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Comment by setum | Hacker News Reader

It's silly to blame China & India when US with quarter the population of India, is and has been the biggest producer of green-house gases, with little to no signs of improvement. US is the inventor of the concept of climate-change denial. On the other hand India and China not just accept climate-change and its impact on environment, but have shown willingness to take positive steps.

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China (22.7%) produces almost 50% more green houses gasses than the US (15.6%). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

The per capita trend is even more troubling with US down ~20% from peak and China on a very strong upward trend.

China is developing and it's impossible in the current economical scenario to do that without ramping up emissions, the US, EU and other developed countries had the luck to do that when we didn't knew (or didn't care) about this. It's easier for a developed nation to curb their emissions, just look here to the EU in general and even more to countries like Sweden or other Scandinavians, France and even Germany doesn't look so bad compared to the US.

We can point fingers all we want to developing nations but they are only the main contributors RIGHT NOW, historically the US and EU have much more to blame. But blame alone right now will not solve anything.

China and the US could both easily afford to replace all coal production with wind and solar. Public transit can make a huge different with cars.

So, it's more priority's vs need.

China has 4x the number of people. Until the US produces 1/4 of the emissions, i don't think we can complain. Also consider, that for decades, the US was the biggest emitter. We created the problem.

We should be taking a leading role. As we drive the costs lower, others will follow. China already uses more solar and wind power.

Totally agree.

China & India have had very little, if any, environmental protection policies or fair labour laws for a long time, so manufacturing was sent overseas just so big corporations could make an extra dollar. Then what? Western countries turn around and try say they're the problem for this mess. It's not right.

Americans were happy to consume their goods for years without putting much thought into the environmental impact large scale consumerism was having.

You're right it seems China & India are at least trying to mitigate the damage done, and really making a mockery of the USA while they're at it. Especially considering so much data about climate change is coming out of NASA.

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