4 ms·

Western democracies at this point can't do anything at that even hints at minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population. Any 5% at that. We are stuck in local

by Muromec 2mo ago

Western democracies at this point can't do anything at that even hints at minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population. Any 5% at that. We are stuck in local maximum even if it slowly and surely slides into the shitter

drawnwren 2mo ago
If you look at the derivatives, there is no change a Western Democracy can make that will matter as this plays out.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  Humanity being saved by China just dumping money into solar because why not, is certainly a take.
  - AlecSchueler 2mo ago
    Because "why not?" Do we understand that humanity includes Chinese people? Do we also understand A) the steps they're already taking to reduce emissions and B) how much of their emissions historically and today are in service of Western consumers?
    - RugnirViking 2mo ago
      i don't accept arguments in the form of B when its a business (our pollution is just serving our customers demand, its their moral responsibility to reduce consumption), and I also don't accept it in country form. centralisation makes centralised opporunity for change. You have all the power, and also all the responsibility.
      - AlecSchueler 2mo ago
        > i don't accept arguments in the form of B Feel free to share why not. At the end of the China is still part of a global system dominated by capitalism and they have to play the markets game in order to survive. They could easily fully do things their own way but that would mean, for example, chance of private intellectual property, which would mean no WTO membership, which would mean massively reduced capacity for trade, which would put them at such a disadvantage they'd inevitably collapse.
        RugnirViking 2mo ago
        I don't think you get to abdicate responsibilty of some avoidable negative externality of something you do just because some entirely separate function of it is the thing your customers want. If I were a plumber who fixed leaks by diverting the water into the customers' neighbors houses, my customers aren't the ones responsible for the damage it causes. I don't think it matters even if the externality isn't avoidable. I think people who sell murder-for-hire services are culpable of murder, even if they are paid by someone else If the argument were about slavery instead - slavery enables cheaper goods, ergo by buying our products, some of which were made using slavery, but we refuse to reveal which ones, but nonetheless by buying them you support slavery and are morally responsible for the slavery not us. Nobody would accept this framing. I agree that China has done very well from manufacturing and trade, and would not have done as well if they had not industrialised at a large scale. But that doesn't change the fact that industrialisation of this kind causes pollution and is damaging the planet and it especially doesn't mean that China has no moral obligation to do as much as it can to reduce emissions. I also don't believe the argument that the pollution is inherent to production, or that there is no way to satisfy demand without pollution. (or that china, specifically, derserves to be the one to profit from satisfying that demand). Production of almost all commodities can be done without massive emissions these days, and even when it couldn't, nobody was forced to ramp up production Someone will inevitably jump in here to point out that china makes a lot of solar or whatever. Sure, they do. They also make a lot of wind power. Their emissions per capita are trending in the wrong direction though. Europe's have been going DOWN since the 1970s, and china's are going UP. China's emissions per capita are roughly equal with the EU at the moment and are going up - pretty soon they will catch up and surpass the US.
        lmz 2mo ago
        Re: emissions per capita - why should the Chinese be limited to a lower amount than the US citizens? They want a high standard of living too.
        RugnirViking 2mo ago
        that might make sense in a world where the US has been chugging along emitting at a constant rate for many years, to maintain a certain standard of living.- but the reality is the US emissions has been going down for many years, while increasing their standard of living (arguable, but difficult to say that US standard of living is less than half of what it was in the 90s), while china is going up in emissions. I also don't agree that just because someone else became rich through some negative process (crime, perhaps), that everyone has a right to the same. This sort of thinking is the way the world burns. I don't get a free pass to behave like a mafia boss just because I really really want to have a bunch of money like one
      - actionfromafar 2mo ago
        Centralisation also comes with upkeep necessary to maintain centralisation. The cost of that upkeep can severaly limit opportunity for change. If you are a dictator, staying in power is priority one, at the cost of everything else.
        spwa4 2mo ago
        Don't worry China and propagandists will just lie about it. Just like people are doing here. In reality China is the main reason climate change got worse for the last 20 years. Ask ChatGPT who contributed to CO2 growth most in the past 20 years, Chinese industry was not just the biggest contributor to CO2 emission growth every year but most years bigger than everyone else combined. And the only real exception was 2020, when China shut down a lot faster for COVID, and a LOT more draconian, than everybody else. Also: China is STILL increasing coal use. STILL building new coal plants. Now, I get why (same reason even Germany is considering it), but that doesn't change the facts.
        wlecometo 1mo ago
        that's really looking at things in the worst possible way. China acquired most of the manufacture of the world, so yeah emission increased, the problem is that they did not decrease where the manifacture was lost. if you look at co2 emission per capita you can see how China is actually an example to follow, we can't say the same for USA, India or EU. you can ask this to chatgpt, or you could also ... search? for this data, it's publicly available. > China is STILL increasing coal use. STILL building new coal plants. this is misleading, yes they are building coal plants but not using them, that is the backup plan for "rainy days" . and the coal usage is going down.
    - drawnwren 2mo ago
      China has never had a meaningful reduction in per capita carbon emissions. Ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#/media/File:1850-_Annual_emission_of_carbon_dioxide_per_capita,_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
      - AlecSchueler 2mo ago
        What are you trying to say with this?
