Comment by glitchc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by glitchc | Hacker News Reader

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What a terrible comment for such a positive development. It completely ignores UK's massive efforts in switching away from coal-fired plants to other alternatives, such a huge undertaking. For reference: The current population in the UK is an estimated 66 million. The population in 1890 was 10 million. Therefore the current energy infrastructure supports 6x the population at the same carbon emissions rate. That's an amazing achievement and doesn't even take into consideration how much more electricity-dependent the average 2019 UKer is compared to the 1890 UKer.

So what if China produces goods in a dirty manner? How is this the UK's problem? This is a classic case of moving the goalposts. The UK has achieved carbon emission reductions without negatively impacting the standard of living, but of course that is not sufficient for the climate activists, is it, as it is the modern standard of living that they truly have an issue with.

Perhaps the climate activitists don't realize is that most of the population doesn't want to live "one with nature", and we are extremely loath to give up the creature comforts of modern urban living. Much of climate moralizing nowadays reminds me of the Temperance League at the turn of the century.

If the standard of living in the UK depends on imports from countries that heavily emit CO2's, then in what sense has the UK achieved a modern standard of living at a low rate of CO2 emissions?

How did you turn a comment on method of accounting into a screed against "modern standard of living" and for living "one with nature"?

Let me turn that question around:

Is the UK supposed to turn away from global trade and become an isolated, self-sufficient nation just to meet its climate commitments? Do you require that of every nation on the planet?

Or should the UK impose its policies and laws on other nations? Do you prefer that model?

Carbon taxes on both domestic products and imported ones, and rebating consumers a fixed amount per person would be a good start.

Carbon taxes on imports only make sense if the emissions data from the exporting countries is readily available to make a quantified estimate. Otherwise they will be poorly quantified, resulting in over- or under- taxation.

If we don’t have detailed information about carbon emissions then just use country-level estimates to establish a general carbon tariff.

It then becomes the importing manufacturer’s responsibility to actually do something about climate change.

While yours are important questions they're somewhat outside of the scope of the topic. The submission is about a measurement of Britain's carbon footprint and the post you were replying to was talking about how that measurement may or may not be particularly helpful.

I don't think it's a particularly good argument that we should accept one method of accounting or another because we like or dislike its policy implications. What is an honest and clear method of accounting in your eyes?

Sorry, I don't think so. The fine article already answers your question and I concur with the approach, originally posted by kitd, key phrase restated here:

Territorial emissions accounting might not be perfect, Mabey says, but in terms of simplicity it is the more practical approach. Lord Deben, chair of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, told the BBC the UK only has direct control over its home-grown emissions, whereas manufacturing methods and energy choices in China are outside our control.

By consequent, I disagree with your more holistic approach of measuring carbon costs as it is based on a moral judgement, and not a quantity that we can measure in any reasonable way.

While a useful metric must be implementable, not every implementable metric is meaningful. Is the metric being discussed here meaningful? What is it useful for?

There is an alternative. Consumers (or government) in the UK could demand more ecologically produced goods to lower their emissions. Of course that would be more expensive but no involvement in policy of other nations is required for that.

To take moral responsibility for the effects of ones own consumption on the rest of the world seems just to me.

This is not to diminish the efforts the UK has undergone to transform their energy sector.

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