13 ms·

How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room.

349 points by MartinMond 17y ago

elblanco 17y ago
Amazing...it's like reading reddit.com, but with Hacker News as the title. http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ahmdz/how_do_i_know_china_wrecked_the_copenhagen_deal_i/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ahmdz/how_do_i_kn...
- weaksauce 17y ago
  To be fair, they used the exact title of the article which is the way that hacker news guidelines are set forth. I think your comment should have been more along the lines of "Amazing... it's crazy that a title on reddit.com did not get editorialized to sensationalize the article."
  - elblanco 17y ago
    Too true, too true.
    - moon_of_moon 17y ago
      I think your comment should have been : oh crap here come the 4chan wannabes. Lets urgently start looking for a new aggregator to frequent.
      - elblanco 17y ago
        That would have been too n00bish, and besides, some people are going through and systematically down-voting every comment I post if you notice (as I'm sure this one will be, jerks).
- sorbus 17y ago
  They're both news aggregators; it's not so unusual to see the same content on both, as it's certainly an interesting article, and the identicalness of the titles is due to the fact that that was the original title.
  - axod 17y ago
    You expect Reddit to be full of politics and environmental stuff. Personally I don't like it on HN.
    - moon_of_moon 17y ago
      Agreed. Dont it let it degrade to that level please.
ars 17y ago
If china would simply put out all it's underground coal mine fires, that alone could remove 360 million tons of CO2 emissions. (As much as all the cars and light trucks in the US.) Just pure waste from china is alone responsible for a very large chunk of CO2 emissions. http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030215coalenviro4p4.asp http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030215coalenviro...
- lionhearted 17y ago
  Very true, but that's a massive easier-said-than-done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire#Extinguishing_coal_fires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire#Extinguishing_co... I actually didn't know China had underground coal fires - I learned a little about the topic reading about the underground coal fires in Pennsylvania: http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm It's expensive and dangerous to put them out as described in Wikipedia, but also the success rate can be fairly low. With our currency technology, you can put out 99% of the fire and have it restart and spread again quickly and undetected. From Wikipedia, italics mine: > In 2004, the Chinese government claimed success in extinguishing a mine fire at a colliery near Urumqi in China's Xinjiang province that had been burning since 1874. However, a March 2008 Time magazine article quotes researcher Steven Q. Andrews as saying, "I decided to go to see how it was extinguished, and flames were visible and the entire thing was still burning.... They said it was put out, and who is to say otherwise?"
  - DaniFong 17y ago
    Interesting. One thing that strikes me is that CO2 is a better asphyxiating agent than nitrogen: it is inert to combustion and it is 47.3% denser than N2, so it will stay put if you can keep it under 147.3% of ambient temperature. And people are looking for places to sequester CO2, anyway. It will asphyxiate animals and people too, though, so you'd better not have any leaks...
- bilbo0s 17y ago
  You know this is the reason I find myself leaning conservative with respect to environmental issues. All of these environmentalists loudly proclaim that China and the US are the profligate polluters in the neighborhood. I have looked up the numbers, and per capita, Australians release five times more carbon into the atmosphere than we do. Yet I have not once seen or heard an environmentalist take Australia to task for their profligate behavior. Do we pollute more than Australia, yes, only because there are more people here. We have to heat 100 million homes in the winter, right now that necessitates some carbon emissions. We are number one in researching alternative energy technologies to attempt to change this state of affairs, but what would you have us do in the meantime? Freeze? You bring up China, well I checked the numbers there as well, and Australia releases eleven times more carbon per capita than China. Will China release more carbon in the future, yes, because instead of the 300 million people that currently enjoy little luxuries like heat in the winter, that number will swell to well over 900 million. Incidentally, guess who is number two in researching alternative energy technologies in an attempt to proactively address their future energy needs. China. What would you have them do in the interim? Freeze as well? Yet China and the US are the "problem". No, the real reason these 'environmentalists' are anti China and US is because it is politically fashionable to be so. It has very little to do with the actual numbers and the reasons behind them. Sane and safe programs for the reduction of carbon emissions should have some basis in per capita emissions. And the evidence is more than clear that many nations have much further to go than the US and China in this regard.
dpatru 17y ago
Although I hate communism, I find myself more in agreement with China than US policymakers with respect to war, trade, economic policy, and regulation. China seems more pro-freedom than the US. Case in point: by wrecking the Copenhagen deal, China has helped the cause of liberty in the western countries by making it harder for governments in increase taxes and regulations on its citizens.
- rms 17y ago
  I'm hesitant to start any argument in this thread, but... While I greatly respect China's economic system ("Socialism with Chinese characteristics"), there are very few definitions of freedom where China is more pro-freedom than the USA.
  - maxklein 17y ago
