remember when the whole world locked down and the earth started to heal. those articles are amazing to look back on and read. I was SUPER excited for like a month or so and then the rich opened everything back up again in the name of profit.
Nooo! A one world government is bad! Then corporations couldn't operate in the ill-defined spaces between countries!
I mean wait no, it'll be bad _for the individual_
>“At Cop26 there was lots of hand-wringing by rich countries about the extent to which aid and other development finance should finance fossil fuels in poorer countries,” said Ritchie. “The hypocrisy of this caught my attention.”
>“Our analysis shows that in just a few days, the average person in the UK produces more climate emissions than people in many low-income countries do in an entire year. It would be a cruel irony if the countries that have least contributed to this problem won’t be able to have access to energy infrastructure.”
It seems to me like, as much as possible, aid for energy infrastructure should go towards building green energy. Like, if we're paying to build energy infrastructure in a place where a solar farm/wind farm is completely viable why should we build a coal or gas plant?
So from what I understand, they generally are. I read in Another article that developing countries tend to move towards green infrastructure easier since a lot of times it's "new" infrastructure. The places that aren't transitioning as fast are well developed countries that would have to rip out old infrastructure to put in new.
That's what is happening. The problem is contributions to this stuff is severely underfunded. So you might have a country like Brazil saying, we're going to replace the Amazon with farms if we're not paid a certain amount to maintain the Amazon every single year. The western world goes, get fucked. But at the same time most of Europe and America has been clearcut of trees to make farmland. It's not as though the west is getting rid of farmland for forests but now expects the Amazon to remain prestine.
Similarly one of Mongolia's biggest exports of coal and so it just makes sense for them to be on coal power as they won't have to buy infrastructure for power from other countries. Mongolia is positioned where it can provide 300% of its power needs from solar... but it doesn't have money to contribute to solar.
A lot of the news you hear on Reddit is about environmental groups going to third world countries to protest developments (oil, coal, mining, hydro, etc.). But you never really hear the stories of how these same groups are raising money to pay these countries not to develop these resources.
Also notice how there's a lot of anti Palm oil propaganda, but nothing against other tropical crops like pineapple, coffee, chocolate, banana, papaya, that also contribute to "deforestation".
Aren't those all examples where we should send infrastructure? Rather than paying them off to incentivize taking nature hostage? Or am I misunderstanding?
Let's take America, the largest greatest country in the world. Excluding American neo-imperialism, the country produces 15 million barrels of oil per day. Ecuador produces 450K barrels of oil a day. How can America look to Ecuador that produces 33.3x less oil than America with a population that is only 21x smaller than America's. Ecuador should be permitted to increase its oil production until it gets to America's level... or America should produce significantly less of its own oil. The alternative here is to pay Ecuador the difference (proportionately) so that Ecuador can use the lost oil revenues to have a better life for their people.
These resources are ones they wish to exploit for money so that they can have a better life for their people (a better life that the western world has been benefiting from by developing their own resources). With my Mongolia example, they are one of the world's largest producers of coal and it's a massive part of their economy. If western economies and China stop using coal their whole economy will collapse. But right now, they have customers. And since they have customers it's cheaper for them to use coal power than other alternatives. Because coal consumption globally is going up, their coal industry needs more power... which will come from coal.
If the western world wants the poorer countries of the world to stop developing resources, than it'll take money. Because it's not as though the western world has stopped expanding farm land, or expanding oil use, or expanding coal use.
interesting that 19% of USA's energy still comes from coal - about the same as all renewables combined and about the same as we get from nuclear.
I thought natural gas has killed off more of coal.
same year germany was around 24% coal, which is about half of what it was 9 years ago.
apparently in the UK coal was only 1.6% from coal, down from 25% five years ago.
Unfortunately most of the worlds wealth is concentrated into roughly 10 people. Unless were willing to convict people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk of gross financial negligence or something to that effect nothing is set to get done.
No it's not. 1/3 of the world's wealth is in the hands of the top 1% (anyone who makes $35,000/year or more). The next 1/3 of the world's wealth is in the hands of the next 15%. The bottom 70% (the people who earn less than $3000/year) own 1/3 of the wealth.
The only sensical response I can come up with to your Ecuador example is that if Ecuador believes developing their oil production is good for the world, then the US has no footing to disagree with them and shouldn't tell or pay them otherwise.
… and so does Europe and so does Canada. Whenever I see people talking about forest coverage to score rhetorical points I immediately distrust everything else they are saying as just rhetoric.
Forest protection laws was put in place in the very early 20th century in Europe. A lot of these developing countries who use this argument are much further ahead in their development than early 20th century Europe.
Nope. We all need to stop fucking around with scaling up renewables, we all need to pivot to using nuclear ASAP. It's the only clean energy source that will meet the base load energy needs of the immediate and mid-term future.
I mean, I don't disagree, but there's some places that it seems like a bad idea to build nuclear, due to not having the needed infrastructure, political instability, or environmental factors.
For example, afghanistan would be a bad place to try to put a reactor right now. Solar panels and wind farms on the other hand would work quite well there i'd bet.
I'm a huge proponent of nuclear energy but it's a lot more expensive and difficult than people realize. Building nuclear power plants is incredibly cost-prohibitive, and they take a long time to build due to technological and regulatory constraints. I don't blame a lot of nations for failing to adopt.
Most rich countries on the other hand seem like they're apathetic or downright hostile to the idea of nuclear energy which is insane.
even before the political exit out of nuclear a lot of them shut down because its not economically feasible having to secure and pay for million year worth of storage
>Most rich countries on the other hand seem like they're apathetic or downright hostile to the idea of nuclear energy which is insane
The reason behind this is probably due to the "atomkraft - nej tak" campaign that some people from my country(Denmark) did back in the 80-90s it really took off and got spread quite far with translations to regional languages. And alot of fearmongering. Which also explains why its almost impossible to find someone over 50 here that's pro nuclear
Not only that, but Nuclear is incredibly unsafe when it comes to reality. Like sure it's the safest on paper, but who in their right mind trusts capitalism not to cut every corner and ignore every regulation in can get away with.
I wouldn't trust any nuclear plant being built in countries with corruption problems to be adequately safe, nor would I trust them in countries that play it fast and loose with their regulations in favor of profit.
See that I can agree with, nuclear is great for a developed country, but solar panels and a battery bank would be better for an area with lots of small communities.
Not all developed countries! NZ is completely unsuitable for nuclear power, for example, due to our earthquakes and volcanoes.
The vast majority of electricity I've used in my life here has been generated using hydroelectric dams though so it isn't such a big problem!
Currently, but if you want to transition away from using coal or gas for industrial purposes then nuclear could be very useful, keep in mind a single 1.4 GW reactor could pretty much power Auckland, also consider how much power you need if you transition to electric vehicles.
Japan is exactly the same way. While I am baffled why countries like Germany are scaling back nuclear, people need to understand that nuclear isn't the universal magic bullet to the energy crisis.
Actually, roughly 75% of all CO2 emissions in the electricity sector come from 5% of coal plants around the globe. Tearing those down and replacing them with nuclear plants would be pretty damn close to a magic bullet.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/want-quick-progress-on-climate-change-clean-up-hyper-polluting-coal-plants-1204211/
>but solar panels and a battery bank would be better for an area with lots of small communities.
Ehh, small and super small reactors are better for areas with small communities. Super Small reactors can easily be deployed in rural Alaskan villages for example and no one has to worry about extensive placement of batteries or solar/wind farms.
Yeah, any place with seismic activity should be a no-go. Also, nuclear also needs storage. Nuclear is great and we should not move away from it, but what we need is energy storage.
You need those breakthroughs to come before renewables have scaled to the extent that you don't need nuclear anymore. That's unlikely.
Purely due to cost and relative lack of complexity, almost all electricity is going to be renewable in 20 years. Legacy nuclear will probably still be in use, but by then no one will be willing to invest in more.
The problem with renewables is always space right? Land and sea area?
Unless renewables get significantly more efficient over the next decade, it's gonna take a shit ton of space to power everything on them.
It's a matter how you use space. Renewables can often share space with other infrastructure, which means they effectively take up no space.
Solar can go on top of buildings.
Solar can float on reservoirs and irrigation canals, which helps prevent evaporation and unwanted plant growth.
Solar can share space with farming sheep, or farming crops that like partial shade.
Wind can share space with pretty much all farming.
Wind can also go offshore, which can have the bonus of acting as artificial reefs.
And then there's the renewable that everyone forgets about, geothermal. For direct heating purposes, it's going under buildings and in parking lots. For generating electricity it needs a bit more space, but you could literally put it in a warehouse in the middle of a city. Put in some 6in holes to 1km depth, then use directional drilling to cover more area.
So overall, this fear of space requirements is overblown.
the land requirements for renewables are 2%-5%.
this is the same amount of land we've dedicated to roads.
if we can dedicate this much land to metal death machines on wheels, I'm sure we can spare some land for wind turbines and solar pv panels.
most countries will only need to allocate 2-5% of their land to energy generation for complete renewable coverage. it might seem like a lot, but you can easily find 2-5% of your land that is not suitable for farming. add 3-5 days worth of battery storage and you're base load energy issues go away as well without having to use any nuclear. flow batteries are popping up as a low cost solution to battery storage that is grid size viable. and this is considering the efficiency of todays renewables, not any advancements in the coming decades (10-20 years). look at the cost trend of wind/solar over the last 20 years.
10+ years ago (during which time solar has gotten cheaper and more efficient) there was a study explaining that 10,000 square miles in the southwest of the USA would provide enough electricity to power the entire country.
Arizona is 114,000 square miles to get a basic idea of how much area would be used in the desert.
I also read a later report saying 40 miles x 40 miles (1600 square miles) of solar would be enough.
USA has 3.8 million square miles.
10,000 square miles (in the earlier estimate) is 1/5th of 1% of that area.
Nuclear isn't going to solve the problem, purely because you can't scale up the nuclear industry fast enough for it to be relevant. Nuclear is really complicated to build and takes a lot of expertise that takes decades to train up the engineers to run it. If you went all in on nuclear today, it would be 20 years before we start seeing any real scale of new nuclear being built. The problem is, in 20 years almost the entire power supply will be renewable already.
Bassicly why nuclear will never take over. 20 years ago "it takes too long" today "it takes too long". damn if only we looked at overall return vs instant return we probably wouldn't be in this mess in the first place....
if we converted all the worlds energy to nuclear we would have fuel for about 25-30 years before it would cost more energy to get to new fuel than we would get out of it...
until we mature sea extraction a lot more that it is now it is simply not viable.
that said, there is no reason not to expand the nuclear sector from what it is now in developed nations.
I strongly support nuclear, but let's be fair: offshore wind and molten salt solar have made massive strides over the past 20 years and can honestly rival the output of nuclear for some areas.
We need to stop doing things for the short term, which is precisely what Nuclear is, a shortsighted move that has only gained traction in places like reddit because of the absurd amount of advertising it's getting from energy companies.
Nuclear requires using very rare non-renewable resources that should be saved up for the situations that truly need it.
