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Comment by weiming | Hacker News Reader

Extensive air pollution from China or India that surpasses the West also doesn't seem to get much attention, e.g. [1] [2]

Greta visited the US and gave some compelling speeches. Will she visit China and India and do the same?

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/01/china-emits-...

[2] https://qz.com/india/1581665/indias-carbon-emissions-growing...

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It gets loads of attention, not least as both India and China have developed way beyond the free "developing nation" pass they got in previous climate agreements. Which plenty said was a big mistake at the time, but we are where we are.

No doubt if the climate movement in China and India invite her, she might well go. Well, perhaps not China as they lack freedom of association and speech. There have been protests in HK though. I doubt there is even as much in China as in Russia.

Russia has school strikes for climate consisting of one person demonstrating, changing places with another every hour or two[1]. That's because two or more demonstrating would fall foul of restrictions, as would anyone under 18.

[1] (Photos, text in Cyrillic): https://twitter.com/Fridaysforfut20/status/11776740588482478...

If you were a rising country coming up from behind in a world where the US dominates, would you want to reduce your growth to ensure you don't catch up to the rest of the world as quickly?

You might if you were one of the nations most likely to be harmed by near-term climate change, and you were already dealing with a severe water crisis to boot.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/india/india-water-crisis-intl...

The original idea was meant to avoid that. Many of the developed nations expected to contribute some sort of levy or subsidy, and try to help developing nations short cut their way past simply repeating all of our fossil-centric development trajectory. The earliest pre-Kyoto UN talks often seemed to be thinking along those lines. Sadly some nations - especially the US - weren't willing.

HK's protesting bandwidth will likely be saturated for the foreseeable future by domestic political concerns.

My guess is Greta focuses on people who can actually be influenced. Americans have access to a free press and information about how we use our energy or pollute. And being the richest nation in the world, we certainly have some responsibility for how we live our lives and the effects it has on the Earth.

Communicating with China and having the ability to effectively influence their policy is a much more difficult task.

It's not just China or India. It's the entirety of Southeast Asia and West Africa for much of the year too (typically starting in the next month or so). I've lived in Southeast Asia for a couple of years of my life and even had to move my family out of Thailand because the pollution is so bad (not just air pollution).

AirVisual [1] shows the impact of these areas pretty dramatically. At times, the air pollution in Africa is so bad that its impact can be felt directly in Brasil.

[1] https://www.airvisual.com/earth?nav

A lot of that air pollution is emitted producing products for the US & European markets.

Exactly. It's pollution that we directly benefit from, it's not fair to think our countries are better at the protecting the environment when everything we buy is made there instead of having the dirty factories/industries in our own countries.

It's interesting seeing how the Right is changing it's rhetoric as public opinion changes.

A few years ago it was "this isn't happening" now it's "these other people do it far worse than we do."

True, the right has been in outright denial of the facts, but the left has also been in denial about the contribution its policies have to the problem - they after all have been the cheerleaders for globalisation. No one is going to come out of this smelling of roses.

The "Left" (not the democrats) was not a cheerleader for globalization.

I also don't buy that if everyone was producing at smaller scales at home, this problem would be at all better. This is a consumption problem, not a "globalization" problem.

Ok, what counts as the "left" in the US and most European countries promoted globalization - the unreconstituted hard left, sure, not so much.

I agree with you that this is a consumption problem, but globalization is what has driven consumption for the past 30 years.

What? It’s the right in almost every country that has promoted globalization. Labor parties around the world, and the democrats in the US up until Bill Clinton, were staunchly opposed.

> democrats in the US up until Bill Clinton, were staunchly opposed.

That's a hell of a caveat.

Shrug, parties change. The democrats ceased to be a party of the left by any measure from 1992-2016. That’s just about a quarter century. Clinton took the party hard right.

The “right” in the US is now staunchly in favor of trade wars instead of free trade. Not what you’d expect given their history.

What aboutism is all well and good. But climate change is a much bigger planet wide threat compared to local air pollution in India and China, which mostly affects locals in India and China. On a per capita basis the western world, especially USA, contribute the most co2 emissions. So that is where the climate protests should start. And dumping all kinds of what aboutism criticisms on a 16 year old is not a good look.

Why are per capita statistics more important than total emissions? Are the glaciers going to reform because China also has a billion people? China produces more than double the raw amounts of CO2 than the USA. Though I am willing to shift some of the blame to countries who outsource their manufacturing to China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

it comes down to standard of living. if you're a developed country you have the luxury to care about the environment. if you are playing catch-up and are also aggressively building/developing the resources you use and the waste you generate are going to have a totally different profile.

Only 58% of the population in china lives in cities and therefore is responsible for pollution. The other 42% are most likely emitting almost nothing. Telling them to cut their emissions even further isn't going to work. Meanwhile Americans with their pickup trucks and 30 minute commutes could trivially change their carbon footprint by simply getting a more efficient car.

>>Why are per capita statistics more important than total emissions?

Why should a grouping of people called "country" be more important than per capita? You can always find a group that is larger than you, but it is still not a good excuse for not changing what you do. I would say it is selfish to expect mostly emerging markets to change, when it is the developed world that is mostly to blame

> Why are per capita statistics more important than total emissions?

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/you-can-lead-a-horse-to-...

> Greta visited the US[...]

Yes, to address the United Nations.

...don’t forget the opportunistic appearance before Congress.

I was struggling with your use of "opportunistic". That word typically implies unethical behavior. Is that what you meant?

Had the opportunity to and acted on it. Parent mentioned UN, but she also visited other places in the US like the Congress.

You probably wanted the word “opportune” instead, then.

You literally just linked to two large publications talking about the issues you think don't get attention. India/China air pollution is pretty well known - it was in the media for decades now.

It was actually bad enough, that Beijing was apparently fixing it for the last 20 years: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/27645/...

Per capita US pollutes more than China and India. Using Anything besides per capita isnt a valid measurement because a it doesn’t treat people equally.

I believe the issue is that they aren't denying the effects like the Trump administration is.

This is a whataboutism that distracts from actually doing anything meaningful about climate change. We can't fix the entire problem, but combating climate change will require everyone to do as much as they can - so we should get to doing our part in transforming our economy.

Please don't troll here. Pollution in those countries gets massive attention. The mainstream news articles you cited are an example. Those countries are part of the UN and Global community that is covered by the Global climate strike. Much of China's pollution is in industry manufacturing exports to the rest of the world.

If you have good faith interest in reducit pollution, please contribute efforts to reducing pollution, not backseat driving another volunteer. Greta Thunberg doesn't owe you anything.

Tbh there are so many things we can change at home already. This tiny pack of reusable straws(https://bit.ly/2nReQyG) has lasted my kids almost a year. Literally zero waste. Trump's the paper straws even! It's the little things..

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