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Unless the emissions from imports are counted, this is meaningless. If you produce an dohicky in the EU and it casues 1000 tons of emissions, and by doing thin
by iso1631 6y ago
Unless the emissions from imports are counted, this is meaningless.
If you produce an dohicky in the EU and it casues 1000 tons of emissions, and by doing things like greening your grid, moving transport to electric, etc, you drop that to 450 tons, that's great.
If you produce an dohicky in the EU and it casues 1000 tons of emissions, and you instead stop producing it, but instead import it from China, where it was produced with 1500 tons of emissions and used another 500 tons to transport it, that's terrible.
- safog 6y agoI think China themselves have targets to cut emissions and transition to clean energy [1]. They've been leading the charge on all clean energy tech so far. It looked like some of the dirtier industries are being moved on from China to SE Asia (Vietnam etc.) but there's a general push across the world to transition to clean energy. I'm pretty confident we'll get out of the doom and gloom existential threat to humanity scenarios, but still think large portions of the world's populations will be impacted by climate change. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/27/china-carbon-pledge-put-energy-system-reverse-wind-solar#:~:text=China's%20President%20Xi%20Jinping%20stunned,to%20virtually%20zero%20by%202060 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/27/china-ca....
- allendoerfer 6y ago> They've been leading the charge on all clean energy tech so far. No, they did not. Germany did and China profitted.
- M2Ys4U 6y agoChina has brought more renewable power online than almost everyone else combined. (although they have also brought online a shittonne of coal power, too)
- allendoerfer 6y agoGermany was a first mover in solar as well as in wind energy. It does not make sense to compare the installed capacity of China to Germany. It is 17 times bigger than Germany. China was the second mover profitting from proven technology and prices that were lowered for all players by subsidising not German companies, but the installation of solar power (no matter where it was from).
- rebuilder 6y agoRe: doom and gloom, I'm less worried about the immediate effects of climate change than I am about the knock-on effects. By which I mean wide scale war. For example, large areas in India (and other hot, humid places) may see lethal wet bulb temperatures during heatwaves within a few decades. I'm not looking forward to seeing how things play out when nuclear powers like India and Pakistan have to deal with hundreds of millions of their citizens needing to relocate.
- safog 6y agoI'm pretty worried about this as well - esp. about heatwaves, but I don't think that would result in nuclear war in our lifetimes. Unless China messes around with rivers that originate in Tibet that is. Possibly my biggest worry is water - providing water for 1bn+ people (and agriculture, and industries) is going to get harder and harder. I'm a techno optimist, so I'm hoping some variant of desalination tech will pull through if things get really bad. The other big worry as you say is the heat waves. If we do get emissions under control, I think we'll also end up doing some form of carbon scrubbing and don't just sit around in a 2C warmer world. None of our current climate engineering approaches are enough to arrest global warming by themselves but I'm hoping we can eventually control the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
- melling 6y agoYes, China makes the steel, etc. They use a lot of coal for all their energy needs. I remember this 13 year old story about dismantling a German steel mill and sending it to China. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/world/asia/21transfer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/world/asia/21transfer.htm...
- jiehong 6y agoThat's exactly why every country should do it.
- young_unixer 6y agoGood lucking getting China to agree.
- jedimastert 6y agoIt'd have to be economic, like a tariff proportional to the amount of emissions created by producing each good
- bognition 6y agoOne way or another we’re going to have to spend a lot of money to reverse the impact of climate change. Politicians don’t seem to have the stomach for a carbon tax and it’s increasingly looking like we’ll just get tariffs. So instead of explicitly working in the cost of carbon and decreasing spending we’re going to raise prices on everything which will likely have the same impact.
- root_axis 6y agoWhat's your point? China isn't cooperative, so no point in trying to reduce emissions?
- agent008t 6y agoIf the outcome is 'the West' handicapping its economies while China continues its growth and expansion, then will you not end up with a situation decades down the road where we all live in a China-dominant world?
- root_axis 6y agoReducing emissions does not equate to handicapping the economy.
- kieranmaine 6y agoThis is being looked at. See: - https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12228-EU-Green-Deal-carbon-border-adjustment-mechanism- https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa... - https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-carbon-border-tax-proposal-still-has-many-grey-areas/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-carbon-bord...
- candu 6y agoThanks for posting authoritative sources! IMHO it's unfortunate when the kneejerk reaction to "governments / leaders do thing X" is "but did they think about obvious edge case Y!?" Yes, they thought about obvious edge case Y; they employ / engage with loads of policy and domain experts for whom thinking about obvious edge case Y is table stakes, especially if Y is something one can think up off the cuff in a comment on HN. Perhaps not all of that thinking makes its way into final policies, whether for practical or political reasons. Perhaps much of that thinking - especially where nuance, expertise, or uncertainty are concerned - gets dropped from layperson reporting on the policy. Almost always, you can find publicly-available documents, transcripts, etc. that exhaustively list these details - all the arguments, all the community consultations, all the policy whitepapers. These all exist, and unlike in modern academic publishing, you can almost always find and read them for free! That said, I do agree that we as a society need to put much more effort into accurate communication around expert fields. Specialization, and the resulting glut of information written for and consumed by specialized audiences, is one of many forces that make it harder to build a shared, agreed-upon sense of reality. What might it look like to solve this problem in the 21st century?
- yostrovs 6y agoPerhaps your optimism about the diligence of politicians should meet the reality of history. Unintended consequences and people skirting the law are endemic to lawmaking.
- ploika 6y agoThat's not very a sophisticated take to be honest, especially when we're talking about a part of the world that gave us the word "realpolitik". Politicians disappoint and unscrupulous people exploit. Absolutely everyone already knows that. It doesn't mean that nothing ever improves.
