11 ms·
We likely won't, at least nowhere near the 20th century balance. For all the new tree saplings planted elsewhere, Brazil straight burns down old growth in the r
by lrem 6y ago
We likely won't, at least nowhere near the 20th century balance. For all the new tree saplings planted elsewhere, Brazil straight burns down old growth in the rainforest. For all the wind and solar installed by the rich countries, poor countries are happy for the cheaper coal. Replacing nuclear base power with fossil fuels doesn't help too.
Even if we ever do manage to come together and fund active carbon capture, it will take decades to reverse the trend. And then possibly centuries for the oceans to de-acidify. Together with active efforts to burn down nature in the places where most biodiversity remains, the mass extinction even is likely to run its course before we get to a stable ecosystem. Sure we can restore most of the biomass, but it will be much fewer species. And letting the nature run its course will, naturally, take millions of years.
- marricks 6y agoWhile your comment isn’t factually wrong it’s phrased to almost blame the poorer countries. Brazil burns down forest mainly because of the United State’s desire for think like soy beans to feed cows. Poorer countries use coal because it’s cheap and global conditions don’t enrich them enough to get better sources. The sad truth is we force countries to be poor and exploit their own resources so we don’t have to do it ourselves. And of course then we’ll all pay the price living on a dying planet.
- f_allwein 6y agoAlso, apparently fifty percent of the world’s carbon emissions are produced by the world’s richest 10%: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/richest-10-percent-causing-climate-change/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/richest-10-percent-ca...
- ratsforhorses 6y agoA less carbon intense life is possible, but much easier without the fear of a needy tomorrow...the consumer may be the biggest cause of so much CO2, but like in "Grapes of Wrath" when you are pushed into a place where you can't grow what you need, can't stay in a place for free so have to go out and work to buy your food and then have too much money so you buy useless stuff....also from that book (prescient in today's awaited ecological collapse) the idea that fruit prices were so low they built factories to put them in cans...to conclude imo the lifestyle that comes from the "western" world's slave mentality to work and growth is the main cause of climate change...that and the overabundance of never ending more printed money...
- CalRobert 6y agoInteresting idea. It reminds me of the fact I'd like to work full time on climate breakdown, but don't because those jobs pay a lot less. After all, trying to buy a house! Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, the other bidder would _also_ prefer to work doing good in the world, but takes the highest paying job instead, so they can outbid me.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoAnd that house is what is causing the climate breakdown in the first place, since it is a detached single family home with a garage, reducing population density and magnifying the amount of energy required to push all the mass people want to live (water, sewer, gas, people, groceries, vehicles, trash, etc).
- brigandish 6y agoGrowth is also about efficiency, not just expansion.
- bumby 6y agoEfficiency fuels growth only by creating more output with the equivalent input. GDP doesn’t go up with “less input” it goes up with “more output”
- brigandish 6y agoOf course, although I'm assuming you meant that as a rebuttal? Keep in mind that output does not always need to be physical. In fact, the history of capitalism shows that growth is coupled with more people doing less physical work and that countries with greater wealth and resources (e.g. the ability to make more stuff more efficiently) will move towards a service oriented economy.
- bumby 6y agoYes, I agree that the more advanced an economy gets the less coupled GDP is to physical labor. But efficiency is not a 1:1 relationship with GDP unless the work input is equal. Meaning, just because there is an increase in efficiency does not guarantee there is an increase in productivity so efficiency shouldn’t be used as a perfect corollary to GDP, just one aspect that helps drive it. It’s like saying “my per hour pay rate went up” and assuming your annual take has also increased. That’s only true if your total hours didn’t drop enough to erode those rate gains. To your point, GDP and efficiency are both increasing but hours per worker are generally decreasing.
- Hypocritelefty 6y agoBut let's blame it on Brazil lol.
