The US is the largest historical emitter of co2. Meaning that the US is still responsible for the largest share of excess co2 in the atmosphere. If co2 emissions are a race then the US has slowed and China is now running faster, but the US lapped china 3 times before China started gaining on them.
Additionally the idea that deploying new technologies equates to economic self harm is absurd. The price per kilowatt hour of renewable energy has been dropping continuously for decades in a pattern similar to moores law. Soon renewable energy will be so much cheaper than fossil fuels that it will be similar to what the discovery of crude oil deposits did to the whale oil industry. Betting on fossil fuels from an economic perspective is stupid as hell in 2022 and risking the survival of worldwide ecosystems and society on that bet is literally the stupidest thing I can think of people advocating for.
China is a problem. We absolutely need China to reduce their emissions much more aggressively than they are. Instead of using them as an excuse to sleepwalk humanity towards potential catastrophe we should be reducing our own emissions so as to have a legitimate position from which to argue about what China should be doing while using our significant economic leverage to incentivize China to reduce their emissions.
Additionally the idea that deploying new technologies equates to economic self harm is absurd. The price per kilowatt hour of renewable energy has been dropping continuously for decades in a pattern similar to moores law. Soon renewable energy will be so much cheaper than fossil fuels that it will be similar to what the discovery of crude oil deposits did to the whale oil industry. Betting on fossil fuels from an economic perspective is stupid as hell in 2022 and risking the survival of worldwide ecosystems and society on that bet is literally the stupidest thing I can think of people advocating for.
China is a problem. We absolutely need China to reduce their emissions much more aggressively than they are. Instead of using them as an excuse to sleepwalk humanity towards potential catastrophe we should be reducing our own emissions so as to have a legitimate position from which to argue about what China should be doing while using our significant economic leverage to incentivize China to reduce their emissions.