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Comment by garmaine | Hacker News Reader

You didn’t answer the question. What policy would be different?

First off the EPA would get proper funding: https://www.edf.org/deep-epa-cuts-put-public-health-risk

And would admit clearly that it is something we can change and start promoting policies that help move society in the right direction. Instead they are censoring themselves and the organization is all but toothless.

https://time.com/5075265/epa-website-climate-change-censorsh...

So yea things would be different.

The Paris agreement was a good start, which Trump pulled the US out of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement

A lot of people (myself included) would say that the Paris Agreement gave up too much for too little. If everyone followed the limits there, the climate would still be fucked - and those limits were far more restrictive for countries like the US than the developing world. And while it might be reasonable to say that it's not fair to ask for those countries to give up their chance of getting out of poverty, it still leaves the problem. I can accept giving up things to save the climate. I, and many others, can't accept giving up things to see the world go to hell anyways.

Agreements are stepping stones to work together, allowing you to reposition your country in the global scheme to be in a better place when a new harsher agreement comes.

It's not obvious what you want to say, but the Paris agreement would have been a piece of cake if we had taken responsibility.

In terser language: we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this.

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