        drawnwren 2mo ago
        "steps to reduce emissions" is a platitude that sounds nice. they have never actually reduced emissions. they will surpass the US in per capita emissions at this rate within a decade.
        defrost 2mo ago
        They have a plan and they are sinking much of their current fossil fuel use into the largest renewable energy system on the planet. Compared to, say, rolling back windfarms and redirecting that money (almost a billion) into dodgy neighbours rolling coal ventures. Your prefer the US approach then?
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
        drawnwren 2mo ago
        This has always appeared to be a very measurable situation. Either one is committed to decreasing emissions or they are not. You can just measure emissions over time and compare. It has never made sense to me that people are willing to ignore the trends and argue in platitudes.
  - drawnwren 2mo ago
    Again, look at the derivatives. Western democracies are currently reducing while China are massively increasing per capita and on track to surpass US per capita in the next decade. Total has long been the more populous countries. The unfortunate truth that presents itself is that if you're not willing to go to war over climate, reduction of consumption is not going to happen. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#/media/File:1850-_Annual_emission_of_carbon_dioxide_per_capita,_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
tpm 2mo ago
This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower. Yeah the issue is "minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population", but it's not any 5%, it's the powerful 5% who resist the change using any means necessary including producing mass propaganda and steering the votes to the nazi parties which promise to revert to the old ways and stop any progress on the climate front.
- TeMPOraL 2mo ago
  > This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower. Can't speak about EV marketshare (I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read), but large part of population is buying only used ICE cars, or get new ones on a business lease; only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket. Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations.
  - tpm 2mo ago
    > I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read no: https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ > only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket. yes, mostly because new cars are very expensive, and that's exactly the point I was making > Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations. Exactly. But it's hard to quantify how much of that hatred is genuine and how much of it is fanned and amplified by fossil interests and reckless politicians. My guess is that around 80% of it is manufactured.
- throwaway473825 2mo ago
  It's a little bit more complicated than that. In a hypothetical EU without political intervention, Chinese EVs would be available without tariffs, and those would probably sell very well without any mandates.
mikojan 2mo ago
Yea, if those 5% are the top-5% - everybody else gets inconvenienced by Neo-Liberal policies all the time.
- AlecSchueler 2mo ago
  The top 5%/over 60s. The overlap is almost total.
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    Only in one way. Most rich bastards are over 60, but absolutely no shortage of very poor old people.
jjav 2mo ago
> even hints at minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population 5%? No. That's a lot of people. At least in the USA, the one and only thing that matters is what benefits the top 0.0002% richest (approximate percentage of billionares in the US). Nobody else matters anymore.
- shrubby 2mo ago
  Yes. Nietzsche once said God is dead and I guess the time has come to say "the systemic change is dead". Our destiny is not decided by a abstract superorganism, but a handful of people given godly rights create the rulebook. And to take us with them in the pursuit of suicide.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- dgellow 2mo ago
  Older people matter, given they vote
  - y04nn 2mo ago
    An interesting idea would be a democracy where your voting right is proportional to your expected remaining years to live. This would give more power to younger generations that are the ones that are going to be the most impacted by the decisions.
- Henchman21 2mo ago
  We should attempt to name all ~700k people on that list.
tomp 2mo ago
Pretty much everything the EU does, is inconveniencing most of its population, often in the name of "climate change" (while not actually making any impact). Positives: no mobile roaming charges Negatives: - less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier) - cookie law - car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit") - paper straws - attached bottle caps - LED lights - expensive electricity (a lot of this is caused by individual countries, but probably also the EU plays a role, e.g. by not classifying nuclear as "green" / "renewable" and banning Russian gas)
- ricardobayes 2mo ago
  I wouldn't even mind the speed limit beeping if it was paired with correct data. But the rental car I recently used in Germany actively reduced the engine power when it detected going "over the limit", which was frequrently triggered by e.g. motorway exit lane speed limits being incorrectly parsed. Since there is talk in the EU to actively prohibit going over the limit, this issue needs to be urgently fixed.
- reeredfdfdf 2mo ago
  Banning Russian gas is the right thing to do, and good for long-term energy independence & prices.
- puszczyk 2mo ago
  Have you ever visited the EU? Let me help you with the positives: common market, freedom of movement, rule of law, clean and beautiful cities and towns. Also, war is costly—so is preparedness. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, e.g. you have a strong polity neighboring you that insists your are by gods grace their zone of influence. I’m sad about nuclear to, but that’s on a culture in specific countries; not on Brussels. Also, there’s heaps of mistakes in the regulations they churn, but that’s another story.
- iso1631 2mo ago
  Not in the EU but have similar regulations > less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier) How exactly are they less efficient? > cookie law The fault being those trying to steal my data > car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit") I haven't seen that > paper straws I'll give you that one, however in my country its businesses that stopped it just to customer pressure, not a law, indeed it's perfectly legal to serve plastic straws to people, its just people don't ask for them > attached bottle caps These are great > LED lights These are also great > expensive electricity In my country that's due to the price of gas
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

