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> hold China and India responsible for their wildly outsized levels of pollution once you control for their per capita contribution to humanity China and India
by Mikeb85 7y ago
> hold China and India responsible for their wildly outsized levels of pollution once you control for their per capita contribution to humanity
China and India contribute 4-10 times less CO2 per capita than the US.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoThe world doesn't care about per capita.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThe people in the world certainly care.
- arrrg 7y agoThat’s an absurd statement and reeks of the most vile arrogance. I’m so confused, do you honestly and in good faith make a statement like that? Do you not understand the disastrous social and political implications of approaching the problem like that? Do you not understand that fairness is central to this problem because a coordinated global effort is necessary and there is no fascist world police and hopefully never will be so we are dependent on convincing everyone and fairness is obviously central to this? Humans care about per capita emissions because that’s one of the only ways to make this fair and we need to make this fair or else we will convince no one. You are solving a social/political problem. Arrogant statements like yours won’t.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoYou won't make a difference until you stop the over population. The biggest contributor is simply being born.
- nabnob 7y agoSince the United States has one of the highest energy usage rates per capita, do you mean tackling overpopulation in the United States?
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoThe US has 330 million people, China has nearly 1.5 billion. No I think the US is just fine. Per capita only matters if you're okay ignoring the bulk of the problem.
- navigatesol 7y ago>China and India contribute 4-10 times less CO2 per capita than the US. And rising, fast. Besides that, the planet doesn't care about per capita numbers.
- Mikeb85 7y agoPeople do though. Why should we stunt the developing world's growth just because we've already fucked things up too much? Seems like colonialism all over; the West gets to keep polluting, but the developing world must stop developing?
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoThe West doesn't get to have a huge population (nor does it need or want one) why should the developing world have one?
- kolbe 7y agoIf "stunting developing world growth" is too much of a cost to endure for your cause, then this isn't a WW2 level emergency. In WW2, the US deemed the ends to be important enough to kill innocent German/Japanese cogs and civilians by the millions.
- Mikeb85 7y agoIt isn't that level of emergency. If it was, western governments would be curbing the largest producers of emissions. Not asking the populace and other nations to curb emissions while doing nothing about more egregious activities.
- navigatesol 7y ago>Why should we stunt the developing world's growth just because we've already fucked things up too much? If climate change is a real concern, it's going to be a requirement.
- adrianN 7y agoThe planet also doesn't care about countries. Per capita seems to be the fairest comparison that one can make.
- tomjen3 7y agoYou skipped the last part. Personally I am not happy going down the route of weighting the value of humans, but if we don't come up a solution to global warming that is politically actionable, somebody will start arguing that the west should do something about the rise of China and India. If we can only support 4 billion people on the planet, nobody will want to be in the group that has to be killed.