    I went to china and the US: * Nobody questioned me on entry into china like I was a criminal * Policemen don't walk around with guns like they are ready to gun you down * When a girl removes her shirt, she she is not jailed in china * When I drink excessively and start acting the fool, I am treated like an idiot in china, not like a criminal I visited both countries. In china, people are happy and friendly. In American, people are trapped and unfriendly. China feels a lot freeer than the United States.
    - TeHCrAzY 17y ago
      When you were in China, you were shown only what you were meant to see. There are large portions of China which are unavaliable to tourists.
      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
      - papersmith 17y ago
        I'm not sure what you meant by unavailable to tourists. Nobody forces you to stay with a tour or anything, it's not like North Korea. Of course, if you stick to a guided-tour, you probably won't see too much. If you leave the city, you can find plenty of backpackers. The friendliness probably has more to do with the culture being more laid-back then political freedom.
chaosprophet 17y ago
I'm not sure of this, but all that I have read on the subject seems to indicate that the US wasn't willing to go in for legally binding emission cuts either. If I'm not wrong on that count, then what basis does the US have to go about trying to force other countries, especially developing countries into legally binding accords? Isn't the US the single largest polluting country? Should they not be cleaning up their own act too?
- dandelany 17y ago
  > Isn't the US the single largest polluting country? Actually, no. At least in terms of CO2 emissions, China replaced us as #1 in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...
  - chaosprophet 17y ago
    That is only on account of actual emissions in the US. What if you take the amount of deforestation in Africa every year to support the US into account? IMO the US seems to blindly insist that everyone other than itself should be punishable, while it will continue to make vague promises and absolutely rubbish the Kyoto Protocol. EDIT: Rephrased that last sentence.
    - dandelany 17y ago
      I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just clarifying that the "official data" conflicts with your original comment. You're welcome to take that data as you wish, but it's better than the citations, or lack thereof, that you've provided. Also, how did you get from "I'm not sure of this..." to "The fact remains..."?
      - chaosprophet 17y ago
        >Also, how did you get from "I'm not sure of this..." to "The fact remains..."? My bad. I kinda assumed, since nobody was actually contradicting it. I'll edit it now.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
shawndrost 17y ago
It's pretty rational of them (and arguably, morally upright): emissions-per-capita is caused by a high standard of living (barring a few confounding factors), and industrialized nations are asking China to restrict themselves to a much lower emissions-per-capita than we are targeting ourselves.
- netcan 17y ago
  The only deal anyone is really talking about is reduction in emissions based on 1990 (or perhaps some other date) levels. Rich countries make faster, deeper cuts and subsidize cuts in poor countries. Pretty much any variations are within that framework. I think there is also a perceived unfairness or indignation surrounding the issues. Depending on how you present things, it's always possible to present you country as getting screwed. There are always those whos agenda (which might even be legit) it serves to tell people they are being screwed. In every country in the world there are powerful people going around with that message. Rich Countries: * You are expected to make emitting carbon more expensive here then it is in other countries. That means that steel mills, factories & the like will shut down & reopened in China. Jobs will be shipped overseas(embellishment) No emissions are prevented since the factory gets reopened in India/China anyway. * This is a plan to tax US/EU suppliers a& transfer this money to China/India. Poor Countries: * You are expected to pay for the problems created by those countries with over 100 years of industrialized history. * Going by 1990 levels means dividing a world environmental resource. Since we were polluting 1/5 as much as US/EU in 1990, we get a smaller slice in the future. (related) This deal means that whoever polluted in the past is entitled to polluted in the future. *There is a known quantity (whatever it takes to get from 380 to 450 ppm) of carbon we can emmit globally. Divide that by 6 billion. Each one of these arguments is true in a way.
  - pyre 17y ago
    HN wraps blocks that are prefixed with 2+ spaces in <pre><code> tags so, you'll probably want to word-wrap things yourself.
- lutorm 17y ago
  I never saw what actual per-capita emissions were on the table. Did they really want the developing nations to stay at a lower value indefinitely?
lionhearted 17y ago
I would strongly recommend this 4 minute video to everyone on the issue: "Michael Crichton on Environmentalism as a Religion" - the video talks about how environmentalism offers salvation and a complete belief structure for many people, but that the religion/faith aspect of it gets in the way of science. Regardless of your views on the environment, it might be insightful for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv9OSxTy1aU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv9OSxTy1aU As for China, I lived in China for a short time a few years back. I wasn't convinced at all that they're the next world power - the government and infrastructure were so far behind the West that I didn't think it'd happen. But watching how China adjusted when the U.S. banking sector fell apart last year has convinced me that they're going to the top. The American government printed a lot, which should make our U.S. Dollars fall relative to other currencies, including Chinese RMB. China in turn printed about the same amount of money and invested it into Chinese infrastructure and tax breaks for their businesses - driving