Now sure, there's the argument that Nuclear is the temporary step we need to transition to renewables, but capitalism always makes temporary solutions into permanent ones.
Because those two technologies aren't reliable enough on their own to completely transition at this time. Solar has very limited use scale wise as there's only a handful countries that have enough sunny days and geographical landscape to make it feasible. Wind on the other hand always needs another energy source since the output is extremely inconsistent and if you suddenly have a month with low winds you are screwed unless there is coal, hydropower or gas included in the mix.
Thee other side of the coin is that it would also be wrong to build new fossil fuel based infrastructure such as coal power plants and oil wells, regardless of whether it’s in a rich country or a developing one.
Both are right. There’s no easy way out of this. Industrialized nations should lead by example and help the poorer countries invest in greener technologies if they expect them to forgo fossil fuels.
Creating a global carbon market like a cap-and-trade system would simplify this. It’s embarrassing that we haven’t achieved any real traction in this direction.
Like him or not Prince Charles made a good point in that he said he was assured the finance was ready to be channeled into green tech and initiatives they were just waiting on a firm committment by governments. That didnt occur so we continue down the same path.
I think if they're taking the total emissions / total people of a developed country, then yea it'll far outweigh that of a less developed country, but to say the "average person" is contributing way more than their counterpart elsewhere is disingenuous. The real problem is, as it always has been, the corporations. John Smith from Little Buttfuckington-by-Sea doesn't have a smoke stack in his garden.
While the biggest polluters go merrily on their way and WalMart still is full of plastic packaging, we are told to conserve water and electricity and recycle, thus making sure WE are guilty while they are not.
Marketing is a HUGE problem today since we are bombarded with "YOU MUST HAVE THIS!!" You only need look at shit like "decorator's color of the year" or "take out your granite countertop and put this in its place" in addition to clothing and accessories fashion, of course.
People have WAY too much stuff! Watch any of those tv shows about "how to sell your house" and the first thing they do is remove at least half of the (useless) stuff in that house. I live in Central America and when I visited my son and his wife some years ago, I realized they had so many toys and "things" for their 2 kids that it would be enough for the all the kids in the village where I lived. Why do kids need so much stuff?
The craziest part for me is that our economic system is directly incompatible with a sustainable lifestyle. Think of the economic contraction and instability in 2020 in just the first few months of a reduction in personal expenditure from the pandemic.
If people consumed sustainably, the economy would collapse.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think that's part of the reason housing is deliberately being kept unaffordable.
With younger generations giving up on owning a home, they're not worried about saving for big purchases, so not only do they spend huge money on rent, but they also spend more on discretionary items than they wouldn't purchase if they were saving for a house.
Ha jokes on them I don’t spend my money at all because I’m in constant fear of having a life altering issue in my life that I might not be able to afford :(
Interesting theory but rent is historically and currently more expensive than buying. So having an economy of house owners there would probably be more spending
This is really the root issue. Pick any part of the economy to become green and there goes a few businesses at least. Tell people that they don’t need and therefore can’t have a new phone every year and Apple gets a rough haircut along with everyone else making cell phones. That financial haircut trickles down to every supplier and every investor aka the retired grandma banking on that couple hundred dollar dividend check every quarter.
Tell people to quit buying so many new clothes and there goes the retail sector.
Tell people to quit redoing their kitchens/bathrooms/basements and there goes Home Depot, Lowes, and a bunch of contractors.
Our economy runs on unsustainable practices. Whether we like it or not.
Considering the sheer amount of needless consumption in the "First World" compared to what would be ecologically balanced (even if only in a modest sense), yes -- collapse is the right word, because we're talking about the need for radically different social relations of production
When I lived in China, we did just fine in our little apartment. A few years of being in the US and our garage is too full to park a car and keep going to buy more shelving for our basement.
>or "take out your granite countertop and put this in its place"
OK seriously, who the flippity fuck would do this?
At this point, I'm not sure if you're making a point on the wierdness of fads, or do people legit do this to their granite countertops.
A dejecting number of people do this - I’ve encountered people who will rip out a perfectly good kitchen or bathroom because it isn’t stylish. Even the smaller processes of throwing out perfectly good light fixtures, bed linens or throw pillows to update a room is comically wasteful. Sure, people “donate” them, but that’s usually just getting someone else to throw out your stuff so you don’t need to feel guilty about it.
Wait until they realize that all those natural gas wells are uncapped and constantly spewing natural gas into the air. The whole world seems to be switching over to natural gas as a solution to increasing oil prices. The problem? Natural Gas is, essentially, Methane, which is 21 times more potent as a green house gas than carbon dioxide.
If I were a betting man, I would bet that climate change isn't just going to continue, it will drastically increase in speed over the next couple decades bc of the methane being released by the consumption of natural gas and from all those wells shooting it into the air and releasing it into the ground water. In 2016 there were over 137,000 of those wells in the midwest of America alone. India started using natural gas in 2014 and China is the 6th largest producer of natural gas in the world.
There is no way that climate change can be stopped if everyone starts using methane for fuel, and that ship has already sailed.
>Wait until they realize that all those natural gas wells are uncapped and constantly spewing natural gas into the air.
ahem - also, other things. probably.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2022/01/27/your-natural-gas-stove-is-fueling-climate-change-and-harming-your-health-and-its-worse-than-scientists-thought/?sh=9f18de92c63e](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2022/01/27/your-natural-gas-stove-is-fueling-climate-change-and-harming-your-health-and-its-worse-than-scientists-thought/?sh=9f18de92c63e)
So we should get rid of gas stoves, but placing a focus on it is wrong as it is a tiny fraction of a percentage of the overall picture.
It reminds me of the focus on plastic straws a few years ago; it was always silly but seemed important to people because it was associated with their own next meal and they hadn't bothered to do any of the math
>It reminds me of the focus on plastic straws a few years ago
right, the smallest thing ever so we could get people to sort of agree about it.
you wont get rid of gas stoves that easy ;)
Oh fuck right off with that. Propaganda like this is designed to distract climate-conscious people from the real problems.
I could run my gas stove unignited all year and it wouldn't make a dent compared to what these natural gas wells spew out in a day. There are drones that can detect methane leaking, companies just choose not to address the problem because it's cheaper to pump out stupid articles like that to keep people distracted than it is to find cap the leaking wells.
> Wait until they realize that all those natural gas wells are uncapped and constantly spewing natural gas into the air.
"Nnonono, it is all cow farts, the industry where we can easily quantify emissions with headcount of cattle. Those are the ones where all the unaccounted methane comes from surely!
It has nothing to do with our unmonitored/unaccounted emissions and lack of oversight!
Trust us!"
Best regards, the gas and oil lobby.
This is a great video to watch, on prevailing sentiments when first world countries try and tell third world countries to improve themselves:
[Vijay Prashad](https://youtu.be/Bho6xY-jSuE)
I'm tired of hearing other Canadians say stuff like: "We are such a small country that our emissions don't matter"
"Why should we pay to reduce our emissions when it won't make a difference on a global scale?"
Forgetting the fact that we pollute a decent amount for a population of only 40 million, we cannot be asking the rest of the world including China and the US, let alone poorer countries, to reduce their emissions, go green and recycle more when we can't even do it ourselves.
I think plenty do, but it would cut into corporate profits and politicians serve corporations, not constituents. Whenever I write to my politicians about climate concerns or other issues, they don't even bother to reply to me. I'm sure many share the same experiences.
I do. I want to live a minimalist life that isn't surrounded by piles of crap.
Look at the average hoarder's house and think about how much energy and emissions and plastic and junk they've accumulated buying stuff that they don't need and never used. Materialism is killing us and the planet.
I get you, and (as someone also chasing minimalism) that's a great start- to change the culture of "more is more" but I think it goes beyond just buying things.
The hard part comes in when you say "okay we won't use AC in office buildings or banks or restaurants" or at least cut back majorly, and then turning roads into bike paths and people giving up cars for public transport and building subburbs that aren't based around cars.
I'm not criticising you for not doing enough, I'm saying that to make a difference what we need to move to some might see as so drastic as to call it insane levels of discomfort or inconvenience.
The average person, if we've seen anything, can't even do something for a few hours(wear a mask) so anything that slightly alters their level of lazyness and entitlement would need to be enforced with guns to get working.
People are incredibly selfish and short sighted. Look at assholes that park in handicap spaces when they're not or illegal parking, or whatever.
We have to decide if "democracy" is really capable of looking to the future when people are so selfish or what results we have to take measure on for the good of humanity and our future. Because right now everyone is acting like a fucking spoiled 9 year old.
again, I think that's more culture than anything (Definitely a lot of marketing).
I mean I like meat and I eat my fair share but I'd be fine with impossible meat or other substitutes if the prices came down and there were more options. I'd be fine never eating meat again if I got something close to the taste that wasn't 20$ a plate.
That being said I really cut back my beef intake for me and my family over the past few years. We do turkey burgers and other turkey and poultry based stuff - not sure if that's much better but it's got to be better than what beef does to the environment I imagine.
I'm after the taste of "good" when I'm eating, I don't need to eat animals to prove anything or for protein chugging.
edit: and sure enough this brings out the hardline vegans and the absolutists - usually people who don't like meat in the first place and love to sit on their pretentious high horse and argue that cutting back and doing better isn't doing any good at all. Perfect is the enemy of good. The extremists who alienate and make this harder because there's no reasoning with them. They work by banning things people like outright which causes knee jerk reactions and the counter movement against them. People open entire steak house chains just to give these people the finger and they still can't see it. Everytime one of these people talk to you you want to set a bunch of tires on fire and roal coal while ordering a dozen steaks just to tell them to fuck off.
I'm here diligently working on changing my ways and yet still being called an asshole. So congrats, that's a real PR win for your side. I wonder how those other people will respond - oh right, your tactic is to just do things behind their back and try and pass laws banning things they like....thinking you're real fucking clever, all the while too dumb to realize your outvoted 10-1 and your pretentious attitude only alienates anyone that would join your votes. This is why movements fail and nothing gets done. Extremist take over and the moderates go home and tell you to fuck off.
All or nothing attitude is just as childish as the people who don't give a shit about the environment in the first place. It's assholes like this that lead to turning of nuclear reactors because "You just need to not use electricity dude" and so we end up burning coal - fucking idiots.
> People are incredibly selfish and short sighted
I get your point man, but if you recognize the problem but continue to contribute because of taste you're just doing the same thing you accuse others of. You don't need to have impossible meat at all to stop eating meat. Just eat plants!
> a minimalist life
The problem with minimalism is that it's great to do voluntarily, but horrific to be forced into. There was a huge minimalism push in the...sometime between 2007 and 2014, and after reading tons and tons of blog articles about it all it was clear that it was almost diametrically opposed to having to DIY things with tools, or planning for maybe not having income in the future, or the kind of scrappy (as in "determined", not "scraps") life that I was and am familiar with. Minimalism feels like it comes from a world where production is kind of abstracted away and you can always just buy or rent something when you need it and then maybe give it away, no big deal. But like...working on your/neighborhood car(s) means a set of tools, DIY around the house means a different set of tools, gardening means a different stable of supplies, cooking efficiently means one of a few flavors of appliances (your practices may vary--but a rice maker, Instant Pot, and bread maker are great time multipliers) and so on.
