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When you look at who's polluting and who's emissions are on an upward trajectory, there's one obvious country that's actively working against the environment. C

When you look at who's polluting and who's emissions are on an upward trajectory, there's one obvious country that's actively working against the environment. China's emissions aren't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. One of the many reasons it's cheaper to manufacture in China and why North Americans and Europeans can't compete [0]. Comparing the US[1] and China[2], the US has: - Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%) - A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%) Meanwhile for the same period China has had - a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%) - 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007 So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation. Time to add tariffs on goods produced by states who made the decision of going all-in on polluting power generation, and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emissions-on-a-per-capita-basis-report-finds.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emis... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china

tomarr 5y ago
Developed country is developed Developing country is developing I would say your viewpoint there is overly simplistic.
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  I think your comment is a bit too glib; your point though I think is entirely correct. You can't compare the average living standard in China to the US and claim bad faith on their part.
lordnacho 5y ago
It's hard to blame this on China. After all, they make a lot of the stuff we want in the west. And they make is precisely because we don't want to make it here, and because we don't want to face choices like which of our own rivers to pollute, or which of our own factories needs relaxed safety standards.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I think "don't want" isn't the right way to look at this. We "want" China to build all our stuff because it's cheaper, and it's cheaper in part because China doesn't care about pollution, so energy costs are lower. (Cost of labor and other factors of course also tie into that.) If China were to put strict, California-style controls on pollution, energy generation would get more expensive there, and goods made in China would also get more expensive. That would be an incentive for other countries to manufacture more of their own goods (or find a new, cheaper country to build things in), and certainly China does not want that, so they continue to pollute.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    We want cheap stuff above non-polluting stuff, so we make them do the polluting. If we really cared about pollution we would put a stipulation that the stuff is made a certain way, and we would send someone to actually check this. The way it's done now there's a wink and a nudge, and the Chinese know perfectly well what the deal is. Note that labor would still be cheaper there, so we could still have cheaper stuff, we just want it even cheaper, to hell with the consequences that we don't see anyway. It's not just energy either, there's various chemicals and safety concerns that people discovered in the west a long time ago. It's just that the allure of cheap stuff is so great, it was fine to just stop making it in the west and pretend that standards overseas were acceptable.
emkoemko 5y ago
" Coal is incredibly cheap " not that cheap that the CCP had to force coal producers to limit the price because it increased more then 3x in a year. what is going on in China? that they are having such energy production problems? to the point where they are rationing electricity for months now. Where is all this extra demand coming from? and at what point will it peak ? the excuse is always well the rest of the world got to pollute so we have our turn now.. seems crazy and childish when this will impact us all.
- jfk13 5y ago
  > Where is all this extra demand coming from? Blockchains? (More seriously, I guess an awful lot of it is used to keep producing the cheap goods that Western consumers demand. We need to adjust our lifestyles to "consume" much less, in every way.)
- nradov 5y ago
  As the world economy picks up again, demand has grown at Chinese factories. The government has fixed electricity prices but worldwide coal prices have also increased, so some coal fired power plants have shut down instead of operating at a loss. The Chinese government also temporarily stopped importing coal from Australia for political reasons.
shawabawa3 5y ago
China's emissions per capita are still almost half the US

tomarr 5y ago

Developed country is developed Developing country is developing I would say your viewpoint there is overly simplistic.

VBprogrammer 5y ago
I think your comment is a bit too glib; your point though I think is entirely correct. You can't compare the average living standard in China to the US and claim bad faith on their part.

lordnacho 5y ago

It's hard to blame this on China. After all, they make a lot of the stuff we want in the west. And they make is precisely because we don't want to make it here, and because we don't want to face choices like which of our own rivers to pollute, or which of our own factories needs relaxed safety standards.

kelnos 5y ago
I think "don't want" isn't the right way to look at this. We "want" China to build all our stuff because it's cheaper, and it's cheaper in part because China doesn't care about pollution, so energy costs are lower. (Cost of labor and other factors of course also tie into that.) If China were to put strict, California-style controls on pollution, energy generation would get more expensive there, and goods made in China would also get more expensive. That would be an incentive for other countries to manufacture more of their own goods (or find a new, cheaper country to build things in), and certainly China does not want that, so they continue to pollute.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  We want cheap stuff above non-polluting stuff, so we make them do the polluting. If we really cared about pollution we would put a stipulation that the stuff is made a certain way, and we would send someone to actually check this. The way it's done now there's a wink and a nudge, and the Chinese know perfectly well what the deal is. Note that labor would still be cheaper there, so we could still have cheaper stuff, we just want it even cheaper, to hell with the consequences that we don't see anyway. It's not just energy either, there's various chemicals and safety concerns that people discovered in the west a long time ago. It's just that the allure of cheap stuff is so great, it was fine to just stop making it in the west and pretend that standards overseas were acceptable.

emkoemko 5y ago

" Coal is incredibly cheap " not that cheap that the CCP had to force coal producers to limit the price because it increased more then 3x in a year. what is going on in China? that they are having such energy production problems? to the point where they are rationing electricity for months now. Where is all this extra demand coming from? and at what point will it peak ? the excuse is always well the rest of the world got to pollute so we have our turn now.. seems crazy and childish when this will impact us all.

jfk13 5y ago
> Where is all this extra demand coming from? Blockchains? (More seriously, I guess an awful lot of it is used to keep producing the cheap goods that Western consumers demand. We need to adjust our lifestyles to "consume" much less, in every way.)
nradov 5y ago
As the world economy picks up again, demand has grown at Chinese factories. The government has fixed electricity prices but worldwide coal prices have also increased, so some coal fired power plants have shut down instead of operating at a loss. The Chinese government also temporarily stopped importing coal from Australia for political reasons.

shawabawa3 5y ago

China's emissions per capita are still almost half the US