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Comment by bachmeier | Hacker News Reader

> 99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies.

China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times the GHG emissions of the US (and nearly half of all world emissions). Move forward in time 30 years and add in countries with large populations like Pakistan, and it's clear that making alternatives to fossil fuels cheaper is a big deal for climate change. That's not to say the US political situation is of trivial importance, but it's not accurate to say we should ignore everything else.

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> China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran combined produce about four times GHG emissions of the US

And? These countries combined have ten times the population of US and still only emit four times that of US. The per capita emissions of West are staggeringly high. Not to forget the west has already developed while these are all developing countries who will pollute more due to their growth phase. The responsibility of dealing with climate change primarily lies with the west only.

I'm not telling you not to hold these beliefs. I fully understand that some people do not believe GHG emissions or climate change are a problem. As a matter of "what the data says", most emissions do not come from the US, and with realistic projections for the next 30 years, a much smaller percentage will come from the US. You're absolutely free to hold the belief that China, India, and other countries should not have to do anything to curtail their emissions.

Why could any of those countries not make the same argument, saying all other countries + the US pollute a lot more than them therefore thats not really their business ?

Not sure if you replied to the wrong person, but that's certainly not anything I said. I was responding to someone that wrote "99% of climate change effort is social signaling, the other 1% is engineers and scientists working on more efficient, cleaner technologies". If you make green technology cheaper, then those technologies will be adopted in the countries I listed. And the most effective way to reduce them in those countries is to make green alternatives cheaper. You're not going to accomplish much if you focus exclusively on reducing US GHG emissions.

If someone is willing to talk about nuclear as option. I know their serious and have done some basic research and maybe willing to negotiate viable solutions.

Most everyone else is either ignorantly repeating what they are told, or trying to make money off them.

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