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As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.
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Isn't this the more pertinent graph? https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=USA~IND...
Pretty sure. Nature, being unconcerned with fairness, has little regard for per capita statistics. If we want 8 billion people living in comfort, we need more energy. As always, I think we should have been building more nuclear plants back in the 90s. And again in the 2000s. And the 2010s. Maybe now we can go wind and solar. But we need lots of something.
"We want" is language that hides reality. Who wants this? How many people?
As the Trump election (and many other elections around the world) show there is no "we want". Different people want different things. Sweeping that fact under the carpet again and again leads to Paris type meaninglessness. Paris fails because there was never any "we".
All the narratives of fear and blame, guilt and shame that have been tried did not make a dent.
Those who want to do something will do it and those that don't want to wont.
Reconcile to that reality and things will actually move forward.
Seriously, it’s time counties who want to improve the situation need move on from worrying about what the United sates is doing because it doesn’t look like much will be happening for a long time.
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Here are some interesting graphs from arguably the most transformative economic miracle in human history [0]. The risk isn't the US doing nothing, it is India, Africa, etc, etc deciding that they seriously want a comfortable standard of living. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=~CHN
I feel like this is a deflection and a critical reason why progress isn’t happening fast enough. Your house is already messy, and the need to clean it up is now. Not when China and a couple billion other people mess their house up. My country’s ambitious plans are shot down by members of parliament going for the kneejern ”but India and China...” response, and the net result would be no action if they were in power. L…
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The silver bullet is natural self-regulation. Mankind will shrink automatically after hitting a real ceiling.
I guess people who say this kind of things don't believe they themselves will be part of the cohort undergoing the shrinkage. This so called natural self-regulation will be ugly and painful. I don't envy the generation that will have to go through it.
The Paris accord is not worth the paper it’s written on.
It’s non-biding, it has no enforcement, and the goals where self imposed and for some countries ridiculous.
Even if it’s not for the right reasons, the US leaving might force world leaders to actually do something.
As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.
The main fear I have during this election is that Biden wins, he picks up where Obama left waging wars, and once again they flood Europe with "refugees".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
China and the EU can, and should. "Polluter pays" should become the standard policy in international trade in numerous other ways, too.
Wouldn't "user pays" be more logical. I think it is quite dishonest to blame China when consumption happens in Europe or USA... All of the pollution should be transported in calculations where consumption happens.
That being said, tariffs and other mechanisms meant to force the pollution cost back onto producers really end up being paid largely by consumers anyway. You can't tax citizens of another country. So the tariff taxes citizens of your own country. The cost gets back to the producer country indirectly in that they sell less stuff, but every time the tax is paid it is paid inside the country imposing the tariff by citizens of that country. So it works more or less according to your suggested mechanism.
Without China (which is a part of the accord, but doesn't have to cut its emissions until 2030, a loophole they're actively using to build insane numbers of coal power plants - whatever their CO2 emissions are in 2030 becomes their "baseline" from which to reduce) this was pretty pointless anyway. Whoever negotiated PCA should not be allowed to negotiate whatever comes after it, because they suck at negotiations. htt…
Maybe they actually do want to reduce pollution ?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t know if “Wired” would know the full story either. China a pretty difficult place to get information in and out of ?