Just own goal, after own goal, after own goal by the current US political party in power.
While China proceeds to lap us doing what they party insisted was economically infeasible if not impossible. Investing in cutting edge technologies, gaining energy independence, and leading the world in manufacturing growth.
And instead of investing in the future, building better products and tech, and out competing the world, all we've heard from the past decade+ is protectionism for oil interests and tariffs for industries.
Such backwards thinking, while China is an existence proof of what they claimed couldn't happen.
Such lost opportunity for no good reason at all. This country is going to hate being so weak in the international stage, but it's almost inevitable given its domestic choices.
What are you going on about? US emissions have been going down for the last 10 years: https://www.eia.gov/environment/
A little chemistry:
The relevance of those equations are that CH4 is methane, the principle component of natural gas, C is pure carbon, the principle component of coal and the USA has been transitioning it's energy production from coal to natural gas.CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O - 890kJ/mol C + O2 -> CO2 - 393kJ/molThe above equations say if you produce the same amount of electricity with natural has, your CO2 emissions halve. That is the driver of the reduction you point to. It is nice to see, but halve is the best that can happen. Meanwhile if China's continues down it's current path, their CO2 emissions for electricity production will drop to 0.
According to the EIA, the USA has about 18 years of reserves of natural gas at current production rates [0]. The USA has about 70 years of reserves of coal, so this transition to using natural gas is temporary. After about 100 years the USA will run out of both. If you want to see what that looks like, look at the UK.
[0] https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/fossil-fuels-run/
China can get to 0 emissions with their approach - replacing coal with solar and batteries. The US cannot do the same with theirs - replacing coal with natural gas.
The United States outsourced the bulk of its consumer production to China and the latter's emissions are still falling. You don't find that impressive?
Our environment is much much more important than the economy. We should be able to reduce production output when we need to.
Seems like a majority of voters disagree with your first sentence.
I think what's amazing about China's case is that they manage to both grow their productive apparatus, whilst decreasing their environmental impact. Pretty good news!
In other news, Mount Everest is getting smaller due to erosion. Wow.
A chinese has much less per capita emission than let's say someone from a western country.
I think there should be a equal global limit on how much per capita CO2 your can release and if you exceed you should pay a penalty and if you are lower that limit you should be able to sell those credits.
Harsh penalties are the only way we can fix this issue unfortunately.
But of course the countries who would have to pay are precisely the ones that will never sign on that.