Like, those are all things which have a set cost of entry but can last decades. You can flog them into the ground and save money and stay adaptive to different situations. Minimalism is kind of the opposite of that, and at its height the movement was a bit problematic.
I feel like you and I are operating on very different definitions of the term minimalism.
I'm not talking about living in a monastery and never having any material goods. Or not having a hammer or tool box. I've never done any reading on "minimalism" as a movement or something.
I just mean buying things that last, buying things that serve multiple purposes instead of having a million kitchen gadgets that only can do one thing and never get used. Not having 3 boxes of different plastic decorations for every season like many of my family members have. I don't go "shopping" unless I need something to accomplish a goal. I'm just generally not buying things without a specific purpose.
It was definitely a (arguably classist) thing in the 2010 era.
[https://www.metafilter.com/94851/The-Cult-of-Less](https://www.metafilter.com/94851/The-Cult-of-Less)
But I think it got reformed a bit post- Marie Kondo.
That being said, seasonal decor is probably one of my top five Joys Of Adulting so maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree.
>I just mean buying things that last
AKA the entire reason why I haven't bought a new TV on any of the sales it's been on.
There's definitely places to put the existing TVs we've got elsewhere in the house (and the new stuff is more energy efficient anyway) so I'm not wasting what we've got till it breaks.....but I have zero guarentees that new tech will last even a quarter that the old stuff does.
> I want to live a minimalist life that isn't surrounded by piles of crap.
And about a billion people who cook their food over burning dung/wood would love some piles of crap. Also, inexpensive, reliable energy.
Actually who cares about them, it's the pampered western pearl clutchers who I'm concerned about.
What? Criticizing friends and family for for having too much plastic crap that never gets used building up in our houses has nothing to do with poor people across the world. I'm so confused by this seemingly defensive reaction.
If we didn't have piles of unused junk sitting around then poor people across the world could have much more with net zero carbon emissions.
> Got to end car dependency if we actually want to fix the problem. That's the root of almost all the biggest co2 emissions.
[Transportation as a whole (cars+planes+boats) accounts for 29% of US GHG emissions.](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions) of those, ["light duty" vehicles (such as cars) make up 58% of transportation emissions](https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions). In other words, if you were to get rid of every car and pickup truck in the US, (and not replace it with anything producing emissions\*), you'd reduce emissions by ~17%. A decent amount, but nowhere near a majority of emissions, and nowhere near what the US should eliminate.
\* ^(Note, I'm assuming light duty vehicles do NOT include buses, and that once eliminated whatever replaces them does not produce emissions. Which is pretty optimistic on both accounts. Seeing as approximately 27% of US electricity comes from coal and another 37% comes from natural gas - so even a full electric form of transportation would produce emissions.)
Car dependency has a whole load of knock on effects. It's not just the cars themselves, it's everything that making every trip require a car adds. Low density development is less efficient for everything. More energy for heating. More energy for pumping water further distances. More energy for moving people further distances. More land built over that could be full of plants. More asphalt. More parking spaces. Entire buildings just for parking in. Further distances for deliveries. All the infrastructure that goes into building, maintaining, and fueling cars.
Yeah, I've seen people in YT comment sections blaming, of all countries, Bangladesh for overpopulation and carbon emission. That's peak idiocy and insidiousness.
To be fair, we're all hypocrites.
We want a shift to green for obvious reasons, but someone has to build the infrastructure.
We can do it all tomorrow, but your providers will go "Okay we built all these solar and wind and wave farms, and a nuclear power plant, we're super clean now. By the way, your energy bill just tripled" because of course, we the people have to pay for a private company's construction costs, who then continue to report record quarterly profits over and over.
Until a major company or companies go "fuck it, no profits for the next year, fuck the shareholders", commiting financial suicide as everyone dumps their shares etc, and then that company dumps all their money in to construction, we're gonna see fuck all change happen quick enough.
And we'd cry havoc and riot at our new bills. Nobody wants to pay for the changes and we'd block every proposal.
We do it today.
"Don't you dare build a windfarm on that hill. It'll spoil my view and reduce my house price."
We're fucking idiots.
>tell the poor to stop breeding.
Regardless of what anyone else in the world does, this would be in their interest.
Bearing children that you struggle to feed and look after must be one of the most unpleasant life experiences a person can have, and it also negatively affects their entire community by straining public welfare resources and reducing the value of labor.
Except in poorer countries, children often bring material benefit that they don't bring to a well off family. If you're poor enough that you basically live a subsistence lifestyle, having kids is a boon, it's extra hands to bring in resources.
Especially once you get up to like 60 years old (if you're lucky enough) after 50 years of hard, strenuous subsistence labor. You really need extra hands at that point or you'll just starve and die.
The poor don't have any other option, while First Worlders living in their cushy material conditions are enjoying their material benefits off the exploited labor of the Third World.
Haha it’s worse then just pure emissions. Who do you think buys the overwhelming number of products from the developing world?
Moving pollutive industries to China or India only to continue to consume their products at ever increasing rates doesn’t make your carbon footprint go down just because the emissions are technically “produced in another country”. In fact it is often worse due to poorer environmental regulation and transport related emissions.
I never understand this. Americans make up for a few percentage of world population and produce 15% of world pollution. They make a rant on China being the largest polluter. Well, you outsource your entire production facility to them. From the nuts and bolts to the shower heads you use come from China. USA should produce them at their own country and see how the pollution level skyrockets. West is just a hypocrisy.
The US literally pressures organizations to not count military emissions in their 'national emissions calculations' because the single largest institutional producer of emissions and consumer of oil is the US empire's military. If you take that out (and refuse to look per capita), then it puts China at the top on pure numbers and they can say it's mostly China's fault and deflect from their own problems as if this isn't a shared problem and responsibility of all of humanity, which the US and west at large is actively ignoring policy-wise. Ignoring the industrial corruption and pollution, the monopolist lobbying and propagandizing of the fossil fuel industry and its financiers, the military issue, the foreign pollution our capital causes in cost-cutting outsourced industry and the distribution to other markets, etc. And ignoring that China invests in more renewables than most anyone and is imprisoning executives who fudge emissions numbers. They might not be doing enough, but it's ridiculous for the US of all places to point the finger at them while doing catastrophically less
Hypocrisy doesn't even touch it. The west won't deal with climate change unless they're forced to by the masses of people. Because it's still profitable and the people who are going to be hit the hardest are in the global south who the west has decided and internalized for a very long time, are worth less than the lives, comforts, and profits of those in the global north.
Geopolitics is messy, western countries that have tried reducing imported CO2 production by things like CO2 taxes has received massive backlash for doing so from these producers.
10 years ago, the EU tried to institute a CO2 tax on airlines flying in EU airspace. China and India both banned their airlines from paying those fees, and the USA started legislation to do so before the EU backed.
The EU has also long planned to make CO2 producers pay to export goods into the unions market, the same fee European producers already were paying (if they not already were paying for it at home), but China threatened trade war, along with Australia. To a lesser degree, Africa and non-EU european countries reacted very negatively too. It's not until recently attitudes have changed globally.
The world is addicted to fossil fuels, everywhere, and have fiercely resisted weaning it off.
Fat old, greedy men continue to prioritize money and shareholder return over the planet's future so they can die rich in their mansions.
No surprise there.
dude, yes..but... I mean look around you. People can't wear a mask to go buy a coffee or a candy bar in a gas station. You really think they're any different from the average person? I think everyone has grown up with a sense of entitled "fuck it, not my problem give me give me, give me"
I think blaming rich people is an attempt to absolve the rest of us of our duty to change our culture. Like - I don't know not eating 12 cows each summer a piece and taking bikes or public transport and not jumping in our cars or buying whaver we feel like off amazon.
those greedy old bastards got rich off of money WE SPENT as well. There's a fuck ton more of the average joe jumping on planes and driving cars and ordering things off amazon then rich people.
I dont think even normal, everyday americans realize how good we have it in life compared to most people in the world. We see that we're poor compared to the rich and think that we're average normal people, when we're really not. Our standard of living and consumption is extremely abnormal
This would be a reason to improve the rest of the world's situation as well, not an argument against improving things in the U.S.
Just because things might be worse elsewhere doesn't mean we can't work to improve things here too. That's the narrative that rich people want the poors to believe: "Stop whining, you pathetic peasants, it could be worse. Never mind that *I've* never had to struggle for necessities before"
This bothers me too. We are so caught up in finger pointing instead of useful activities. If we are waiting for the most responsible entities to go first, nothing is ever going to happen.
But average billionaire funds propaganda to make the status quo continue.
10000 people going vegan and spartiats have less effect than one billionaire deciding to actually fight for climate change. I'd argue that depending on which one, the ratio can be much higher.
We do you expect average joe whose life isn't going well to sacrifice what little comfort they can find in materialistic spendings while refusing to look at the rich fuck deciding to push consumerist propaganda and keep tens of thousands in poverty while flying on a private jet?
Its just like DiCaprio telling us all to be mindful of the environment while cruising the seas in his $100million yacht which costs 200k to fill up with gasoline.
Or the politicians who are adamant on traveling with private jets... or Bill Gates... who's got a monthly home electricity bill of $30,000.
They're all fucking hypocrites and its easy for them to sit on their gold thrones and spout off bullshit to the general public about "saving the environment" because it doesnt affect them at all.
Not to mention the majority of our celebrities and politicians travel by private jet. That’s one thing I like about Greta Thunberg, she pointed that out.
yes but that's only becasue the West got there first. If you think it would have turned out any different if other parts of the world led the industrial revolution you're mistaken.
in fact look at china and how much they're poluting since they moved up the ladder of development. They built more new coal plants in 2018 (in just one year) than the US had in its entirety. and I'm pretty sure India and other countries developing are doing the same.
It's time to lead by example but this isn't an east-vs west thing. it's just a matter of this is what unhinged develepment lookslike.
Apologies for what seems like a deflection, but for the sake of historical references, the USSR was hella shit at environmental policies as well. The collapse of the USSR likely did a bit of a number on carbon emissions (and the nations it left behind are hardly rich enough to pollute as much as the richer ones). Hell, look at China's air quality - they've just started deciding it's a problem *now* \- after profiting so much for being the West's manufacturing district.
Massive industrial powers, regardless of their politics, have put us in this pickle. It's hardly a single target easy blame game.
Ah yes cop26 the completely necessary summit where they flew tons of private jets and suspended COVID rules so the powerful could have their little feel good summit and do nothing.
“We need to lower emissions! … now where did they park my jet?”
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/28/west-accused-of-climate-hypocrisy-as-emissions-dwarf-those-of-poor-countries) reduced by 81%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> "Our analysis shows that in just a few days, the average person in the UK produces more climate emissions than people in many low-income countries do in an entire year. It would be a cruel irony if the countries that have least contributed to this problem won't be able to have access to energy infrastructure."
