101–110 of 234 posts
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FYI: "Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps, research finds" https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cows-seaweed-metha...
But it does hardly anything got the carbon costs of their feed.
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This is exactly what most Westerners do not get about China. If you want to reduce emissions stop buying their products.
People do get that, but waiting for people to spontaneously start doing the right thing is just not a very good strategy. That's why we need a carbon tax. To force people to.
If their neighbors are buying cheap goods, they probably will too.
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The Europeans killed off most large animals like Aurochs and Bison, and a few predators including Tigers, Lions. They also killed off most of the forests. When I was in southern Germany I did notice how cultivated the land was. There were a few patches of trees but they didn’t look like old growth forests. Even the hills were cultivated into farmland. Costa Rica is a good example of developing a country who wants to…
> They also killed off most of the forests. Yeah, keep this in mind; big parts of Europe are hundreds of years after a gradual deforestation. Europe, mostly Western, is highly cultivated. Mind you, thanks to that we're also very efficient in agriculture - NL, despite being one of the smallest countries in the world, is also the second biggest agricultural export country in the world.
That stat while true is very misleading. First of all that's based on money not volume. On top of that the majority of NL's agricultural export is due to the fact that Amsterdam is home to the largest flower/live plant market/exchange in the world. Most of those billions of dollars of exports are in the form of highly expensive decorative plants and/or their seeds/bulbs, not staple crops.
I guess that's all to say if the Netherlands sunk below the sea tomorrow the world would not suddenly be starving. Rich people just wouldn't get their flowers.
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This is exactly what most Westerners do not get about China. If you want to reduce emissions stop buying their products.
People do get that, but waiting for people to spontaneously start doing the right thing is just not a very good strategy. That's why we need a carbon tax. To force people to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly what most Westerners do not get about China. If you want to reduce emissions stop buying their products.
People do get that, but waiting for people to spontaneously start doing the right thing is just not a very good strategy. That's why we need a carbon tax. To force people to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly what most Westerners do not get about China. If you want to reduce emissions stop buying their products.
That’s why I oppose free trade. We need a legislative solution that would ban (or tax highly) products from countries/companies that skim environmental / employment standards...
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The worst culprit for many people I know is flying. You can eat a lot of meat for the emissions of just one long-haul flight. (Which is sad because flying is great.)
>> The worst culprit for many people I know is flying. You can eat a lot of meat for the emissions of just one long-haul flight. (Which is sad because flying is great.) And yet the total CO2 contribution of the world-wide aviation industry is 'only' 2%. Based on that chart I would say having (more) children is by far the worst culprit. By now I'm really 100% convinced that the only way to save the earth is if everyon…
However, the contribution of children in the chart we are referring is dubious. The number is so high that I once googled and found what I think to be the original source. (A couple of swedish researches IIRC.)
They counted the children's and their descendants contributions and assigned them to parents for ongoing year.
There are many problems there. For example if the birth rate would be calculated as 2, the contribution would be infinite.
Also counting multiple generations is problematic, because if climate change is not mitigated within one generation we could be in for Mad Max * Water World.
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What does UBI have to do with carbon emissions?
Nothing whatsoever. Why must it? Taxes are used to move money from where it is to where it needs to be. The tax would price goods and services relative to their CO2. Hopefully some things like single use plastic, ICE cars, coal power would become impossible or very near so. If you used some of the proceeds to start a UBI, it might pay to replace an ageing and creaking welfare and pension system. UBI might be suitable…
If the assertion that a carbon (or whatever else) tax is to cover the "cost" of externalities, then the money needs to go to actually addressing those externalities. Otherwise, it's just a lie to make a general tax more palatable.
It also runs into the problem that "sin taxes" have, namely that once a government entity has a consistent stream of income from such taxes that it can spend on its general expenditures, said entity has a perverse incentive to not curtail the activity below a certain point to avoid endangering that income stream.
> Norway's oil fund pays pensions.
Norway's oil fund is built up on royalties from exploration and extraction activity in Norwegian territory. It's not a tax on externalities.
> In 2010, Norway pledged to support Indonesia with up to 1 billion USD depending on results. It's easy to sit in a developed western country, buying products from other countries, and then complain about their emissions. I'm glad that we're trying to be responsible. It may not be enough or not the right way to do it (some thoughts on this?), but it's something.
This is exactly what most Westerners do not get about China. If you want to reduce emissions stop buying their products.
Poor people have been put in a position where they really don't have a lot of options. Blaming poor Westerners is like blaming a child for their parent's bad spending habits.
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The worst culprit for many people I know is flying. You can eat a lot of meat for the emissions of just one long-haul flight. (Which is sad because flying is great.)
>> The worst culprit for many people I know is flying. You can eat a lot of meat for the emissions of just one long-haul flight. (Which is sad because flying is great.) And yet the total CO2 contribution of the world-wide aviation industry is 'only' 2%. Based on that chart I would say having (more) children is by far the worst culprit. By now I'm really 100% convinced that the only way to save the earth is if everyon…
