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Apart from that tiny chinese fleet of 1000+ coal plants, havent noticed any plans for those, or rest of developing world like India. I am all for env protectio

by jajko 3y ago

Apart from that tiny chinese fleet of 1000+ coal plants, havent noticed any plans for those, or rest of developing world like India. I am all for env protection but if the effort is not global while the effects always are, poor folks that are also footing the bill get properly pissed off and then vote out do gooders for more extreme populists. EU green deal feeds off various extreme parties in all eastern EU for decade+ and sowing deep discontent. I dont think western part or EU leadership realized how badly they underestimated this.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Do you ever consider that you personally are helping the extreme parties by passing on memes like "but what about the foreigners!" and "poor folks are paying the bills!" when this topic comes up?
- peteradio 3y ago
  Do you think its not true or should we mute certain truths dare it support the evil faction?
  - cbrozefsky 3y ago
    Noone has spoken facts on this matter. They made vague and incorrect statements, and "whattabouts". The energy price volatility is not due to green policies, or extreme parties in the EU, it's due to their reliance upon natural gas and oil from a global exporter who then decided to invade their neighbor and threaten all of Europe. That's the fact here.
  - adrianN 3y ago
    I believe we should refrain from reducing complex topics like international carbon policy to „but the other guy“ style arguments.
- gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
  Is your suggestion to not look at the full picture when discussing policy topics? If so, how do you propose rational policies? The impact of parties outside of direct political control can offset any good done locally. If the local policies are too restrictive it could have knock on effects that make people’s live materially and psychologically worse.
  - adrianN 3y ago
    Luckily environmental protections are extremely far from „too restrictive“ so there are no concerns about that.
    - gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
      If the price of energy is too high, you will suffer economically. This will lead to mental health issues. That will lead to suicide and broken homes. That will lead to cycle of poverty and pain across generations. We’re seeing this play out in children due to Covid lockdowns. Their development was retarded. They started speaking later. They lost functionally three years. Many are pushed through school compounding the issue. At the same time violence at home rose during that time due to stressor. We need to avoid such policy shortcomings. Administrations at various levels need to think things out. I’m not saying do nothing. I am saying tread lightly while considering many issues.
      - cbrozefsky 3y ago
        The politicians and policy makers are very aware of the energy price, so you are not introducing anything new to the policy makers decision making process. Read any of their materials and you will see the energy price sensitivity is a core measure for them. What you are doing, it bringing up a series of unrelated issue and trying to pin them on these policies, or suggest, in an ignorance, that they are not thinking about one of the core political realities of their career. This is all the more reason to speed up the transfer of renewables which have near zero marginal cost, and aren't emitting carbon and particles which damage the people around them. Speaking or cycle of pain and poverty, the particle pollution of coal plants and refineries is an ongoing public health crisis. This policy is an aspect of making them pay for the pollution they previously were making their neighbors pay for, in asthma, COPD, mercury poisoning, lung cancer and many other illnesses directly attributed to these plants emissions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tichiian 3y ago
  "Whataboutism" isn't a proper counter-argument. Shutting down a few plants in the west is maybe just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and asking about the iceberg and the cold water isn't "whataboutism" in that it doesn't distract from the issue at hand. It rather points to the really important part of the issue. More like a kind of "reverse whataboutism". Relative emissions and various kinds of cost factors matter a lot. The climate isn't going to improve by stupidly and blindly spending billions, goodwill and precious time on low-yield measures, when less resources could be spent on high-yield measures elsewhere. That is why stuff like banning plastic straws or kitchen gas stoves is actively harmful. Because the "what about those foreign big emitters" argument is very valid.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    US per capita emissions are almost twice that of China, so a dollar spent on emissions reductions in the US has a bigger impact.
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      Total global warming is predicated on total CO2 emissions, which is the bottom line that is most significant. Yes, the US has higher per-capita emissions, and absolutely should reduce those. However US emissions have been flat or declining for decades now (since the 1970s or 1980s depending on how you look at it), whilst China's emissions, both total and per capita, have exploded in the past four decades as that country has industrialised and emerged as a mid-income nation. These facts re-hash arguments about planetary limits which have been ongoing since the 1970s if not before, and pit past growth, consumption, and pollution amongst western nations (the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia, largely), with the hopes for economic growth, still strongly coupled to consumption and emissions, of the rest of the world, quite notably China and India, but also Africa's future billion or so in coming decades. It's notable that despite the Industrial Revolution and carbon age being roughly 250 years old, half of all emissions date from the 1970s, a time at which Western emissions were slowing heavily following the 1970s oil shocks. It's not a case of either/or but both, the reality is complex, and simple, and most especially nationalistic simplifications, finger-pointing, or whataboutisms really don't advance the discussion. <https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions>