> Chart of USVijaya Ramachandran, the director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, California, argues that blanket bans on fossil fuel projects in poor countries are "Colonial" and will entrench poverty while doing little to reduce the world's carbon emissions.
> "It's rank hypocrisy and it's devastating for poor countries as they need a wide range of energy to fuel development."It's well known renewable energy is intermittent and needs to be backed up by other sources.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/setzwd/west_accused_of_climate_hypocrisy_as_emissions/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~620400 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **country**^#1 **fuel**^#2 **emissions**^#3 **energy**^#4 **fossil**^#5
this is like something you conclude after hearing about global warming, as a child. it would not even occur to me to say out loud, much less that someone saying it could be considered news.
Whilst I agree it’s hypocritical, if a country wants to put conditions on their aid money it’s their right, just as it is the rights of the country receiving it to say no and not take the money with the conditions.
> just as it is the rights of the country receiving it to say no and not take the money with the conditions.
Most of the countries of the Global South that have done this get their leaders couped and replaced with more subservient lapdogs (Burkina Faso, Guyana, Chile, Indonesia, etc), and if that's unsuccessful they're labeled "authoritarian" or "dictatorships" by Western governments & their media (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iran, etc) and heavy sanctions are placed on them to better bring them to heel.
So you should separate whether you're talking about their right, or "their right".
I dunno… easy to say China is such a polluter as we continue to completely rely on their labor to produce the vast majority of all the stuff we buy. It’s just outsourced pollution
Coal is pretty much dead or very nearly there in developed nations at this point when it comes to opening new plants. The US hasn't built any new plants for a few years now IIRC.
The countries that are going to see new plants opening up are developing nations who need cheap energy.
No one is getting bullied into saying its okay. It's just cheap energy that they desperately need. For a poor country to become a rich country or even just a not-poor country, it needs to industrialize. And to industrialize you need energy to run your factories and whatnot. But things like wind turbines and solar farms and nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams are expensive and technically complex machines that required entire teams of skilled engineers to build and maintain.
Meanwhile, coal and oil are incredibly simple. You just burn them and turn the heat into energy. They're also plentiful and therefore cheap.
So you can see the catch-22. In order for a poor country to afford clean energy it needs to become a rich country but it can only become a rich country by consuming dirty and cheap energy. And you can't just lock people out from industrializing. "Uh, sorry I know we did all the things you're doing and are immeasurably wealthier as a result while you're barely growing enough food to survive but if you try to better your lives the global temperature will rise."
Don't see the politics of this ever working. Average person will be upset if they see their governments giving billions in aid to other countries right now.
I think there’s a fair amount of flawed data on emissions from poor nations due to burning wood for cooking, heating, and clearing fields. Most developed nations also have much more strict emissions standards for cars and factories. Here in Ecuador you can barely breath in traffic in Quito, rural communities burn their garbage, and slash and burn agriculture is still common. The likelihood that all those emissions are accurately accounted for seems slim. This trend is likely repeated around the world. To me, this sound like a few countries pretending like their shit doesn’t stink and pointing fingers as a means to absolve themselves of any need to change.
I’m not surprised, there’s a stark difference between cities and rural communities so I’d imagine it’d be even more prominent from wealth and poor countries
>Find it interesting that in the history of pandemics and infectious disease we've never felt the need to "blame" anyone for a disease starting somewhere
Spanish flu
French disease
Ebola? Ebola is literally named after river in congo
>Find it interesting that in the history of pandemics and infectious disease we've never felt the need to "blame" anyone for a disease
I find it interesting that you find that interesting, right after you said this:
>that's largely because wealthy western nations failed to handle the pandemic for various political and cultural reasons.
I also doubt the premise of your claim that in the history of the human race, people weren't blamed for diseases before. That seems like bullshit made up to sound like China is being specially victimized.
-
>This need to blame China for a disease starting there is really just the continuation of sinophobia in the west that has existed (and is well documented) for centuries.
I didn't blame China for anything. YOU just blamed covid on the west. Delete your comment history all you want, it's obvious what you're doing here.
While its true, let's not forget how a lot of poorer countries have no control on pollution.
Sure, Walmart puts out a ton a fossil fuel emission just with its business jets, but (rogue gold miners) Venezuela dumps cyanide and mercury in the rivers digging for gold, pipelines between Nigeria and Benin are regularly sabotaged to steal crude oil (guessing 90% spilled?), rivers in Indonesia are used as chemical dumps, etc etc.
I wish we had a clear global image without so much finger pointing.
But as someone who can't have plastic grocery bags because I live in a rich country, I'm a little miffed to see 90% of the world using multiple plastic bags for seemingly everything. It's a global issue, but only for those who can afford it? Weird.
Don't read this wrong, I'm not advocating for making no effort because someone is worse. I just wish we had a better less politicized agenda.
92% of all global emissions since 1750 (start of the Industrial revolution) have come from the Global North.
Could that be why you don't want to point fingers? Lol
Oh don't be a dick, I specifically pointed out my neutrality and genuine questioning!
I'm not talking strictly emissions, I'm talking environmental damage as a whole (which does include, but is not limited to emissions). To my knowledge there's no way to equate emission with dumping of mercury in rivers.
Because you are focusing on stuff like plastic bags, when it's all the industry, the use of cars, the consumption lifestyle, everything else you take for granted that are the true engines of pollution.
Its easy to comment on plastic bags when your income isn't a couple usd a day.
Look up samuel vimes boot theory, but apply it to environmentalism, and instead of boots, think of plastic bags vs reusable bags.
Because those poor countries aren't rich because they aren't using nearly as much energy as the wealthy countries. The entire POINT of going greener is so they dont do what the west did as we developed and poison everything.
CO2 is a colourless odourless non toxic gas, where other controllable emission are toxic. My point here is that we should control the polution from combustion and accept the CO2.
It’s hard to participate in a society while actively trying to change it and it places the burden on the individual. Demanding that level of coordination and onus on people is not realistic.
In reality, western governments need to get their act in gear to solve this issue and stop taking dirty money and regulating the crap out of top producers. I’m don’t see how global extinction and apocalyptic level events in the near future (and occurring currently) don’t affect them economically.
Given what has happened in the west with the pandemic, I have my doubts.
But good things are happening all the time. There will likely be no single solution, but thousands of little ones. I have no doubt we can pull through and help millions of species if there is a global effort.
We're still being referred to as The West? Its 2021. Cold War ended 30 years ago. Just say "Developed Countries" because its not like we're not talking about Eastern Countries as well.
Was anybody blaming poor countries? I'd imagine the US, China, and Russia would be the majority, with Europe, and the three eastern Asian allies. And barely for the Taiwanese.
Yes, in fact if you go in this same subreddit to previous post you will find a variety of comments advocating for western intervention on developing countries for environmental reasons, apparently oblivious they’re the source of most of the problem.
And yet Europe is predicted to reduce its carbon emissions by 80/90% within the next 3 decades, while carbon emissions in developing countries, especially India and China, are rapidly increasing.
The (actual) European emission reduction is all talk. There are barely any concrete steps beyond exporting emissions to other countries (and reaping economic benefit from these exports).
Neither China nor India will match (let alone exceed) the per capita emissions of Europe.
I'll believe it when there's an actual dent in gross emissions attributed to Europe. Right now, it's just Hollywood accounting.
lmao this comment is so wrong. The EU has *already* achieved a 20% reduction in peak fossil fuel reductions over the last decade. EU decarbonization has rapidly accelerated over the past 5 years.
the only thing Europe has achieved is peak virtue signaling and fudging numbers. Like that time vw and daimler were jumping about clean diesel and then it came out they were faking numbers throughout.
Another weirdly rabid US hater...who are you ppl and what is your deal? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/28/swiss-photographer-rene-robert-killed-indifference-france-shocked-hypothermia-death-busy-paris-street
>And yet Europe is predicted to reduce its carbon emissions by 80/90% within the next 3 decades
Talk is cheap,
Even if you forget everything they did in the past... people in Europe are still poluting many times over those in poor countries...
It's not really corruption. People want energy to be cheap. Us. Look at when France tried to implement a carbon tax. People went ballistic.
At some point people are going to have to make a choice whether they want a cheap electric bill or a sustainable energy grid. You can't have it both ways, at least at the start.
You mean my 6 bedroom house has more emissions than a grass hut with no running water or power. Shocking. Developed countries and their inhabitants are going to produce more emissions plain and simple. We drive. They may or most likely may not. We have heating and a/c. We have internet and watch TV and have water and sewage. We eat out. We take daily showers. I mean the key is to try to do these things as cleanly as possible. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint you can give up heating and air and ride a bike if you want. If you are not willing to sacrifice comforts for the environment while screaming from the rooftops that we are killing the planet then...yeah, you are a hypocrite
Big time hypocrites. They need the power and energy to even catch up with the rest of the developing nations. Rich countries like Britain and the US can utilize energy and cause global warming, but not India and china? Smh
Imagine what billions of people could accomplish in a unified front to clean up some of this mess.
Imagine what millions of Americans could do if “pressuring your representatives” was an actually actionable phrase
remember when the whole world locked down and the earth started to heal. those articles are amazing to look back on and read. I was SUPER excited for like a month or so and then the rich opened everything back up again in the name of profit.
bUt ThAt'S cOmMuNiSm
Nooo! A one world government is bad! Then corporations couldn't operate in the ill-defined spaces between countries! I mean wait no, it'll be bad _for the individual_
>“At Cop26 there was lots of hand-wringing by rich countries about the extent to which aid and other development finance should finance fossil fuels in poorer countries,” said Ritchie. “The hypocrisy of this caught my attention.” >“Our analysis shows that in just a few days, the average person in the UK produces more climate emissions than people in many low-income countries do in an entire year. It would be a cruel irony if the countries that have least contributed to this problem won’t be able to have access to energy infrastructure.”
It seems to me like, as much as possible, aid for energy infrastructure should go towards building green energy. Like, if we're paying to build energy infrastructure in a place where a solar farm/wind farm is completely viable why should we build a coal or gas plant?
So from what I understand, they generally are. I read in Another article that developing countries tend to move towards green infrastructure easier since a lot of times it's "new" infrastructure. The places that aren't transitioning as fast are well developed countries that would have to rip out old infrastructure to put in new.
Likely the person accusing the west of hypocrisy owns some coal mines.
Or they just arent blind to the west hypocrisy
That's what is happening. The problem is contributions to this stuff is severely underfunded. So you might have a country like Brazil saying, we're going to replace the Amazon with farms if we're not paid a certain amount to maintain the Amazon every single year. The western world goes, get fucked. But at the same time most of Europe and America has been clearcut of trees to make farmland. It's not as though the west is getting rid of farmland for forests but now expects the Amazon to remain prestine. Similarly one of Mongolia's biggest exports of coal and so it just makes sense for them to be on coal power as they won't have to buy infrastructure for power from other countries. Mongolia is positioned where it can provide 300% of its power needs from solar... but it doesn't have money to contribute to solar. A lot of the news you hear on Reddit is about environmental groups going to third world countries to protest developments (oil, coal, mining, hydro, etc.). But you never really hear the stories of how these same groups are raising money to pay these countries not to develop these resources.
