41–50 of 368 posts
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".
Question: should countries be able to tax imports from countries with more lax environmental laws? Because that would address the argument about cost and staying competitive.
Then you would be entering into a "trade war" with the United States - which most countries aren't going to be able to do.
This brings up something that I don't understand. How can there be candidates that say they support the environment, support worker rights, and support free trade with places such as China? Laborers are treated like crap and pollution is rampant in China. Promoting free trade seems to oppose the other two positions since there's more pollution in the developing nations that we outsource out manufacturing to and that labor in our country can't compete with the lower wages of those developing countries, partly due to lower living standard but also due to fewer worker protections and even safety equipment.
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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.
But nature also has little regard for per country statistics. Splitting China into two countries, isn't going to lower their polution.
Using per capita statistics at least allows us to focus on those that are emitting excessively more than others.
Question: should countries be able to tax imports from countries with more lax environmental laws? Because that would address the argument about cost and staying competitive.
Originally the thought was to do this on a product by product basis, but unwinding supply chains is effectively impossible.
Actually, it's still pretty tough because some countries buy and rebrand products to slip around tariffs even now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The definition of comfort is the issue. There are simply not enough resources for everyone on Earth to live like an American. Maybe Europeans if we stretch with renewables and quickly cut down overfishing and stripmining agricultural practices. My money (unfortunately) is on a whole lot of death and despair from crop failures, drought, and mass migrations due to climate change even if we’re able to rapidly decarboniz…
Making people's standards of living go backwards make them shoot you.
Holding down people's standards of living makes their kids or grand-kids shoot you.
Policy sticks are a time bomb. Social solutions (convincing people to behave in a way that reduces their environmental footprint) only get you so far. We need technical solutions (more efficiency in the entire economy) such that people can eat fish or beef and drive in cars (or have access to functionally equivalent or superior analogues) at lesser environmental cost. The "western lifestyle" (moving target, I know) needs to scale because even if the west manages to reduce consumption enough to have a good impact the masses in developing nations are certainly not going to settle for the status quo let alone a reduction in consumption.
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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.
Then you would be charging people who have no control over the production. The producer nation sets the laws and standards for their facilities.
Question: should countries be able to tax imports from countries with more lax environmental laws? Because that would address the argument about cost and staying competitive.
Then you would be entering into a "trade war" with the United States - which most countries aren't going to be able to do.
Any serious climate plan shall contain 100% push for nuclear power to be credible.