YHK - yet another hacker news clone

UN says breaching 1.5C warming limit is 'imminent and unavoidable'

24 points dabinat 3 hours ago 13 comments

ijidak 3 hours ago | parent

> We are now saying this window has closed, but we can open it again by making the overshoot as brief as possible

Not holding my breath.

It would require relentless global catastrophe to move humans globally. And even then many would dig in and resist.

The spotty nature of climate impact on a globe wide scale will likely never allow a shared assessment of risk.

Not to mention the need for most of humanity to stick to a plan over sufficiently long timescales.

westurner 2 hours ago | parent

"New UNEP report lays out emission cuts needed for return to 1.5°C" (2026) https://www.unep.org/en/news-and-stories/press-release/new-u...

[UNEP] "Emissions Gap Report 2026" https://wedocs.unep.org/items/87c02cac-8da8-4c28-ba61-c846ee...

How to use AI to solve this problem?

Energy storage?

A new Captain Planet? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48043192

throwaway-blaze 2 hours ago | parent

You know, I searched this article for "China" and "India" (each of whom have over 60 Gigawatts of coal-fired power plants completing construction over the next 24 months) and found nothing.

The world needs to either decide that we will confront the developing world and tell them they cannot build power plants like we did (unlikely), or start figuring out how to ameliorate the effects of the warming.

It is fundamentally unserious for smaller-population rich countries to think they can cut their own emissions enough to make a dent, unless they plan to return their populations to the pre-electric age.

crtified 1 hour ago | parent

Reading suggests that much of the coal-plant building in China of late is purposed as backup-only, and that their vast expansion of clean energy production overall is swallowing almost all power demand in that country. Accordingly, if you look at the figures we have, China's emissions are relatively stable in recent years.

According to the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), China and India combined (~35.5% of the human population) account for roughly 38% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Which is indeed an overshoot, albeit not of terribly epic proportions.

However, per-capita - on both a 100-year-effect and a 20-year-effect timeframe - the USA is easily the leader in emissions per person, and the USA also records the largest absolute increases ongoing.

The figures, which already take the variable potency/effect of different gas types into account, show annual per-person greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2 equivalent) of 17.3 Tonnes-per-person (USA), 11.1 Tpp (China), 5.6 Tpp (EU27), 2.2 Tpp (India) on the 100 year impact scale.

On the 20 year impact scale ("the amount 1 person releases in 1 year will trap the same amount of heat as XX tonnes of pure carbon-dioxide would"), which much better takes into account the balance of current agricultural practices etc, the USA = 21.5 Tpp, China = 15.8, EU = 6.8, India = 4.1.

The United States also recorded the largest absolute increase between 2024 and 2025 (+131.5 Mt CO2eq, or +2.2%), followed by Indonesia (+16.1 Mt CO2eq, or +1.2%).

So, any message which - when translated through the lens of practical reality - is essentially saying to the developing world "Please either tighten your belts, or be less populous" seems a very challenging expectation, if not outright-unviable by almost any other metric or ethic.

two_handfuls 44 minutes ago | parent

Upvoted for thoughtful info, though I would suggest using metric tons (t) rather than teslas (T) to make reading easier for us SI people.

dabinat 1 hour ago | parent

China also deployed over 300 GW of solar last year, not to mention that EVs are really taking off there. I’d prefer if if they deployed zero coal, but I don’t think it’s the same as “building like we did”.

alephnerd 1 hour ago | parent

I don't disagree with you, but this is why nothing will happen and everyone has been planning for a 2-2.5C breach by 2050.

China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia. Brazil, Nigeria, and others are continuing to build out capacity. While this capacity is much more green than past buildouts, it's still in aggregate going to have a significant downstream impact on overall GHG emissions.

It doesn't matter who deploys more renewables or less when countries like China, India, and others continue to expand coal and ONG at reduced but still significant rates.

But they can morally push back and say North America, Europe and Japan industrialized via similar externalities.

And the reality is countries don't care. This is why China is now export controlling solar technology and IP [0] at the expense of India and other large members of the global south.

The reality is most countries are going to rush as much capacity as they can until the externalities can no longer be ignored en masse (probably by 2040-45).

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-16/china-mov...

jwrallie 1 hour ago | parent

With a global economy where products are imported from elsewhere, local pollution statistics that do not include that indirect pollution as their own are meaningless. Energy imports are also being abused for report purposes.

alephnerd 1 hour ago | parent

This ignores how comparatively richer domestic economies in the developing countries have become and are continuing to become.

It isn't just cheap kotchkes being consumed by western consumers anymore.

Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Nigerian, Brazilian, and other consumers are also able to consume much more than they were 40 years ago (which is when most HNers appear to have been born).

40 years ago you'd be hard pressed to find plastic wrapped packaged food in a village in rural China or India. Now they're available everywhere.

40 years ago the only people who could dream of buying a car let alone a motorcycle or moped in those villages would have been local politicos. Now they are well within grasp for most households.

As large countries like India, Vietnam, the rest of ASEAN, and other regions are expected to grow in the 6-8% for at least the next decade, expect carbon output to also grow - not as the same degree as before, but still significantly nonetheless.

triceratops 10 minutes ago | parent

Any plan that tells China and India "stay poor" is also fundamentally unserious. Why is it fairer for their populations to be without electricity than rich countries? You may wish for them to not burn coal but wishing doesn't do anything.

So. Do you propose to massively subsidize solar and batteries for all developing countries? That's the only thing that has a chance of working. Anything else is dead on arrival. They will tell you politely to fuck off, and they will be in the right. Without money how will they "ameliorate the effects of climate change"? Are you, sitting in your rich country, going to help them?

ChrisArchitect 52 minutes ago | parent

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50177911

ost-ing 22 minutes ago | parent

The entire human philosophy is to borrow from tomorrow to pay for today, and it’s leading to the destruction of our societies. At some point we will be forced to redefine the models that we’ve held onto so tightly.

lukeify 5 minutes ago | parent

It's absurd how even surrounded by wealth, an abundance of resources, and a beautiful natural environment; we continue this frenetic hustle culture of committing ourselves to collectively overworking our planet and society, like coked up hamsters on a wheel.

There's numerous times I've thought of checking out with the (little) wealth I have and becoming a hitch-hiking vagrant and enjoying my time in nature with friends instead.