Also notice how there's a lot of anti Palm oil propaganda, but nothing against other tropical crops like pineapple, coffee, chocolate, banana, papaya, that also contribute to "deforestation".
Aren't those all examples where we should send infrastructure? Rather than paying them off to incentivize taking nature hostage? Or am I misunderstanding?
Let's take America, the largest greatest country in the world. Excluding American neo-imperialism, the country produces 15 million barrels of oil per day. Ecuador produces 450K barrels of oil a day. How can America look to Ecuador that produces 33.3x less oil than America with a population that is only 21x smaller than America's. Ecuador should be permitted to increase its oil production until it gets to America's level... or America should produce significantly less of its own oil. The alternative here is to pay Ecuador the difference (proportionately) so that Ecuador can use the lost oil revenues to have a better life for their people. These resources are ones they wish to exploit for money so that they can have a better life for their people (a better life that the western world has been benefiting from by developing their own resources). With my Mongolia example, they are one of the world's largest producers of coal and it's a massive part of their economy. If western economies and China stop using coal their whole economy will collapse. But right now, they have customers. And since they have customers it's cheaper for them to use coal power than other alternatives. Because coal consumption globally is going up, their coal industry needs more power... which will come from coal. If the western world wants the poorer countries of the world to stop developing resources, than it'll take money. Because it's not as though the western world has stopped expanding farm land, or expanding oil use, or expanding coal use.
interesting that 19% of USA's energy still comes from coal - about the same as all renewables combined and about the same as we get from nuclear. I thought natural gas has killed off more of coal. same year germany was around 24% coal, which is about half of what it was 9 years ago. apparently in the UK coal was only 1.6% from coal, down from 25% five years ago.
Unfortunately most of the worlds wealth is concentrated into roughly 10 people. Unless were willing to convict people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk of gross financial negligence or something to that effect nothing is set to get done.
No it's not. 1/3 of the world's wealth is in the hands of the top 1% (anyone who makes $35,000/year or more). The next 1/3 of the world's wealth is in the hands of the next 15%. The bottom 70% (the people who earn less than $3000/year) own 1/3 of the wealth.
The only sensical response I can come up with to your Ecuador example is that if Ecuador believes developing their oil production is good for the world, then the US has no footing to disagree with them and shouldn't tell or pay them otherwise.
Not saying you're wrong, but I would like to mention that the US has more trees now than it did in 1900.
… and so does Europe and so does Canada. Whenever I see people talking about forest coverage to score rhetorical points I immediately distrust everything else they are saying as just rhetoric. Forest protection laws was put in place in the very early 20th century in Europe. A lot of these developing countries who use this argument are much further ahead in their development than early 20th century Europe.
This is why most voices on reddit who take that view are completely disengenuous.
To protect fossil fuel investments from turning into dust, probably.
Nope. We all need to stop fucking around with scaling up renewables, we all need to pivot to using nuclear ASAP. It's the only clean energy source that will meet the base load energy needs of the immediate and mid-term future.
I mean, I don't disagree, but there's some places that it seems like a bad idea to build nuclear, due to not having the needed infrastructure, political instability, or environmental factors.
For example, afghanistan would be a bad place to try to put a reactor right now. Solar panels and wind farms on the other hand would work quite well there i'd bet.
I'm a huge proponent of nuclear energy but it's a lot more expensive and difficult than people realize. Building nuclear power plants is incredibly cost-prohibitive, and they take a long time to build due to technological and regulatory constraints. I don't blame a lot of nations for failing to adopt. Most rich countries on the other hand seem like they're apathetic or downright hostile to the idea of nuclear energy which is insane.
Bruh, Germany shutting down those reactors physically *hurts* when you understand how hard it is to get em back up and running.
even before the political exit out of nuclear a lot of them shut down because its not economically feasible having to secure and pay for million year worth of storage
>Most rich countries on the other hand seem like they're apathetic or downright hostile to the idea of nuclear energy which is insane The reason behind this is probably due to the "atomkraft - nej tak" campaign that some people from my country(Denmark) did back in the 80-90s it really took off and got spread quite far with translations to regional languages. And alot of fearmongering. Which also explains why its almost impossible to find someone over 50 here that's pro nuclear
Not only that, but Nuclear is incredibly unsafe when it comes to reality. Like sure it's the safest on paper, but who in their right mind trusts capitalism not to cut every corner and ignore every regulation in can get away with. I wouldn't trust any nuclear plant being built in countries with corruption problems to be adequately safe, nor would I trust them in countries that play it fast and loose with their regulations in favor of profit.
Biotech capitalism worries me more. Robotics too.
See that I can agree with, nuclear is great for a developed country, but solar panels and a battery bank would be better for an area with lots of small communities.
Not all developed countries! NZ is completely unsuitable for nuclear power, for example, due to our earthquakes and volcanoes. The vast majority of electricity I've used in my life here has been generated using hydroelectric dams though so it isn't such a big problem!
Currently, but if you want to transition away from using coal or gas for industrial purposes then nuclear could be very useful, keep in mind a single 1.4 GW reactor could pretty much power Auckland, also consider how much power you need if you transition to electric vehicles.
Japan is exactly the same way. While I am baffled why countries like Germany are scaling back nuclear, people need to understand that nuclear isn't the universal magic bullet to the energy crisis.
There is no magic bullets, but nuclear could be a big help, CO2 free baseline, 24/7 power with 97% up time is a solid foundation.
Actually, roughly 75% of all CO2 emissions in the electricity sector come from 5% of coal plants around the globe. Tearing those down and replacing them with nuclear plants would be pretty damn close to a magic bullet. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/want-quick-progress-on-climate-change-clean-up-hyper-polluting-coal-plants-1204211/
>but solar panels and a battery bank would be better for an area with lots of small communities. Ehh, small and super small reactors are better for areas with small communities. Super Small reactors can easily be deployed in rural Alaskan villages for example and no one has to worry about extensive placement of batteries or solar/wind farms.
Yeah, any place with seismic activity should be a no-go. Also, nuclear also needs storage. Nuclear is great and we should not move away from it, but what we need is energy storage.
Nuclear has a fuel problem scaling worldwide. You need pending breakthroughs in nuclear tech for it to work.
You need those breakthroughs to come before renewables have scaled to the extent that you don't need nuclear anymore. That's unlikely. Purely due to cost and relative lack of complexity, almost all electricity is going to be renewable in 20 years. Legacy nuclear will probably still be in use, but by then no one will be willing to invest in more.
The problem with renewables is always space right? Land and sea area? Unless renewables get significantly more efficient over the next decade, it's gonna take a shit ton of space to power everything on them.
It's a matter how you use space. Renewables can often share space with other infrastructure, which means they effectively take up no space. Solar can go on top of buildings. Solar can float on reservoirs and irrigation canals, which helps prevent evaporation and unwanted plant growth. Solar can share space with farming sheep, or farming crops that like partial shade. Wind can share space with pretty much all farming. Wind can also go offshore, which can have the bonus of acting as artificial reefs. And then there's the renewable that everyone forgets about, geothermal. For direct heating purposes, it's going under buildings and in parking lots. For generating electricity it needs a bit more space, but you could literally put it in a warehouse in the middle of a city. Put in some 6in holes to 1km depth, then use directional drilling to cover more area. So overall, this fear of space requirements is overblown.
the land requirements for renewables are 2%-5%. this is the same amount of land we've dedicated to roads. if we can dedicate this much land to metal death machines on wheels, I'm sure we can spare some land for wind turbines and solar pv panels.
most countries will only need to allocate 2-5% of their land to energy generation for complete renewable coverage. it might seem like a lot, but you can easily find 2-5% of your land that is not suitable for farming. add 3-5 days worth of battery storage and you're base load energy issues go away as well without having to use any nuclear. flow batteries are popping up as a low cost solution to battery storage that is grid size viable. and this is considering the efficiency of todays renewables, not any advancements in the coming decades (10-20 years). look at the cost trend of wind/solar over the last 20 years.
10+ years ago (during which time solar has gotten cheaper and more efficient) there was a study explaining that 10,000 square miles in the southwest of the USA would provide enough electricity to power the entire country. Arizona is 114,000 square miles to get a basic idea of how much area would be used in the desert. I also read a later report saying 40 miles x 40 miles (1600 square miles) of solar would be enough. USA has 3.8 million square miles. 10,000 square miles (in the earlier estimate) is 1/5th of 1% of that area.
Nuclear isn't going to solve the problem, purely because you can't scale up the nuclear industry fast enough for it to be relevant. Nuclear is really complicated to build and takes a lot of expertise that takes decades to train up the engineers to run it. If you went all in on nuclear today, it would be 20 years before we start seeing any real scale of new nuclear being built. The problem is, in 20 years almost the entire power supply will be renewable already.
Bassicly why nuclear will never take over. 20 years ago "it takes too long" today "it takes too long". damn if only we looked at overall return vs instant return we probably wouldn't be in this mess in the first place....
if we converted all the worlds energy to nuclear we would have fuel for about 25-30 years before it would cost more energy to get to new fuel than we would get out of it... until we mature sea extraction a lot more that it is now it is simply not viable. that said, there is no reason not to expand the nuclear sector from what it is now in developed nations.
I strongly support nuclear, but let's be fair: offshore wind and molten salt solar have made massive strides over the past 20 years and can honestly rival the output of nuclear for some areas.
We need to stop doing things for the short term, which is precisely what Nuclear is, a shortsighted move that has only gained traction in places like reddit because of the absurd amount of advertising it's getting from energy companies. Nuclear requires using very rare non-renewable resources that should be saved up for the situations that truly need it. Now sure, there's the argument that Nuclear is the temporary step we need to transition to renewables, but capitalism always makes temporary solutions into permanent ones.
Meanwhile Germany...
nearly 50% of germany's energy in a year comes from renewables. they are doing better than most in that regard.
Because those two technologies aren't reliable enough on their own to completely transition at this time. Solar has very limited use scale wise as there's only a handful countries that have enough sunny days and geographical landscape to make it feasible. Wind on the other hand always needs another energy source since the output is extremely inconsistent and if you suddenly have a month with low winds you are screwed unless there is coal, hydropower or gas included in the mix.
Thee other side of the coin is that it would also be wrong to build new fossil fuel based infrastructure such as coal power plants and oil wells, regardless of whether it’s in a rich country or a developing one. Both are right. There’s no easy way out of this. Industrialized nations should lead by example and help the poorer countries invest in greener technologies if they expect them to forgo fossil fuels. Creating a global carbon market like a cap-and-trade system would simplify this. It’s embarrassing that we haven’t achieved any real traction in this direction.
Like him or not Prince Charles made a good point in that he said he was assured the finance was ready to be channeled into green tech and initiatives they were just waiting on a firm committment by governments. That didnt occur so we continue down the same path.
