4 ms·

The majority of pollution is caused by 3rd world/ eastern countries. Do you want to go to war with China to enforce an environmentalist agenda?

wffurr 7mo ago
If this was the stated rationale and goal of the trade war, I'd be all for it. This is exactly the kind of situation tariffs are for.
- goatlover 7mo ago
  Tariffs on goods the world pays China to make which drives up emissions?
  - wffurr 7mo ago
    What? I think you forgot some words in there. The EU has applied tariffs for climate reasons with the carbon border adjustment. The idea is for a country to have domestic climate standards, and then apply tariffs on importers who import from countries that don't meet those standards. It's a straightforward application of tariffs to ensure domestic manufacturers aren't undercut by foreign rivals that aren't required to meet the same standards and redirect importers to sources that do meet standards or at least come closer. Carbon tax at home and carbon tariffs abroad is the only real economically sound strategy to nudge the economy towards emitting less. And yes, that does likely mean taxing Chinese imports in the short term. The Chinese leadership does understand the risks of climate change as well or better than many other countries and is already pursuing enormous amounts of clean energy and emission standards, so I'd not expect the tariffs on Chinese imports to last long on an environmental or carbon basis.
queenkjuul 7mo ago
China produces a lot less carbon per capita than we do
- wing-_-nuts 7mo ago
  Global warming doesn't care about 'per capita'. Edit: Individuals do not build coal power plants, utilities (and therefore, governments) do. India and China are continuing to build fossil fuel power generation. Global warming does not care about 'fairness', global warming cares about co2 PPM in the atmosphere. When we address climate change, we have to do so at the government level, or we mine as well not bother. The whole idea that we should look at 'emissions per capita' or 'historical emissions' in the interest of fairness is simply giving a license to governments to kill genuinely poor people in the third world.
  - californical 7mo ago
    And it also doesn’t care about arbitrary country boundaries. But it is affected by total emissions, and per-capita measurements is one fair way to judge how a country is doing
  - Longwelwind 7mo ago
    It also doesn't care about arbitrary groupings of humans (a.k.a countries). The fairest system would be for each human being to have an equal amount of pollution they are allowed to emit.
  - myrmidon 7mo ago
    There is literally no charitable interpretation of this point. How much of a problem any individuals CO2 emissions are is completely decoupled from what nation they live in, or how many people live in that nation specifically. If you hypothetically split up Asia or the US into 100 smaller countries then local emissions are not suddenly more (or less) of a problem than the are now (duh). And of course more people have more of an influence on global outcomes. This whole argument makes about as much sense as demanding that black people in Europe should not pay any income tax, because the total tax income from black people in Europe is very low, and "national budget does not care about per capita".
    - wing-_-nuts 7mo ago
mossTechnician 7mo ago
I don't see why war is necessary. There could be something like the Space Race, where nations flex their technological skills at producing solutions to environmental problems.
- atlintots 7mo ago
  That race already started, but China is the only one participating at the moment. The US has been running backwards, though.
jmcgough 7mo ago
Over the past century, the US has produced more cumulative carbon emissions than any other country, and it's not even close. China is in the middle of a massive expansion in wind, solar, and electric vehicles. The US is burning even more coal to support AI, and has gutted much of its federal emission reduction efforts.
- marcosdumay 7mo ago
  This changed on the last decade or so. It's close now. Of course, China has 5 times more people than the US, so they get a little bit of leeway. But they are close, and their emissions are growing. That said, yes, they are investing more than anybody else. And they are improving the technology we need more than anybody else. People talking about military intervention are full of shit, but we could use some diplomatic collaboration.
  - jimnotgym 7mo ago
    > and their emissions are growing. I know nothing about it. I have read comments on this very comments section, with references, that say China's emissions are not growing. This is what makes this subject so hard for the average numbskull like me, so much misinformation.
    - marcosdumay 7mo ago
      https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions The discussion is about what happened last year. We don't have the last year's data assembled yet. There's a real possibility it changed.
  - triceratops 7mo ago
    It's still not that close. 15% for China vs 24% for just the US. Add in the EU-27 and it's 41%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-...