the cost of Chinese goods even lower. They're building the same sort of infrastructure and industrialization that the United States did during the Cold War. They're also liberalizing and gradually loosening and eliminating central government while we're currently expanding the role of central government. Considering their population is three times larger, if the United States want to keep military parity with China over the next 30 years, they'll have to change their economic policies or they're going to go bankrupt. There's some difficult choices facing the USA soon - China is definitely on the rise. They face some hurdles - can they integrate and keep friendly the Cantonese, Xianjianese, Tibetans, Macanese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kongese to some extent into the primarily Mandarin Han government? The effects of the One Child Policy will be interesting to see - the gender imbalance and all. China breaking into Civil War is a very real possibility in the next 30-50 years, but if they don't, they're on the rise globally and will be the next world power.
- mhartl 17y ago
  environmentalism offers salvation and a complete belief structure for many people Environmentalism is but one piece, but you're right that we're dealing with a religion here. Moreover, the narrative of sin and redemption is not a coincidence: progressivism (including its environmentalism subset) is not metaphorically a religion; it is a real, living (nontheistic) religion,* the clear intellectual descendant of mainline ecumenical protestant Christianity. A century ago it was the WCTU and the YMCA; today it's NOW and Greenpeace. *If a nontheistic religion seems like a contradiction in terms, the problem is merely linguistic; English lacks a good word meaning "all religious beliefs minus the supernatural stuff". Whatever you call it, a nontheistic religion can't help but show its roots: a nontheistic sect of Hinduism, for example, would still be identifiably Hindu, despite the absence of gods; it would likely lack a sin-redemption narrative, but would probably include some sort of caste system.
jacoblyles 17y ago
The Chinese leadership strikes me as pragmatic. If they thought the harm from Global Warming would be more costly than carbon emission cuts, they would make them. But neither China nor India wants to remain poor. Any poor country is likely to benefit much more from development than the harm development will cause through additional carbon emissions (unless it's the Maldives). And neither countries' regimes can benefit from buying the votes of a green constituency with expensive projects of uncertain value. Rather, their legitimacy is strengthened by delivering increased living standards, and that is just what they intend to do. The author is disingenuous to claim that these countries are acting in the service of of "planetary suicide", the breathless accusations of western green activists to the contrary. The Chinese leadership is well-educated. They can read the IPCC reports. They know what the likely consequences are. Planetary suicide is not among them. Their leaders also know it's a hell of a lot better to be not-poor than poor. They think they are making a rational decision by frustrating the western green lobby's plans. And I'm pretty sure they are right. It's going to take a hell of a lot bigger bribe than $100 billion to convince them otherwise.
- baguasquirrel 17y ago
  Define "planetary suicide." I'm sure that the Chinese leadership isn't too concerned because their patch of Earth is well-positioned to whatever chaos will ensue. I'm sure the sub-Saharan nations, Australia and perhaps even the Indian subcontinent would beg to differ though. A two degree centigrade difference, real or imagined, wouldn't be a big deal to a modernized China, nor would it be a big deal to those of us living in North America. What's more is that China is blessed with regards to natural defenses. These same natural defenses also lead to isolation. The Chinese paid dearly for their relative isolation in the 19th and 20th centuries. But if all havoc were to break out in the rest of the world, then they'd do comparatively well in their present state. It's all just politics, plain and simple.
  - Zarkonnen 17y ago
    The problem with a 2C warming is that it won't just cause everywhere to become two degrees warmer. It will mean a massive upset in weather patterns and large areas of land that are currently arable becoming barren, along with a lot of fertile or inhabited land becoming flooded.
deleted 17y ago
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cnanon 17y ago
There's no need for China to cut emissions. As western economy fails in the next 2 decades, its emissions will drastically fall as well. So why should east cut down emissions if western economy will cut back by itself? This whole Copenhagen fiasco was to put a lid on developing nations so the west could further delay the transfer of global power to the Asian nations. USA had no intention of cutting its own emissions but asks China that they should. What kind of deal is that?
- netcan 17y ago
  Copenhagen is really waking the conspiracy theorists. If the US had agreed to a minor cut, China would have probably agreed to limiting growth and eventually (10-15 years reducing). The argument is how big the gap is. I've mostly heard talk of between a 15% & a 30% delay for developing countries. @ 15% delay, the US cuts by 5% & China gets to grow by 10%. 20 years later the US cuts by 20% & China cuts by 5%. etc. Any deal that emerges will probably slightly favour the developing world. It is they that will need to pay for most of it because they have the money. "The West" will subsidise "The East's" reductions somewhat. The only qestion is how much. The US is holding up the show at the moment. Maybe after next US elections they will be ready for 5-10% cuts with China limiting itself to about 10% growth (by 2020 or 2025). Most other developed countries are ready for 20% by 2020 now.
  - thaumaturgy 17y ago
    > Maybe after next US elections... I doubt it. I expect that the next POTUS will be a conservative Republican.