- dahfizz 6y agoHere is a link to Oxfam's methodology[1]. First, they only track emissions that they can directly tie with consumption. The statement "fifty percent of the world’s carbon emissions are produced by the world’s richest 10%" is not supported by the study because it makes no attempt to track all of the world's carbon emissions. Second, they assume that income == consumption == carbon emissions, which is a very bad assumption. The world's richest people do not spend their entire income every year, so using that as the basis for consumption is inaccurate. Also, assuming that every dollar spent, no matter where or by whom, has the exact same emissions associated with it is incorrect. Wealthy people are the people who can afford to put solar panels on their roofs and buy new electric cars, but by this study they are penalized for such consumption. In general, I find that oxfam optimizes their studies for the headlines. When you dig into it, there are so many qualifiers and assumptions made that it seems clear the study was authored with an specific outcome in mind. "The top 10% earn 5x more money than average" is not as outrageous a headline as we are used to seeing. But by multiplying by a carbon emission factor of 1, they get to write "Top 10% emits half of world's carbon", which generates way more clicks. [1]https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/582545/tb-carbon-emissions-inequality-methodology-021215-en.pdf;jsessionid=2C4BDF1ED88D1EFA6DEDA2C0351A2049?sequence=2 https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...
- spacemark 6y agoSo are you saying the assertion that rich countries spend far more CO2 per capita than poorer countries is incorrect? What studies would you point to that offer a more accurate estimate?
- dahfizz 6y ago> So are you saying the assertion that rich countries spend far more CO2 per capita than poorer countries is incorrect? I made no statement one way or the other, _and neither did OP's study_. I'm just pointing out that the linked paper is bogus. FWIW, your statement is factually correct - rich countries pollute more per capita than poor countries. I think a more useful metric is emissions per dollar GDP[1]. This measure how carbon efficient an economy is. We could drop carbon emissions to nearly zero by reverting all of human society to be hunter-gatherers who haven't discovered fire yet. Building a more efficient economy lets us get closer to zero emissions without losing all of our modern quality of life improvements. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?most_recent_value_desc=true&view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?most_...
- throwoutttt 6y agoHow does buying products from s country make them poorer?
- samatman 6y ago75% of Brazil's soybean exports go to China, for pig feed. This is 47.6% of all soybean exports. The number two exporter? The United States, at 34.1%, the vast majority of this also goes to China, again, for pigs.
- maccard 6y agoHis point was > Brazil burns down forest mainly because of the United State’s desire for think like soy beans to feed cows. You can easily replace that with > Brazil burns down forest mainly because of the Chinese desire for soy beans to feed pigs and the point still stands. Brazil is planting soy beans because a rich trading partner is paying them more than the ranforests attract with no future foresight, despite this being a devestating blow to the entire world. It's unreasonable to expect Brazil to stand up and say "hey we're done with this" while other powers are encouraging the practices.
- dahfizz 6y agoExcept China emits more than double the CO2 that America does. The USA emits less today than it did 10 years ago, while China's emissions grow exponentially. The original point was that there is a lot of work to do outside of rich, western countries. I'm not saying America is blameless, or that it is all China's fault. I'm saying putting all of your effort and focus on America while ignoring the growth of the world's largest polluter will not solve the problem.
- maccard 6y agoThe point I tried to make is that it doesn't matter if it's the us, china, france, russia, etc. Blaming brazil isn't the solution, they're only doing this because china (in this case) are prioritizing cheap soy over the health of the Amazon. The exact same argument is true for palm oil in indonesia; blaming indonesia for destroying borneo and sumatra isn't going to fix the problem when it's all being exported to the EU and india.
- 6y ago
- concordDance 6y agoI don't think "But I can get money for burning my children's future!" is a good excuse for sais burning unless you're literally starving. Which the burners in Brazil et al are not. People have agency, there's no Coca Cola goons with guns to their heads this time.
- newsclues 6y agoIf you can make enough money to move away from the destruction you wrought, and live in luxury while providing education that elevates your offspring to a higher social class, many people will do the wrong thing for selfish reasons.
- PicassoCTs 6y agoI cant hear it anymore, when companies claim to have become "carbon" neutral. It almost always boils down to - "we bought a paper in some third world country" on which is stated that money has been paid to plant trees or otherwise capture carbon. Usually the reality on the ground shows that this money went nowhere and thus, that company is not carbon neutral.
- DrBazza 6y ago> Brazil burns down forest mainly because of the United State’s desire for think like soy beans to feed cows. In the UK at least, we seem to have palm oil in everything, and Indonesia and that part of the world are busily hacking down forests and killing orangutans in the process. What's the sudden need for palm oil? We hardly used it in the 70s and 80s when I was a kid.
- Sharlin 6y agoCheap and versatile [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/19/palm-oil-ingredient-biscuits-shampoo-environmental https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/19/palm-oil-ingred...
- tremon 6y agoIt's only cheap because the UK doesn't pay for the Orangutans.
