omphaloskepsy

laughs

Presumably, that we're at a severe and perhaps unnecessary competitive disadvantage because of domestic restrictions.

We continue to ignore the widespread, egregious pollution in countries like China and India - people are buying fucking oxygen tanks, for crying out loud - and yet here at home we're getting up in arms because vehicles aren't getting 60 MPG or because many areas still use coal-fired plants for their base load energy needs or any number of similar items.

Companies all over are being told to shave almost impossibly thin margins off of their pollution at this point, at great expense, while our trading partners just keep on keeping on with wild abandon.

We could probably use our economic leverage as trading partners to gently "encourage" the worst offenders to actually ramp up match us on emissions, but we don't.

Our politicians are happy to turn a blind eye to these abuses of humanity and the environment and placate their voting bloc at home by pretending to be tough on pollution.

Until we start actually demanding equity worldwide, and we will have to demand it, because it makes China et al much less competitive by raising their costs, it's almost pointless to demand that we reduce emissions by an additional 3% because that's all we can scientifically get - and it's horrifically expensive to achieve those milestones.

But that's just a guess and I didn't source a goddamn thing except for the Google search, so take it all with some NaCl.

(You'll find lots of us are happy to actually discuss things, if that's what you wanted, y'know.)