    - test543 17y ago
      Sarah? :D
vikram 17y ago
1.6 Billion people (quarter of the world's population), live without electricity. All of these people live in the developing nations. Without progress, these nations can't bring basic things like a glowing light bulb to large sections of their population. I don't know if the chinese leadership is pragmatic or not, but it sort of makes sense to help your population today, than to help the planet in 50 years time. I don’t think the choice is Having lived in India and the UK, I'd say there is already a massive difference between India and UK, in terms of what we used. In India even if you can pay for water/electricity you just don't have access to it, there are regular power cuts in the summers as much as 8 hours a day in most cities. Running Water is available for a few hours a day. Most rich people drill a well and have a pump which pumps water into an overhead tank. For electricity, the rich have diesel generators, to run their homes. In the UK, I've never experienced a power cut, never had any water shortage, no cut of gas to the house. There just isn't any infrastructure in poorer nations. If you are poor you are on your own. If you are rich you are still on your own, but you have the resources to fix the problem for yourself. I think it is important that 1.6 billion of us get electricity some time in the near future.
- eru 17y ago
  Electricity does not have damage the climate. Take wind power, or nuclear as examples. Or geothermic stuff.
  - gtt 17y ago
    Sadly, it's easier said than done.
    - eru 17y ago
      Indeed. Although the problems with nuclear are mostly `ethical' (or very long-term technical).
  - masomenos 17y ago
    but can you build and maintain a wind turbine without using fossil fuels? Or mine and refine uranium? Total lifecycle analysis is complicated, and important in these questions.
moon_of_moon 17y ago
From the Guidelines for this forum: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics,..." Please don't turn this into a place for politics, instant support groups, lolcats, and recycled memes from 4chan. That place is called reddit.
nice1 17y ago
As much as I hate the commies (wherever they reside), I think the Chinese saved the world from a scam of unheard proportions. To make far-reaching policy decisions based on doctored data and questionable analysis would be criminal. Until there is an open, solid scientific basis for the AGW hypothesis absolutely nothing should be undertaken along the lines of what these people suggest. There are other serious environmental issues (like contamination) which deserve far more attention; they are understood and well documented. AGW at the moment looks like a scam. It is a good thing the Chinese couldn't be bought off or tricked by the fraudsters.
miked 17y ago
I'd like to take a little poll, if I might. The basis: 1) There was a plan in Copenhagen to give $100 billion to poor nations to "help them cope with climate change". 2) Since 1998 the temperature of the earth has fallen about 0.4 F. 3) The actions these nations need to take against global warming are very different than those they need to take against global cooling. Questions: 1) Is the money they were to be given to be spent to protect against warming, or cooling? 2) Whichever one you picked, why aren't they more specific in their namimg? Why the ambiguity?
Zarkonnen 17y ago
One of the assumptions here is that economic growth necessarily makes people happier. Studies on happiness indicate that up to a point, more wealth makes people happier. After that, there is no impact. So forgive me if I'm cynical about the hysteria about the effects of cutting carbon emissions. A lot of people live in abject poverty, but that is a problem of distribution, not total numbers. The gap between the rich and poor has been widening so quickly that despite the growth in GDP, in real terms, the poor have been getting poorer. Economic growth, as it stands, does little to help most people, and much to further fill the pockets of the rich.
Tichy 17y ago
I wonder, is there or could there be a list of emissions, not by countries, but by companies and industries? For example, wasn't there a news item recently about cargo shipping being the worst offender? Maybe such a list would be more efficient than certificate trading between countries. Just as for optimizing computer programs, it might make sense to eliminate the worst offenders first. Maybe a lot of bad offenders would be easy to fix. Negotiating emission rates between countries might be akin to premature optimization. Maybe satellites could be used to spot CO2 emission hot spots? With some additional logic, hot spots could be assigned to industries (ie if it is at sea, it is likely to be a ship. If it is on land, Google Maps probably knows the name of the company). Just wondering how to compile such a list...
- Rabidgremlin 17y ago
  I agree this is the way to go...
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xster 17y ago
I don't quite see how the warmongering of guardian managed to get on hacker news
heresy 17y ago
Saner heads in the room prevailed (Chinese heads). And I'm glad they did, they did us a service. I don't want my country to be shipping out hundreds of billions a year to despotic regimes in the hope that there is a chance in hell the money would go to the uses it was intended for and not serve as a slush fund for well connected government officials. I don't want my country to do the worst possible thing it could to its already weak economy by hamstringing it even further compared to rivals who do not have the same costs. Also, I don't buy the guilt argument, I'm not about to apologize for the past 300 years of progress brought to humanity care of the West. "Reparations" should not even be on the table in any way shape or form, they should be thanking us.
joubert 17y ago
Hedging my bets, I'm saving up for my space ticket. http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/space-tickets/ http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/space-tickets/