- DrBazza 6y agoBritish supermarkets should hang their heads in shame about palm oil and refuse to stock food that uses it. They're complicit whether they realise it or not. Even so called 'ethical palm oil' just means that those that want it, and can't get it from an 'ethical supplier' because Western companies consume the supply, get it from "illegal" suppliers.
- Sharlin 6y agoThat's true for most cheap things, unfortunately. Externalities are not accounted for.
- pvaldes 6y ago> Brazil burns down forest mainly because of the United State’s And because brazilians voted for president a man clearly hostile to science and environment conservation... with not surprising results. If you vote a man that calls himself Captain chainsaw you obtain exactly the prize what you asked for
- markdown 6y agoThe US has cut down and destroyed three quarters of a billion acres of primary forest. Plant a lot more saplings before you point a finger at nations in different states of development.
- concordDance 6y agoThere's a couple of fallacies going on here. One is confusing between groups and individuals. An individual (e.g. the OP) can have planted several saplings and can thus point fingers (id one holds with these silly heuristics about who is allowed to point out bad things). The other is that the state of saplings in the USA is irrelevant to whether or not old forests should be burnt down in Brazil.
- markdown 6y agoWell of course. He was attacking Brazil when the US is a far far far worse polluter, so since it wasn't a good-faith debate in the first place, I felt a fallacy or two couldn't make things any worse.
- jacquesm 6y agoJoe Jackson, Obvious Song: "There was a man in the jungle Trying to make ends meet Found himself one day with an axe in his hand When a voice said "Buddy can you spare that tree We gotta save this world-starting with your land." It was a rock 'n' roll millionaire from the USA Doing three to the gallon in a big white car And he sang and he sang 'till he polluted the air And he blew a lot of smoke from a Cuban cigar"
- ben_w 6y agoFortunately, solar is now cheaper than coal. Doesn’t solve everything, but it’s not all doom.
- IMTDb 6y agoSolar, like wind, is not an energy source you can control. It's nice when it's there, but it can't be the backbone of your energy mix without controllable energy sources, like coal
- ben_w 6y agoEven with batteries it’s cheaper than coal.
- rhodozelia 6y agoLink? There are a lot of caveats to that! Does it get the solar to 95% of the time available at name plate rating? 98%?
- ben_w 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Capital_costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#... • solar PV (fixed) - $1060/kW (utility) • battery storage power - $1380/kW • coal (with SO2 and NOx controls)- $3500–3800/kW $(1060+1380) = $2440 < $3500 I get similar results with KWh costs (i.e. energy rather than power), but the sources are more spread out; it’s still more cost effective than coal even when I make conservative estimates about the number of cycles a LiIon can do.
- IMTDb 6y agoWhat do you do when it's winter, and there hasn't been any significant wind for several days and batteries are empty ? All these prices are computed "when there are enough supplies", which is easier to guarantee with coal/gas/oil/nuclear. On the best case scenario, renewable are cheaper than anything else. The issue is that the price of electricity is driven by the hardest watts to create, not the easiest ones.
- neuronic 6y agoHere it is again, the subtle but completely unfounded nuclear power astroturfing. Nuclear fission power is economically unfeasible and completely incapable of "saving the climate". It's a complete ruse. Any new reactor type you'd build now would go online the EARLIEST 10-15 years from now. And then they will never be profitable and you still have no actual proper solution to waste management other than some fluffy marketing slides. > And letting the nature run its course will, naturally, take millions of years. Yea, letting physics run it's course will take 100,000 years too with a plutonium half-life of 24,000 years. A country like Germany doesn't have vast desert lands to store dangerous materials *reliably* for that long. It's also not willing to just dump it in third world countries or international waters.
- adrianN 6y agoI think many people who oppose building new nuclear power plants would also support shutting off coal first.
- toast0 6y ago> Yea, letting physics run it's course will take 100,000 years too with a plutonium half-life of 24,000 years. A country like Germany doesn't have vast desert lands to store dangerous materials reliably for that long. It's also not willing to just dump it in third world countries or international waters. Just burn the waste and distribute it from smokestacks. That's how coal handles its radioactive waste, and that seems to be accepted. I agree however, that it's hard to argue for nuclear when it takes so long to get plants built that the developers die of boredom before grounds is broken.
