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General disclaimer: The things I am writing, are not the things deem to be the utmost important matter at the moment. Most likely something just happened to lead me to the train of thought which you see below and I see something contradicting something important. And instead of stamping it as one of the things in the world that are just awry, I thought it would be better to write it out. Maybe I am just being an idiot (and if you manage to persuade me that I was, thank you very much), but maybe I am not.
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I've been following several news reports in the German media regarding the climate conference Durban and I don't seem to understand how the German media defines a "enemy of climate" (in German: Klimasünder, lit. Sinner on the climate).
Now, here I am putting one assumption which I hold for granted:
Germany is a democratic country acknowleding the basic human rights. In particular it acknowledges that each human life is equal and that there are no humans whose existance superior (in any regard) than the others (edit: also, one of the fundamental idealogies behind it is that basic rights should be the same for everybody). This is shared amongst the vast majority of its population (minus some radicals like nazis), amongst the institutions of the country and its media.
Okay, let's assume the point above is granted. Then I do not understand why Nations like primarily China, but also India are brandmarked as an enemy of the climate in German media, while other countries, primarily Germany itself, are left untouched. Let's put some numbers, even though they are outdated, into play:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
metric tons of CO2 per capita (2008)
China: 5.3
Germany: 9.6
India: 1.4
Does that mean that it is okay, for the average German to emit 9.6 metric tons of CO2 per year, while it is not right for the average Chinese and Indian to emit 5.3 or even 1.4 respectively? Does that mean that, according to the German media (most prominently the public service broadcaster), that the average German has the right to emit more CO2 than the average Chinese/Indian?
So, the golden question is what is going on here?
(a) in my argumentation, there is at least one wrong deduction
(b) my assumptions were wrong
addendum:
The growth of China's CO2 emissions is frightening, in particular because only a small fraction of the population are "causing" through their high standards of life, while the most chinese citizens outside the big cities are living in poverty and do next to nothing to create additional emissions. However, I do not think that we (in particular the Germans) are in a position to blame them as much as we do, especially in our moral framework of "each life is equal".
tl;dr: saying "beware of rising CO2 emissions, especially considering only a small portion of your population is "responsible" for most of it" to china and countries like that is alright, blaming them outright is not compatible with the western view of the world of "all humans are equal".
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Well seeing as the per capita meassure is biased by population, i fail to see your point. China has over a billion people in the population and thus gives out lets say 5.3 Billion tons. India has nearing a Billion population and germany has 82 million 82 million x 9.6 = 787 million tons. I think you have your answer.
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On December 09 2011 03:28 Zaros wrote:
Well seeing as the per capita meassure is biased by population, i fail to see your point. China has over a billion people in the population and thus gives out lets say 5.3 Billion tons. India has nearing a Billion population and germany has 82 million 82 million x 9.6 = 787 million tons. I think you have your answer.
Let's all build coal plants in Vatican, if they can produce as much CO2 as Germany we're saved !
Obviously per capita makes much much more sense.
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What does this have to do with bullshit about the value of all human lives being equal? Your "deductions" aren't really relevant to much of anything.
It doesn't matter how much pollution the average citizen of country X creates. Per capita numbers have no useful meaning here. Maybe per area would be a reasonable thing to look at, but even that's not necessary. The average citizen of country X is not responsible for creating and enforcing emissions-standards legislature; that's the job of country X's government. If there are unacceptable emissions levels coming from anywhere in a country on any significant scale, it falls to one specific organization to regulate it. When someone says "I blame China for problem X", it's not like they're walking down the street thinking every Chinese person they see is accountable for X, they're thinking that the Chinese government should do something about X.
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Because the first world doesn't want to acknowledge the fundamental unsustainability of its civilization.
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I'm amazed that such a term even exists in any standardized way... Your main point is right, in that morally it makes sense that per capita CO2 is the defining metric, rather than total CO2. In reality, though, things get much more complicated. International relations aren't democratic, and work more on a per-country basis than a per-person basis, even though that makes no sense morally. And even if you're purely talking about what *should* happen, rather than what is realistic, some other things pop up.