- maccard 6y agoIt's easy to come onto HN and dismiss something like this. If the EU agreed to count emissions from China there would be something else to complain about. This is a huge move, and by itself it's not enough, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. It's also likely that an agreement like this is a required precondition of enforcing this with trading partners. The actual implementation of this will likely be a little from column A and a little from column B, and will likely have a positive impact on the current situation.
- dudul 6y agoIs it really a "huge move" though? I feel like we've seen something like that once or twice a year for the past decade at least.
- oseityphelysiol 6y agoI supposed what's different from previous announcements is now that we're to see somewhat more tangible deadlines, not "30 years in the future" which will likely never happen. It would be nice to plan for an even shorter amount of time, 5 years for instance, so that people announcing these goals are actually accountable if they're not reached, but it's a nice start.
- toyg 6y agoGlobal polices take time to bubble up. Say you get a local authority to agree to something (news), then multiple ones (news), then the entire state (news), then multiple states (news), then a continent-sized entity (news), then multiple continent-sized entities (news), then all entities (news). That's a lot of announcements for what could be, in practice, a single policy. When the problems are as many and as interlocked as this particular one is (involving emissions, energy sources, level-playing market issues, etc), you will have a multitude of agrements and initiatives, which will feel "multiplied" through news channels.
- pydry 6y agoAdded to which, China can be dealt with via restructuring a trade agreement provided there is the political will. Which it looks like there is. The fact that this plugs one hole in the sinking ship and not two is hardly evidence that it's crap.
- znpy 6y agoA more likely output would be chinese factories blatantly lying and certifying that such dohicky was produced using 450 tons of emissions and transport only uses like 350 tons of emissions. And you wouldn't have any way of verifying whether it's true and demonstrating it's false.
- arez 6y agoclassic HN comment, nothing is worth anything if not done 100% luckily it's not like that in the real world. Agreements like this are tiny footsteps in the right direction, people are being aware, acknowledging the problem, setting directions, goals, timelines etc. this all helps to reach the goal
- Benmcdonald__ 6y agoChina has a modern infrastructure with electric transportation and investing in green energy. Their emissions per capital are low The real problem is the US. High per capital emissions and weak commitments to reduce emissions
- posix_me_less 6y agoBoth are big polluters, both are real problems.
- 1234fdsazxcv 6y agoEmissions per capita are low because a lot of the population lives in poverty outside the city or in the city on the margins. It is not an eco-utopia.
- dane-pgp 6y agoThe US is free to plunge millions of its own citizens into poverty to take advantage of this "loophole" if it wishes.
- Benmcdonald__ 6y agoEven the rich lifestyles are greener than in America Manufacturing is dirty but then the whole world consumes these goods so that's not only a China problem
- iso1631 6y ago> Their emissions per capital are low Well I do see far more electric vehicles in Beijing and in Washington DC if that's what you mean
- latortuga 6y agoThere are plenty of non-"just import it from China" emissions that will be targeted by this. Think personal and public transportation, heating and cooling, and more. You can't exactly outsource heating your bedroom to China.
- calkuta 6y agoIn addition to this very obvious "out", there is also the fact that politicians today are unlikely to bear responsibility for outcomes that occur 10 or more years into the future. Promises to do things in the future seem to be a mainstay of international climate discussions, from Kyoto to Paris and onward.
- acdha 6y agoThis comment inadvertently highlights the importance of educating people about where they use fossil fuels. Manufacturing is a small part of the picture and there is a ton of inherently local usage: heating, transportation, and food are significant and easily changed by removing government subsidies for wasteful industries. A lot of personal decisions like eating less (or sustainably grown) meat, driving less, or using less HVAC are sensitive to government incentives. Here are two calculators for you to learn more about the topic: https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/ https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon... https://www.nytimes.com/ask/answers/lower-personal-carbon-footprint https://www.nytimes.com/ask/answers/lower-personal-carbon-fo...
- rebuilder 6y agoThe leadership of the EU states know this well. They also know that industry in the EU is a hugely important employer and a major shift to importing more goods would be very destabilizing. So what does it tell you that they choose to move ahead with this policy, even though it means potentially weakening their economies relative to the competition? To me, it says they finally see that the consequences of not acting to mitigate climate change are unacceptable, and that there's no solution without risk left.
- taneq 6y agoDon't let best be the enemy of good.
- hannob 6y agoThe EU is working on adressing this on some level, they want to introduce something they call a carbon border adjustment mechanism. Details are complex and will matter in how effective this is and there's also a lot of resistance, so this is not decided yet. But it sounds like this is probably gonna happen.
- dane-pgp 6y ago> Unless the emissions from imports are counted, this is meaningless. To give some perspective, in the case of the UK (which until this year had been an EU member): "directly-produced carbon emissions peaked in 1972, total carbon emissions created by the UK economy peaked thirty-five years later in 2007" So yes, "imported" carbon emissions can make a big difference, but even if you take them into account, the trend for total emissions has been downward for over a decade. https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/10/21/imported-emissions-mean-uks-carbon-footprint-peaked-later-than-believed/ https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/10/21/imported-emissions...
- rdsubhas 6y agoThe fact that they'll be willing to lose local manufacturing, production, jobs and the linked market and economy – doesn't sound entirely meaningless. Constructive criticism is good, but really, "meaningless"? Comments like these make me worried about general built-up pessimism and negativity of the human race. We're not happy when anything happens, but then we're also surprised when nothing happens. Statistics may be there, but they're just getting discussed and counter-argued infinitely until nothing happens.