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None of it matters when China is burning coal like crazy and 99% of all ocean plastic comes from Asia.[1] Europe is mostly costly virtue signaling. [1] https:/

• cherryteastain 2y ago
  Measures like ICE bans still improve the local air quality.
  • afh1 2y ago
    True. All of the measures mentioned have local benefits, with a price tag attached. Global impact is less clear cut.
  • jeltz 2y ago
    Not much. Banning old ICE cars does but modern ICE cars does not pollute that much more than electric. A lot of the pollution comes from the tyres.
• choult 2y ago
  If everyone keeps using everyone else's use of fossil fuels as a justification for their own, then no progress will ever be made.
  • afh1 2y ago
    When your waste is irrelevant vs that of your neighbor, paying a high price to do your insignificant part is simply inefficient. If people really cared about a global impact, the approach would need to be radically different.
    • dylan604 2y ago
      If you reduce your waste, you have the high ground to use as leverage to coninve others. It's not a hard concept
• xethos 2y ago
  Your six year old source itself states that in 2017, China stopped the import of foreign garbage. Meaning plastic pollution will have dropped in the six years since your source was published. More importantly though, it wasn't even necessarily China's waste. Rich, Western nations like the one you're (likely) commenting from have sent their plastic waste to China, where it ends up in the sea. And you use that for justification that "using less plastic doesn't matter", and that it's "mostly virtue signaling".
  • jeltz 2y ago
    Nah, it is mostly local plastic from what I can tell. And I come from a country which is a net importer of waste, not exporter. And China is not the issue, it is mostly the Phillipines. We cannot solve this other than by payibg for and forcing a couple of countries to solve their issue. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic-waste-pollution-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic...
• __m 2y ago
  Yeah let’s not compare per capita or historic responsibility, or their huge investments in renewable energy, I don’t want to lower my first world lifestyle.
  • jeltz 2y ago
    Per capita plastic pollution is highest in a handful of Asian countries, but for CO2 you have a point. Plastic pollution is caused by just a couple of countries.
  • hellgas00 2y ago
    On a per capita basis China emits more CO2 than Europeans.
    • defrost 2y ago
      The EU-27 and China are currenty ballpark; the EU has made a solid effort to come down overthe decades, China has risen by virtue of being the worlds largest trading source .. the argument can be made that western countries have outsourced the CO2 of much of their production to China. All that aside, for those that want figures: EU-27: https://www.statista.com/statistics/986392/co2-emissions-per-cap-by-country-eu/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/986392/co2-emissions-per... China: https://www.statista.com/statistics/239070/co2-emissions-per-capita-in-china https://www.statista.com/statistics/239070/co2-emissions-per...
• otherme123 2y ago
  It's not virtue signaling. Europe acknowledges that we are already good enough to keep basing our growth in fossils. But developing countries deserve some slack with fossil usage while they converge. Indirectly, by requiring cleaner cars for example, there's a push toward China designing clean engines if they want to sell in Europe. In fact China is already selling a decent amount of cars in Europe.