To the editor:

To anyone who thinks that the blame for climate change lies somewhere else besides the U.S., you are picking your facts to distort the truth. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions may be falling, but only because we have polluted so much in the recent past. In spite of the drop, per capita emissions are still double those of China and nearly 10 times those of India. Waste plastic generation figures show an even greater difference.

And don’t forget that China has nearly stopped its population growth, unlike the United States. Having a stable population has brought an enormous reduction in the emissions and pollution produced by China compared with the alternative.

There are few countries on the planet that rival the United States in consumption of resources or generation of waste. Even the highly developed nations of Western Europe show per capita figures much lower than the U.S. We may be doing better than we were a couple of decades ago, but we are still among the worst polluters on the planet. So don’t point the finger at someone else when our own room needs a lot more cleaning.

Greg Seibel,

Lawrence