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Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

forbes.com

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Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#51

Post by neves »

inapis wrote: post #15

These kind of article raises more questions than answers. Leaving aside politics on this, I need to know more. How does this "greening" help? Is it more due to agriculture or forests? If it's due to agriculture, what are the unintended consequences? While this article is positive in its tone (which I appreciate) I can't help but feel that it's shallow. It's green so yayy! But what comes next? Increased greenery due t…

How much of these "reforested" areas are of eucalyptus plantations, used to fabricate paper? I don't think that we can point a big exogenous monoculture can be considered "greener".

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#52

Post by coldtea »

umadon wrote: post #46
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

require constant vigilance i.e., y’all need to vote.

People keep voting, meanwhile nothing's getting better.

That's because people just vote once every few years on election day.

Vigilance includes actively following politics (not just the sensational BS headlines in TV news and newspapers, but the real deal), marching and demonstrating when needed, participating in your preferred party and making sure the right people get its nomination, and so on.

Don't just "write your congressman" about issues, for they could not care less. Write online, influence others, organize, and make them care (whatever your politics, this is just so the politics are closer to what people want, not so that the politics are "the right politics", which doesn't exist).

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#53

Post by 24gttghh »

baddox wrote: post #26
umadon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the government arrests people and seizes factories that violate these ecological goals" Why isn't this a good thing? Shouldn't people who ignore ecological laws be punished? And anyway, how do you propose to fix climate change without massive, centralized planning, including punishment of those who subvert such a fix for personal gain? Also, in your link, the plants are closed, not seized.

I don’t understand. Why would central planning be required to fix climate change? How about just charge greenhouse gas emitters so that there are no longer externalities? I don’t see any reason to turn to central planning, unless one just uses that term to refer to any regulations involving the economy.

>How about just charge greenhouse gas emitters so that there are no longer externalities?

There will still be externalities, but they would be properly priced in and accountable.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#54

Post by pm90 »

DataWorker wrote: post #24
ixtli wrote: post #16

For sure! I'm not saying democracy should be abandoned. I'm saying that 1) china might not actually be quite like its depicted in the west 2) what we call authoritarian is often just counter to our ideology that people should be able to deploy capital however they see fit with little consequence. Anyway your point that it just takes correctly allocated capital to solve this problem is 100% salient. (And before anyone…

“what we call authoritarian” is rolling over protestors with tanks. That’s for starters.

How about systemic criminalization of previously enslaved minority population so they’re unable to make any economic gains? Disenfranchisement so they’re unable to vote for leaders with their interests?

That sounds pretty authoritarian to me. The difference is simply that it’s cleverly hidden from plain view.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#55

Post by gamblor956 »

new2628 wrote: post #31
ixtli wrote: post #10

I think its very important to engage with the fact that this is something China can do because of what we in the west deem unacceptably "authoritarian" governance. This effect isn't entirely due to people's starry-eyed conservationism: the government arrests people and closes factories that violate these ecological goals. By way of example, this happened a few weeks ago and is very difficult to find coverage of in en…

This resonates with what happened in Eastern Europe. Until the fall of communism nature (by and large) thrived. Despite some bone-headed industrial projects, hunting sprees of the ruling class, etc., a remarkable level of biodiversity was preserved and there was no widespread poaching or deforestation. In comparison, the wild capitalism of the last 30 years and the opening up of the market to (more efficient) interna…

The forests of Europe in general have all grown considerably denser since WW2. In eastern Germany, the forests are still sparser than their western German counterparts.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#56

Post by whatshisface »

pm90 wrote: post #33
whatshisface wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why you couldn't have a fossil fuel lobbyist as a dictator, or even as a dictatorial appointment motivated by the same reasons that got the current EPA head appointed.

