UN says breaching 1.5C warming limit is 'imminent and unavoidable' | Hacker News Reader

UN says breaching 1.5C warming limit is 'imminent and unavoidable'

cnn.com

54 pointsdabinat31 comments

You know, I searched this article for "China" and "India" (each of whom have over 60 Gigawatts of coal-fired power plants completing construction over the next 24 months) and found nothing.

The world needs to either decide that we will confront the developing world and tell them they cannot build power plants like we did (unlikely), or start figuring out how to ameliorate the effects of the warming.

It is fundamentally unserious for smaller-population rich countries to think they can cut their own emissions enough to make a dent, unless they plan to return their populations to the pre-electric age.

Reading suggests that much of the coal-plant building in China of late is purposed as backup-only, and that their vast expansion of clean energy production overall is swallowing almost all power demand in that country. Accordingly, if you look at the figures we have, China's emissions are relatively stable in recent years.

According to the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), China and India combined (~35.5% of the human population) account for roughly 38% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Which is indeed an overshoot, albeit not of terribly epic proportions.

However, per-capita - on both a 100-year-effect and a 20-year-effect timeframe - the USA is easily the leader in emissions per person, and the USA also records the largest absolute increases ongoing.

The figures, which already take the variable potency/effect of different gas types into account, show annual per-person greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2 equivalent) of 17.3 Tonnes-per-person (USA), 11.1 Tpp (China), 5.6 Tpp (EU27), 2.2 Tpp (India) on the 100 year impact scale.

On the 20 year impact scale ("the amount 1 person releases in 1 year will trap the same amount of heat as XX tonnes of pure carbon-dioxide would"), which much better takes into account the balance of current agricultural practices etc, the USA = 21.5 Tpp, China = 15.8, EU = 6.8, India = 4.1.

The United States also recorded the largest absolute increase between 2024 and 2025 (+131.5 Mt CO2eq, or +2.2%), followed by Indonesia (+16.1 Mt CO2eq, or +1.2%).

So, any message which - when translated through the lens of practical reality - is essentially saying to the developing world "Please either tighten your belts, or be less populous" seems a very challenging expectation, if not outright-unviable by almost any other metric or ethic.

Upvoted for thoughtful info, though I would suggest using metric tons (t) rather than teslas (T) to make reading easier for us SI people.

America is the clear outlier. To their credit, Europeans have been doing pretty well. India “benefits” from poverty in this case. China’s also an outlier, but much of China’s emissions are products used by the rest of the world outsourced to China, which has basically become the world’s factory.

Europeans could have a legitimate gripe about other nations not doing enough.

Americans certainly cannot.

With a global economy where products are imported from elsewhere, local pollution statistics that do not include that indirect pollution as their own are meaningless. Energy imports are also being abused for report purposes.

This ignores how comparatively richer domestic economies in the developing countries have become and are continuing to become.

It isn't just cheap kotchkes being consumed by western consumers anymore.

Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Nigerian, Brazilian, and other consumers are also able to consume much more than they were 40 years ago (which is when most HNers appear to have been born).

40 years ago you'd be hard pressed to find plastic wrapped packaged food in a village in rural China or India. Now they're available everywhere.

40 years ago the only people who could dream of buying a car let alone a motorcycle or moped in those villages would have been local politicos. Now they are well within grasp for most households.

As large countries like India, Vietnam, the rest of ASEAN, and other regions are expected to grow in the 6-8% for at least the next decade, expect carbon output to also grow - not as the same degree as before, but still significantly nonetheless.

Most emissions come from transport and housing. Imports represent a relatively small proportion of the total.

See plenty of attention to the relative impact of US consumption below, but fundamentally you've got to get your own house in order before you start whining about your neighbor's. The US has largely refused to even think about addressing climate change through energy policy, we've been using the excuse you repeat for the last 30+ years. I think you are the person being unserious here.

Western consumers benefit from cheap products made by Chinese factories that have cheap labor and "negligible" environmental costs (i.e. factories don't need to pay to keep pollution to a minimum).

But yeah, you western consumer (I assume) point the finger at China, but when you're asked to pay more so your phone is made in a more environmentally-safe way, you'll balk and say "No way!". Maybe not you personally, but "you" the masses. Affordable flight to your next exotic country vacation vs sustainable vacation?

So the idea of environmental sustainability gets demolished the next time you pull out your wallet... meanwhile "China!", "India!".

And understandably, if these countries have to pay more so they can grow in a sustainable way, and they ask "Wouldn't it be fair if we ask the rich countries to pay for the past, where they grew in a ecologically destructive way?", the already rich countries reflexively say "No...".

China also deployed over 300 GW of solar last year, not to mention that EVs are really taking off there. I’d prefer if if they deployed zero coal, but I don’t think it’s the same as “building like we did”.

I don't disagree with you, but this is why nothing will happen and everyone has been planning for a 2-2.5C breach by 2050.

China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia. Brazil, Nigeria, and others are continuing to build out capacity. While this capacity is much more green than past buildouts, it's still in aggregate going to have a significant downstream impact on overall GHG emissions.

It doesn't matter who deploys more renewables or less when countries like China, India, and others continue to expand coal and ONG at reduced but still significant rates.

But they can morally push back and say North America, Europe and Japan industrialized via similar externalities.

And the reality is countries don't care. This is why China is now export controlling solar technology and IP [0] at the expense of India and other large members of the global south.

The reality is most countries are going to rush as much capacity as they can until the externalities can no longer be ignored en masse (probably by 2040-45).

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-16/china-mov...