349 points by MartinMond 17y ago

Amazing...it's like reading reddit.com, but with Hacker News as the title. http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ahmdz/how_do_i_know_china_wrecked_the_copenhagen_deal_i/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ahmdz/how_do_i_kn...

weaksauce 17y ago
To be fair, they used the exact title of the article which is the way that hacker news guidelines are set forth. I think your comment should have been more along the lines of "Amazing... it's crazy that a title on reddit.com did not get editorialized to sensationalize the article."
- elblanco 17y ago
  Too true, too true.
  - moon_of_moon 17y ago
    I think your comment should have been : oh crap here come the 4chan wannabes. Lets urgently start looking for a new aggregator to frequent.
    - elblanco 17y ago
      That would have been too n00bish, and besides, some people are going through and systematically down-voting every comment I post if you notice (as I'm sure this one will be, jerks).
sorbus 17y ago
They're both news aggregators; it's not so unusual to see the same content on both, as it's certainly an interesting article, and the identicalness of the titles is due to the fact that that was the original title.
- axod 17y ago
  You expect Reddit to be full of politics and environmental stuff. Personally I don't like it on HN.
  - moon_of_moon 17y ago
    Agreed. Dont it let it degrade to that level please.

ars 17y ago

If china would simply put out all it's underground coal mine fires, that alone could remove 360 million tons of CO2 emissions. (As much as all the cars and light trucks in the US.) Just pure waste from china is alone responsible for a very large chunk of CO2 emissions. http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030215coalenviro4p4.asp http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030215coalenviro...

lionhearted 17y ago
Very true, but that's a massive easier-said-than-done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire#Extinguishing_coal_fires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire#Extinguishing_co... I actually didn't know China had underground coal fires - I learned a little about the topic reading about the underground coal fires in Pennsylvania: http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm It's expensive and dangerous to put them out as described in Wikipedia, but also the success rate can be fairly low. With our currency technology, you can put out 99% of the fire and have it restart and spread again quickly and undetected. From Wikipedia, italics mine: > In 2004, the Chinese government claimed success in extinguishing a mine fire at a colliery near Urumqi in China's Xinjiang province that had been burning since 1874. However, a March 2008 Time magazine article quotes researcher Steven Q. Andrews as saying, "I decided to go to see how it was extinguished, and flames were visible and the entire thing was still burning.... They said it was put out, and who is to say otherwise?"
- DaniFong 17y ago
  Interesting. One thing that strikes me is that CO2 is a better asphyxiating agent than nitrogen: it is inert to combustion and it is 47.3% denser than N2, so it will stay put if you can keep it under 147.3% of ambient temperature. And people are looking for places to sequester CO2, anyway. It will asphyxiate animals and people too, though, so you'd better not have any leaks...
bilbo0s 17y ago
You know this is the reason I find myself leaning conservative with respect to environmental issues. All of these environmentalists loudly proclaim that China and the US are the profligate polluters in the neighborhood. I have looked up the numbers, and per capita, Australians release five times more carbon into the atmosphere than we do. Yet I have not once seen or heard an environmentalist take Australia to task for their profligate behavior. Do we pollute more than Australia, yes, only because there are more people here. We have to heat 100 million homes in the winter, right now that necessitates some carbon emissions. We are number one in researching alternative energy technologies to attempt to change this state of affairs, but what would you have us do in the meantime? Freeze? You bring up China, well I checked the numbers there as well, and Australia releases eleven times more carbon per capita than China. Will China release more carbon in the future, yes, because instead of the 300 million people that currently enjoy little luxuries like heat in the winter, that number will swell to well over 900 million. Incidentally, guess who is number two in researching alternative energy technologies in an attempt to proactively address their future energy needs. China. What would you have them do in the interim? Freeze as well? Yet China and the US are the "problem". No, the real reason these 'environmentalists' are anti China and US is because it is politically fashionable to be so. It has very little to do with the actual numbers and the reasons behind them. Sane and safe programs for the reduction of carbon emissions should have some basis in per capita emissions. And the evidence is more than clear that many nations have much further to go than the US and China in this regard.

dpatru 17y ago

Although I hate communism, I find myself more in agreement with China than US policymakers with respect to war, trade, economic policy, and regulation. China seems more pro-freedom than the US. Case in point: by wrecking the Copenhagen deal, China has helped the cause of liberty in the western countries by making it harder for governments in increase taxes and regulations on its citizens.

