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I feel like you are trying to put me in a gotcha. The IPCC published their first report on climate change in 1990, the Rio conference took place in 1992, and t

I feel like you are trying to put me in a gotcha. The IPCC published their first report on climate change in 1990, the Rio conference took place in 1992, and the first real UN climate deceleration wasn’t until 1997 with the Kyoto protocol (I say real because this is the one where government promised to limit their greenhouse emissions; and then proceeded to fail). So I say that even thought the climate crises starts with the industrial revolution, 1997 is the year we start seeing the climate failure that will doom us all. Just to state the obvious, if governments would have acted in 1997 like they promised to, then climate change probably wouldn’t have reached this catastrophic proportions which we are observing today. We had recently saved the ozone layer using similar measure, so there is no reason the Kyoto protocol failed other then the profit motive of fossil fuel companies which successfully lobbied against following through with the promises. The efforts of ignoring the Kyoto protocol were led by the USA which failed to ratify it. I believe there was significant lobbying involved from fossil fuel companies that influenced the senate’s decision to not even vote on it.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
It's not a gotcha if you can support your claim. You claimed something that clearly isn't supported by the history of those events. Soviet scientists and officials certainly would have known about the link between fossil fuel usage and global warming, and obviously seen it at odds with their drive to expand their economy and production just as their rivals did. Bringing capitalism into it is just silly. "Capitalism" is not to blame, removing capitalism does not fix it, and people don't need to give up capitalism to improve global warming. It seems to be bringing an unrelated personal bias against capitalism in and tying it to global warming, which is really anti-scientific misinformation.
- runarberg 4y ago
  We are arguing in alternative history here, which is never going to be a fruitful conversation. My statements was about fossil fuel companies internal scientists discovering the link, which resulted in them thinking only about their shareholders’ profits when it came time to react. You have no proof a similar situation ever happened inside the soviet union. Off course there were scientists within the soviet union which knew about the link, and even some that realized the scale of the human impact before the political collapse. But stating how the soviet leadership would have acted in the wake of the Kyoto protocol is pure fiction that has nothing to do with the world we live in. Communists certainly contributed to the climate disaster, and continue to do so today, but by the time push came to shove, and we were set up to enact the essential international agreements to prevent it becoming a disaster, it were capitalist countries, and capitalist countries alone, that resisted.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    I am addressing the contents of your initial comment. > Communists certainly contributed to the climate disaster, and continue to do so today, but by the time push came to shove, and we were set up to enact the essential international agreements to prevent it becoming a disaster, it were capitalist countries, and capitalist countries alone, that resisted. Also incorrect. China is a strong resister. Of course they like treaties that puts restrictions on the west and allows them to continue increasing emissions, which is what they push for.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      I believe this is part of the misinformation campaign that the oil lobby pushed to kill the Kyoto protocol, and it holds no merit. Western nations are responsible for the majority of historic emissions, and have gotten rich at the cost of everyone else’s future. They have the financial capacity to build out the required infrastructure with the money they have already made off of their pollution. This is the logic behind the exceptions to the Kyoto protocol. The US (or rather the oil lobby) touted this as unfair (which it isn’t) and instead continued to pollute at an accelerated rate. It was also always understood that the Kyoto protocol was a start which would get stronger in a later agreement, so China was never going to be exempt forever, and they knew that. When the US killed the Kyoto protocol they killed every future prospects with it as well. The disagreement was always about this issue you point out, but COP after COP, non-western nations (including China) proposed a reduction (e.g. in COP 2009 China promised a 40-45% reduction from 2005 by 2020; this puts China in the same category as Europe with governments that promise action but fail to deliver) but COP after COP it was always the USA that brought up this as a disagreement and we continued to not make an agreement (COP-15 resulted in a non-binding agreement and China missed this target). But this is all irrelevant when discussing capitalism as the only culprit of the climate disaster because most (all?) of China’s pollution companies are publicly traded either in Hong Kong Stock Exchange, or in the New York Stock Exchange, or both, with the Chinese state as its majority owner, for over a decade now. These companies operate for the profits of their share holders, not for the benefits of their workers like a communist entity would. These are firmly capitalist entities, one might call them state capitalist.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

It's not a gotcha if you can support your claim. You claimed something that clearly isn't supported by the history of those events. Soviet scientists and officials certainly would have known about the link between fossil fuel usage and global warming, and obviously seen it at odds with their drive to expand their economy and production just as their rivals did. Bringing capitalism into it is just silly. "Capitalism" is not to blame, removing capitalism does not fix it, and people don't need to give up capitalism to improve global warming. It seems to be bringing an unrelated personal bias against capitalism in and tying it to global warming, which is really anti-scientific misinformation.

runarberg 4y ago
We are arguing in alternative history here, which is never going to be a fruitful conversation. My statements was about fossil fuel companies internal scientists discovering the link, which resulted in them thinking only about their shareholders’ profits when it came time to react. You have no proof a similar situation ever happened inside the soviet union. Off course there were scientists within the soviet union which knew about the link, and even some that realized the scale of the human impact before the political collapse. But stating how the soviet leadership would have acted in the wake of the Kyoto protocol is pure fiction that has nothing to do with the world we live in. Communists certainly contributed to the climate disaster, and continue to do so today, but by the time push came to shove, and we were set up to enact the essential international agreements to prevent it becoming a disaster, it were capitalist countries, and capitalist countries alone, that resisted.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  I am addressing the contents of your initial comment. > Communists certainly contributed to the climate disaster, and continue to do so today, but by the time push came to shove, and we were set up to enact the essential international agreements to prevent it becoming a disaster, it were capitalist countries, and capitalist countries alone, that resisted. Also incorrect. China is a strong resister. Of course they like treaties that puts restrictions on the west and allows them to continue increasing emissions, which is what they push for.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    I believe this is part of the misinformation campaign that the oil lobby pushed to kill the Kyoto protocol, and it holds no merit. Western nations are responsible for the majority of historic emissions, and have gotten rich at the cost of everyone else’s future. They have the financial capacity to build out the required infrastructure with the money they have already made off of their pollution. This is the logic behind the exceptions to the Kyoto protocol. The US (or rather the oil lobby) touted this as unfair (which it isn’t) and instead continued to pollute at an accelerated rate. It was also always understood that the Kyoto protocol was a start which would get stronger in a later agreement, so China was never going to be exempt forever, and they knew that. When the US killed the Kyoto protocol they killed every future prospects with it as well. The disagreement was always about this issue you point out, but COP after COP, non-western nations (including China) proposed a reduction (e.g. in COP 2009 China promised a 40-45% reduction from 2005 by 2020; this puts China in the same category as Europe with governments that promise action but fail to deliver) but COP after COP it was always the USA that brought up this as a disagreement and we continued to not make an agreement (COP-15 resulted in a non-binding agreement and China missed this target). But this is all irrelevant when discussing capitalism as the only culprit of the climate disaster because most (all?) of China’s pollution companies are publicly traded either in Hong Kong Stock Exchange, or in the New York Stock Exchange, or both, with the Chinese state as its majority owner, for over a decade now. These companies operate for the profits of their share holders, not for the benefits of their workers like a communist entity would. These are firmly capitalist entities, one might call them state capitalist.