> US emissions are declining per capita

Because we have continually outsourced our emissions to China while still reaping the financial benefits of expoiting resources in those countries. I know there are studies that try to account for this but they still fail to look at the bigger picture of resources we have outsourced.

Cheap and large scale manufacturing in China has meant enormous benefits for the US economy. We see a decoupling of GDP and energy because we are playing tricks with accounting.

> We really do have the opportunity to change our behavior and keep a planet that is as welcoming to us as it is today.

First we are absolutely locked into increasing global warming from emissions, so we have without question given up on a planet as welcoming as today.

We do have an opportunity to change our behavior, I have repeatedly said that, but that means actually reducing fossil fuel usage, globally and immediately.

As I have said, the US can reduce global emissions because we have seen the US do this twice: April 2020 and 2008.

> a lot of hope and a lot of reason to take action now

There's reason to take action now, but since you won't even accept the notion that you might have to reduce your standard of living, at least until renewables catch up again, means we are not going to change our path.

I had these exact conversations in 2006, and very similar ones in the 1990s (though people were less sure of the extreme risks then). The IPCC reports have been for years considered by many to be far too optimistic, and again those people have been proven correct over and over again (until recently they didn't consider positive feed backs and also assume scalable CCS).

At what point would you admit you are wrong? I'll admit I'm wrong if we see three years of decreasing global emissions starting this year and reduced global emissions by 20% in the next 5 years. These aren't enough to get us to our required goals, but if I see this I'll still be shocked and admit I've been too skeptical. Currently I believe this would only happen with a catastrophic financial crisis (which may be the only way we can avoid climate catastrophe).

> Because we have continually outsourced our emissions to China while still reaping the financial benefits of expoiting resources in those countries.

That's simply not true. The chart I linked is CO2 accounting based on consumption, not US production, it takes into account Chinese emissions for US consumption.

> There's reason to take action now, but since you won't even accept the notion that you might have to reduce your standard of living,

Sorry, what? What do you know about what I want to do? My preferred life would be considered a "reduced standard of living" to many Americans, because I want to live car-free in a walkable neighborhood.

> At what point will you admit you are wrong?

When there's evidence that a position I have taken is wrong. Start sending me data!!

Will you admit that emissions have decreased, even accounting for moving production to China? Will you admit that we have cleaner energy sources ready to deploy that will replace fossil fuels, if we choose to do so? Will you admit that we can develop alternatives to industrial processes that generate non-fossil-fuel emissions? Will you admit that we can switch disastrous land use policies that reduce the ability of the ecosystem to sequester CO2?

These are all possible without a drastic reduction in the quality of life. The question is how quickly we can make that transition. At this stage in the game, nihilism is as bad as denialism. We need to make drastic drastic change, and I am doing so in my personal life, but personal action is no substitute for changing the system.

> For example in the manufacture of solar PV, the solar panels themselves are counted, but since the companies manufacturing and processing the silicon need for these are in China selling to other Chinese companies, that is not counted even though all those fossil fuels used are used exclusively for the benefit of American companies.

This is simply inaccurate. US consumption CO2 numbers account for US purchase of solar panels.

Though I appreciate that there are some link here, you are still making backwards-looking statements rather than stating limitations about what could be. For example, this link:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...

Is of what was in terms of energy. Will it be that way in the future? Only if we let corruption and entrenched fossil fuel interests prevent cheaper options from being deployed.

Renewable expansion is just barely getting started. To declare "game over" already is fatalism and not founded by any sort of data.

Dollars are not CO2 emissions. CO2 is emissions. Our economic systems are constructed by law and convention, and technology is completely changeable.

I see lots of feelings and emotions in your post about frenzy, but we need all that frenzy. We need action and change, desperately. Economic collapse will not save us, because emitting 25% of our current emissions is not good enough.

The only solution is compete transition of the economy in all sectors. Massive change. I say get on board or get out of the way.

> US consumption CO2 numbers account for US purchase of solar panels.

That's what I said, but they don't account for the manufacture of raw materials produced and sold in China to aid in the manufacture of these panels, nor of the associated infrastructure causes. They therefore underestimate the export co2.

> Is of what was in terms of energy. Will it be that way in the future? Only if we let corruption and entrenched fossil fuel interests prevent cheaper options from being deployed.