rms 17y ago
I'm hesitant to start any argument in this thread, but... While I greatly respect China's economic system ("Socialism with Chinese characteristics"), there are very few definitions of freedom where China is more pro-freedom than the USA.
- maxklein 17y ago
  I went to china and the US: * Nobody questioned me on entry into china like I was a criminal * Policemen don't walk around with guns like they are ready to gun you down * When a girl removes her shirt, she she is not jailed in china * When I drink excessively and start acting the fool, I am treated like an idiot in china, not like a criminal I visited both countries. In china, people are happy and friendly. In American, people are trapped and unfriendly. China feels a lot freeer than the United States.
  - TeHCrAzY 17y ago
    When you were in China, you were shown only what you were meant to see. There are large portions of China which are unavaliable to tourists.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - papersmith 17y ago
      I'm not sure what you meant by unavailable to tourists. Nobody forces you to stay with a tour or anything, it's not like North Korea. Of course, if you stick to a guided-tour, you probably won't see too much. If you leave the city, you can find plenty of backpackers. The friendliness probably has more to do with the culture being more laid-back then political freedom.

chaosprophet 17y ago

I'm not sure of this, but all that I have read on the subject seems to indicate that the US wasn't willing to go in for legally binding emission cuts either. If I'm not wrong on that count, then what basis does the US have to go about trying to force other countries, especially developing countries into legally binding accords? Isn't the US the single largest polluting country? Should they not be cleaning up their own act too?

dandelany 17y ago
> Isn't the US the single largest polluting country? Actually, no. At least in terms of CO2 emissions, China replaced us as #1 in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...
- chaosprophet 17y ago
  That is only on account of actual emissions in the US. What if you take the amount of deforestation in Africa every year to support the US into account? IMO the US seems to blindly insist that everyone other than itself should be punishable, while it will continue to make vague promises and absolutely rubbish the Kyoto Protocol. EDIT: Rephrased that last sentence.
  - dandelany 17y ago
    I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just clarifying that the "official data" conflicts with your original comment. You're welcome to take that data as you wish, but it's better than the citations, or lack thereof, that you've provided. Also, how did you get from "I'm not sure of this..." to "The fact remains..."?
    - chaosprophet 17y ago
      >Also, how did you get from "I'm not sure of this..." to "The fact remains..."? My bad. I kinda assumed, since nobody was actually contradicting it. I'll edit it now.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

shawndrost 17y ago

It's pretty rational of them (and arguably, morally upright): emissions-per-capita is caused by a high standard of living (barring a few confounding factors), and industrialized nations are asking China to restrict themselves to a much lower emissions-per-capita than we are targeting ourselves.

netcan 17y ago
The only deal anyone is really talking about is reduction in emissions based on 1990 (or perhaps some other date) levels. Rich countries make faster, deeper cuts and subsidize cuts in poor countries. Pretty much any variations are within that framework. I think there is also a perceived unfairness or indignation surrounding the issues. Depending on how you present things, it's always possible to present you country as getting screwed. There are always those whos agenda (which might even be legit) it serves to tell people they are being screwed. In every country in the world there are powerful people going around with that message. Rich Countries: * You are expected to make emitting carbon more expensive here then it is in other countries. That means that steel mills, factories & the like will shut down & reopened in China. Jobs will be shipped overseas(embellishment) No emissions are prevented since the factory gets reopened in India/China anyway. * This is a plan to tax US/EU suppliers a& transfer this money to China/India. Poor Countries: * You are expected to pay for the problems created by those countries with over 100 years of industrialized history. * Going by 1990 levels means dividing a world environmental resource. Since we were polluting 1/5 as much as US/EU in 1990, we get a smaller slice in the future. (related) This deal means that whoever polluted in the past is entitled to polluted in the future. *There is a known quantity (whatever it takes to get from 380 to 450 ppm) of carbon we can emmit globally. Divide that by 6 billion. Each one of these arguments is true in a way.
- pyre 17y ago
  HN wraps blocks that are prefixed with 2+ spaces in <pre><code> tags so, you'll probably want to word-wrap things yourself.
lutorm 17y ago
I never saw what actual per-capita emissions were on the table. Did they really want the developing nations to stay at a lower value indefinitely?

lionhearted 17y ago

I would strongly recommend this 4 minute video to everyone on the issue: "Michael Crichton on Environmentalism as a Religion" - the video talks about how environmentalism offers salvation and a complete belief structure for many people, but that the religion/faith aspect of it gets in the way of science. Regardless of your views on the environment, it might be insightful for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv9OSxTy1aU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv9OSxTy1aU As for China, I lived in China for a short time a few years back. I wasn't convinced at all that they're the next world power - the government and infrastructure were so far behind the West that I didn't think it'd happen. But watching how China adjusted when the U.S. banking sector fell apart last year has convinced me that they're going to the top. The American government printed a lot, which should make our U.S. Dollars fall relative to other currencies, including Chinese RMB. China in turn printed about the same amount of money and invested it into Chinese infrastructure and tax breaks for their businesses - driving the cost of Chinese goods even lower. They're building the same sort of infrastructure and industrialization that the United States did during the Cold War. They're also liberalizing and gradually loosening and eliminating central government while we're currently expanding the role of central government. Considering their population is three times larger, if the United States want to keep military parity with China over the next 30 years, they'll have to change their economic policies or they're going to go bankrupt. There's some difficult choices facing the USA soon - China is definitely on the rise. They face some hurdles - can they integrate and keep friendly the Cantonese, Xianjianese, Tibetans, Macanese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kongese to some extent into the primarily Mandarin Han government? The effects of the One Child Policy will be interesting to see - the gender imbalance and all. China breaking into Civil War is a very real possibility in the next 30-50 years, but if they don't, they're on the rise globally and will be the next world power.

