Just back from a very nice lunch (I'm on holiday in South Africa again). Seems this thread has livened up a bit since I left it.
Where to start?
Proof! Must have proof! Where's the proof??? This is what happens when sensible people start to argue less like engineers and more like cheap, strip mall lawyers (aka Saul Goodman). You cannot have absolute proof! If you're making predictions several decades into the future, by definition, you cannot have 'proof' of what has not yet happened. And because you don't have 100% proof, you only commit yourself to a course of action that results in absolutely nothing ever changing! As a philosophical concept, is it just me that thinks this is just plain dumb? You do not have to have proof to do good stuff. Proof often only comes after the event. Every half decent scientist knows this.
Yes, its pretty obvious that emissions in China & India aren't great and that Western emissions pale in comparison but again, is this a sensible argument for not doing anything at all?? 'He's doing it so why can't I do it?' is a philosophy that belongs in the school playground, not at the heart of global attempts to temper the worst potential effects of climate change. And anyways, the smoggy, polluted China & India you see today won't be the China & India you see in a decade's time. I can remember back to when Japan was the 'dirty' industrial nation (anyone else remember Minimata?) but they 'cleaned-up' in the blink of an eye.
Anyway, while its sort of unfair to single out the US for criticism, it is fair to say the US is the nation that needs most to change. I honestly believe that Americans see the world through a distorting prism. This prism makes things look normal & acceptable to US citizens but take away the prism and things look very strange & often as not, dangerous. Guns, drugs, police thuggery, obscene levels of obesity, having armed forces that could take in the entire rest of the world and win, being best buddies with a nuclear armed regional bully and in the context of this thread, the gross inefficiency of the cars you drive & your willful blindness to see how this might impact the world...well all I can say is it looks very weird...