by Muromec 2mo ago

drawnwren 2mo ago

If you look at the derivatives, there is no change a Western Democracy can make that will matter as this plays out.

fragmede 2mo ago
Humanity being saved by China just dumping money into solar because why not, is certainly a take.
- AlecSchueler 2mo ago
  Because "why not?" Do we understand that humanity includes Chinese people? Do we also understand A) the steps they're already taking to reduce emissions and B) how much of their emissions historically and today are in service of Western consumers?
  - RugnirViking 2mo ago
    i don't accept arguments in the form of B when its a business (our pollution is just serving our customers demand, its their moral responsibility to reduce consumption), and I also don't accept it in country form. centralisation makes centralised opporunity for change. You have all the power, and also all the responsibility.
    - AlecSchueler 2mo ago
      > i don't accept arguments in the form of B Feel free to share why not. At the end of the China is still part of a global system dominated by capitalism and they have to play the markets game in order to survive. They could easily fully do things their own way but that would mean, for example, chance of private intellectual property, which would mean no WTO membership, which would mean massively reduced capacity for trade, which would put them at such a disadvantage they'd inevitably collapse.
      - RugnirViking 2mo ago
        I don't think you get to abdicate responsibilty of some avoidable negative externality of something you do just because some entirely separate function of it is the thing your customers want. If I were a plumber who fixed leaks by diverting the water into the customers' neighbors houses, my customers aren't the ones responsible for the damage it causes. I don't think it matters even if the externality isn't avoidable. I think people who sell murder-for-hire services are culpable of murder, even if they are paid by someone else If the argument were about slavery instead - slavery enables cheaper goods, ergo by buying our products, some of which were made using slavery, but we refuse to reveal which ones, but nonetheless by buying them you support slavery and are morally responsible for the slavery not us. Nobody would accept this framing. I agree that China has done very well from manufacturing and trade, and would not have done as well if they had not industrialised at a large scale. But that doesn't change the fact that industrialisation of this kind causes pollution and is damaging the planet and it especially doesn't mean that China has no moral obligation to do as much as it can to reduce emissions. I also don't believe the argument that the pollution is inherent to production, or that there is no way to satisfy demand without pollution. (or that china, specifically, derserves to be the one to profit from satisfying that demand). Production of almost all commodities can be done without massive emissions these days, and even when it couldn't, nobody was forced to ramp up production Someone will inevitably jump in here to point out that china makes a lot of solar or whatever. Sure, they do. They also make a lot of wind power. Their emissions per capita are trending in the wrong direction though. Europe's have been going DOWN since the 1970s, and china's are going UP. China's emissions per capita are roughly equal with the EU at the moment and are going up - pretty soon they will catch up and surpass the US.
        lmz 2mo ago
        Re: emissions per capita - why should the Chinese be limited to a lower amount than the US citizens? They want a high standard of living too.
        RugnirViking 2mo ago
        that might make sense in a world where the US has been chugging along emitting at a constant rate for many years, to maintain a certain standard of living.- but the reality is the US emissions has been going down for many years, while increasing their standard of living (arguable, but difficult to say that US standard of living is less than half of what it was in the 90s), while china is going up in emissions. I also don't agree that just because someone else became rich through some negative process (crime, perhaps), that everyone has a right to the same. This sort of thinking is the way the world burns. I don't get a free pass to behave like a mafia boss just because I really really want to have a bunch of money like one
