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Comment by ManBeardPc | Hacker News Reader

Ironically climate will also rewrite the US and the rest of the world in return. More so that we are losing several important years because the US as a big contributor is now governed by complete climate deniers. Currently having the hottest summer so far, but coolest summer we will see at the same time is something I hoped to never experience.

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I’m not sure the US matters as much as other economies. And our emissions peaked around 2005 and continues to decline. We will still continue to reduce emissions in the next few years because old energy sources just are losing economic viability.

The US is just choosing to make a huge mistake and not participate in growth markets like clean energy, etc.

The US matters, it has a big influence and could force companies around the globe to hurry up the transition. Just because the emissions may have peaked a lot of it is just outsourced. Also just reducing is not enough. We already missed important goals.

Fossil fuels losing economic viability is a small light at the end of the tunnel. But even that may not help if politic is making bad enough laws.

We don't emit as much as China and India now, but we're not small potatoes either. As bad as we consider ourselves, those two countries are worse and due to only increase it for the next 30 years or so. So that may be the only point the climate deniers really have, that any changes we make maybe be irrelevant since we're probably already over the point of criticality and it may become a self-driving cycle of wiping out the environment for the next couple hundred years.

Now do China. Four times the emissions of Europe and USA combined with no end in sight. Building 1000 coal power plants over the next two years. But do go on with your usa bashing because that's your actual motivation

Somebody doing worse is not an excuse. Everyone has to cut their emissions. The story is about the US so that’s what I wrote about.

Chinese emissions look like they peaked last year, even despite the economy growing (previous reductions have happened but came with caveats): https://web.archive.org/web/20250529112216/https://www.carbo...

Coal plants may still be getting installed, but relatively(!) little coal gets burned in them, because PV is just so much cheaper these days.

EV transition is also a big deal there. For all that the American (and European) car industry complains about dumping, the Chinese just buy those same EVs without any of the tariffs adding to the prices.

Practical issues remain with emissions due to metal refining, but those seem tractable, and solutions are already getting deployed outside research labs.

Still, big unsolved issues remain with emissions from concrete (IIRC the work there is currently lab research), and the scale of change needed is ~"everything everywhere except *grassland*" or ~"everything everywhere except North Korea".

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