Reply #7: Perhaps I can explain. What I see happening lately... [View All]

[phantom power]

is various governments around the world playing the equivalent of the old school-yard game: "You're the biggest polluter, you clean up first!" "No, you're polluting too! I'm not going to stop until you do! It's not fair!"

I guess another way to put it is: which nations have the moral authority to "put pressure on China" to clean up? Especially considering that one of the main reason China pollutes so much is that they are very busy making unsustainably-cheap products which the rest of the world is (so far) happy enough to purchase. The political pragmatics aren't there yet. There will be nobody with credibility to ask anything of China until somebody "goes first." I suppose China might in theory go first, but I can only imagine them laughing at anybody demanding that they do.

Meanwhile, as I'm sure you know, nobody is "cleaning up." They're arguing about the burden of rolling back to 1990-levels of GHG emissions, when in fact the last time human GHG emissions were in equilibrium was 1860. Pre Civil War. And we don't need equilibrium. We need sub-equilibrium. We need GHG levels to fall, not remain constant.

For the most part, we need to be turning our attention to surviving climate change. We missed the boat on prevention by at least 10 years. Maybe a lot more than that.