[tock]

Climate change isn't driven by human defined borders either. It's driven by total CO2 emissions. If a per-capita rate is non sensical then border based emissions are even more non sensical. Greenland only emits 0.001% of the total. Greenland is 12000x a better country than the US wow. This is exactly why per-capita is used.

[im3w1l]

Yeah and this is clearest when you consider federations. Imagine if you count the US as 50 separate countries, suddenly they are much more climate friendly! That's of course absurd.

[mulmen]

Climate change isn’t driven by borders but energy policy is defined within them.

[tock]

And no policy is gonna willingly reduce energy consumption which is directly co-related with QOL when other countries have much higher per-capita consumption. Politically humans need fairness.

[mulmen]

We don’t need to reduce energy consumption. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

[tock]

We know. There are many reasons why countries choose more polluting sources of energy. Part of which is costs. The world runs on incentives. Maybe rich countries like the US can subsidize clean energy for poorer countries like India. Because consumption is definitely not going to come down.

[mulmen]

You say you know then directly contradict yourself by bringing up consumption again.

The United States already supports clean energy in India. India is not “poor”. It has a larger economy than the United Kingdom. 46.3% of India’s installed capacity is renewable and that mix is growing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_India

[tock]

> You say you know then directly contradict yourself by bringing up consumption again.

It's not a contradiction. Increasing consumption today will mean increase of greenhouse emissions. Any increase of consumption today still involves some increase in fossil fuels for many reasons like grid stability.

> The United States already supports clean energy in India.

They work together on projects. AFAIK the US doesn't subsidise anything for India or other countries.

> India is not “poor”.

It is. Its per capita GDP is $2,878. The US is $85,809. Thats a 30x difference. It is an incredibly poor country.

> It has a larger economy than the United Kingdom.

Philippines and Norway have the same total GDP too. It's silly to consider them equally rich.

> 46.3% of India’s installed capacity is renewable and that mix is growing.

Hell yeah! Hopefully it keeps growing. It's kinda hilarious that India is one of the few countries who will meet the Paris accord commitments. The US is still stuck at 23% and isn't even close to meeting its commitments.

[nradov]

The notion of subsidizing a foreign country that literally has nuclear weapons is ludicrous. US voters would never stand for that.

[tock]

No voter would. Humans would rather die from climate change than try and work together. Our innate tribalism is what makes solutions to this problem hard.

[immibis]

Solar energy is currently the cheapest form of energy, cheaper than coal, cheaper than natural gas. You know the conspiracy theories about how the oil companies are keeping perpetual motion machines hidden? Solar panels are literally that. With the caveat that they only work in sunlight. So they're not great when you need energy at night. But even if you triple your costs to account for only working 8 hours a day, they're cheaper than anything else.

[nradov]

For a lot of industrial processes, being limited to running during sunny periods would cause costs to go up by a lot more than a factor of three. The grid scale storage necessary to make solar power work for heavy industry remains extremely expensive and capacity limited. Costs are starting to come down but it will take decades.

[reliabilityguy]

> Solar energy is currently the cheapest form of energy, cheaper than coal, cheaper than natural gas.

Cheaper before the incentives?

[s1artibartfast]

For some reason, these savings never cascade down to the consumer. Solar energy is typically a surcharge, not a cost savings.

When I log into my utility account, I can opt into solar generated power for X $/kwh more, not less.

[tock]

Yeah main issue is elasticity. But otherwise promising. China is adding insane solar capacity yearly so I guess they see it as promising too.