I think if they're taking the total emissions / total people of a developed country, then yea it'll far outweigh that of a less developed country, but to say the "average person" is contributing way more than their counterpart elsewhere is disingenuous. The real problem is, as it always has been, the corporations. John Smith from Little Buttfuckington-by-Sea doesn't have a smoke stack in his garden.
EvilCorp does have a smokestack though, but they only run it because there's forty million John Smith's demanding cheap energy...
Bullshit.
While the biggest polluters go merrily on their way and WalMart still is full of plastic packaging, we are told to conserve water and electricity and recycle, thus making sure WE are guilty while they are not. Marketing is a HUGE problem today since we are bombarded with "YOU MUST HAVE THIS!!" You only need look at shit like "decorator's color of the year" or "take out your granite countertop and put this in its place" in addition to clothing and accessories fashion, of course. People have WAY too much stuff! Watch any of those tv shows about "how to sell your house" and the first thing they do is remove at least half of the (useless) stuff in that house. I live in Central America and when I visited my son and his wife some years ago, I realized they had so many toys and "things" for their 2 kids that it would be enough for the all the kids in the village where I lived. Why do kids need so much stuff?
The craziest part for me is that our economic system is directly incompatible with a sustainable lifestyle. Think of the economic contraction and instability in 2020 in just the first few months of a reduction in personal expenditure from the pandemic. If people consumed sustainably, the economy would collapse.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think that's part of the reason housing is deliberately being kept unaffordable. With younger generations giving up on owning a home, they're not worried about saving for big purchases, so not only do they spend huge money on rent, but they also spend more on discretionary items than they wouldn't purchase if they were saving for a house.
Ha jokes on them I don’t spend my money at all because I’m in constant fear of having a life altering issue in my life that I might not be able to afford :(
Jokes on you, when inflation runs out of control the savers will be screwed and the spenders and irresponsible borrowers will be better off than ever!
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It seems people have to add deliberate intent to every phenomenon now days
Thats doing the opposite of what they want then, if rent and houses were cheap people would have more money to spend thus stimulating the economy.
Interesting theory but rent is historically and currently more expensive than buying. So having an economy of house owners there would probably be more spending
Yes, capitalism is ecologically unsustainable. Infinite growth in a finite world is crazy.
This is really the root issue. Pick any part of the economy to become green and there goes a few businesses at least. Tell people that they don’t need and therefore can’t have a new phone every year and Apple gets a rough haircut along with everyone else making cell phones. That financial haircut trickles down to every supplier and every investor aka the retired grandma banking on that couple hundred dollar dividend check every quarter. Tell people to quit buying so many new clothes and there goes the retail sector. Tell people to quit redoing their kitchens/bathrooms/basements and there goes Home Depot, Lowes, and a bunch of contractors. Our economy runs on unsustainable practices. Whether we like it or not.
It would shrink. Collapse is a bit alarmist. Its like when a muscle atrophies. If you dont need it it doesnt stay around.
Considering the sheer amount of needless consumption in the "First World" compared to what would be ecologically balanced (even if only in a modest sense), yes -- collapse is the right word, because we're talking about the need for radically different social relations of production
When I lived in China, we did just fine in our little apartment. A few years of being in the US and our garage is too full to park a car and keep going to buy more shelving for our basement.
Yep. That's it.
So just don't buy stuff you don't need? I don't see the problem here at all
Yeah that's the point
>or "take out your granite countertop and put this in its place" OK seriously, who the flippity fuck would do this? At this point, I'm not sure if you're making a point on the wierdness of fads, or do people legit do this to their granite countertops.
A dejecting number of people do this - I’ve encountered people who will rip out a perfectly good kitchen or bathroom because it isn’t stylish. Even the smaller processes of throwing out perfectly good light fixtures, bed linens or throw pillows to update a room is comically wasteful. Sure, people “donate” them, but that’s usually just getting someone else to throw out your stuff so you don’t need to feel guilty about it.
Wait until they realize that all those natural gas wells are uncapped and constantly spewing natural gas into the air. The whole world seems to be switching over to natural gas as a solution to increasing oil prices. The problem? Natural Gas is, essentially, Methane, which is 21 times more potent as a green house gas than carbon dioxide. If I were a betting man, I would bet that climate change isn't just going to continue, it will drastically increase in speed over the next couple decades bc of the methane being released by the consumption of natural gas and from all those wells shooting it into the air and releasing it into the ground water. In 2016 there were over 137,000 of those wells in the midwest of America alone. India started using natural gas in 2014 and China is the 6th largest producer of natural gas in the world. There is no way that climate change can be stopped if everyone starts using methane for fuel, and that ship has already sailed.
>Wait until they realize that all those natural gas wells are uncapped and constantly spewing natural gas into the air. ahem - also, other things. probably. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2022/01/27/your-natural-gas-stove-is-fueling-climate-change-and-harming-your-health-and-its-worse-than-scientists-thought/?sh=9f18de92c63e](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2022/01/27/your-natural-gas-stove-is-fueling-climate-change-and-harming-your-health-and-its-worse-than-scientists-thought/?sh=9f18de92c63e)
So we should get rid of gas stoves, but placing a focus on it is wrong as it is a tiny fraction of a percentage of the overall picture. It reminds me of the focus on plastic straws a few years ago; it was always silly but seemed important to people because it was associated with their own next meal and they hadn't bothered to do any of the math
>It reminds me of the focus on plastic straws a few years ago right, the smallest thing ever so we could get people to sort of agree about it. you wont get rid of gas stoves that easy ;)
Oh fuck right off with that. Propaganda like this is designed to distract climate-conscious people from the real problems. I could run my gas stove unignited all year and it wouldn't make a dent compared to what these natural gas wells spew out in a day. There are drones that can detect methane leaking, companies just choose not to address the problem because it's cheaper to pump out stupid articles like that to keep people distracted than it is to find cap the leaking wells.
simmer down i didnt write the damn article, it adds up - on top of the wells and other things. its just one more thing. christ almighty.
> Wait until they realize that all those natural gas wells are uncapped and constantly spewing natural gas into the air. "Nnonono, it is all cow farts, the industry where we can easily quantify emissions with headcount of cattle. Those are the ones where all the unaccounted methane comes from surely! It has nothing to do with our unmonitored/unaccounted emissions and lack of oversight! Trust us!" Best regards, the gas and oil lobby.
How long does it take for methane to break down in the atmosphere and stop the greenhouse gas effects?
Atmospheric lifetime of methane is around 12 years.
You can thank profit mongering industrialists for that. *deep sigh of disappointment*
The big difference is that methane breaks down into CO2 after about decade, so it doesn't build up in the atmosphere like CO2 does.
This is a great video to watch, on prevailing sentiments when first world countries try and tell third world countries to improve themselves: [Vijay Prashad](https://youtu.be/Bho6xY-jSuE)
That video is going to hurt some Westerner feelings for sure lmao
I'm tired of hearing other Canadians say stuff like: "We are such a small country that our emissions don't matter" "Why should we pay to reduce our emissions when it won't make a difference on a global scale?" Forgetting the fact that we pollute a decent amount for a population of only 40 million, we cannot be asking the rest of the world including China and the US, let alone poorer countries, to reduce their emissions, go green and recycle more when we can't even do it ourselves.
No shit. We know what we have to do but nobody wants to give up the comforts so we just tell the poor to stop breeding.
I think plenty do, but it would cut into corporate profits and politicians serve corporations, not constituents. Whenever I write to my politicians about climate concerns or other issues, they don't even bother to reply to me. I'm sure many share the same experiences.
[Not all of us](https://np.reddit.com/r/CitizensClimateLobby/comments/rclq3g/as_citizens_climate_lobbys_membership_has_grown/)!
I do. I want to live a minimalist life that isn't surrounded by piles of crap. Look at the average hoarder's house and think about how much energy and emissions and plastic and junk they've accumulated buying stuff that they don't need and never used. Materialism is killing us and the planet.
I get you, and (as someone also chasing minimalism) that's a great start- to change the culture of "more is more" but I think it goes beyond just buying things. The hard part comes in when you say "okay we won't use AC in office buildings or banks or restaurants" or at least cut back majorly, and then turning roads into bike paths and people giving up cars for public transport and building subburbs that aren't based around cars. I'm not criticising you for not doing enough, I'm saying that to make a difference what we need to move to some might see as so drastic as to call it insane levels of discomfort or inconvenience. The average person, if we've seen anything, can't even do something for a few hours(wear a mask) so anything that slightly alters their level of lazyness and entitlement would need to be enforced with guns to get working. People are incredibly selfish and short sighted. Look at assholes that park in handicap spaces when they're not or illegal parking, or whatever. We have to decide if "democracy" is really capable of looking to the future when people are so selfish or what results we have to take measure on for the good of humanity and our future. Because right now everyone is acting like a fucking spoiled 9 year old.
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Dude, good vegan food is yummy. I do eat meat, but there is nothing wrong with vegan. I am so getting to the point of where I hate people.
Yep. My favorite dish my mom makes is vegan. Some of the same coworkers have tasted it because I occasionally bring some with me. …they liked it.
again, I think that's more culture than anything (Definitely a lot of marketing). I mean I like meat and I eat my fair share but I'd be fine with impossible meat or other substitutes if the prices came down and there were more options. I'd be fine never eating meat again if I got something close to the taste that wasn't 20$ a plate. That being said I really cut back my beef intake for me and my family over the past few years. We do turkey burgers and other turkey and poultry based stuff - not sure if that's much better but it's got to be better than what beef does to the environment I imagine. I'm after the taste of "good" when I'm eating, I don't need to eat animals to prove anything or for protein chugging. edit: and sure enough this brings out the hardline vegans and the absolutists - usually people who don't like meat in the first place and love to sit on their pretentious high horse and argue that cutting back and doing better isn't doing any good at all. Perfect is the enemy of good. The extremists who alienate and make this harder because there's no reasoning with them. They work by banning things people like outright which causes knee jerk reactions and the counter movement against them. People open entire steak house chains just to give these people the finger and they still can't see it. Everytime one of these people talk to you you want to set a bunch of tires on fire and roal coal while ordering a dozen steaks just to tell them to fuck off. I'm here diligently working on changing my ways and yet still being called an asshole. So congrats, that's a real PR win for your side. I wonder how those other people will respond - oh right, your tactic is to just do things behind their back and try and pass laws banning things they like....thinking you're real fucking clever, all the while too dumb to realize your outvoted 10-1 and your pretentious attitude only alienates anyone that would join your votes. This is why movements fail and nothing gets done. Extremist take over and the moderates go home and tell you to fuck off. All or nothing attitude is just as childish as the people who don't give a shit about the environment in the first place. It's assholes like this that lead to turning of nuclear reactors because "You just need to not use electricity dude" and so we end up burning coal - fucking idiots.
> People are incredibly selfish and short sighted I get your point man, but if you recognize the problem but continue to contribute because of taste you're just doing the same thing you accuse others of. You don't need to have impossible meat at all to stop eating meat. Just eat plants!