    - actionfromafar 2mo ago
      Centralisation also comes with upkeep necessary to maintain centralisation. The cost of that upkeep can severaly limit opportunity for change. If you are a dictator, staying in power is priority one, at the cost of everything else.
      - spwa4 2mo ago
        Don't worry China and propagandists will just lie about it. Just like people are doing here. In reality China is the main reason climate change got worse for the last 20 years. Ask ChatGPT who contributed to CO2 growth most in the past 20 years, Chinese industry was not just the biggest contributor to CO2 emission growth every year but most years bigger than everyone else combined. And the only real exception was 2020, when China shut down a lot faster for COVID, and a LOT more draconian, than everybody else. Also: China is STILL increasing coal use. STILL building new coal plants. Now, I get why (same reason even Germany is considering it), but that doesn't change the facts.
        wlecometo 1mo ago
        that's really looking at things in the worst possible way. China acquired most of the manufacture of the world, so yeah emission increased, the problem is that they did not decrease where the manifacture was lost. if you look at co2 emission per capita you can see how China is actually an example to follow, we can't say the same for USA, India or EU. you can ask this to chatgpt, or you could also ... search? for this data, it's publicly available. > China is STILL increasing coal use. STILL building new coal plants. this is misleading, yes they are building coal plants but not using them, that is the backup plan for "rainy days" . and the coal usage is going down.
  - drawnwren 2mo ago
    China has never had a meaningful reduction in per capita carbon emissions. Ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#/media/File:1850-_Annual_emission_of_carbon_dioxide_per_capita,_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
    - AlecSchueler 2mo ago
      What are you trying to say with this?
      - drawnwren 2mo ago
        "steps to reduce emissions" is a platitude that sounds nice. they have never actually reduced emissions. they will surpass the US in per capita emissions at this rate within a decade.
        defrost 2mo ago
        They have a plan and they are sinking much of their current fossil fuel use into the largest renewable energy system on the planet. Compared to, say, rolling back windfarms and redirecting that money (almost a billion) into dodgy neighbours rolling coal ventures. Your prefer the US approach then?
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
        drawnwren 2mo ago
        This has always appeared to be a very measurable situation. Either one is committed to decreasing emissions or they are not. You can just measure emissions over time and compare. It has never made sense to me that people are willing to ignore the trends and argue in platitudes.
- drawnwren 2mo ago
  Again, look at the derivatives. Western democracies are currently reducing while China are massively increasing per capita and on track to surpass US per capita in the next decade. Total has long been the more populous countries. The unfortunate truth that presents itself is that if you're not willing to go to war over climate, reduction of consumption is not going to happen. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#/media/File:1850-_Annual_emission_of_carbon_dioxide_per_capita,_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

tpm 2mo ago

This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower. Yeah the issue is "minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population", but it's not any 5%, it's the powerful 5% who resist the change using any means necessary including producing mass propaganda and steering the votes to the nazi parties which promise to revert to the old ways and stop any progress on the climate front.

