Item — HN Reader

If that was the case, then global GHG emissions would have remained roughly stagnant for over 2 decades.

The reality is the world got richer, and households who 30 years ago would have had little access to electricity, finished manufactured goods, and automotive vehicles can now purchase those. Go visit a village in rural China, India, or Vietnam - 30 years ago plastic bags were nonexistent and industrial fertilizers were rationed, and now tetrapaks, plastics, industrial fertilizers, and heavy machinery like tractors and trucks are everywhere.

In 2000, China and India's HDIs were comparable to Cameroon and Ethiopia's present HDI. That isn't the case in 2023 (UNDP HDI calculations have a 2-3 year lag because transnational data collection is hard). And large, poor countries like Pakistan (260 million), DRC (100 million), and Ethiopia (139 million) are now hitting developmental indicators comparable to those two in the early 2000s.

Most countries have chosen to use both GreenTech and Coal to expand electricity generation from Vietnam [0] to India [1] to Indonesia [2]. You are talking about 3 billion people living in an economic region that is expected to see 6-8% GDP growth rates for at least the next decade. And even countries at the lower end of the developmental cycle like Pakistan [3][4] and Ethiopia [5] are now doing the same.

Frankly, it doesn't matter what reduction Europe does (and Europe's GHG emissions reduction has been massive [6]) because India, ASEAN, and LatAm's GHG emissions expansion eats up any reduction from the EU-27 and US.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-allows-coal-...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-fuels-global-g...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-coal-power...

[3] - https://www.climatepolicylab.org/climatesmart/2022/1/27/what...

[4] - https://www.thefridaytimes.com/19-Jun-2026/thar-coal-pakista...

[5] - https://afrinz.ru/en/2026/07/there-is-a-request-to-supply-60...

[6] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

1 comments

> Frankly, it doesn't matter what reduction Europe does (and Europe's GHG emissions reduction has been massive [6]) because India and ASEAN's GHG emissions expansion eats up any reduction from the EU-27 and US.

You're contradicting yourself. If Europe doesn't reduce emissions expansion doubles.

> You're contradicting yourself. If Europe doesn't reduce emissions expansion doubles.

What I am saying is it doesn't matter if Europe drops GHGs anymore - either way we are now at a stage in 2026 that some of the worst aspects of climate change are irreversible

Edit: can't reply

> It can always get worse...

Not can, will.

> some of the worst aspects of climate change are irreversible

You're wrong about that. It can always get worse. Especially by believing that reducing emissions somewhere doesn't matter.

And China has plans that have some decarbonization baked in - and even the US are decarbonizing, no matter what the current administration says.

Can they decarbonize _fast enough_ ? No idea...

India and the rest of asia will be interesting - can they leapfrog oil and gas for some sectors ?

> Can they decarbonize _fast enough_ ? No idea...

Likely not. China and the US are decarbonizing, but their overall rate of GHG emissions is still stagnant.

> India and the rest of asia will be interesting - can they leapfrog oil and gas for some sectors ?

Not really. GreenTech is useful, but there are multiple industrial processes and products such as Fertilizers and Steel that have hard carbon and coal dependencies.

Additionally, in Asia energy security is the name of the game, not environmentalism.

Edit: can't reply

> If solar is the cheapest form of energy...

Cheap but comes with a dependency on China.

Also, a number of industrial processes like Fertilizers and Steel simply cannot be decarbonized because carbon is a critical input.

> have much oil and gas

Most of ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Phillipines) has significant gas reserves because of the South China Sea.

But coal remains cheap and available everywhere.

> Asia is also the most vulnerable continent to climate change. Reversing or mitigating it is national security in a way that it simply isn't for most developed economies.

And depending on the country, GreenTech dependency on China is also a real risk. Vietnam (Hoang Sa), Phillipines (Bajo de Masinloc), Indonesia (Laut Natuna Utara), India, and other large industrial states in Asia have ongoing disputes with China that have gone hot over the past decade.

> Additionally, in Asia energy security is the name of the game, not environmentalism.

Does Asia, outside of Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Middle East, have much oil and gas? If solar is the cheapest form of energy, and can't be embargoed, why wouldn't they adopt it rapidly?

Asia is also the most vulnerable continent to climate change. Reversing or mitigating it is national security in a way that it simply isn't for most developed economies.

Completely agree.

On the last point : given enough climate events, "decarbonization" will become a "national security" topic. Who knows what happens next. (First chapter of "Ministry for the Future" always comes to mind...)

