You know, I searched this article for "China" and "India" (each of whom have over 60 Gigawatts of coal-fired power plants completing construction over the next 24 months) and found nothing.
The world needs to either decide that we will confront the developing world and tell them they cannot build power plants like we did (unlikely), or start figuring out how to ameliorate the effects of the warming.
It is fundamentally unserious for smaller-population rich countries to think they can cut their own emissions enough to make a dent, unless they plan to return their populations to the pre-electric age.
Reading suggests that much of the coal-plant building in China of late is purposed as backup-only, and that their vast expansion of clean energy production overall is swallowing almost all power demand in that country. Accordingly, if you look at the figures we have, China's emissions are relatively stable in recent years.
According to the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), China and India combined (~35.5% of the human population) account for roughly 38% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Which is indeed an overshoot, albeit not of terribly epic proportions.
However, per-capita - on both a 100-year-effect and a 20-year-effect timeframe - the USA is easily the leader in emissions per person, and the USA also records the largest absolute increases ongoing.
The figures, which already take the variable potency/effect of different gas types into account, show annual per-person greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2 equivalent) of 17.3 Tonnes-per-person (USA), 11.1 Tpp (China), 5.6 Tpp (EU27), 2.2 Tpp (India) on the 100 year impact scale.
On the 20 year impact scale ("the amount 1 person releases in 1 year will trap the same amount of heat as XX tonnes of pure carbon-dioxide would"), which much better takes into account the balance of current agricultural practices etc, the USA = 21.5 Tpp, China = 15.8, EU = 6.8, India = 4.1.
The United States also recorded the largest absolute increase between 2024 and 2025 (+131.5 Mt CO2eq, or +2.2%), followed by Indonesia (+16.1 Mt CO2eq, or +1.2%).
So, any message which - when translated through the lens of practical reality - is essentially saying to the developing world "Please either tighten your belts, or be less populous" seems a very challenging expectation, if not outright-unviable by almost any other metric or ethic.
You know, I searched this article for "China" and "India" (each of whom have over 60 Gigawatts of coal-fired power plants completing construction over the next 24 months) and found nothing.
The world needs to either decide that we will confront the developing world and tell them they cannot build power plants like we did (unlikely), or start figuring out how to ameliorate the effects of the warming.
It is fundamentally unserious for smaller-population rich countries to think they can cut their own emissions enough to make a dent, unless they plan to return their populations to the pre-electric age.
Reading suggests that much of the coal-plant building in China of late is purposed as backup-only, and that their vast expansion of clean energy production overall is swallowing almost all power demand in that country. Accordingly, if you look at the figures we have, China's emissions are relatively stable in recent years.
According to the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), China and India combined (~35.5% of the human population) account for roughly 38% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Which is indeed an overshoot, albeit not of terribly epic proportions.
However, per-capita - on both a 100-year-effect and a 20-year-effect timeframe - the USA is easily the leader in emissions per person, and the USA also records the largest absolute increases ongoing.
The figures, which already take the variable potency/effect of different gas types into account, show annual per-person greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2 equivalent) of 17.3 Tonnes-per-person (USA), 11.1 Tpp (China), 5.6 Tpp (EU27), 2.2 Tpp (India) on the 100 year impact scale.
On the 20 year impact scale ("the amount 1 person releases in 1 year will trap the same amount of heat as XX tonnes of pure carbon-dioxide would"), which much better takes into account the balance of current agricultural practices etc, the USA = 21.5 Tpp, China = 15.8, EU = 6.8, India = 4.1.
The United States also recorded the largest absolute increase between 2024 and 2025 (+131.5 Mt CO2eq, or +2.2%), followed by Indonesia (+16.1 Mt CO2eq, or +1.2%).
So, any message which - when translated through the lens of practical reality - is essentially saying to the developing world "Please either tighten your belts, or be less populous" seems a very challenging expectation, if not outright-unviable by almost any other metric or ethic.
"New UNEP report lays out emission cuts needed for return to 1.5°C" (2026) https://www.unep.org/en/news-and-stories/press-release/new-u...
[UNEP] "Emissions Gap Report 2026" https://wedocs.unep.org/items/87c02cac-8da8-4c28-ba61-c846ee...
How to use AI to solve this problem?
Energy storage?
A new Captain Planet? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48043192
> We are now saying this window has closed, but we can open it again by making the overshoot as brief as possible
Not holding my breath.
It would require relentless global catastrophe to move humans globally. And even then many would dig in and resist.
The spotty nature of climate impact on a globe wide scale will likely never allow a shared assessment of risk.
Not to mention the need for most of humanity to stick to a plan over sufficiently long timescales.