mhartl 17y ago
environmentalism offers salvation and a complete belief structure for many people Environmentalism is but one piece, but you're right that we're dealing with a religion here. Moreover, the narrative of sin and redemption is not a coincidence: progressivism (including its environmentalism subset) is not metaphorically a religion; it is a real, living (nontheistic) religion,* the clear intellectual descendant of mainline ecumenical protestant Christianity. A century ago it was the WCTU and the YMCA; today it's NOW and Greenpeace. *If a nontheistic religion seems like a contradiction in terms, the problem is merely linguistic; English lacks a good word meaning "all religious beliefs minus the supernatural stuff". Whatever you call it, a nontheistic religion can't help but show its roots: a nontheistic sect of Hinduism, for example, would still be identifiably Hindu, despite the absence of gods; it would likely lack a sin-redemption narrative, but would probably include some sort of caste system.

jacoblyles 17y ago

The Chinese leadership strikes me as pragmatic. If they thought the harm from Global Warming would be more costly than carbon emission cuts, they would make them. But neither China nor India wants to remain poor. Any poor country is likely to benefit much more from development than the harm development will cause through additional carbon emissions (unless it's the Maldives). And neither countries' regimes can benefit from buying the votes of a green constituency with expensive projects of uncertain value. Rather, their legitimacy is strengthened by delivering increased living standards, and that is just what they intend to do. The author is disingenuous to claim that these countries are acting in the service of of "planetary suicide", the breathless accusations of western green activists to the contrary. The Chinese leadership is well-educated. They can read the IPCC reports. They know what the likely consequences are. Planetary suicide is not among them. Their leaders also know it's a hell of a lot better to be not-poor than poor. They think they are making a rational decision by frustrating the western green lobby's plans. And I'm pretty sure they are right. It's going to take a hell of a lot bigger bribe than $100 billion to convince them otherwise.

baguasquirrel 17y ago
Define "planetary suicide." I'm sure that the Chinese leadership isn't too concerned because their patch of Earth is well-positioned to whatever chaos will ensue. I'm sure the sub-Saharan nations, Australia and perhaps even the Indian subcontinent would beg to differ though. A two degree centigrade difference, real or imagined, wouldn't be a big deal to a modernized China, nor would it be a big deal to those of us living in North America. What's more is that China is blessed with regards to natural defenses. These same natural defenses also lead to isolation. The Chinese paid dearly for their relative isolation in the 19th and 20th centuries. But if all havoc were to break out in the rest of the world, then they'd do comparatively well in their present state. It's all just politics, plain and simple.
- Zarkonnen 17y ago
  The problem with a 2C warming is that it won't just cause everywhere to become two degrees warmer. It will mean a massive upset in weather patterns and large areas of land that are currently arable becoming barren, along with a lot of fertile or inhabited land becoming flooded.

deleted 17y ago

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cnanon 17y ago

There's no need for China to cut emissions. As western economy fails in the next 2 decades, its emissions will drastically fall as well. So why should east cut down emissions if western economy will cut back by itself? This whole Copenhagen fiasco was to put a lid on developing nations so the west could further delay the transfer of global power to the Asian nations. USA had no intention of cutting its own emissions but asks China that they should. What kind of deal is that?

netcan 17y ago
Copenhagen is really waking the conspiracy theorists. If the US had agreed to a minor cut, China would have probably agreed to limiting growth and eventually (10-15 years reducing). The argument is how big the gap is. I've mostly heard talk of between a 15% & a 30% delay for developing countries. @ 15% delay, the US cuts by 5% & China gets to grow by 10%. 20 years later the US cuts by 20% & China cuts by 5%. etc. Any deal that emerges will probably slightly favour the developing world. It is they that will need to pay for most of it because they have the money. "The West" will subsidise "The East's" reductions somewhat. The only qestion is how much. The US is holding up the show at the moment. Maybe after next US elections they will be ready for 5-10% cuts with China limiting itself to about 10% growth (by 2020 or 2025). Most other developed countries are ready for 20% by 2020 now.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  > Maybe after next US elections... I doubt it. I expect that the next POTUS will be a conservative Republican.
  - test543 17y ago
    Sarah? :D

