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> how can the state of all of humanity improve without damaging even more the environment? It can't. There are three to four billion young, new consumers comin
by adventured 3y ago
> how can the state of all of humanity improve without damaging even more the environment?
It can't. There are three to four billion young, new consumers coming on in the third world over the next 30-50 years, and they want what the first world has. And there's no fair argument to telling them they can't have it or strive for it.
That means enormous additional coal power plant production and emissions output.
Just ask India and China, they can't build coal power fast enough. Next comes Africa's energy build-out, and it will only partially be green, the rest will be coal. Take Africa's next billion new consumers and give that block the coal output of China, that's the end of the world as we know it (if the climate change forecasts are correct).
There's no stopping it now. Just enjoy your life, the future is set. Unless someone has an epic cheap energy breakthrough ready to go right now (so that we can have it deployed fully within 30-50 years).
Just what China and India are adding alone is enough to end the world. You could immediately cut US emissions in half and it wouldn't matter at all to the expansion going on in Asia. And again that's before we even get to what's about to happen in Africa. No matter how many times you bring this up to the green crowd, they just ignore it aggressively, pretending that doing little token virtue signaling things in one market (we cut emissions 5% in NY state, it's amazing!) is going to actually contribute meaningfully to stopping the avalanche. Anything that doesn't involve massively slashing the coal output of China and India (and preventing its rise elsewhere), is meaningless.
- concordDance 3y ago> that's the end of the world as we know it Notably, this does NOT mean a mass die off and the end of human civilization or even the end of lots of nicely habitable bits of Earth.
- Ekaros 3y agoMy take is that environment will become lot more variable and we will just have to deal with it. Living in some areas will be worse than now and in others better. And we might need to move some things a bit, which is likely expensive but not life ending.
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoWe have already seen quite a few lives ended during mass migrations, and there will be plenty more.
- myrmidon 3y agoThis is badly informed doomerism. China installed 125GW of wind/solar power in 2022 alone, and their power sectors CO2 output is projected to decrease (!!) starting in 2025 [1]. > You could immediately cut US emissions in half and it wouldn't matter at all to the expansion going on in Asia I know that many people don't like to hear this, but this is just absolving yourself from blame and it's despicable. Yes the Asian continent emits more CO2 than North America-- about 10 times more people live there, what do you expect?! What you conveniently gloss over is that the US does ABSOLUTELY NOT "lead by example"-- CO2/capita is the absolut WORST worldwide except for some superrich petrostates (~15 tons/year/person, compared to ~8 for EU/China and <3 for India). Fact is that ANY contribution you make as US citizen is highly likely to be MORE effective (in terms of CO2/year saved) than anything a Chinese or Indian citizen could do, AND also likely to demand LESS from you (because an American family just has to leave the second car at home more often to save a ton of CO2, and Indian family has to turn off heating during winter to achieve the equivalent, basically). [1]: https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/ci/research-analysis/chinas-record-coal-capacity-approvals-in-2022-carbon-targets.html https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/ci/research-an...