> India is almost as populous as China What does India have to do with anything? Yes, India uses even less carbon per capita than the US or China! Good for Ind

> India is almost as populous as China What does India have to do with anything? Yes, India uses even less carbon per capita than the US or China! Good for India! It'd be awesome if both China and the US could bring their carbon production per capita down to India's level, or even lower. As for the situation in the US: the latter of your sources is conveniently from 2015, before the US elected a president who campaigned on reviving the coal industry, appointed the CEO of Exxon-Mobil to Secretary of State, pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, and has made it his daily mission to roll back EPA protections. Does this [1] sound like a government that's "aggressively reducing coal usage"? If coal usage is going down in the US, it's despite, not because of, any efforts by the current federal government. And indeed, coal specifically aside, carbon emissions in 2018 are projected to rise in the US after a steady decline since 2005 [2]. > And finally, I'm sorry it needs to be specifically pointed out -- but politicians vote on policies. Not lobbyists, not energy companies. I mean, it doesn't need to be pointed out; we're all, despite differences of opinions, reasonably intelligent people here, and we all know about and have made up our minds on lobbying. Of course politicians write laws and vote on policies; I happen to think that if oil and gas companies are spending things like $65 million a year [3] to try to influence those politicians and the policies they make, they must have determined that has some effect. I suppose you don't, or think it doesn't matter because the buck stops with the politicians or something. I think that's naïve. But I promise we're all familiar with the ground facts, and your condescending attitude isn't really encouraging any useful discussion. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/politics/epa-climate-power-plants-trump-west-virginia/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/politics/epa-climate-power-pl... [2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34872 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34872 [3] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=E01 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=E01