Most of the emissions are people-related: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
People who want food, transportation, electricity, heat, concrete, etc.
People who want food, transportation, electricity, heat, concrete, etc.
As you can see the most emitting sector is energy production. That’s mostly driven by countries using coal as energy source and countries with significant oil and gas reserves. It is a lever at the strategical and political level. Same with industry where gains are mostly achieved through regulation.
Construction is direly in need of innovation regarding its emission but unless you want people to sleep in the street remains somewhat unavoidable.
That leaves agricultures where people have a huge role to play by consuming less meat and somewhat transportation (even if that’s actually extremely linked to the offer of effective public transport).
For the rest and as much as I would like to believe in it, most actions I see people doing are actually fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I’m a bit annoyed by it because it somehow lulls people into thinking they are doing something for the problem while the actual issues stay unaddressed.
Not that the US shouldn't also stop burning coal, mind you. Same with Germany.
We’ve been burning coal for hundreds of years and around 150 to make electricity. To suggest that others should do much less than we did and continue to do is, IMO, unreasonable to the point of being absurd.
Well then I’m being absurd because we are sharing the same planet and the fact remains that they are stupidly burning coal. The fact that they are late to the party doesn’t magically make it stop affecting all of us.
There is no place for virtue signalling here. At some point, some serious pressure will have to be put on countries which are not sorting their shit out or we will all pay the price.