They eat the cost. Most countries are not as poor as they used to be 30 years ago, and can afford a $2 billion or even $10 billion climate disaster hit.

Back in VN, the cyclone seasons now causes several billion dollars of damage a year yet they still trudge on. Same with the Philippines, China, India, and others.

> given enough climate events, "decarbonization" will become a "national security" topic

They already are, but most large states in Asia also have ongoing disputes with China that have almost gone hot multiple times over the past decade.

The climate disaster costs are going to be so so much bigger than that unless our rates change. It’s easy to look at our $30000B gdp, even project that to 100k B into the future, and say “well we will eat the 2-10B costs”.

There is no number for “we don’t have a source of soy anymore” or “Florida coastlines have moved 50 miles inland” or “the Ogallala is empty”. We could guess, and we would be guessing some really really big numbers that don’t sound very eatable.

The big easy ones are the weather disasters. Katrina did 200b in damage (inflation adjusted). If we jump up to a disaster like that yearly, 1000b every 5 years is…. A serious problem for a 30,000B economy. And that’s JUST hurricanes.

I agree, but no one is going to change their track and this is something that neither the EU-27 nor the US nor anyone else has power over now.

And it's not like this wasn't known - we were literally modeling this kind of a standoff at the Belfer Center almost 15 years ago.

What I am trying to say is arguing from a moralistic or humanity standpoint doesn't help because that's not how decisionmakers think, and that requires accepting agency across multiple players.

We need to accept we are fucked, and based on the cards we have in our hand understand what will happen next.

Can they afford wet bulb events that kill outdoor laborers? Crop failures and mass starvation?

People will not die to starve in place. They will move. Can their neighbors afford to deal with that ? And their neighbors's neighbors ?

Our "sovereign borders defended by true patriots making whatever great again" are going to be so cute... (Or so ugly if they decide to actually to deal with it XXth-century-style...)

India is very renewable already. Same with Africa. Hundreds of millions if not billions burn wood and biomass for heat and cooking daily

Which is why I mentioned _decarbonization_, not only renewables ;) (wood stoves are always this weird thing to put in the carbon cycle. It's "recent" carbon, not carboniferous, so... the But they're not very efficient.)

> It's "recent" carbon, not carboniferous, so...

Yeah try telling that to the people who want to ban beef because the cows eat grass and burp

Cows also eat corn and burp.

Corn is grown with fertilizers and harvested with tractors and shipped by truck. All fossil-fuel intensive.

If all we had were grass-fed cows and no deforestation to raise them, it would be a much smaller problem.

A lot of political platforms has the goal of using corn based ethanol to become carbon-neutral, by burning that fuel for heat, electricity and in transportation.

Animal feed and bio fuels are directly competing with each other. For now, animal feed has a bit bigger portion of the market but the distance is shrinking as demand for bio fuels are constantly increasing. With plans to increase bio fuel consumptions several times over, bio fuels will overtake animal feed in consumption, while deforestation will increase in order to generate more green credits.

Definitely not billions. Do you have actual sources for how many? Do you imagine they enjoy wood and dung smoke in their houses, or maybe they'd prefer electric ranges or hot plates powered by solar panels?

About 660 million in India and 1 billion in Africa burn renewables like wood or biomass for cooking, heating and daily energy needs.

We could learn from them.

Sources:

https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/clean-cooking-expands-at-r...

https://www.fao.org/wood-energy-info-portal/search/detail/en...

In a sense, when we use scraps from agriculture in a methanizer to produce "bio" gaz, we are "learning" from people still using biomass. It's just that we mediate it through ch4 to avoid some of the worst health risk.

The problem is of course that we don't use "scraps" so much as "purposefully using fossil fuels to grow stuff that we won't eat and burn instead".

There's a startup to build around "disrupting food wastes from gen-Z". Like a "reverse" dashdoor, where people would drive e-bikes door to door to collect your compostables, and sell the gaz / fertilizer.

Then the next version will not collect food scraps, but other forms of... Let's say "valuable organic matter currently wasted in big cities" ;)

But I doubt VCs would rush to fund something like "UberPoop"... Unless we find a way to get views on HN by bringing "AI" in the mix, or writing the client in Rust :P

Thanks for the sources. So not billions but still more than I'd have expected.

Also the 1 billion number from Africa includes people burning kerosene. That isn't biomass.

> We could learn from them.

I sense sarcasm. It's an ugly worldview.