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Obviously the other main culprit (for putting carbon into the air) is China, and it's not worth it for the US to try to exercise power over them.

As to the list of stuff you're complaining about, you can only blame Australia (i.e., your fellow citizens and your politicians). Australia absolutely could just not do that stuff. The US is not going to invade Australia.

The reason Australia goes along with it is because it wants to.

And it wants to because it's a whole lot like the US. All the former British colonies have a lot in common.

We probably should have all just stayed in one big empire. After all, the US Founders bungled up our system permanently by claiming that rights come from God, which is only a way to supposedly invalidate rights.




What are you on about, China is way behind the US in emissions per per capita:

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


And three million kilotons ahead on emissions total, which are what matter. Also, how and where was this data collected? We know that we can't trust companies to report this accurately. Was it collected by the state? Since it's not privacy-related, I sort of trust the US to report accurately, whereas I don't trust the PRC to do so.


Also those emissions are relatively easy to fix since it's mostly cheap and nasty coal plants. They're already sick of coal plants due to local pollution, and switching electricity generation tech is much easier than say changing 100 year old car based city structures. And they are well positioned to do renewables & nuclear.


And yet that same chart shows China has twice as much in total emissions as compared to the US. Pick your preference I guess.

Plus I don't remember hearing quite as many reports of extremely polluted cities outside of China as I hear about in China.


I don't think it's especially useful to think about emissions by country for the purpouses of thinking who can effect change. Any more than a small town resident should feel discouraged about voting in national elections.

People need to be doing their part in all the reference groups they belong to, be it their field of expertise, their local government, international communities they belong to etc. "Act locally, think globally".




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