Drawing a line makes no sense, because all modern countries should fit under the term. At this point, any additional carbon emissions are pretty harmful, and yet no country is carbon-neutral. For that to happen, you'd need large-scale sequestration efforts somewhere, and they don't exist.
But at some point it still makes sense to pollute. Going to zero is unreasonable, and the harm done by failing to produce basic goods would be worse than the CO2. But how much? Should the first bit of CO2 be less blameworthy, because that production goes to more basic needs? What if CO2 is being emitted in one country, but in the process of making goods for export to another country?
What about historical emissions? CO2 built up over centuries.
I think the clearest definition would be to say the "bad" countries are the ones blocking international deals to fix things. But how do you define who that is? Everyone claims they'd sign *some* sort of deal. The US and China both have ideas of things they'd sign - they're just nowhere near each other. So who's being unreasonable? Any of the deals would be better than nothing...
It's very, very messy. But I'm really, really surprised that German media has some sort of formal consensus-ish thing on who exactly the bad guys are here.
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On December 09 2011 03:36 endy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 03:28 Zaros wrote:
Well seeing as the per capita meassure is biased by population, i fail to see your point. China has over a billion people in the population and thus gives out lets say 5.3 Billion tons. India has nearing a Billion population and germany has 82 million 82 million x 9.6 = 787 million tons. I think you have your answer. Let's all build coal plants in Vatican, if they can produce as much CO2 as Germany we're saved ! Obviously per capita makes much much more sense.
I think the point is to reduce the total CO2 output. Per capita comparison is implying with these numbers that Germany is polluting the environment way more than China or India, which it is not. Of course the per capita measure has to be taken into account but from the environment's point of view, reducing the total CO2 amount is important. 
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On December 09 2011 03:44 aristarchus wrote:
Drawing a line makes no sense, because all modern countries should fit under the term. At this point, any additional carbon emissions are pretty harmful, and yet no country is carbon-neutral. For that to happen, you'd need large-scale sequestration efforts somewhere, and they don't exist.
Bhutan is carbon negative just to let you know.
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As a mechanical engineer specializing in energy usage (in buildings, but it's part of the same industry) I will state that the focus on CO2 is very narrow-minded. Water usage and heating, as well as water vapor, is just as bad as the production of CO2.
Regardless, for a media outlet to brand a country a "sinner on the climate" is arbitrary. As you pointed out there is no consensus as to how a country can be estimated to be a 'climate offender.' When you look at the CO2/capita you have to realize too that the population in China is 1.5 billion while the population of Germany is an order of magnitude less than that.
In China, the production of electricity is progressing at an alarming rate. China opens a new coal-fired power plant every week, and yet the country itself does not possess enough proven coal reserves to last more than 48 years. Coal plants produce more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants do, plus they have all of the greenhouse gas emissions. And while fluidized bed coal burners are more efficient than past types, it's still not the right fuel in the first place.
So now does that make Germany better? No. While China chooses to fly in the face of climate science Germany chooses to be stupid about it. The choice to shut down all of Germany's nuclear power plants is absolutely a step in the wrong direction for the energy security of the planet. Nuclear fission power on Earth will last thousands of years. The problem is it has such a bad wrap for two reasons:
- The word "nuclear" is associated with nuclear bombs. Yes a nuclear reactor can be used to breed the kind of reactants used in a nuclear bomb, however most plants are not configured with way. "Nuclear" actually refers to the type of reaction taking place (to distinguish them from chemical reactions). It's a social stigma that is undeserved.
- The reactants used in a nuclear power plant are not radioactive enough to blow up like a nuclear bomb, but people seem to think this is possible. Any reactor meltdown to date (2 in all of human history) has been as a result of grossly unique circumstances. This makes people think nuclear power plants are dangerous. Nuclear power plants have more safeties of any type, and considering the sheer number of nuclear power plants out there, 2 screwing up in 60 years isn't bad. If you ever read the circumstances required for the Chernobyl reactor to go critical, you would not believe the pileup of stupidity that led to that disaster. Fukushima also required an inhuman event to set the stage for its meltdown.