- jajko 3y ago
  Man, I am not living in EU anymore so not personally affected by its policies, just mentioning that world and people are more complex than you would like it to be, not 'sowing' anything. Just relaying what I heard over and over in eastern part of EU, across multiple states, on personal but also institutional/government level. We all saw how quickly Brexit went, and neither UK nor Europe is better afterwards, you just need few skilled populists push the right levers at right time and its done, for good. Why feed them even more without even listening to their concerns? I am all for EU despite its dysfunctions and consider it overall a good institution in Europe, but ignoring problems and having tunnel vision only on efforts that you like ain't smartest approach, things will backfire. People and societies we form are complex in various ways, lets respect that a bit if we want some long term consensus and not constant infighting and ignored tensions which benefits just our enemies, like current one in the east.
9dev 3y ago
Well, it’s a hard problem to solve. The world requires a lot more immediate action than what the EU leadership ever proposed, yet we can’t even convince the fools sawing the branch we’re sitting on to at least swing the saw a little slower. And it’s not limited to Eastern Europe, the idiots are far and wide…
cbrozefsky 3y ago
The number of coal plants doesn't count, it's their utilization rate and outputs that counts. See 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... for a overview of utlization, projected emissions etc.. from one analysis. Stop carrying water for those who use oil and gas supply as weapons and blaming the radical price volatility of energy on renewaqbles. It's oil and gas that were the cause of those spikes. You aren't speaking for the people against extreme parties, you are parroting a propaganda line.
littlestymaar 3y ago
> but if the effort is not global while the effects always are The effect will never be global if the West doesn't start first, because the developing countries will never accept to hurt their economic development for something the rich countries isn't doing. But if the West starts, the rest of the world will follow, because their elite want to be like us: it is a status symbol! That's why for instance the elites in Southern countries wear western clothes despite their obvious inappropriateness to the weather. That's also why many dictators out there pretend to be “elected presidents”: because being a “president” is what makes you look like you're an western ruler. Humans are social animals, and status is probably the strongest driver for our behaviors. The day the West is all green, you can be sure that every country leader elsewhere world is going to flex about how green their country is too. The problem right now is that the West is all about green-washing, and so are they.
- fwungy 3y ago
  Tell Putin and the Sauds. Do you think they'll give up trillions of wealth because "they aspire to be like Western elites"?
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    It's about the demand side, not the supply side. Putin has zero leverage on Indian's energy policy and neither does MBS. If anything, sending money to Putin and MBS hurts Modi and Lula's own economic goals.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
China is reducing their CO2/kWh at a much faster rate than the US, mostly due to massive solar deployment. They're installing solar at a rate almost 10x the rate that the US is.
cbrozefsky 3y ago
This is not about the EU or India or China. It's about the US and the EPA. The EPA cannot regulate those other places, but it can make coal plants in the US pay for the pollutants they previously externalized.
mschuster91 3y ago
> Apart from that tiny chinese fleet of 1000+ coal plants, havent noticed any plans for those, or rest of developing world like India. China in particular is building out insane amounts of solar - hundreds of gigawatts a year [1]. India plans to pause new coal power plants and increase its capacity for solar [2] - Modi's government has it a bit easier than most Western countries, both due to the increasing authoritarianism and because the people see destructive weather events and their impact themselves. The rest of the world is already going solar thanks to cheap Chinese panels. In most of Africa, there isn't much of a working phone or electricity grid anyway for historical reasons (poverty, colonialism, theft, construction challenges, political, ...) so there's quite a lot of international aid programs going on [3] - after all, Africa has 60% of the solar energy potential of this entire rock floating in space, but only 1% of the worldwide production. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol... [2] https://apnews.com/article/india-coal-pause-plan-climate-renewables-68b75402af663e4553434bc672fc9cda https://apnews.com/article/india-coal-pause-plan-climate-ren... [3] https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2024/start-ups-powering-africa%E2%80%99s-solar-energy-ecosystem https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2024/start...
epgui 3y ago
Yes you're right that it's a global problem, but that should not be an objection to taking initiative.
- pxmpxm 3y ago
  No, that is wrong - if the outcome of this regulation is coal export with the same end use + co2 for transit + no sulfur scrubbing because emerging markets coal plants have lesser env standards, it doesn't make sense.
  - epgui 3y ago
    That would be a great argument if it were a response to a comment other than the one I made.

