Aviation

I don't know that it much matters what the US announces
with respect to the Paris climat accords, because there are a lot of
imponderables. Rereading accounts of earlier negotiations, it is clear that although
China and the US are the largest carbon emitters, they are so in very different ways.
China has an immense population (of breathers) and is in the throes of development
but in a very collectivist culture, an aspect with deeper historical roots than
a recent flirtation with Marxist ideas. (Indeed Marx himself recognized this with
the notion of the 'Asiatic mode of production', based on self-sufficient islands
of economic activity with a ruling over-class).

It certainly makes sense to want them to proceed in an as ecological way as possible.
In a social sense, they are half-way there; with respect to population density,
it is necessarily a long-term issue. And one very much gets the sense that the US signed 
- at least in part - as a big brother, to legitimize this unique development.

Concretely, the US has issues of its own. In 2016, the Obama administration smilingly
signed on for making aviation less carbon producing . How is that going, guys?
An insane number of people are travelling by plane in the US (some 5 000 planes in
the sky at any one time, on a planetary basis). Folks are more cramped than ever, but
flying is ever-more affordable to more people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation

Proponents of the Paris accord have described it as an agreement on the end of
the fossil fuel-based economy. SRSLY. I doubt that this version of an approach would
be tenable in an Administration where the Secretary of State is an ex-oil executive
(Rex Tillerson, Exxon-Mobil CEO).

The other arm of that Obama accord was forest management. Here Canada has some
experience. But forest management and ecology are not synonymous. A true forest is
a wild habitat evolving with its myriad inhabitants; a managed forest amounts to tree growing
as an economic activity. With wild reserves another issue. I hear that President Trump
donates his salary to America's National Parks. Not so senseless after all.

                                                      *   *   *

 There it is, the US wants out of the Paris Climate
accord. I'm not surprised although I do appreciate
that a number of people might be upset.

What I do not like about the Climate Change argument is that it was,
at the onset, disingeneous. An extra 6 billion people over one hundred
years will heat things up, regardless of considering of the possible role of
greenhouse gases in trapping solar radiation. Yes the United Nations is on-going
and the idea of not making things worse by using carbon spewing technologies
is - on the face of it - straightforward enough. It is also, economically, nonsense.
And that is the heart of this tragedy. Areas of expertise that cannot dialogue.

Not sure what happens next.

For the fun of it, I googled how 'much heat does a human being dissipate to
the environment'. Best answer (from a physics student), roughly that
of a 100 watt light  bulb.

Dayuuuum!