A few general points, since I don't have the time or energy to go through all of Plano's points. I'm sure he will let me know if I forgot anything.

The anti-China stuff bothers me. I believe this is only the first or second year that China has surpassed the US in carbon emissions. On a per capita basis, the Chinese are a small fraction of American emissions. The only country higher than the Us on a per capita basis is possibly Canada. China will probably never catch up with us on a per capita basis because there likely isn't enough fossil fuels in the world to allow them to use as much as we do.

Much of the recent increase in Chinese carbon emissions is due to the ever increasing trade imbalance between China and the developed countries. That means that we have transferred much manufacturing--which pollutes heavily--from our own soil to China. It is often said that we have outsourced our pollution to China in exchange for cheap consumer goods.

Besides low paid labor, the main reason Chinese goods are cheap is that their industry is poorly regulated. We could probably force China to pollute less by using tariffs, trade restrictions, and consumer boycotts. That would result in more expensive shoes, electronics, and other goods for our consumers.

I think China would like to greatly reduce pollution for two or three reasons. Their babies and old people are dying from pollution, and productivity is suffering from worker illnesses. They feel uneasy depending on unstable world regions to supply oil, just as we do. And they believe that global climate change is a serious threat to the world--unlike many leaders in the US.

At the same time, the US has been the biggest foe of reducing carbon emissions. We refuse to take any meaningful steps to reduce our own emissions, let alone encourage other countries to take steps. Again, we are roughly tied for first place in total emissions, and by far the winners in per capita emissions. But we will do almost nothing, and we will even foolishly pretend that the problem does not exist.

Given the facts outlined above, it's understandable that the rest of the world has no faith in the USA. Out of one side of our mouth we say that China and India must solve the problem, and they should trust that we will follow along once they get the ball rolling. Out of the other side of our mouth, we say that there is no problem, global warming doesn't even exist, so why should we change anything.

Now Plano has raised the issue of unilateral action. This is pure foolishness. We have had many opportunities to work multilaterally on this issue. Every single country in the world ratified the Kyoto Protocol to decrease carbon emission, except for the United States and Canada. Many of those countries voluntarily met or exceeded their Kyoto targets. It's insane to say that the US would be working unilaterally on a project the rest of the world tackled almost 20 years ago.