[troutman]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

And another thing. The "west" collectively has had a certain lifestyle that has been at a minimum a ridiculously high rate of consumption per capita.

Now that you have India and China emerging, shifting their lifestyle to a more 'westernized' one with cars, oil, natural gas usage... how exactly are we going to get them to just watch their energy consumption? How hypocritical is that? Oh yeah we just lived the high petroleum life for the last 100 years but you guys? Yeah you guys can't.

Not to mention that with their populations, the magnitude of environmental impact should amount to something much worse looking that North America... particularly with China's rockstar environmental record.

China's green progress leaves US red-faced
http://www.theguardian.com/environme...-plans-america

Environmental progress should spur Beijing to press on
http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/C...ental-progress

The 2014 edition of the annual Environmental Performance Index, compiled by US-based Yale and Columbia universities, said China had made huge strides in slowing the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions in the past decade.

“Despite high economic expansion averaging greater than 10% annual growth in GDP, China reported a 20% decrease in carbon intensity between 2005 and 2010,” the report noted. This is the amount of carbon emitted for each unit of economic growth.

Reducing the speed at which the world’s largest industrial nation is pumping harmful gases into the atmosphere may not be the same as actually reducing overall emissions, the criterion by which rich nations are judged, but it is a start. The report’s authors are optimistic that the policies that delivered this deceleration will continue to bear fruit and may one day lead China to actually reduce emissions.

Country Rankings:
http://epi.yale.edu/epi/country-rankings