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> The biggest polluter isn't the US. Most of it comes from China because they don't give a damn, and a lot if it can be addressed by making physical goods last
by tzs 3y ago
> The biggest polluter isn't the US. Most of it comes from China because they don't give a damn, and a lot if it can be addressed by making physical goods last longer and be more repairable.
If you are going to compare countries you have to do it per capita because the environment does not care about arbitrary political boundaries.
If you allocate allowed emissions per country instead of per capita, with each country getting a 1/N share of the Earth's total allowed CO2 emissions where N is the number of countries, then a country that is feeling constrained by that could split into two countries. Everyone's new share is 1/(N+1) but the former residents of the pre-split country now get to individually emit almost twice as much without putting their new country over its quota.
Of course other countries will figure out that trick too. In the limit it reduces to a world of 8 billion countries each with 1 person, and then is indistinguishable from per capita allocation.
- princeb 3y agoit could be more advantageous for china to, say, negotiate emissions and environmental agreements through multiple political groupings - like NE china, south china, and west china for example, and treat them as separate countries in a union.
- matrix_overload 3y agoThen we would also need to look at the heating costs, food quality, mobility and life expectancy. If we force everyone to go run with a bare arse in a jungle and die from a snake bite at age 40 on average, we'll get the number low, but I don't think it's the future you would want. A more reasonable approach would be grouping by use case (production, shipping, construction, agriculture, commuting, etc) and addressing the highest contributors. But again, it's a billion-dollar industry vs. Average Joe with a plastic straw.
- myshpa 3y ago> go run with a bare arse in a jungle and die from a snake bite at age 40 on average That's the future selfish and short-sighted attitudes like yours will lead us to.
- reducesuffering 3y agoThe problem about per capita is that a country faces less repercussions for their policies that add to the CO2 load of the world via population. If you currently cap everyone, Y, to some per capita value of emissions, X, (total emissions Y * X). Then if some country adds 1m to their population, Y + 1m, everyone else then goes to X * 95% emissions, by the fault of those people.
- AlchemistCamp 3y ago> If you are going to compare countries you have to do it per capita because the environment does not care about arbitrary political boundaries. The environment doesn’t care about your population, either. If population is large and total pollution is high, it’s a problem. If population is small and total pollution is low, it’s fine. If population is small and total pollution is high, it’s a problem. If population is large and total pollution is low, it’s fine. A more rational approach than an arbitrary reward for overpopulation is to look at pollution per square kilometer of land.