by jajko 3y ago

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

Do you ever consider that you personally are helping the extreme parties by passing on memes like "but what about the foreigners!" and "poor folks are paying the bills!" when this topic comes up?

peteradio 3y ago
Do you think its not true or should we mute certain truths dare it support the evil faction?
- cbrozefsky 3y ago
  Noone has spoken facts on this matter. They made vague and incorrect statements, and "whattabouts". The energy price volatility is not due to green policies, or extreme parties in the EU, it's due to their reliance upon natural gas and oil from a global exporter who then decided to invade their neighbor and threaten all of Europe. That's the fact here.
- adrianN 3y ago
  I believe we should refrain from reducing complex topics like international carbon policy to „but the other guy“ style arguments.
gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
Is your suggestion to not look at the full picture when discussing policy topics? If so, how do you propose rational policies? The impact of parties outside of direct political control can offset any good done locally. If the local policies are too restrictive it could have knock on effects that make people’s live materially and psychologically worse.
- adrianN 3y ago
  Luckily environmental protections are extremely far from „too restrictive“ so there are no concerns about that.
  - gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
    If the price of energy is too high, you will suffer economically. This will lead to mental health issues. That will lead to suicide and broken homes. That will lead to cycle of poverty and pain across generations. We’re seeing this play out in children due to Covid lockdowns. Their development was retarded. They started speaking later. They lost functionally three years. Many are pushed through school compounding the issue. At the same time violence at home rose during that time due to stressor. We need to avoid such policy shortcomings. Administrations at various levels need to think things out. I’m not saying do nothing. I am saying tread lightly while considering many issues.
    - cbrozefsky 3y ago
      The politicians and policy makers are very aware of the energy price, so you are not introducing anything new to the policy makers decision making process. Read any of their materials and you will see the energy price sensitivity is a core measure for them. What you are doing, it bringing up a series of unrelated issue and trying to pin them on these policies, or suggest, in an ignorance, that they are not thinking about one of the core political realities of their career. This is all the more reason to speed up the transfer of renewables which have near zero marginal cost, and aren't emitting carbon and particles which damage the people around them. Speaking or cycle of pain and poverty, the particle pollution of coal plants and refineries is an ongoing public health crisis. This policy is an aspect of making them pay for the pollution they previously were making their neighbors pay for, in asthma, COPD, mercury poisoning, lung cancer and many other illnesses directly attributed to these plants emissions.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tichiian 3y ago
"Whataboutism" isn't a proper counter-argument. Shutting down a few plants in the west is maybe just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and asking about the iceberg and the cold water isn't "whataboutism" in that it doesn't distract from the issue at hand. It rather points to the really important part of the issue. More like a kind of "reverse whataboutism". Relative emissions and various kinds of cost factors matter a lot. The climate isn't going to improve by stupidly and blindly spending billions, goodwill and precious time on low-yield measures, when less resources could be spent on high-yield measures elsewhere. That is why stuff like banning plastic straws or kitchen gas stoves is actively harmful. Because the "what about those foreign big emitters" argument is very valid.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  US per capita emissions are almost twice that of China, so a dollar spent on emissions reductions in the US has a bigger impact.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Total global warming is predicated on total CO2 emissions, which is the bottom line that is most significant. Yes, the US has higher per-capita emissions, and absolutely should reduce those. However US emissions have been flat or declining for decades now (since the 1970s or 1980s depending on how you look at it), whilst China's emissions, both total and per capita, have exploded in the past four decades as that country has industrialised and emerged as a mid-income nation. These facts re-hash arguments about planetary limits which have been ongoing since the 1970s if not before, and pit past growth, consumption, and pollution amongst western nations (the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia, largely), with the hopes for economic growth, still strongly coupled to consumption and emissions, of the rest of the world, quite notably China and India, but also Africa's future billion or so in coming decades. It's notable that despite the Industrial Revolution and carbon age being roughly 250 years old, half of all emissions date from the 1970s, a time at which Western emissions were slowing heavily following the 1970s oil shocks. It's not a case of either/or but both, the reality is complex, and simple, and most especially nationalistic simplifications, finger-pointing, or whataboutisms really don't advance the discussion. <https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions>
jajko 3y ago
Man, I am not living in EU anymore so not personally affected by its policies, just mentioning that world and people are more complex than you would like it to be, not 'sowing' anything. Just relaying what I heard over and over in eastern part of EU, across multiple states, on personal but also institutional/government level. We all saw how quickly Brexit went, and neither UK nor Europe is better afterwards, you just need few skilled populists push the right levers at right time and its done, for good. Why feed them even more without even listening to their concerns? I am all for EU despite its dysfunctions and consider it overall a good institution in Europe, but ignoring problems and having tunnel vision only on efforts that you like ain't smartest approach, things will backfire. People and societies we form are complex in various ways, lets respect that a bit if we want some long term consensus and not constant infighting and ignored tensions which benefits just our enemies, like current one in the east.

