At least someone is... it's a sad, sad day when the supposed "leaders of the free world" insist on burying their heads in the sand WRT: global warming. Even if we ARE wrong, acting as if reducing pollution is a bad thing is just silly.
Americans have set up their government so that it more or less reflects the will of the people, and the relatively educated American public is not OK with the government taking drastic steps very quickly. For better or for worse, the Chinese government can move extremely quickly because they essentially answer to no one; if the government wants to raze a neighborhood for something, they do it. If they want to build a road, they move whatever's in the way and build it. In some ways it's incredibly efficient. But that's something the US government is not optimized for, and I'm personally glad for that.
I patently disagree with this opinion. Between lobbyist money and "news" agencies blatantly lying to groups of people not educated enough to fact check what they're hearing on the news, the government very much does NOT reflect the will of the people. It reflects the will of a handful of extremely wealthy people, and large corporations seeking profits at the expense of *.
If Americans didn't want lobbyists or dishonest news, they would vote to ban lobbyists and not watch the dishonest news. But they choose to keep those things in a kind of self-reinforcing feedback loop.
You realize that's actually a provable thing, right? That it's significantly harder to break that cycle when it's introduced at a young age because it forces children to remove their parents from the pedestal they're naturally placed on.
You say that as though you think it's just something people make up, when there's actual provable science behind it.
The Chinese have a saying for this: the mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away.
Xi actually comes predominantly from the reformer branch of the Chinese political house. I think his biggest challenge is that his precedessors grew China too quickly.
The US has seen its CO2 emissions consistently falling for years, while generating ever greater economic output from its falling CO2 emissions output, a trend that is set to continue regardless of what the White House does.
The US is presently a leader at reducing its CO2 output and CO2 output per unit of economic growth. Its CO2 emissions from energy production is at a 26 year low, a time when the economy was half its present size in real terms.
Per capita CO2 emissions in the US have declined by nearly 30% since their peak, per the Department of Energy. They're back to where they were in 1960. The trend-line is persistently down.
Several major economies of Europe are seeing similar aggressive trends in general CO2 emissions and per capita emissions.
China's CO2 emissions are still rapidly increasingly by contrast. They have no plans to actually reduce CO2 emissions, their plan is to maybe slow the increase in the next two decades. They also have no plans to reduce their extreme consumption of coal, rather they plan to try to have more renewable energy as a share. Currently China is producing at least 2x the CO2 output of the US with growing CO2 emissions, while the US has an economy 60% larger with a trend of falling CO2 emissions (set to continue as natural gas & renewables replace coal).
It's often said that the blame should be on the developed world because they're outsourcing pollution to China. At this point that's blatantly incorrect. China has made a choice about how it manufactures, to keep its costs artificially low so as to remain competitive. The US has doubled its substantial manufacturing output in roughly 30 years, without any corresponding output spike in CO2. China is cutting environmental corners, because if they don't the cost of their manufacturing would go up significantly.
"Leader at reducing its output": Down is easier when you're standing on a mountian instead of at sea level.
"Per capital...": US per capita output is still higher than China's.
It really is a matter of how you look at it, and which timespans you observe.
Looking at the same data you could come to vastly different conclusions:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-bi...
No it's not. China is producing 2x the CO2 of the US, while the US has an economy 60% larger. China's emissions are still rapidly climbing and are set to continue to do so.
> The current downward trend is just a blip in the general trend across all recorded data since ~1900
So you're predicting that the US is going to dramatically reverse course and begin producing a lot more energy with coal, soon? That's the only way the US CO2 decline trend is going to reverse course and consistently move higher. You must also be predicting that the US is going to entirely skip the inbound electric car change-over. As it looks now, the US is seeing the slow death of coal, with increasing electricity from natural gas and renewables, while simultaneously the US is about to adopt electric cars (like much of the developed world). Would you mind supporting your counter premise with some kind of data?
> US per capita output is still higher than China's.
It should be. US GDP per capita is five to six times that of China. China's CO2 output is 2x that of the US. That means the US is radically more efficient than China when it comes to economic output vs CO2 output.
China's CO2 output has been climbing rapidly the last five and ten years. The US added $4 trillion to its economy while reducing its CO2 output. China is such an immense polluter when it comes to CO2, that within perhaps just 15 years that per capita CO2 imbalance will decline to near zero - with the US still possessing 3x to 4x the GDP per capita of China.
And "per capita" still places the US solidly at the top of global polluters.
"per GDP" is an useless metric to me. You don't get to have more of the pie just because you managed to figure out how to get fatter eating it.
At the moment, if we are viewing people as a resource, in terms of economic production per individual, they are.
That aside, I agree with you in general, but the point can also be made that It is not fair to compare the US and China per capita because in theory China is still a developing country, and only when the standards of living are similar between the two countries would the comparison be fair.
This assumes that improving standard of living is more important to China than controlling emissions though.
Per capita is only meaningful without international trade.
Not true. They have been stopping most coal plants that were in the planning stage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy-environme...
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/06/electric-car-s...
In the context of the USA, could just be that republicans (the anti-climate change prevention party) are simply speaking to their conservative values in some way and want the USA to remain coal-powered with gasoline cars. All change is bad change?
Another less tenable theory is that typically conservatives/republicans cater to religious groups, and a tenant of christianity is the only thing that matters on earth is your own works - earth is irrelevant in the face of eternal paradise. I don't buy this one as much but it's fun to chew on.
I do feel very strongly though that not taking climate change seriously represents a fundamental inability to comprehend the term "long term investment."
In summary, people don’t give religion enough thought to let it influence their actions WRT climate change, except out of convenience.
Or perhaps the senator would fall under my “convenience” clause, dunno.
However, I'd argue that it's more wide-ranging deficit than simply long-term thinking. I'd argue that it's about empathy deficits, all around - not just with in regards to the future.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/self-con...
No, pollution means something going into the environment that causes harm, and in the amounts being emitted. That is how every environmentalist I have ever heard of defines it.
But I bet you already knew that. You know, when someone uses bad arguments, I tend to assume it is because they lack good ones, and they lack good ones because the idea they are arguing for is mistaken.
No, not one in a thousand environmentalists believes that. You know, flat-out lies may work with the sort of people you identify with, but not people who know the truth.
Not sure where you got that idea when I said CO2 is a problem. I guess this topic is too charged with emotion to discus reasonably.
But I am still saying that the claim that any significant proportion of environmentalists think the human race is evil and should all be killed is simply false. Do you want to defend it?
"I think many people join the "climate change denial" crowd too push back against the "humans are evil and should go extinct, the quicker the better" environmentalist crowd."
Not completely obvious from this statement, but what I meant to convey was that the people who are committed and serious about "climate change denial" are people who believe many/most environmentalists are in the "humans are evil and should go extinct, the quicker the better" crowd. Not really sure about that, as I don't know any committed deniers well enough to have an honest conversation, but it doesn't seem unlikely.
Hey, I started out being strongly critical, and now we agree. Rational discourse does work, at least some of the time.