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Comment by ixtli | Hacker News Reader

I think its very important to engage with the fact that this is something China can do because of what we in the west deem unacceptably "authoritarian" governance. This effect isn't entirely due to people's starry-eyed conservationism: the government arrests people and closes factories that violate these ecological goals.

By way of example, this happened a few weeks ago and is very difficult to find coverage of in english speaking media: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/china-makes-arrests-shut...

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And what about India? As far as I know it doesn't have an authoritarian government. Europe is also democratic and has been a world leader in environmental policy. It's really just the United States that has the problem.

I don't think the key difference is authoritarian vs. democratic, but "prudent" vs. "proudly ignorant". America has some deep, deep-rooted cultural problems that are really at the heart of our environmental failings. Nearly half of our country still thinks global warming is a conspiracy. Some here in the south modify their trucks to produce more pollution as some kind of twisted badge of honor. You see them belch smog across the freeway like it's 1920. It's really a very specifically American complex.

You make a very good point, and I upvoted it.

That said, ixtli has a very salient point on the subject of how implementing these things is a whole lot easier when you start shutting down factories and arresting scofflaws. But you probably don't necessarily need government as authoritarian as China's to do those things.

Ya I’ve said to another commenter that I just don’t know enough about Indian post-colonial government to be able to comment effectively.

Extremely multi-leveled and complex. Democratic. Corrupt in many places. Idk how you measure authorotarian-ness, but it certainly isn't totalitarian. Ie, A central national authority does not exercise a lot of power over people's lives. As you move down the power ladder to local scale, there is a lot of variance and there are pickets of totalitarian power... not the kind of power that'd be implementing environmental policies though.

I'd say more similar to the west than china, in terms of stuff pertinent to the thread.

More generally still, I don't think the high-level system is a driving force. I think it's mostly pretty straightforward.. environmental issues have become a thing people care about more in china and India, governments and publics.

Right- law and order when it comes to corporations are what's needed, which isn't incompatible with democracy. It is incompatible with the values held by much of America, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, it looks like the US are exporting this "proud ignorance" - see the recent victory of Jair Bolsonaro, who has been dubbed the "Brazilian Trump" because of his similar views on gun control, the environment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jair_Bolsonaro#Environmental_p...) and general firmly populist right-wing attitude. Maybe India, China and others will be able to offset the increased rate of deforestation in Brazil, but still, a planted forest is not the same as an untouched tropical rainforest...

For various reasons the American mindset is more common in less-developed countries. To a degree that's natural - when you're just trying to get your economy off the ground, it makes more sense to get out of the way of business, as opposed to when you have the world's largest and most impactful economy.

The United States is a country that started out in that situation and never totally grew out of it. It's culturally stunted, stuck romanticizing an earlier stage of development instead of growing up. It's a fifty-year-old that refuses to stop acting like he's twenty-one.

Of course, the UK right now is a counter-example to this way of looking at things.

Well, yes, but India and China are less-developed countries too. I know all developing countries can say "you cut down your forests centuries ago, why can't we do the same thing now?", but at least some are trying to develop without making the same mistakes...

Don't forget the new trend of purposefully parking their trucks in EV parking spots to deny EVs the ability to charge.

It won't take a dictator to plant trees, just government spending. In fact the EPA has done a lot without eliminating democracy in the US.

....And it’s currently run by a fossil fuel lobbyist.

While I’m not arguing for the US to not be a democracy, it’s important to accept that democracies are not perfect, have many flaws and require constant vigilance to ensure the knobs of State power don’t end up in the hands of incompetent idiots (as they are in the current administration).

I suspect that instituting very strong campaign finance laws would get us 90% of the way towards solving this problem.

And not just _this_ problem.

I don't see why you couldn't have a fossil fuel lobbyist as a dictator, or even as a dictatorial appointment motivated by the same reasons that got the current EPA head appointed.

It’s a good question. Notably, most dictatorships are this way and rarely do we find benevolent totalitarian regimes (Park Chung Hee, Lee Kuan Yew etc).

The CPC is different in that at its core it still seems to a) believe in science and b) wants to uplift China. The bargain is that CPC will take China down a path of prosperity while suspending democratic freedoms. It’s entirely possible they don’t hold their end of the bargain, but it would likely lead to social instability on a massive scale.

>wants to uplift China

Why would they want to do that? To stay in power, presumably - the same as any other political organization. If they are ever faced with a situation where the best way to stay in power is to destroy China, they will take it; an option that US politicians might sometimes wish they could take, but are unable to because of limits on their power.

