China and India Do More Than You Think to Fight Global Warming

With world leaders having just met in Paris to discuss the environmental catastrophe facing the planet, coming on the heels of the northeastern US being choked on soot from Canada’s worst-ever forest fires, Americans are gradually realizing that climate change is today’s problem — not tomorrow’s. Yet many continue to think that the worst offenders are developing economies, especially China and India. This mindset, while never accurate, ignores how those very countries are taking the leadership mantle in the transition to green energy.

Part of the problem is US domestic politics. A deep and lingering partisan divide over climate was borne in a cynical $13 million advertising campaign launched by fossil-fuel interests in 1997 to prevent US ratification of the proposed Kyoto climate treaty. They made the case that the US was doing more than its fair share of sustaining global burdens, including foreign aid and peacekeeping, and that the same was happening in efforts to mitigate climate change.