It’s a good question. Notably, most dictatorships are this way and rarely do we find benevolent totalitarian regimes (Park Chung Hee, Lee Kuan Yew etc). The CPC is different in that at its core it still seems to a) believe in science and b) wants to uplift China. The bargain is that CPC will take China down a path of prosperity while suspending democratic freedoms. It’s entirely possible they don’t hold their end of…

>wants to uplift China

Why would they want to do that? To stay in power, presumably - the same as any other political organization. If they are ever faced with a situation where the best way to stay in power is to destroy China, they will take it; an option that US politicians might sometimes wish they could take, but are unable to because of limits on their power.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#57

Post by mikeash »

pm90 wrote: post #17
whatshisface wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't take a dictator to plant trees, just government spending. In fact the EPA has done a lot without eliminating democracy in the US.

....And it’s currently run by a fossil fuel lobbyist. While I’m not arguing for the US to not be a democracy, it’s important to accept that democracies are not perfect, have many flaws and require constant vigilance to ensure the knobs of State power don’t end up in the hands of incompetent idiots (as they are in the current administration).

I think most of us accept that democracy is imperfect. There’s a reason for the popularity of the quote that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

The main, perhaps only, advantage of democracy is that it is resilient. A dictatorship can easily decide to plant a ton of trees and shut down dirty factories. It can just as easily decide to dump toxic waste into the rivers and shoot anyone who complains. A benevolent dictatorship is much better than democracy, this is pretty widely accepted. It’s better until the dictator dies or is overthrown, then you don’t know what you’ll get.

To quote Scott Alexander, “If you remember nothing else about the superiority of democracies to other forms of government, remember the fact that in three years, we will have a change of leadership and almost no one is stocking up on canned goods to prepare for the inevitable civil war.”

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#58

Post by false-mirror »

ixtli wrote: post #16

For sure! I'm not saying democracy should be abandoned. I'm saying that 1) china might not actually be quite like its depicted in the west 2) what we call authoritarian is often just counter to our ideology that people should be able to deploy capital however they see fit with little consequence. Anyway your point that it just takes correctly allocated capital to solve this problem is 100% salient. (And before anyone…

"But we need to criticize it for the right reasons..."

Sure, but no one is criticizing china for its conservation efforts. Their political assassinations and decimation of civil liberties however...

I'm all for changing the unsustainable and ecologially detrimental status quo among western liberal democracies-- but ecofascism or eco-state-capitalism are not a viable alternatives. Literally any government can plant trees and shut down factories-- let's not use this to defend unrelated horrors.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#59

Post by whatshisface »

pm90 wrote: post #54
DataWorker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“what we call authoritarian” is rolling over protestors with tanks. That’s for starters.

How about systemic criminalization of previously enslaved minority population so they’re unable to make any economic gains? Disenfranchisement so they’re unable to vote for leaders with their interests? That sounds pretty authoritarian to me. The difference is simply that it’s cleverly hidden from plain view.

I see this argument a lot in China threads, "America has already used up the world's supply of crime, so everyone else is forced to remain innocent." Unfortunately, bad government is not finite, every country can manufacture their own.

Re: Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

#60

Post by bilbo0s »

_bxg1 wrote: post #34
ixtli wrote: post #10

I think its very important to engage with the fact that this is something China can do because of what we in the west deem unacceptably "authoritarian" governance. This effect isn't entirely due to people's starry-eyed conservationism: the government arrests people and closes factories that violate these ecological goals. By way of example, this happened a few weeks ago and is very difficult to find coverage of in en…

And what about India? As far as I know it doesn't have an authoritarian government. Europe is also democratic and has been a world leader in environmental policy. It's really just the United States that has the problem. I don't think the key difference is authoritarian vs. democratic, but "prudent" vs. "proudly ignorant". America has some deep, deep-rooted cultural problems that are really at the heart of our environ…

You make a very good point, and I upvoted it.

That said, ixtli has a very salient point on the subject of how implementing these things is a whole lot easier when you start shutting down factories and arresting scofflaws. But you probably don't necessarily need government as authoritarian as China's to do those things.

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