There are a million CPC officials, and 2200 elected representatives. The party claims 89 million members. I’d be critical of attempts to view it as a somehow monolithic entity that exists separately from “the rest” of China.

When joining the party is required if you want to get a job in your career field, you'll join the party.

require constant vigilance

i.e., y’all need to vote.

People keep voting, meanwhile nothing's getting better.

That's because people just vote once every few years on election day.

Vigilance includes actively following politics (not just the sensational BS headlines in TV news and newspapers, but the real deal), marching and demonstrating when needed, participating in your preferred party and making sure the right people get its nomination, and so on.

Don't just "write your congressman" about issues, for they could not care less. Write online, influence others, organize, and make them care (whatever your politics, this is just so the politics are closer to what people want, not so that the politics are "the right politics", which doesn't exist).

What were the voter turnouts in the last presidential election (which had the most people vote in recent memory)?

What about the most recent mid-term, off-year elections?

People don't vote. Well, old people vote. But that's about it.

Who are you voting for in your municipal and/or state elections in November? Yes, this year. Do you know there are races?

Federal elections are incredibly important, but on a day-to-day basis, city and state elections will affect you just as much, if not more.

Here in Seattle, for instance, seven of our nine city council members are up for reelection, and the outcome will determine how $6 billion gets spent every year. It will help determine whether Seattle can keep pace with its huge influx of tech workers. It will determine whether housing affordability gets addressed.

And not that many people are really aware of these elections. Even fewer are aware of the primary that will determine who's on our November ballot.

So, if you've made a plan to be a voter in your forthcoming municipal elections, then bravo—I'm incredibly happy to hear it. And now get to work making sure that your friends and family members have up-to-date voter registration information on file, and that they have plans to be voters, too.

Vote Save America makes it easy to check if your registration is up to date: https://votesaveamerica.com

It's true. Australia just had a federal election, and re-elected a party running on an anti green, pro-coal energy strategy. Voting here is compulsory

democracy is not a spectator sport

has done, not is doing

That is one of the reasons why we have the Electoral College.

How does the electoral college prevent this problem?

I think most of us accept that democracy is imperfect. There’s a reason for the popularity of the quote that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

The main, perhaps only, advantage of democracy is that it is resilient. A dictatorship can easily decide to plant a ton of trees and shut down dirty factories. It can just as easily decide to dump toxic waste into the rivers and shoot anyone who complains. A benevolent dictatorship is much better than democracy, this is pretty widely accepted. It’s better until the dictator dies or is overthrown, then you don’t know what you’ll get.

To quote Scott Alexander, “If you remember nothing else about the superiority of democracies to other forms of government, remember the fact that in three years, we will have a change of leadership and almost no one is stocking up on canned goods to prepare for the inevitable civil war.”

"the government arrests people and seizes factories that violate these ecological goals"

Why isn't this a good thing? Shouldn't people who ignore ecological laws be punished? And anyway, how do you propose to fix climate change without massive, centralized planning, including punishment of those who subvert such a fix for personal gain?

Also, in your link, the plants are closed, not seized.

Oh I hoped it was clear that I think it's a very, very good thing that we should do here. Also v good point, they are closed. (However I would bet that they'll be reopened under new management. Definitely my western bias saying 'seized.')

I edited my comment to say closed.

I don’t understand. Why would central planning be required to fix climate change? How about just charge greenhouse gas emitters so that there are no longer externalities?

I don’t see any reason to turn to central planning, unless one just uses that term to refer to any regulations involving the economy.

It may unfortunately be the only way. We live in a capitalist society where the only reason any sort of enterprise occurs is because there's a profit to be made. The US government just doesn't give a shit to correct negative externalities via smart regulation because it's in bed with all the big actors in most industries.

I don’t quite understand the argument. Since the US government is in bed with big industry, it should take over the entire economy instead of regulate those big industries?

I don't see the US government (for one) having the teeth or even really desire to enforce any regulations absent a huge change.

I think a lot of right wingers in North America would say that regulations such as taxing carbon, or providing government incentives to solar or wind farms would be considered a socialist centrally planned catastrophe. I mean, that's what the 'Green New Deal' is all about, and apparently American right wing nuts think that's communism.

The Green New Deal is a mishmash of left wing talking points, not a coherent proposal.

>How about just charge greenhouse gas emitters so that there are no longer externalities?

There will still be externalities, but they would be properly priced in and accountable.

One example when I was there in March: I saw no 2-stroke ICE scooters, everybody is riding electric scooters. AFAIK, it was a decree by the central govt, and a very effective change since 2-strokes are notorious polluters.

> And anyway, how do you propose to fix climate change without massive, centralized planning, including punishment of those who subvert such a fix for personal gain?

