4 ms·

Not in the US. The majority of the country isn't to the point of believing that climate change poses a serious threat, and among non-Democrats attitudes toward

• sparkling 8y ago
  Weather or not the majority believes in climate change is irrelevant. The simple fact is: while the US reduced its total carbon footprint by ~0,4% in 2017, it increased in the EU and China. No reason to point fingers at the US.
  • StavrosK 8y ago
    Are you suggesting the link is causal?
  • jmcgough 8y ago
    Classic tragedy of the commons. No one wants to do their part because others aren't trying hard enough to fix the problem.
  • mads_ravn 8y ago
    It is quite a lot easier to reduce when you are using > 2.5 times as much as the ones you are comparing to (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...)
  • koube 8y ago
    The EU is reducing its carbon footprint if you zoom out from that one year[0]. China also has half of the carbon footprint per person[0]. The US appears the have the highest carbon footprint per capita of the major nations, beaten only by small countries[1]. [0]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-biggest-carbon-polluter-in-history-will-it-walk-away-from-the-paris-climate-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-bi... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/carbon-emissions-per-person-capita https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02...
  • bmarkovic 8y ago
    Except that EU has been doing it's job since the 90s and China has been doing it as well in recent years. They both slipped the last 12 months and a lot of it, at least in Europe is combination of side-effects of the post-Fukushima nuclear scare and increase in greeny renewables (like solar and wind) that actually cause more methane and coal to burn because they cannot work as reliable base supply.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• sehugg 8y ago
  Those who haven't experienced it directly might underestimate how effective the right has been at tying anti-environment beliefs to political identity, even among people who are highly educated in the sciences and should know better.
  • a_tractor 8y ago
    To be fair though, a lot of people on the right simply do not agree with the proposed solutions, specifically those found in the UN Paris Agreement. The left seems to get confused by this, as illustrated by your comment, where criticism, disagreement, or political opposition towards a specific set of solutions that just happens to contain products of many philosophical biases and geopolitical agendas (wealth redistribution, supranational bureaucracy, non-Democratic decision making), is turned into "anti-environment beliefs" or other overly-simplistic derogatory characterizations. Denying the sanctity of the Paris Agreement, much less its ideological foundations, isn't even getting into the science and yet it would be enough to paint someone as a "climate denier" and likely dis-invited to dinner parties. >how effective the right has been at tying anti-environment beliefs to political identity The right is not "anti-environment," nor do they think that scientific truth is a matter of consensus or faith. At the very least, that straw-man wouldn't be something the right would choose for itself... Observing that the Paris Agreement was really a UN-led wealth redistribution scheme deceptively using the noble cause of protecting the environment as a front and rejecting it is not "anti-environment." It is clearly political, but if you want to be honest about who is responsible for intentionally misrepresenting what is simply an opposing position to the neo-liberal global agenda, and making it a highly charged emotional issue with almost religiously devoted followers where opponents are basically treated like heretics, its not the right.