Either way, truly the safest and best form of energy production humanity can ever hope to achieve is the nuclear fusion reactor. We're so close to it that I'm salivating with what the next 50 years are going to offer. The current method we use (D-T) can produce power for tens of thousands of years (until we run out of Lithium), but a (D-D) reactor could last millions...
And no, nuclear fusion is nothing like this... and Tritium is not a fucking solid...
![[image loading]](http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/11/gallery_doomsday/spiderman2.jpg)
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On December 09 2011 03:50 TheGiz wrote:As a mechanical engineer specializing in energy usage (in buildings, but it's part of the same industry) I will state that the focus on CO2 is very narrow-minded. Water usage and heating, as well as water vapor, is just as bad as the production of CO2. Regardless, for a media outlet to brand a country a "sinner on the climate" is arbitrary. As you pointed out there is no consensus as to how a country can be estimated to be a 'climate offender.' When you look at the CO2/capita you have to realize too that the population in China is 1.5 billion while the population of Germany is an order of magnitude less than that. In China, the production of electricity is progressing at an alarming rate. China opens a new coal-fired power plant every week, and yet the country itself does not possess enough proven coal reserves to last more than 48 years. Coal plants produce more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants do, plus they have all of the greenhouse gas emissions. And while fluidized bed coal burners are more efficient than past types, it's still not the right fuel in the first place. So now does that make Germany better? No. While China chooses to fly in the face of climate science Germany chooses to be stupid about it. The choice to shut down all of Germany's nuclear power plants is absolutely a step in the wrong direction for the energy security of the planet. Nuclear fission power on Earth will last thousands of years. The problem is it has such a bad wrap for two reasons: - The word "nuclear" is associated with nuclear bombs. Yes a nuclear reactor can be used to breed the kind of reactants used in a nuclear bomb, however most plants are not configured with way. "Nuclear" actually refers to the type of reaction taking place (to distinguish them from chemical reactions). It's a social stigma that is undeserved.
- The reactants used in a nuclear power plant are not radioactive enough to blow up like a nuclear bomb, but people seem to think this is possible. Any reactor meltdown to date (2 in all of human history) has been as a result of grossly unique circumstances. This makes people think nuclear power plants are dangerous. Nuclear power plants have more safeties of any type, and considering the sheer number of nuclear power plants out there, 2 screwing up in 60 years isn't bad. If you ever read the circumstances required for the Chernobyl reactor to go critical, you would not believe the pileup of stupidity that led to that disaster. Fukushima also required an inhuman event to set the stage for its meltdown.
Either way, truly the safest and best form of energy production humanity can ever hope to achieve is the nuclear fusion reactor. We're so close to it that I'm salivating with what the next 50 years are going to offer. The current method we use (D-T) can produce power for tens of thousands of years (until we run out of Lithium), but a (D-D) reactor could last millions... And no, nuclear fusion is nothing like this... and Tritium is not a fucking solid...
Very good point, however I have to nitpick you on one little thing. you WANT nuclear reactor to be critical. A critical reactor means the reactor is running stable and producing a constant amount of energy, what you don't want is prompt supercritical (this is what happened to chernobyl) which causes power to rise exponentially. It's also really funny how Chernobyl was completely the fault of terrible untrained plant operators and had nothing to do with the safety of the reactor itself. The computer even sent an automated emergency shutdown signal TWICE which was overridden! because they wanted to complete their experiment and go home. The media has such a bias on nuclear power, people think they are bombs waiting to go off!
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On December 09 2011 04:00 phant wrote:
Very good point, however I have to nitpick you on one little thing. you WANT nuclear reactor to be critical. A critical reactor means the reactor is running stable and producing a constant amount of energy, what you don't want is prompt supercritical (this is what happened to chernobyl) which causes power to rise exponentially. It's also really funny how Chernobyl was completely the fault of terrible untrained plant operators and had nothing to do with the safety of the reactor itself. The computer even sent an automated emergency shutdown signal TWICE which was overridden! because they wanted to complete their experiment and go home. The media has such a bias on nuclear power, people think they are bombs waiting to go off!