Energy is effectively the same as economic activity. You are correct that if we could magically replace all of the fossil fuel usage with renewables we would be at zero emissions. But again, all sources of energy production have been rising.

> Dollars are not CO2 emissions. CO2 is emissions. Our economic systems are constructed by law and convention, and technology is completely changeable.

Again you are correct that dollars are not CO2 emissions, but dollars are a good proxy for energy (read Smil's Energy and Civilization if you need a reference for that), and currently the vast majority of our energy needs are met with CO2 emitting fuel sources.

> The only solution is compete transition of the economy in all sectors. Massive change. I say get on board or get out of the way.

Do you really not see the contradiction regarding the problem at hand and your solution? A complete transition of the economy is a incredibly destructive, insanely energy intensive process. Unless energy was already mostly renewable such a solution will only lead to the problem being worse.

I guess I'll get out of the way since this conversation has only further convinced me of how bleak our situation is.

> And, again, all I am saying is the only way to reduce GHG is to globally reduce emissions and we are not doing that at all. You can claim that the US is somehow separate from China's emissions, but you can see a global dip in emissions in 2008. I can think of no better experiment on the interconnected nature of emissions than to see how a housing crisis in the US becomes a global economic down turn which sees the most promising drop in emissions we have ever seen.

The underlying phenomenon here is not economic activity. It's that a decrease in economic activity is a proxy for a decrease in things such as pleasure transport, heating/cooling, food consumption, and other things. Decoupling these activities from emissions is what this entire thread is talking about; for example, taking a train and walking for a vacation requires much fewer emissions than flying to your destination and renting a car. It may be in vogue in environmental circles to decry growth and capitalism as two factors behind emissions, but there's nothing that precludes growth or capitalism to transition into a new lower-power regime. The problem has nothing to do with the economic systems as much as it has to do with entrenched economic actors that continue to aggressively lobby governments to convince them _not_ to pass the regulations necessary to spur innovation to decrease emissions.

To leave with a pithy saying: There's two ways to quiet a crowded room, either ask everyone to speak quietly or ask everyone to leave. Halting growth is similar to the latter option, decreasing emissions is similar to the former.

> Decoupling these activities from emissions is what this entire thread is talking about;

And my entire point, is that after 30+ years of trying to reduce emissions by adding renewables we have failed to see this happen. There is no evidence that we are getting any closer now. If any global fossil fuel usage had decline, we could say it might be being replaced with renewables, but all evidence we have shows that renewables just supplement our existing and growing needs for energy.

To go with your metaphor, we've been asking everyone to be quiet for 30+ years and the room is getting louder. If we need that room quiet or we'll get kicked out of the house for good, it's getting time to ask people to leave.

If it's this difficult to get folks to transition to lower energy-use regimes, I think it would be even more difficult to get folks to abandon growth-based economics. Unless the worst happens and our economic systems collapse due to climate events. That's what I would consider the worst case, though.

What does "growth based" economics even mean? I think it's an incoherent concept, and have never gotten the same answer from two different people on the matter. Growth of GDP? Growth of energy use? Growth of carbon emissions? Growth of population? These different types of "growth" get substituted in, silently, to move an argument forward, but if one looks at details and tries to be specific, everything falls apart.

I agree with you. In my last post I'm using "growth based" to represent the status quo, nothing more (I'm not trying to say anything about why it is growth based.) If I were writing more carefully I should have simply called it out as the status quo instead of calling it "growth based".

Sorry for accidentally implying that you didn't agree, I was just kind of hoping you might have an answer!

We haven't spent 30 years trying to reduce emissions with renewables, we've spent 3 years doing pilot projects to drive down their costs.

And we are, today, at the point where we can deploy them. Around 2016-2018, we passed an economic inflection point for new energy deployments, and in 2023 we will have been through the five year periods over which utilities typically plan, and hopefully we will have sued enough of them to force use of accurate and up to date data in their economic planning models.

Only then will we actually start to try to use renewables to decrease emissions in any sort of full force.

And with the tiny trial balloons up until now, and via increased energy efficiency, we have been increasing GDP per CO2 for years, despite your refusal to believe the data.

These are basic facts. If your conclusions requires rejecting basic facts, then the conclusions are not sound.