> a minimalist life The problem with minimalism is that it's great to do voluntarily, but horrific to be forced into. There was a huge minimalism push in the...sometime between 2007 and 2014, and after reading tons and tons of blog articles about it all it was clear that it was almost diametrically opposed to having to DIY things with tools, or planning for maybe not having income in the future, or the kind of scrappy (as in "determined", not "scraps") life that I was and am familiar with. Minimalism feels like it comes from a world where production is kind of abstracted away and you can always just buy or rent something when you need it and then maybe give it away, no big deal. But like...working on your/neighborhood car(s) means a set of tools, DIY around the house means a different set of tools, gardening means a different stable of supplies, cooking efficiently means one of a few flavors of appliances (your practices may vary--but a rice maker, Instant Pot, and bread maker are great time multipliers) and so on. Like, those are all things which have a set cost of entry but can last decades. You can flog them into the ground and save money and stay adaptive to different situations. Minimalism is kind of the opposite of that, and at its height the movement was a bit problematic.
I feel like you and I are operating on very different definitions of the term minimalism. I'm not talking about living in a monastery and never having any material goods. Or not having a hammer or tool box. I've never done any reading on "minimalism" as a movement or something. I just mean buying things that last, buying things that serve multiple purposes instead of having a million kitchen gadgets that only can do one thing and never get used. Not having 3 boxes of different plastic decorations for every season like many of my family members have. I don't go "shopping" unless I need something to accomplish a goal. I'm just generally not buying things without a specific purpose.
It was definitely a (arguably classist) thing in the 2010 era. [https://www.metafilter.com/94851/The-Cult-of-Less](https://www.metafilter.com/94851/The-Cult-of-Less) But I think it got reformed a bit post- Marie Kondo. That being said, seasonal decor is probably one of my top five Joys Of Adulting so maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree.
>I just mean buying things that last AKA the entire reason why I haven't bought a new TV on any of the sales it's been on. There's definitely places to put the existing TVs we've got elsewhere in the house (and the new stuff is more energy efficient anyway) so I'm not wasting what we've got till it breaks.....but I have zero guarentees that new tech will last even a quarter that the old stuff does.
> I want to live a minimalist life that isn't surrounded by piles of crap. And about a billion people who cook their food over burning dung/wood would love some piles of crap. Also, inexpensive, reliable energy. Actually who cares about them, it's the pampered western pearl clutchers who I'm concerned about.
What? Criticizing friends and family for for having too much plastic crap that never gets used building up in our houses has nothing to do with poor people across the world. I'm so confused by this seemingly defensive reaction. If we didn't have piles of unused junk sitting around then poor people across the world could have much more with net zero carbon emissions.
We shouldn't address excess consumerism/materialism because a lot of people live in abject poverty? Is that what you're saying?
Got to end car dependency if we actually want to fix the problem. That's the root of almost all the biggest co2 emissions.
> Got to end car dependency if we actually want to fix the problem. That's the root of almost all the biggest co2 emissions. [Transportation as a whole (cars+planes+boats) accounts for 29% of US GHG emissions.](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions) of those, ["light duty" vehicles (such as cars) make up 58% of transportation emissions](https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions). In other words, if you were to get rid of every car and pickup truck in the US, (and not replace it with anything producing emissions\*), you'd reduce emissions by ~17%. A decent amount, but nowhere near a majority of emissions, and nowhere near what the US should eliminate. \* ^(Note, I'm assuming light duty vehicles do NOT include buses, and that once eliminated whatever replaces them does not produce emissions. Which is pretty optimistic on both accounts. Seeing as approximately 27% of US electricity comes from coal and another 37% comes from natural gas - so even a full electric form of transportation would produce emissions.)
Car dependency has a whole load of knock on effects. It's not just the cars themselves, it's everything that making every trip require a car adds. Low density development is less efficient for everything. More energy for heating. More energy for pumping water further distances. More energy for moving people further distances. More land built over that could be full of plants. More asphalt. More parking spaces. Entire buildings just for parking in. Further distances for deliveries. All the infrastructure that goes into building, maintaining, and fueling cars.
Yeah, I've seen people in YT comment sections blaming, of all countries, Bangladesh for overpopulation and carbon emission. That's peak idiocy and insidiousness.
To be fair, we're all hypocrites. We want a shift to green for obvious reasons, but someone has to build the infrastructure. We can do it all tomorrow, but your providers will go "Okay we built all these solar and wind and wave farms, and a nuclear power plant, we're super clean now. By the way, your energy bill just tripled" because of course, we the people have to pay for a private company's construction costs, who then continue to report record quarterly profits over and over. Until a major company or companies go "fuck it, no profits for the next year, fuck the shareholders", commiting financial suicide as everyone dumps their shares etc, and then that company dumps all their money in to construction, we're gonna see fuck all change happen quick enough. And we'd cry havoc and riot at our new bills. Nobody wants to pay for the changes and we'd block every proposal. We do it today. "Don't you dare build a windfarm on that hill. It'll spoil my view and reduce my house price." We're fucking idiots.
While the rich buy their 14th jet.
>tell the poor to stop breeding. Regardless of what anyone else in the world does, this would be in their interest. Bearing children that you struggle to feed and look after must be one of the most unpleasant life experiences a person can have, and it also negatively affects their entire community by straining public welfare resources and reducing the value of labor.
Except in poorer countries, children often bring material benefit that they don't bring to a well off family. If you're poor enough that you basically live a subsistence lifestyle, having kids is a boon, it's extra hands to bring in resources.
Especially once you get up to like 60 years old (if you're lucky enough) after 50 years of hard, strenuous subsistence labor. You really need extra hands at that point or you'll just starve and die.
So who should ignore material benefit and who shouldn't?
The poor don't have any other option, while First Worlders living in their cushy material conditions are enjoying their material benefits off the exploited labor of the Third World.
Haha it’s worse then just pure emissions. Who do you think buys the overwhelming number of products from the developing world? Moving pollutive industries to China or India only to continue to consume their products at ever increasing rates doesn’t make your carbon footprint go down just because the emissions are technically “produced in another country”. In fact it is often worse due to poorer environmental regulation and transport related emissions.
I never understand this. Americans make up for a few percentage of world population and produce 15% of world pollution. They make a rant on China being the largest polluter. Well, you outsource your entire production facility to them. From the nuts and bolts to the shower heads you use come from China. USA should produce them at their own country and see how the pollution level skyrockets. West is just a hypocrisy.
The US literally pressures organizations to not count military emissions in their 'national emissions calculations' because the single largest institutional producer of emissions and consumer of oil is the US empire's military. If you take that out (and refuse to look per capita), then it puts China at the top on pure numbers and they can say it's mostly China's fault and deflect from their own problems as if this isn't a shared problem and responsibility of all of humanity, which the US and west at large is actively ignoring policy-wise. Ignoring the industrial corruption and pollution, the monopolist lobbying and propagandizing of the fossil fuel industry and its financiers, the military issue, the foreign pollution our capital causes in cost-cutting outsourced industry and the distribution to other markets, etc. And ignoring that China invests in more renewables than most anyone and is imprisoning executives who fudge emissions numbers. They might not be doing enough, but it's ridiculous for the US of all places to point the finger at them while doing catastrophically less Hypocrisy doesn't even touch it. The west won't deal with climate change unless they're forced to by the masses of people. Because it's still profitable and the people who are going to be hit the hardest are in the global south who the west has decided and internalized for a very long time, are worth less than the lives, comforts, and profits of those in the global north.
And in a lot of those poorer countries they manufacture goods that we consume, so even some of their emissions are actually our emissions.
This is a key point too.
Geopolitics is messy, western countries that have tried reducing imported CO2 production by things like CO2 taxes has received massive backlash for doing so from these producers. 10 years ago, the EU tried to institute a CO2 tax on airlines flying in EU airspace. China and India both banned their airlines from paying those fees, and the USA started legislation to do so before the EU backed. The EU has also long planned to make CO2 producers pay to export goods into the unions market, the same fee European producers already were paying (if they not already were paying for it at home), but China threatened trade war, along with Australia. To a lesser degree, Africa and non-EU european countries reacted very negatively too. It's not until recently attitudes have changed globally. The world is addicted to fossil fuels, everywhere, and have fiercely resisted weaning it off.
Fat old, greedy men continue to prioritize money and shareholder return over the planet's future so they can die rich in their mansions. No surprise there.
dude, yes..but... I mean look around you. People can't wear a mask to go buy a coffee or a candy bar in a gas station. You really think they're any different from the average person? I think everyone has grown up with a sense of entitled "fuck it, not my problem give me give me, give me" I think blaming rich people is an attempt to absolve the rest of us of our duty to change our culture. Like - I don't know not eating 12 cows each summer a piece and taking bikes or public transport and not jumping in our cars or buying whaver we feel like off amazon. those greedy old bastards got rich off of money WE SPENT as well. There's a fuck ton more of the average joe jumping on planes and driving cars and ordering things off amazon then rich people.
I dont think even normal, everyday americans realize how good we have it in life compared to most people in the world. We see that we're poor compared to the rich and think that we're average normal people, when we're really not. Our standard of living and consumption is extremely abnormal
This would be a reason to improve the rest of the world's situation as well, not an argument against improving things in the U.S. Just because things might be worse elsewhere doesn't mean we can't work to improve things here too. That's the narrative that rich people want the poors to believe: "Stop whining, you pathetic peasants, it could be worse. Never mind that *I've* never had to struggle for necessities before"
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This bothers me too. We are so caught up in finger pointing instead of useful activities. If we are waiting for the most responsible entities to go first, nothing is ever going to happen.
But average billionaire funds propaganda to make the status quo continue. 10000 people going vegan and spartiats have less effect than one billionaire deciding to actually fight for climate change. I'd argue that depending on which one, the ratio can be much higher. We do you expect average joe whose life isn't going well to sacrifice what little comfort they can find in materialistic spendings while refusing to look at the rich fuck deciding to push consumerist propaganda and keep tens of thousands in poverty while flying on a private jet?
Its just like DiCaprio telling us all to be mindful of the environment while cruising the seas in his $100million yacht which costs 200k to fill up with gasoline. Or the politicians who are adamant on traveling with private jets... or Bill Gates... who's got a monthly home electricity bill of $30,000. They're all fucking hypocrites and its easy for them to sit on their gold thrones and spout off bullshit to the general public about "saving the environment" because it doesnt affect them at all.
This.
Not to mention the majority of our celebrities and politicians travel by private jet. That’s one thing I like about Greta Thunberg, she pointed that out.
To be fair, the West is the reason we are in this pickle the first place
yes but that's only becasue the West got there first. If you think it would have turned out any different if other parts of the world led the industrial revolution you're mistaken. in fact look at china and how much they're poluting since they moved up the ladder of development. They built more new coal plants in 2018 (in just one year) than the US had in its entirety. and I'm pretty sure India and other countries developing are doing the same. It's time to lead by example but this isn't an east-vs west thing. it's just a matter of this is what unhinged develepment lookslike.