9dev 3y ago

Well, it’s a hard problem to solve. The world requires a lot more immediate action than what the EU leadership ever proposed, yet we can’t even convince the fools sawing the branch we’re sitting on to at least swing the saw a little slower. And it’s not limited to Eastern Europe, the idiots are far and wide…

cbrozefsky 3y ago

The number of coal plants doesn't count, it's their utilization rate and outputs that counts. See 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... for a overview of utlization, projected emissions etc.. from one analysis. Stop carrying water for those who use oil and gas supply as weapons and blaming the radical price volatility of energy on renewaqbles. It's oil and gas that were the cause of those spikes. You aren't speaking for the people against extreme parties, you are parroting a propaganda line.

littlestymaar 3y ago

> but if the effort is not global while the effects always are The effect will never be global if the West doesn't start first, because the developing countries will never accept to hurt their economic development for something the rich countries isn't doing. But if the West starts, the rest of the world will follow, because their elite want to be like us: it is a status symbol! That's why for instance the elites in Southern countries wear western clothes despite their obvious inappropriateness to the weather. That's also why many dictators out there pretend to be “elected presidents”: because being a “president” is what makes you look like you're an western ruler. Humans are social animals, and status is probably the strongest driver for our behaviors. The day the West is all green, you can be sure that every country leader elsewhere world is going to flex about how green their country is too. The problem right now is that the West is all about green-washing, and so are they.

fwungy 3y ago
Tell Putin and the Sauds. Do you think they'll give up trillions of wealth because "they aspire to be like Western elites"?
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  It's about the demand side, not the supply side. Putin has zero leverage on Indian's energy policy and neither does MBS. If anything, sending money to Putin and MBS hurts Modi and Lula's own economic goals.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

China is reducing their CO2/kWh at a much faster rate than the US, mostly due to massive solar deployment. They're installing solar at a rate almost 10x the rate that the US is.

cbrozefsky 3y ago

This is not about the EU or India or China. It's about the US and the EPA. The EPA cannot regulate those other places, but it can make coal plants in the US pay for the pollutants they previously externalized.

mschuster91 3y ago

> Apart from that tiny chinese fleet of 1000+ coal plants, havent noticed any plans for those, or rest of developing world like India. China in particular is building out insane amounts of solar - hundreds of gigawatts a year [1]. India plans to pause new coal power plants and increase its capacity for solar [2] - Modi's government has it a bit easier than most Western countries, both due to the increasing authoritarianism and because the people see destructive weather events and their impact themselves. The rest of the world is already going solar thanks to cheap Chinese panels. In most of Africa, there isn't much of a working phone or electricity grid anyway for historical reasons (poverty, colonialism, theft, construction challenges, political, ...) so there's quite a lot of international aid programs going on [3] - after all, Africa has 60% of the solar energy potential of this entire rock floating in space, but only 1% of the worldwide production. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol... [2] https://apnews.com/article/india-coal-pause-plan-climate-renewables-68b75402af663e4553434bc672fc9cda https://apnews.com/article/india-coal-pause-plan-climate-ren... [3] https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2024/start-ups-powering-africa%E2%80%99s-solar-energy-ecosystem https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/january-2024/start...

epgui 3y ago

Yes you're right that it's a global problem, but that should not be an objection to taking initiative.

pxmpxm 3y ago
No, that is wrong - if the outcome of this regulation is coal export with the same end use + co2 for transit + no sulfur scrubbing because emerging markets coal plants have lesser env standards, it doesn't make sense.
- epgui 3y ago
  That would be a great argument if it were a response to a comment other than the one I made.