> I’ve been puzzled why climate change messaging seems to ignore the emissions of other large countries like China and India.

It doesn't. The issue is likely more that you don't see or read widely enough.

Even here on HN you'll see mention of China and India's emissions and use of coal on a regular basis.

The US is a significant mention for two main reasons:-

* of all the human lofted additional CO2 of the past century plus (that sourced from formerly deep underground) the US is the single largest sole country contributor (although China is catching up (but may or may not equal the US)), ...

* the US is still a large per capita contributor today (ignoring tiny tiny outlier countries with small populations and near single export fossil fuel extraction countries) - it has an energy intensive economy.

My personal beef isn't so much with the US but specifically with US based fossil fuel and resource companies of the 1970s onwards (eg: Koch brothers) who were well aware of the problem with increasing the insulation factor of the atmosphere and doubled down anyway - spending large on "think tanks" to promote confusion via media, over sell the appeal of large cars, destroy any and all grass roots campaigns for public transport, etc. (CO2MaXXing ?).

The US has had influence across the planet post WWII, these campaigns just promoted a bad example for profit and deferred early and timely addressing of the issues.

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ipaddr 9 hours ago | parent [-]

In the 60s/70s they had the world is going into another ice age scare. Based on historical patterns we are in a cooling phase based on Milankovitch cycles. A long slow cooling phase going into another ice age. You can't blame the Koch brothers.

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defrost 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> they had the world is going into another ice age scare.

They did, didn't they! Not in the bulk of scientific discussion though, just in media outlets, broadsheets, opinion columns, etc.

It does rather sound like somebody bought into the Koch / Heartland propaganda stream whole heartedly.

Hopefully commenters can bring up "the little ice age" et al. so we can all play denialist talking point bingo.

	▲	ipaddr 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So the Koch brothers came up with the Milankovitch cycles. Even though it was proposed in 1842 by Joseph Adhémar then in 1860 James Croll added orbital theory in 1911 Milutin Milankovitch came up with the math. The big event that caused it to come into pop culture in the 70s was a landmark paper by James Hays, John Imbrie and Nicholas Shackleton, published in Science in 1976. But you think its the Koch brothers. And anyone who actual knows history is playing denialist bingo. You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award for ignoring facts and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.