- neuronic 6y agoI thoroughly agree with you on coal! We need to get away from it as soon as possible. I just do not believe that nuclear fission power is the way anymore. 25 years ago I would have had another opinion entirely because the time frame would have been different. Let's say I agree to build a modern reactor type today. Planning and construction begin, it doesn't have a host of issues and cost explosions like the "new" Finnish plants [1], problems that are typical for modern large scale engineering projects in Europe. Then it will go online in 12 years and deliver the megawatts of power as planned. That's 12 years of progress in renewables at the same time. Just look at photovoltaics since 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics and that's just ONE out of many categories of renewables. A decade of progress while monstrous masses of concrete a poured for an 80s power plant design so it doesn't blow up in our faces and make land inhospitable for thousands of years. Is that where we should invest our cognitive energy? Nuclear waste disposal and upgrading/modernizing the many 1960s reactor designs out there would have been key but it hasn't happened because of cost. If nuclear was cheap, reliable and environmentally friendly it would have replaced coal a long time ago. But even Western states with tight proliferation control and a strongly embedded infrastructure in the Western security hemisphere are not opting to vastly extend nuclear fission power for a decent number of reasons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Finland#New_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Finland#New_c...
- adnzzzzZ 6y agoMost electricity production in Brazil is renewable, at much higher levels than most first world countries, including yours most likely. https://i.imgur.com/gMBJEQG.png https://i.imgur.com/gMBJEQG.png Also look up a chart of CO2 production per capita and compare Brazil's to your country's before you start talking like you are. If you want to point fingers then fine, but at least do it properly and be informed.
- ajmadesc 6y agoI support and agree with your sentiment. Western countries are to blame, but _Biomass should not count as renewable_ It is not carbon neutral. Monocultures requires petrol based inputs (and petrol reliant for output), and store less than half the c02 of an old growth forest. Biomass was one of the biggest mistakes in the green movement.
- vagrantJin 6y agoYeah, being poor doesn't give you the option of having conservation at the top of your list of priorities. Not to mention poor countries don't use all that much energy per capita. Make of that what you will. I dont think brazil would burn old forrests at the rate they are with US somewhere in the equation. Nor do I think Indonesia would deforrest without the US/EU need for palm oil above all else.
- concordDance 6y ago> Yeah, being poor doesn't give you the option of having conservation at the top of your list of priorities. Yes it does. Very little of todays poverty, particularly in a place like Brazil is of the starvation-level variety and the people burning down the forrests are very much NOT the starving poor, they're on the wealthier side even!
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoSo average person in USA, who is definitely not starving, will finally give up their ridiculous truck that pollutes more than 10 brazilian farmers ever could?
- vagrantJin 6y ago> the people burning down the forests are very much NOT the starving poor Hmm. Growing up in a developed industrial economy must be lovely. So the communities who've lived in or by said forrests are a non issue? You know, the people who've lived there for centuries if not longer. People to whom the forest isn't just a bunch of trees but home. Because middle class brazilians in Rio or Cruziero can afford Macdonalds, so there are no poor people and woo woo we can burn down the forest to plant soy and make grazing land for cattle? That's it? Were going to burn millenia old forests just so Macdonalds can make more beef burgers. A fucking burger? Indonesia is losing their forests to Doritoes. A fucking chip. Future generations better make usuable manure of our bones.
- LordDragonfang 6y ago> For all the wind and solar installed by the rich countries, poor countries are happy for the cheaper coal. Rich countries still burn plenty of coal. The US ranks 11th globally in per-capita coal consumption, burning 1.6 tons of coal annually, over twice the global average. Australia nearly tops the list, burning 2.8 tons per person. And that's not even touching the truly tremendous amounts of gasoline wasted on individual commuters in first world countries, or the historical emissions used by the "rich" countries to establish their economies. https://www.statista.com/statistics/604946/per-capita-coal-consumption-in-selected-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/604946/per-capita-coal-c... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-capita?tab=table&time=earliest..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-capi...
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoCountries are also moving away from coal in favor of more cleanly burning natural gas. They will need to keep those plants up, because renewables are not as predictable and they need a stable and predictable backup like fossil fuels or nuclear. Renewables are nice, but managing and balancing them is a lot more difficult.
- pif 6y agoPeople from rich countries exploited every possible energy source to enhance their living standards, without too much thinking about the pollution. Demanding people from poor countries to pay more attention than we did is not fair, not at all.