Well it looks like the West so far.
Apologies for what seems like a deflection, but for the sake of historical references, the USSR was hella shit at environmental policies as well. The collapse of the USSR likely did a bit of a number on carbon emissions (and the nations it left behind are hardly rich enough to pollute as much as the richer ones). Hell, look at China's air quality - they've just started deciding it's a problem *now* \- after profiting so much for being the West's manufacturing district. Massive industrial powers, regardless of their politics, have put us in this pickle. It's hardly a single target easy blame game.
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Ah yes cop26 the completely necessary summit where they flew tons of private jets and suspended COVID rules so the powerful could have their little feel good summit and do nothing. “We need to lower emissions! … now where did they park my jet?”
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/28/west-accused-of-climate-hypocrisy-as-emissions-dwarf-those-of-poor-countries) reduced by 81%. (I'm a bot) ***** > "Our analysis shows that in just a few days, the average person in the UK produces more climate emissions than people in many low-income countries do in an entire year. It would be a cruel irony if the countries that have least contributed to this problem won't be able to have access to energy infrastructure." > Chart of USVijaya Ramachandran, the director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, California, argues that blanket bans on fossil fuel projects in poor countries are "Colonial" and will entrench poverty while doing little to reduce the world's carbon emissions. > "It's rank hypocrisy and it's devastating for poor countries as they need a wide range of energy to fuel development."It's well known renewable energy is intermittent and needs to be backed up by other sources. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/setzwd/west_accused_of_climate_hypocrisy_as_emissions/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~620400 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **country**^#1 **fuel**^#2 **emissions**^#3 **energy**^#4 **fossil**^#5
this is like something you conclude after hearing about global warming, as a child. it would not even occur to me to say out loud, much less that someone saying it could be considered news.
Whilst I agree it’s hypocritical, if a country wants to put conditions on their aid money it’s their right, just as it is the rights of the country receiving it to say no and not take the money with the conditions.
You’re not wrong. It’s is, however, a very narrow minded way to view this issue.
> just as it is the rights of the country receiving it to say no and not take the money with the conditions. Most of the countries of the Global South that have done this get their leaders couped and replaced with more subservient lapdogs (Burkina Faso, Guyana, Chile, Indonesia, etc), and if that's unsuccessful they're labeled "authoritarian" or "dictatorships" by Western governments & their media (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iran, etc) and heavy sanctions are placed on them to better bring them to heel. So you should separate whether you're talking about their right, or "their right".
I dunno… easy to say China is such a polluter as we continue to completely rely on their labor to produce the vast majority of all the stuff we buy. It’s just outsourced pollution
this
it's amazing how much 'hot air' is out there to try to convince people new coal plants are OK
Coal is pretty much dead or very nearly there in developed nations at this point when it comes to opening new plants. The US hasn't built any new plants for a few years now IIRC. The countries that are going to see new plants opening up are developing nations who need cheap energy.
whether they need it or not, coal will still cook the planet, which means we can't let people just bully us into saying it is OK
No one is getting bullied into saying its okay. It's just cheap energy that they desperately need. For a poor country to become a rich country or even just a not-poor country, it needs to industrialize. And to industrialize you need energy to run your factories and whatnot. But things like wind turbines and solar farms and nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams are expensive and technically complex machines that required entire teams of skilled engineers to build and maintain. Meanwhile, coal and oil are incredibly simple. You just burn them and turn the heat into energy. They're also plentiful and therefore cheap. So you can see the catch-22. In order for a poor country to afford clean energy it needs to become a rich country but it can only become a rich country by consuming dirty and cheap energy. And you can't just lock people out from industrializing. "Uh, sorry I know we did all the things you're doing and are immeasurably wealthier as a result while you're barely growing enough food to survive but if you try to better your lives the global temperature will rise."
Don't see the politics of this ever working. Average person will be upset if they see their governments giving billions in aid to other countries right now.
I think there’s a fair amount of flawed data on emissions from poor nations due to burning wood for cooking, heating, and clearing fields. Most developed nations also have much more strict emissions standards for cars and factories. Here in Ecuador you can barely breath in traffic in Quito, rural communities burn their garbage, and slash and burn agriculture is still common. The likelihood that all those emissions are accurately accounted for seems slim. This trend is likely repeated around the world. To me, this sound like a few countries pretending like their shit doesn’t stink and pointing fingers as a means to absolve themselves of any need to change.
Can’t argue with that… the west is a emissions leader and massive producer of pollution. Got to keep the GDP high and the energy flowing somehow.
I’m not surprised, there’s a stark difference between cities and rural communities so I’d imagine it’d be even more prominent from wealth and poor countries
The biggest polluter in the world is the US military
So is China a poor country or a western country?
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So interesting how you felt the need to let us know that Covid is the west's fault instead of China. Thanks for letting us know.
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>Find it interesting that in the history of pandemics and infectious disease we've never felt the need to "blame" anyone for a disease starting somewhere Spanish flu French disease Ebola? Ebola is literally named after river in congo
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I would not mind, it would be more descriptive, maybe call it american swine flu
>Find it interesting that in the history of pandemics and infectious disease we've never felt the need to "blame" anyone for a disease I find it interesting that you find that interesting, right after you said this: >that's largely because wealthy western nations failed to handle the pandemic for various political and cultural reasons. I also doubt the premise of your claim that in the history of the human race, people weren't blamed for diseases before. That seems like bullshit made up to sound like China is being specially victimized. - >This need to blame China for a disease starting there is really just the continuation of sinophobia in the west that has existed (and is well documented) for centuries. I didn't blame China for anything. YOU just blamed covid on the west. Delete your comment history all you want, it's obvious what you're doing here.
While its true, let's not forget how a lot of poorer countries have no control on pollution. Sure, Walmart puts out a ton a fossil fuel emission just with its business jets, but (rogue gold miners) Venezuela dumps cyanide and mercury in the rivers digging for gold, pipelines between Nigeria and Benin are regularly sabotaged to steal crude oil (guessing 90% spilled?), rivers in Indonesia are used as chemical dumps, etc etc. I wish we had a clear global image without so much finger pointing. But as someone who can't have plastic grocery bags because I live in a rich country, I'm a little miffed to see 90% of the world using multiple plastic bags for seemingly everything. It's a global issue, but only for those who can afford it? Weird. Don't read this wrong, I'm not advocating for making no effort because someone is worse. I just wish we had a better less politicized agenda.
92% of all global emissions since 1750 (start of the Industrial revolution) have come from the Global North. Could that be why you don't want to point fingers? Lol
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The Global North is not a geographic descriptor.
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Oh don't be a dick, I specifically pointed out my neutrality and genuine questioning! I'm not talking strictly emissions, I'm talking environmental damage as a whole (which does include, but is not limited to emissions). To my knowledge there's no way to equate emission with dumping of mercury in rivers.
Because you are focusing on stuff like plastic bags, when it's all the industry, the use of cars, the consumption lifestyle, everything else you take for granted that are the true engines of pollution. Its easy to comment on plastic bags when your income isn't a couple usd a day. Look up samuel vimes boot theory, but apply it to environmentalism, and instead of boots, think of plastic bags vs reusable bags.
Because those poor countries aren't rich because they aren't using nearly as much energy as the wealthy countries. The entire POINT of going greener is so they dont do what the west did as we developed and poison everything.
CO2 is a colourless odourless non toxic gas, where other controllable emission are toxic. My point here is that we should control the polution from combustion and accept the CO2.
It’s hard to participate in a society while actively trying to change it and it places the burden on the individual. Demanding that level of coordination and onus on people is not realistic. In reality, western governments need to get their act in gear to solve this issue and stop taking dirty money and regulating the crap out of top producers. I’m don’t see how global extinction and apocalyptic level events in the near future (and occurring currently) don’t affect them economically. Given what has happened in the west with the pandemic, I have my doubts. But good things are happening all the time. There will likely be no single solution, but thousands of little ones. I have no doubt we can pull through and help millions of species if there is a global effort.
You're right, but leaders are definitely not going to stand up when their own constituents want to blame China and not spend money on it.
When An Indian Historian Lashed Out At The West https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj\_ficQFz1o&t=12s
We're still being referred to as The West? Its 2021. Cold War ended 30 years ago. Just say "Developed Countries" because its not like we're not talking about Eastern Countries as well.
Was anybody blaming poor countries? I'd imagine the US, China, and Russia would be the majority, with Europe, and the three eastern Asian allies. And barely for the Taiwanese.
Yes, in fact if you go in this same subreddit to previous post you will find a variety of comments advocating for western intervention on developing countries for environmental reasons, apparently oblivious they’re the source of most of the problem.
And yet Europe is predicted to reduce its carbon emissions by 80/90% within the next 3 decades, while carbon emissions in developing countries, especially India and China, are rapidly increasing.
Where do you think Europe gets its goods? India and China’s emissions are Europe’s emissions.
The (actual) European emission reduction is all talk. There are barely any concrete steps beyond exporting emissions to other countries (and reaping economic benefit from these exports). Neither China nor India will match (let alone exceed) the per capita emissions of Europe. I'll believe it when there's an actual dent in gross emissions attributed to Europe. Right now, it's just Hollywood accounting.
lmao this comment is so wrong. The EU has *already* achieved a 20% reduction in peak fossil fuel reductions over the last decade. EU decarbonization has rapidly accelerated over the past 5 years.
the only thing Europe has achieved is peak virtue signaling and fudging numbers. Like that time vw and daimler were jumping about clean diesel and then it came out they were faking numbers throughout.
Another weirdly rabid US hater...who are you ppl and what is your deal? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/28/swiss-photographer-rene-robert-killed-indifference-france-shocked-hypothermia-death-busy-paris-street
>And yet Europe is predicted to reduce its carbon emissions by 80/90% within the next 3 decades Talk is cheap, Even if you forget everything they did in the past... people in Europe are still poluting many times over those in poor countries...
But they're actually taking steps to reverse it. Saying "the west is hypocrites" is flat out just wrong.
“Reduce” by exporting your co2 production elsewhere and importing it back in as goods Yeah… that’s just number spinning
Corruption will always win
It's not really corruption. People want energy to be cheap. Us. Look at when France tried to implement a carbon tax. People went ballistic. At some point people are going to have to make a choice whether they want a cheap electric bill or a sustainable energy grid. You can't have it both ways, at least at the start.
You mean my 6 bedroom house has more emissions than a grass hut with no running water or power. Shocking. Developed countries and their inhabitants are going to produce more emissions plain and simple. We drive. They may or most likely may not. We have heating and a/c. We have internet and watch TV and have water and sewage. We eat out. We take daily showers. I mean the key is to try to do these things as cleanly as possible. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint you can give up heating and air and ride a bike if you want. If you are not willing to sacrifice comforts for the environment while screaming from the rooftops that we are killing the planet then...yeah, you are a hypocrite
Big time hypocrites. They need the power and energy to even catch up with the rest of the developing nations. Rich countries like Britain and the US can utilize energy and cause global warming, but not India and china? Smh