Sorry you caught me using an incorrect term, you're right. Critical is the desired state of the nuclear reactor but in media it's used to describe a runaway reaction.
And omg Chernobyl. Thank you for elaborating; it's such a frustrating topic because it's the #1 argument people use against nuclear power. Soviet morons...
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Blazinghand
United States25560 Posts
On December 09 2011 03:36 endy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 03:28 Zaros wrote:
Well seeing as the per capita meassure is biased by population, i fail to see your point. China has over a billion people in the population and thus gives out lets say 5.3 Billion tons. India has nearing a Billion population and germany has 82 million 82 million x 9.6 = 787 million tons. I think you have your answer. Let's all build coal plants in Vatican, if they can produce as much CO2 as Germany we're saved ! Obviously per capita makes much much more sense.
I'd actually consider the BEST measure to be emmisions per GDP per Capita.
If your country has a small GDP but a large population, that doesn't give you the right to use super ineffecient methods and shoot emissions into the air. How much you are allowed to emit should be reduced for countries with less factories-- this sounds the most reasonable to me.
CO2/GDP/capita.
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I would love to see a time when not just humans but all sentient life on this planet is seen as having equal rights to exist and have access to clean and healthy food and water. Sadly that is unlikely to ever happen in countries such as the US. Humans are too greedy to consider the impact of their actions, mostly we just take what we want and screw anyone or anything that gets in our way. :-(
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On December 09 2011 03:41 Iranon wrote:
What does this have to do with bullshit about the value of all human lives being equal? Your "deductions" aren't really relevant to much of anything.
Okay, true point. Life being equal was not the key starting point of my argumentation, but rather that one fundamental belief of our western societies is that rights should be equal for everybody. Though that might stem from the fact that we like to think everybody is "the same" (whatever you understand under it).
On December 09 2011 03:41 Iranon wrote:
It doesn't matter how much pollution the average citizen of country X creates. Per capita numbers have no useful meaning here. Maybe per area would be a reasonable thing to look at, but even that's not necessary.
There are even other metrics, like per gdb, which all hold some part of truth inside of them.
However I thought that the "per capita" metric would be the one that is closest to our democratic system.
On December 09 2011 03:41 Iranon wrote:
The average citizen of country X is not responsible for creating and enforcing emissions-standards legislature; that's the job of country X's government. If there are unacceptable emissions levels coming from anywhere in a country on any significant scale, it falls to one specific organization to regulate it. When someone says "I blame China for problem X", it's not like they're walking down the street thinking every Chinese person they see is accountable for X, they're thinking that the Chinese government should do something about X.
I'm not talking about regulating emissions at all, I am talking about how much right (or leeway, if you like it) should be given to countries regarding CO2 emissions and I am just pointing out that whatever metrics the German media uses to see no big problems in Germany, but huge deficits in China, it is neither the per capita, nor the per gdb metric. And definitely not even the per area metric.
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On December 09 2011 05:07 Zaranth wrote:
I would love to see a time when not just humans but all sentient life on this planet is seen as having equal rights to exist and have access to clean and healthy food and water. Sadly that is unlikely to ever happen in countries such as the US. Humans are too greedy to consider the impact of their actions, mostly we just take what we want and screw anyone or anything that gets in our way. :-(
Humans are the only sentient life on the planet. 
For that comment I'm definitely putting ground beef in my pasta tonight.
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Honestly it's just western media bias, you're thinking too much into it. Out of curiosity, is there a chart for countries and their CO2 emissions / GDP / capita?
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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.
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They look at how much a country produces not how much the individuals in said country produce. First reply pretty much has it. Also I feel the UN just likes to screw with certain countries after they spin an arrow with all of them on it in regards to these topics.
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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 too late.
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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 States25560 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