- concordDance 6y ago"Fairness" is not a useful concept to apply here. Yes, it's not fair that Ugo the caveman could just bash Uga the cavewoman over the head and rape her while I can't do the same with my neighbour Sally. But that lack of "fairness" is irrelevant given that the thing in question (rape/destroying the environment) is bad.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoIndeed it is not, which is why its a tragedy that wealthy countries basically sit around paying lip service to the issue and point finger at some poor farmer god kbow where claiming pollution is his fault Meanwhile people who control the global financial markets and industry bear no responsibility
- curryst 6y agoI would be far more careful in tossing aside the concept of fairness. Fairness still applies to your cave people. Sexual assault was never fair; it's true that you can't do something earlier people could, but that unfairness is more than weighed about by the fairness granted to Sally. In this case, fairness would probably look like devoting more resources to poor countries so they don't have to go through the same "destroying the environment" cultural growth phase. First world country growth was predicated on the access to energy afforded to us by selling out the environment. We are attempting to cut off that avenue for other cultures. It seems fair to accelerate them past the point of needing to destroy the environment, rather than telling them they just have to deal with being a backwater since they don't have a way to generate the energy needed to become a bleeding edge society. In more practical terms, and avoiding the concept of fairness, lesser developed countries aren't going to simply acquiesce and stop. They have no reason to. Cutting off their access to large amounts of energy is going to fling them back into the 1700-1800s. Have you seen The 1% on Netflix? It'll look like that. A small number of highly advanced countries with access to plentiful energy and all the technology that brings, and then a large number of countries that are dirt poor. I would be surprised if you could even manufacture modern medicine without access to large amounts of power. It will create a global power struggle, and first world nations are going to have to police basically the entire world to ensure there aren't any revolts or nations that are refusing to willingly go back in time.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoThis is factually wrong, looks at CO2 emissions per capita, USA has carbon footprint double that of France. Do people in US have twice better life? They don't, its just that the policy doesnt give a flying fuck about environment. The government spends more on military programs to defend from hypothetical weapons that dont exist yet, than it does on dealing with the certainty of climate change. People here bitching about brazil removing forest, forest cover of UK is like 12%, one of the lowest in thw world. The 'ambition' is to plant like 2% more trees in 30 years. We just cut it down years ago, and so are off the hook. You know what the wealthy countries should have done? Funded development of fusion properly, actually invested in renewables and shared technology with developing nations, had electric vehicles in mass production by 2010. Then you could do around and point at aome poor farmer fuck knows where trying to feed his family. As things stand China has 10x more electric buses than the rest of the world combined, a couple Nordic countries have shown leadership in Wind. But most of western world is not just complicit, but a partner in crime, has actively enabled and protected their oil firms to commit literal crimes.
- melonmouse 6y ago> This is factually wrong, looks at CO2 emissions per capita, USA has carbon footprint double that of France. It's closer to 3x: USA 15.7 vs France 5.2 tonnes of CO2 per capita per year (2017, not accounting for other gasses that contribute to warming) [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
- bumby 6y agoAny idea how much nuclear power has contributed to this discrepancy? I.e., if the US had the same per capita nuclear power generation as France, what would the numbers look like?
- curryst 6y agoI would expect our spread out nature to contribute to that a lot. We drive a lot (and often environmentally unfriendly vehicles). Our food chain also involves shipping food substantial distances (not sure how true that is of Europe).
- smokey_circles 6y agoWhy is the default always to blame poorer countries? The US is one of the largest contributors of CO2 in the world. The per capita argument is silly: They're a single, centralised source of pollution. Just regulate it already. The impact would be phenomenal. As for the poorer countries: How about the wealthier nations that outright stole the mineral resources from us start paying that money back in the form of a solution rather than having their denizens pointing obese fingers at us? I'm not saying give the money back (would be nice though), but how about spending that ill-gotten gain on progress for a change?
- lrem 6y agoYou misread me quite badly. I've never lived in the US and actually come from a country 4x poorer (at least according to GDP/C), that's still ramping up coal, despite being told not to.
- renewiltord 6y agoEurope needs to destroy her cities and give her farmland back to Nature before she criticizes Brazil. Europe has 150 years of industrial revolution grade emissions to atone for. Europeans systematically killed their fauna and their flora to live a better life and would now like to deny others the same. Well, undo your harm first. Take the beam out of your eye.