TeMPOraL 2mo ago
> This is an interesting take because for example the EU car fleet emmission rules, fuel taxes, additional member state polluting car taxes etc. do exactly that. Otherwise ICE cars in the EU would be far far cheaper and the EV marketshare would be much lower. Can't speak about EV marketshare (I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read), but large part of population is buying only used ICE cars, or get new ones on a business lease; only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket. Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations.
- tpm 2mo ago
  > I'm guessing someone is bundling hybrids into stats you read no: https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ > only minority actually pays the sticker price for new car out-of-pocket. yes, mostly because new cars are very expensive, and that's exactly the point I was making > Also, it's hard not to notice how much general population hates those. I'm actually surprised EU got as far as it got here, pretty sure they're burning a lot of political capital because of environmental regulations. Exactly. But it's hard to quantify how much of that hatred is genuine and how much of it is fanned and amplified by fossil interests and reckless politicians. My guess is that around 80% of it is manufactured.
throwaway473825 2mo ago
It's a little bit more complicated than that. In a hypothetical EU without political intervention, Chinese EVs would be available without tariffs, and those would probably sell very well without any mandates.

mikojan 2mo ago

Yea, if those 5% are the top-5% - everybody else gets inconvenienced by Neo-Liberal policies all the time.

AlecSchueler 2mo ago
The top 5%/over 60s. The overlap is almost total.
- spwa4 2mo ago
  Only in one way. Most rich bastards are over 60, but absolutely no shortage of very poor old people.

jjav 2mo ago

> even hints at minimally inconveniencing 5% of the population 5%? No. That's a lot of people. At least in the USA, the one and only thing that matters is what benefits the top 0.0002% richest (approximate percentage of billionares in the US). Nobody else matters anymore.

shrubby 2mo ago
Yes. Nietzsche once said God is dead and I guess the time has come to say "the systemic change is dead". Our destiny is not decided by a abstract superorganism, but a handful of people given godly rights create the rulebook. And to take us with them in the pursuit of suicide.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
dgellow 2mo ago
Older people matter, given they vote
- y04nn 2mo ago
  An interesting idea would be a democracy where your voting right is proportional to your expected remaining years to live. This would give more power to younger generations that are the ones that are going to be the most impacted by the decisions.
Henchman21 2mo ago
We should attempt to name all ~700k people on that list.

tomp 2mo ago

Pretty much everything the EU does, is inconveniencing most of its population, often in the name of "climate change" (while not actually making any impact). Positives: no mobile roaming charges Negatives: - less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier) - cookie law - car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit") - paper straws - attached bottle caps - LED lights - expensive electricity (a lot of this is caused by individual countries, but probably also the EU plays a role, e.g. by not classifying nuclear as "green" / "renewable" and banning Russian gas)

ricardobayes 2mo ago
I wouldn't even mind the speed limit beeping if it was paired with correct data. But the rental car I recently used in Germany actively reduced the engine power when it detected going "over the limit", which was frequrently triggered by e.g. motorway exit lane speed limits being incorrectly parsed. Since there is talk in the EU to actively prohibit going over the limit, this issue needs to be urgently fixed.
reeredfdfdf 2mo ago
Banning Russian gas is the right thing to do, and good for long-term energy independence & prices.
puszczyk 2mo ago
Have you ever visited the EU? Let me help you with the positives: common market, freedom of movement, rule of law, clean and beautiful cities and towns. Also, war is costly—so is preparedness. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, e.g. you have a strong polity neighboring you that insists your are by gods grace their zone of influence. I’m sad about nuclear to, but that’s on a culture in specific countries; not on Brussels. Also, there’s heaps of mistakes in the regulations they churn, but that’s another story.
iso1631 2mo ago
Not in the EU but have similar regulations > less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier) How exactly are they less efficient? > cookie law The fault being those trying to steal my data > car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit") I haven't seen that > paper straws I'll give you that one, however in my country its businesses that stopped it just to customer pressure, not a law, indeed it's perfectly legal to serve plastic straws to people, its just people don't ask for them > attached bottle caps These are great > LED lights These are also great > expensive electricity In my country that's due to the price of gas

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]