Is existing solar tech insufficient?

Yes it's insufficient, and countries want to have the ability to build their own capacity.

And India as well as much of ASEAN view coal and ONG as core stopgaps or important intermidate inputs for their own industrialization efforts (eg. Steelmaking has hard dependencies on thermal coal, roadbuilding and concrete have hard oil dependencies as intermediate parts).

Much of the overall impact from GHGs comes from the hard industrial dependencies in fertilizers, steel, pharmaceuticals, and other heavy industries that countries need to industrialize.

In that way?

There's a lot of bizarre discussions on HN about energy, you can really get pulled into the weeds on various issues as it's a complicated issue.

But the clearest demarcation is the people who think dirty energy is cheaper than clean energy (or vice versa)

What about the poor people? What about the poor countries? What about industry keeping competitive?

All those questions flip once the price flips.

Personally I'm more worried about coal and gas interests forcing poor (and rich) countries to make unwise investments in fossil fuels so they keep getting a cut than I am about having to force them to move on from coal.

Who is this "we" that will confront people that use less when the "we" use massively more themselves.

per capita energy use in MJ ( Mega Joules)

USA 300,000 MJ per person.

India 28,000 MJ per person

China 130, 000 MJ per person

I was shamed by another parents for giving my 9 month old a bath a few years ago because it’s a waste of water. The corporate line of shifting blame onto the do-gooder consumer has been a stunning success

That’s crazy, what was the context? Like they said you were giving them too many baths? Did they not bathe their own kids??

No it was a comment about one bath the night before. They said it’s a tragedy to waste all that water by ever bathing a kid in a bathtub.

They bath their kid more efficiently, I guess.

Not like we filled the tub more than a couple inches, but oh well, we are the problem. And if everyone just recycles (DO YOUR PART!) that’ll do it!

Any plan that tells China and India "stay poor" is also fundamentally unserious. Why is it fairer for their populations to be without electricity than rich countries? You may wish for them to not burn coal but wishing doesn't do anything.

So. Do you propose to massively subsidize solar and batteries for all developing countries? That's the only thing that has a chance of working.

Anything else is dead on arrival. They will tell you politely to fuck off, and they will be in the right.

Without money how will they "ameliorate the effects of climate change"? Rich countries didn't help them prevent climate change, so why would poor countries think they'd get help to deal with it when it arrives?

To me, the problem with “1.5 degC” messaging as it is treated as a boundary “avoid this or doom”, where “avoid” immediately means decades of economic disadvantage compared countries that ignore the warning.

Rarely, does the messaging talk about actual long-term harms in the form of economic costs with numbers. And if they do, it’s worse than convincing people to be concerned about the extended weather forecast for next month…

It’s really a trade-off that should be discussed with less emotion and more reason. Unfortunately, it involves a timescale that is beyond that of political terms, and remaining lifetimes of elected officials…

The entire human philosophy is to borrow from tomorrow to pay for today, and it’s leading to the destruction of our societies. At some point we will be forced to redefine the models that we’ve held onto so tightly.

It's absurd how even surrounded by wealth, an abundance of resources, and a beautiful natural environment; we continue this frenetic hustle culture of committing ourselves to collectively overworking our planet and society, like coked up hamsters on a wheel.

There's numerous times I've thought of checking out with the (little) wealth I have and becoming a hitch-hiking vagrant and enjoying my time in nature with friends instead.

We live in a mass spiritual cognitive dissonance, boarding like hamsters thinking we can take it all with us when we die

"New UNEP report lays out emission cuts needed for return to 1.5°C" (2026) https://www.unep.org/en/news-and-stories/press-release/new-u...

[UNEP] "Emissions Gap Report 2026" https://wedocs.unep.org/items/87c02cac-8da8-4c28-ba61-c846ee...

How to use AI to solve this problem?

Energy storage?

A new Captain Planet? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48043192

This is the cue for fossil fuel defenders to say "Whelp, we tried. But what are you gonna do when India and China...blah blah. Let's just try to deal with it now, no point burning less fossil fuels.".

You can see an example of that attitude in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50202929

No, we didn't try. We didn't even pretend to try. These are all lies.

The truth is even if India and China didn't exist on the earth, we'd be heading for the same fate. Maybe 20 years later, but in the same direction. Europe and North America emit just as much carbon as China even today[1], despite China building a coal plant every time you take a breath or whatever "fact" fossil-heads come up with.

China has probably made the best effort out of everyone, with its prioritization of solar, wind, and batteries. But even that was too little, too late.

Now the target is 2.5C.

1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...

> We are now saying this window has closed, but we can open it again by making the overshoot as brief as possible

Not holding my breath.

It would require relentless global catastrophe to move humans globally. And even then many would dig in and resist.

The spotty nature of climate impact on a globe wide scale will likely never allow a shared assessment of risk.

Not to mention the need for most of humanity to stick to a plan over sufficiently long timescales.

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50177911

The reality is until we are talking about tens of millions dying each year due to climate change (millions per year won't be enough) we aren't going to do anything truly useful.

We have known the exact problem for 50 years. Our dipshit president is still forcing open coal plants that no one wants or needs. We aren't even close to solving any of this, except by pure chance through technical advancement. But I fully expect parts of the world to hit 135 degrees within a decade, killing every human in the area. Then comes endless refugee waves, closed borders and a deep discount on human life.

Maybe then we can start to talk solutions. But not before.

Don't worry, AI will solve this, once it solves all the math problems.

"Trump says he's ending restrictions on climate-warming methane from oil drilling" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50275081

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