jwb

Re: china and India... They are industrializing the same way the west already did so it's a bit rich to say now that we've already fouled up the earth with our development that they are just supposed to languish in third world poverty for the sake of the planet imo

Whatever strides we do make in cutting emissions have been rather miniscule and based more on regulation and emissions standards. Which is like putting a bandaid on a gushing wound. Until the underlying energy infrastructure is completely overhauled and green technology made capable of out competing fossil fuels, we are ****ed. If said green technology was made cost effective and efficient enough countries like China and India would adopt them voluntarily out of self interest... I'm quite sure they don't actually want to live in smog ridden cities with toxic air. Of course that's easier said than done.

The Batlord

Alright so we're going after China? Cool. What's the first step? Well as Americans I guess we have to get American politicians to really take climate change seriously, get a handle on all the misinformation, and remove fossil fuel industry money from the government. Only then can we...

Oh wow it's almost like bringing up China is a red herring to distract us from doing exactly what we needed to do anyway.

Church. If China and India shook hands to nuke England they'd be kinda justified.

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jwb

It seems like that would be much harder to pitch in this country let alone to enforce internationally... I have little faith in prohibition tbh

I think investing massive amounts of money into r&d to try to bring green energy and carbon trapping technology up to speed seems more plausible

Lisnaholic

Well, at least there is some point of agreement here, though Frownland wins the larger point, imo, that "obssessing about which country is Most to Blame" is not effective.


Admittedly, I haven't gone beyond the pie chart we mentioned, but if you are refering to China, then I'm finding fault with your arithmatic here. 28% cannot be described as "over double" 15%

Both of those statements seem unjustified to me and for similar reasons: grand generalisations without evidence or context.

I agree with most of this bit, Anteater, except for the bold. With tariffs, tech innovation, exchange rates, etc, buyer-seller relationships are surely constantly shifting. Ask the manager of any import/export business in the world.
Is this another example of your "15% = zero" thinking?

Yes, this is true, as is jwb's post: the most on-point summation so far:-

Justified or not, I would be reluctant to support this approach for personal reasons.
I think the lopsided truth is that yes, we messed up the environment, but out of ignorance of the consequences. We also had a cleaner planet to poo on.
You, (China and India) don't have the excuse of ignorance and environmental circs have changed radically for the worse. Sorry guys, what was ok then is not ok today.
A somehow connected note of optimism is the story of the telephone service in Africa. It used to be terrible, and very limited. The solution of putting up telephone lines across the continent was unattainable, but then with satellite technology, Africa leapfrogged that problem completely.
That's what we want from India, China and Brasil: do something smarter, not based on the circs of 100 years ago.

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The Batlord

And Anteater calling himself "solution-oriented" is ludicrous when his solution is to "make China do X". How you gonna make China do anything, Ant, when half the political class in your country is actively obstructing climate change solutions and the other half is just kicking the can down the road? Are you personally going to make China do anything? Seems to me if you want to make China do anything you first have to change your own country's stance on climate change. Unless you support grass roots eco terrorism in China?

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Frownland

Might be true on a level, but

Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago

The funding of climate change denialism from the oil industry is also a tacit admission of foreknowledge. Even going back to the early industrial revolution, people in England seemed to widely recognize the direct impact of the recent industrialization on the environment.

idk how to solve the issue of developing nations' emissions without it damning them to underdevelopment. Return to monke should be a choice, not something imposed on by powerful western governments. Even if they abandon coal, the transportation of materials for infrastructure will virtually always be high output.

Modi's on some bull****, but Kerala has been innovating on farming and localization which is hopeful.

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Anteater

Lisna, you should look at some of the other figures in those links and a few other stories. One has it at 30%, the others are slightly lower and another dataset I saw had it at 32%. The stats vary on the U.S. and E.U. too as far as CO2 numbers go. Looking at all the different reports together, 30% is about right for China for 2021. I had assumed you had looked at other data when I responded to you. You don't need to be such a literalist if that wasn't the case.

As far as my comments go about the buyer-seller relationship goes...China has most of the leverage and they don't seem to want things to change. That's why despite all the talk from Trump and being "tough" on China, the trade wars don't change the status quo all that much. If the nature of that relationship ever does change, you'd have to see regime changes in both countries way beyond what we have seen in the last few decades.


I thought the obvious solution was to incentivize China to stop using coal. We agreed it was a bad idea in the U.S. a long time ago - is there some reason why they should stay on coal and not go above and beyond what the U.S. has done?

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The Batlord

I didn't ask what are you going to make China do, I asked how are you going to make China do anything? The onus on us as Americans isn't to change China. It's to change America.

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The Batlord

Yeah terrorism would almost surely have little return on investment but it's at least a different approach from almost certain eco doom.

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jwb

if it has little return on investment how is it not still just almost certain eco doom lol