to blame for the current situation: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-...
The EU-27 is 17% to blame.
The US is 24% to blame.
Yesterday's CO2 emissions cause today's problems. Today's CO2 emissions will cause tomorrow's problems.
If total matters then it's historic total per capita where US is (far) ahead, "current" is 100s of years on climate scale. Unless one insists on only stats that makes PRC to blame. All per capita GDP vs per captial emissions reflects is PRC gdp per capita (btw PPP is 1/3 US) is massively underreported, i.e. comports with other proxy indicators like how PRC consume a lot of goods at per capita rates higher than 1/6 nominal and 1/3 per capita would suggest.
... so if you are some poor rice farmer, you should be forbidden from even heating in winter, but if you're rich enough, flying around the globe all day is a-ok?
I'm not sure exactly how this sounds like a good argument to you, but I can assure you most certainly that less wealthy persons will not find it convincing.
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What do you even mean by "arguing at scale"?
I have a point and numbers to back it up, I don't see either on your side.
> 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.
Assume the avg. home will last 50 years. Limit construction on new suburban developments, problem solved in 50+ years. It would be unpopular, but you claimed it wouldn't be possible, very different. The latter is denying agency in the situation.
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You listed out a whole lot of excuses for America, suburbia this, heating that, etc etc, etc...
Now an assignment - you are Chinese and you have 1.5bn people in your country, lets hear it? You think you can't reasonably list 100x "excuses" for their "issues" and "reasons" for CO2 consumption?
They are working a lot harder than pretty much all other countries combined to usher in renewables and many other things while we elect people who don't know what wind is/does and stare at the Sun during the eclipse.
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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.
> Mexico, Canada, and the EU
Do you want to take a wild guess as to which country is a top 3 importer to all of these countries/regions?
Here's a clue: it's the same country that is a major exporter of oil from GCC countries, and the wealth from those GCC countries is a major contributor of investment to US industry/financial sector.
The correct answer, is of course: China
The global is economy is very tightly interconnected and still very much driven by oil and fossil fuels in general. You can do all the accounting tricks you want, but developed Western lifestyles, especially in the US, are entirely supported and made possible by growing global fossil fuel usage.
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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.
> China passed EU's cumulative emissions in 2014
Not yet according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-....
> it's morally much harder to give a pass to countries polluting now using the same sources
Developed countries should subsidize their use of cleaner energy sources. That balances things out, morally speaking.
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
> Why do 90% of Americans have AC while only 20% of Europeans do?
Maybe because the majority of Europe is closer to Canada, latitude-wise, than to Phoenix, AZ, and there is simply less demand? Less wealth is certainly a factor, too, especially considering how the warmest nations in Europe all tend to be weaker economically.
> Why does US have ~4 heat related deaths per million while Europe has ~235 per million?
Maybe its just the higher life expectancy increasing susceptibility? Everyone has to die of something at some point.
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It is a statistic, 'treacherous' is a word often lurking around the corner.
No healthy person all of a sudden dies from heat, I am sorry to tell. If that would be the case, everyone would be as panicked as you are. Europe has comparatively older demographics. Heat risk mainly affects infants and the elderly.
Most EU countries have free health care, so even people not caring enough for themselves will have a comparatively higher chance to survive into an old age. But also those who didn't die because of a bad lifestyle are part of this demographic. Like I said, treacherous, because you should look at this demographic and start to ask how many hours of life expectancy is lost. Healthcare keeps finding that the elder people just don't drink enough during these warm days.
I guess that if you want to win back these hours, you have to convince those elderly people to install AC or get them to drink enough during hot days. At this age people have a certain flexibility of mind, complicated by the fact that heat waves these days are really more severe than in their lived past.
Let me assure you: if people think it is too hot for them at home and they don't see an alternative, they will install AC. It is affordable enough. But there might be a cultural difference, people don't think of AC as the first line of defense against the hot days. Environmental awareness is higher; AC's contribute to global warming. Anecdotally, looking around I see there is a preference for sun protection over AC's.
> Why do 90% of Americans have AC while only 20% of Europeans do?
Because Rome is further north than New York and Paris is just south of Ottawa/Montreal.
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Most of Europe simply doesn't need an AC. Spain, south of Italy, south of France, parts of the Balkans. But in countries like UK, the Nordics, Germany, etc. you'd need something more than "open windows" for mere days of the year, if that. The people who live in the places that need AC usually have AC. It's actually pretty damn simple.
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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.
Are you a climate change doesn't matter guy or a china is the climate change causer guy? You can't do both at once.
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Nah, the analogy for your argument is:
Two Americans and ten Chinese are on a lifeboat. The Americans are each eating two sandwiches a day and the Chinese are eating one. Supplies are low. You do the math and note that the Chinese sure are eating a lot of sandwiches.
To your metaphor, their point is that if everyone is grabbing buckets while someone else is working to spring more leaks, maybe someone needs to set aside their bucket & stop the person springing leaks
What?
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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.
No, they are not building new coal fired power plants at the same rate they are expanding renewables. This is several years out of date.
China is also replacing old, inefficient coal power plants with new ones.
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).
Newer refrigerants with lower GWP are great actually. That’s not a restriction on installing AC.
Your mentions PUBLIC building policies are irrelevant
Are you claiming there are restrictions on installing ACs, or there are restrictions on how those installed are used? The two are quite different arguments.
And 27C is a completely normal temperature. When it's 35C outside, you're better off with a minimised thermal shock with a small difference, instead of going at it the US South or Dubai style where inside it's 18C, so all everyone does is move from one air conditioned place to another (home to car to office to car to mall to home).
> Spain, Italy, and Greece have all announced that A/C in public buildings cannot be set lower than 27C (80F) in summer
So?
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.