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On December 09 2011 06:29 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 06:18 aebriol wrote:
It is very very simple.
It's a crystal clear case of 'blame that other guy'.
Nothing more to it.
Me personally I don't care too much.
That is ... I know for a fact that the politicians won't be able to do anything about it, because the voters don't care enough about it (or the people who could make trouble for the regime in dictatorships). There are simply other things that pretty much everyone considers more important, regardless of nation.
Like: Having a job, decent salary, work security, decent taxes, immigration, security, law enforcement, education, care for the elderly, etc etc etc. This is true. It's funny that we're basically aware that we have to act before it's too late and we're just gonna wait for it to be to late.
Not a big problem in my lifetime.
And I am sure a ton of people think exactly like that.
And I have to say that I personally believe that overpopulation is much more of a real problem that needs to be dealt with, than co2 emissions.
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On December 09 2011 06:30 aebriol wrote:
Not a big problem in my lifetime.
And I am sure a ton of people think exactly like that.
And I have to say that I personally believe that overpopulation is much more of a real problem that needs to be dealt with, than co2 emissions.
Agree completely. You could make a solid (yet insensitive) case that sending food to impoverished countries that have no way to sustain themselves yet consistently procreate is more of an attack on humanity than emissions.
I'd rather spend more time/effort/money attempting to find other planets to colonize and rapidly advance our transportation sciences than worry about carbon dioxide. It'd be more interesting and less trite.
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Blazinghand
United States25562 Posts
On December 09 2011 06:39 South wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 06:30 aebriol wrote:
Not a big problem in my lifetime.
And I am sure a ton of people think exactly like that.
And I have to say that I personally believe that overpopulation is much more of a real problem that needs to be dealt with, than co2 emissions. Agree completely. You could make a solid (yet insensitive) case that sending food to impoverished countries that have no way to sustain themselves yet consistently procreate is more of an attack on humanity than emissions. I'd rather spend more time/effort/money attempting to find other planets to colonize and rapidly advance our transportation sciences than worry about carbon dioxide. It'd be more interesting and less trite.
You could make a solid and sensitive case that sending food to impoverished countries that have no way to sustain themselves actually causes this unsustainability; given the choice between free food and paying for food from farmers, people take the free food; this means that farming doesn't earn any money and the agriculture industries in these countries bottoms out as soon as food aid is sent.
The fact of the matter is that a long term solution to overpopulation includes actively encouraging sustainable industrialized agriculture around the world combined with comprehensive reproductive education and birth control in both developed and developing countries. Economic development is positively correlated with a reduction in reproduction rates (countries like Germany, UK etc have fewer than 2 children per female, a negative fertility rate) so by bringing wealth to impoverished countries we fight against overpopulation.
In the long run, dealing with overpopulation also helps deal with CO2 emissions.
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IIRC, China by far does actually do the most in the world to prevent pollution, but at the same time, they are also expanding exponentially with industrialization and industries which is why they're a big pollutant. Also, half of China's population is rural, most of those literally living off of subsistence farming, which is why their CO2 emissions per capita is rather low.
Looking at the graph posted by aebriol:
Canada obviously does little to nothing to lower their CO2 emissions, and the US statistics just makes me sad. We have more technology, money, and power than anyone else in the world, and we're simply one of the worst developed nations in this regard. Just disgusting.
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I am a really, really big fan of what China is doing.
First, they know that with higher living standards, people tend to not have so many kids.
Second, they know that before that higher living standard is obtained, people will want to have more kids.
Third, they know that it's easier to raise the general living standard for everyone if people don't have so many kids.
So they work on both controlling population AND raising the general living standard at the same time.
That require enormous focus, and people are so stupid if they imagine there's room in there for also caring about the climate, when trying to lift a population above 1 billion into higher living standards, higher education, more modern and effective way of life.
I have enormous respect for what is going on in China, and have been going on for a few decades, and I think that they are the single most important nation in the world now for combating poverty.
So what if their emissions are rising? In 20 years, maybe they will have resources left over to worry about it, instead of having 500+ millions stuck in real 'almost starving to death' poverty with rising population and uneven living standards and an unstable government (like I fear India may have).
If we (and I mean the west) really cared about emissions, we'd tax it heavily and invest into technology to make clean energy (including nuclear) cheaper, more affordable, and in 10-20 years we'd sell it to china and other nations and recoup the investment (hopefully). Since we really don't care about emissions, we're not doing anything ourselves, and we're just pretending to be angry about what everyone else are doing (but really just camouflaging that we are not doing much on our own).
If the current debt / financial crisis is over in 10 years, maybe we'll care again ... but since all the voters are too selfish to want to sacrifice more at the moment when the economy is already doing badly, we won't do anything that matters in the west until the economy is really doing a lot better ... and then it's f'ing stupid to expect China and other nations to do anything, when their living standards are below ours.
Now, the golden hope is that oil prices will rise high enough that solar and wave energy will be better in the future, and more economically feasible, than they currently are ... if they do, that's what will make us invest enough. If oil prices drop ... for some reason ... we won't. No matter how much we pretend to care.
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What was that island that experts predicted would sink below sea level? I think its name started with an M. Anyway, they probably have population in the thousands and practically no emissions and they're fucked.
Given how much pollution happened in the industrial revolution it kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth that the Western developed countries are not willing to take the lead.
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While China is doing a lot in the alternative energy industries, a combination of corruption, GDP objectives, lack of oversight and powerless and poor citizenry means dirty industries (both in greenhouse gases and more dangerous pollutants) stay open, even despite public outrage and protests, such as in Dalian recently over lackluster safety standards at a chemical plant.
But it is truly unfair and selfish of the US and anyone who follows their example to set such low standards for themselves despite their wealth and technology yet demand so much more proportionally for developing countries, where a lot of emissions and pollution are in manufacturing which caters to affluent consumers abroad (or are outright operated by their corporations). Makes me wish the UN was more powerful in this regard, and that politicians were not, well, politicians.
Emissions per capita certainly makes more sense than outright total emissions, but I think it would be "fairer" to use CO2 consumption per capita. It would be heck of a lot harder to measure, I think, but I imagine it would be even more lopsided than emissions per capita.
Durban Hwaiting, deliver us from environmental destruciton!
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EPT