Tax tax tax. Price in the cost of externalities and let the market sort it out. Market forces allow society-wide coordination without heavy-handed central planing.

Obviously you'll still need to prosecute tax cheats.

"the government arrests people and seizes factories that violate these ecological goals"

But near human slavery in factories with working commiting suicide, that does not violate any goals.

So it says greener today than 20 years ago. How Green were they in say 1960 and 1970 and 1980, etc. I take it since the article says 20 years, then 30 years ago the space was a lot greener before then?

Yes the US needs to pick up on green space, but remeber when you look at the map the south west (Cali to Texas, is not exactly good for trees.

On the other hand, India is more federated and much less centralized (nor authoritarian) and they’ve achieved progress in this area too!

Yes, it definitely appears this way! I just know a bit about china and nearly nothing about india so i don't really comment :)

It is worth noting though, that just planting trees all over the place isn't the same as building and sustaining a complex forest/jungle ecosystem. They may be planting a lot, but the habitat destruction is still a serious concern.

And it's not just an India/China thing too. The US also paves over new and moderate growth forests so they will never develop into old growth ones.

"I think its very important to engage with the fact that this is something China can do because of what we in the west deem unacceptably "authoritarian" governance."

I disagree.

Check the article again:

- Canada has been responsible for 40% as much 'man made greening' as China.

- Canada is 3% the population of China.

- Canada has provided 1500% 'more greening per capita' than China.

- Canada is obviously a decent modern democracy.

In 'per capita' or 'per square km' terms, or even in 'per GDP' terms, there doesn't seem to be a much of a story here.

So I don't think this is at all about 'authoritative power', in fact, arguably just the opposite.

FYI I think the 'real' story is in the opposite direction - a large country like Brazil which is currently having problems with deforestation.

I know this is a somewhat controversial statement, but I sometimes feel that Democracy is ruining our chances of survival as a species.

Long-term project planning and execution is very difficult when administrations, and their inherent focuses, change so quickly compared to the length of time necessary to achieve massive projects.

If we want to "fix" climate change by terraforming our planet, it'll take multiple lifetimes. Same with substantial space engineering projects.

It flies in the face of my liberal demeanor, but I think the only form of government with the ability to stick to plans for hundreds of years would be a Monarchy, strict dictatorship, or something similar. In theory, we could get lucky and they would be benevolent.

We could also just embrace the plausible AI "singularity" and ask the machines to take care of us and tell us what to do. It just takes faith that an AI would be more reliable over hundreds of years than a succession of different people. It also takes faith that it wouldn't decide to just throw in the towel and remove the people to save the planet.

>I sometimes feel that Democracy is ruining our chances of survival as a species.

The cynic in me believes that the point of environmental alarmism is to convince the public that giving up their democratic way of life and their rights is the only way to save the earth and humanity from certain destruction. Those who believe that dramatic action is necessary to stop certain extinction will stop at nothing to take power in order to enact their plan. After all, the very survival of the species depends upon them, doesn't it?

What actions do you propose in order to "engage with" this "fact"? Are there factories in Western nations that would be seized by more "authoritarian" governments? Can we write some letters to get those factories shuttered without buying into more authoritarianism too?

In fact it seems quite normal that polluters would be punished. When the authorities charged with environmental enforcement are accountable to the populace, polluters are punished for that reason. When they are not accountable, polluters are punished for other reasons, which reasons are probably more closely aligned with the interests of those authorities than with those of the populace. It's great that China no longer imports trash, and it's great that they've closed down some polluters, but they're pretty late to this party. Far freer nations managed to accomplish this a long time ago. Maybe China should copy them instead?

It is authoritarian, but so is every government intervention. Authoritarian actions aren't inherently bad...it's just dangerous and often suboptimal to resolve issues by force.

This is effectively "infrastructure spending," which is the thing China has done best, and very few people in the US and Europe actually oppose. The complaints against infrastructure spending don't tend to be that they represent government overreach, but rather that they tend to overspend and do a terrible job (see California bullet train).

This resonates with what happened in Eastern Europe. Until the fall of communism nature (by and large) thrived. Despite some bone-headed industrial projects, hunting sprees of the ruling class, etc., a remarkable level of biodiversity was preserved and there was no widespread poaching or deforestation. In comparison, the wild capitalism of the last 30 years and the opening up of the market to (more efficient) international players meant a death-penalty for forests and wildlife.

EDIT: downvoters, please argue for the opposite if you disagree.

The forests of Europe in general have all grown considerably denser since WW2. In eastern Germany, the forests are still sparser than their western German counterparts.

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