vikram 17y ago

1.6 Billion people (quarter of the world's population), live without electricity. All of these people live in the developing nations. Without progress, these nations can't bring basic things like a glowing light bulb to large sections of their population. I don't know if the chinese leadership is pragmatic or not, but it sort of makes sense to help your population today, than to help the planet in 50 years time. I don’t think the choice is Having lived in India and the UK, I'd say there is already a massive difference between India and UK, in terms of what we used. In India even if you can pay for water/electricity you just don't have access to it, there are regular power cuts in the summers as much as 8 hours a day in most cities. Running Water is available for a few hours a day. Most rich people drill a well and have a pump which pumps water into an overhead tank. For electricity, the rich have diesel generators, to run their homes. In the UK, I've never experienced a power cut, never had any water shortage, no cut of gas to the house. There just isn't any infrastructure in poorer nations. If you are poor you are on your own. If you are rich you are still on your own, but you have the resources to fix the problem for yourself. I think it is important that 1.6 billion of us get electricity some time in the near future.

eru 17y ago
Electricity does not have damage the climate. Take wind power, or nuclear as examples. Or geothermic stuff.
- gtt 17y ago
  Sadly, it's easier said than done.
  - eru 17y ago
    Indeed. Although the problems with nuclear are mostly `ethical' (or very long-term technical).
- masomenos 17y ago
  but can you build and maintain a wind turbine without using fossil fuels? Or mine and refine uranium? Total lifecycle analysis is complicated, and important in these questions.

moon_of_moon 17y ago

From the Guidelines for this forum: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics,..." Please don't turn this into a place for politics, instant support groups, lolcats, and recycled memes from 4chan. That place is called reddit.

nice1 17y ago

As much as I hate the commies (wherever they reside), I think the Chinese saved the world from a scam of unheard proportions. To make far-reaching policy decisions based on doctored data and questionable analysis would be criminal. Until there is an open, solid scientific basis for the AGW hypothesis absolutely nothing should be undertaken along the lines of what these people suggest. There are other serious environmental issues (like contamination) which deserve far more attention; they are understood and well documented. AGW at the moment looks like a scam. It is a good thing the Chinese couldn't be bought off or tricked by the fraudsters.

miked 17y ago

I'd like to take a little poll, if I might. The basis: 1) There was a plan in Copenhagen to give $100 billion to poor nations to "help them cope with climate change". 2) Since 1998 the temperature of the earth has fallen about 0.4 F. 3) The actions these nations need to take against global warming are very different than those they need to take against global cooling. Questions: 1) Is the money they were to be given to be spent to protect against warming, or cooling? 2) Whichever one you picked, why aren't they more specific in their namimg? Why the ambiguity?

Zarkonnen 17y ago

One of the assumptions here is that economic growth necessarily makes people happier. Studies on happiness indicate that up to a point, more wealth makes people happier. After that, there is no impact. So forgive me if I'm cynical about the hysteria about the effects of cutting carbon emissions. A lot of people live in abject poverty, but that is a problem of distribution, not total numbers. The gap between the rich and poor has been widening so quickly that despite the growth in GDP, in real terms, the poor have been getting poorer. Economic growth, as it stands, does little to help most people, and much to further fill the pockets of the rich.

Tichy 17y ago

I wonder, is there or could there be a list of emissions, not by countries, but by companies and industries? For example, wasn't there a news item recently about cargo shipping being the worst offender? Maybe such a list would be more efficient than certificate trading between countries. Just as for optimizing computer programs, it might make sense to eliminate the worst offenders first. Maybe a lot of bad offenders would be easy to fix. Negotiating emission rates between countries might be akin to premature optimization. Maybe satellites could be used to spot CO2 emission hot spots? With some additional logic, hot spots could be assigned to industries (ie if it is at sea, it is likely to be a ship. If it is on land, Google Maps probably knows the name of the company). Just wondering how to compile such a list...

Rabidgremlin 17y ago
I agree this is the way to go...

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xster 17y ago

I don't quite see how the warmongering of guardian managed to get on hacker news

heresy 17y ago

Saner heads in the room prevailed (Chinese heads). And I'm glad they did, they did us a service. I don't want my country to be shipping out hundreds of billions a year to despotic regimes in the hope that there is a chance in hell the money would go to the uses it was intended for and not serve as a slush fund for well connected government officials. I don't want my country to do the worst possible thing it could to its already weak economy by hamstringing it even further compared to rivals who do not have the same costs. Also, I don't buy the guilt argument, I'm not about to apologize for the past 300 years of progress brought to humanity care of the West. "Reparations" should not even be on the table in any way shape or form, they should be thanking us.

joubert 17y ago

Hedging my bets, I'm saving up for my space ticket. http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/space-tickets/ http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/space-tickets/