wffurr 7mo ago

If this was the stated rationale and goal of the trade war, I'd be all for it. This is exactly the kind of situation tariffs are for.

goatlover 7mo ago
Tariffs on goods the world pays China to make which drives up emissions?
- wffurr 7mo ago
  What? I think you forgot some words in there. The EU has applied tariffs for climate reasons with the carbon border adjustment. The idea is for a country to have domestic climate standards, and then apply tariffs on importers who import from countries that don't meet those standards. It's a straightforward application of tariffs to ensure domestic manufacturers aren't undercut by foreign rivals that aren't required to meet the same standards and redirect importers to sources that do meet standards or at least come closer. Carbon tax at home and carbon tariffs abroad is the only real economically sound strategy to nudge the economy towards emitting less. And yes, that does likely mean taxing Chinese imports in the short term. The Chinese leadership does understand the risks of climate change as well or better than many other countries and is already pursuing enormous amounts of clean energy and emission standards, so I'd not expect the tariffs on Chinese imports to last long on an environmental or carbon basis.

queenkjuul 7mo ago

China produces a lot less carbon per capita than we do

wing-_-nuts 7mo ago
Global warming doesn't care about 'per capita'. Edit: Individuals do not build coal power plants, utilities (and therefore, governments) do. India and China are continuing to build fossil fuel power generation. Global warming does not care about 'fairness', global warming cares about co2 PPM in the atmosphere. When we address climate change, we have to do so at the government level, or we mine as well not bother. The whole idea that we should look at 'emissions per capita' or 'historical emissions' in the interest of fairness is simply giving a license to governments to kill genuinely poor people in the third world.
- californical 7mo ago
  And it also doesn’t care about arbitrary country boundaries. But it is affected by total emissions, and per-capita measurements is one fair way to judge how a country is doing
- Longwelwind 7mo ago
  It also doesn't care about arbitrary groupings of humans (a.k.a countries). The fairest system would be for each human being to have an equal amount of pollution they are allowed to emit.
- myrmidon 7mo ago
  There is literally no charitable interpretation of this point. How much of a problem any individuals CO2 emissions are is completely decoupled from what nation they live in, or how many people live in that nation specifically. If you hypothetically split up Asia or the US into 100 smaller countries then local emissions are not suddenly more (or less) of a problem than the are now (duh). And of course more people have more of an influence on global outcomes. This whole argument makes about as much sense as demanding that black people in Europe should not pay any income tax, because the total tax income from black people in Europe is very low, and "national budget does not care about per capita".
  - wing-_-nuts 7mo ago

mossTechnician 7mo ago

I don't see why war is necessary. There could be something like the Space Race, where nations flex their technological skills at producing solutions to environmental problems.

atlintots 7mo ago
That race already started, but China is the only one participating at the moment. The US has been running backwards, though.

jmcgough 7mo ago

Over the past century, the US has produced more cumulative carbon emissions than any other country, and it's not even close. China is in the middle of a massive expansion in wind, solar, and electric vehicles. The US is burning even more coal to support AI, and has gutted much of its federal emission reduction efforts.

marcosdumay 7mo ago
This changed on the last decade or so. It's close now. Of course, China has 5 times more people than the US, so they get a little bit of leeway. But they are close, and their emissions are growing. That said, yes, they are investing more than anybody else. And they are improving the technology we need more than anybody else. People talking about military intervention are full of shit, but we could use some diplomatic collaboration.
- jimnotgym 7mo ago
  > and their emissions are growing. I know nothing about it. I have read comments on this very comments section, with references, that say China's emissions are not growing. This is what makes this subject so hard for the average numbskull like me, so much misinformation.
  - marcosdumay 7mo ago
    https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions The discussion is about what happened last year. We don't have the last year's data assembled yet. There's a real possibility it changed.
- triceratops 7mo ago
  It's still not that close. 15% for China vs 24% for just the US. Add in the EU-27 and it's 41%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-...