What are you basing this on? The World Heritage Sites are run by UNESCO, and China is not on the current Executive board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO#Executive_Board
edit China is on the World Heritage Committee, but so is Australia with every member having an equal ballot.
Do not be distracted by nationalism - this natural asset is being immeasurably degraded in our lifetime.
Most of the "big players" you mention are similar so it is not just the "big players" who need to decrease emissions. You should see the per-capita numbers for fair comparision.
Please stop blaming India and China without much research.
Genuinely curious
- Electricity and heat benefit from a bigger electricity network (e.g. to get more reliable solar and wind), but electrical grids don't necessarily follow borders. The US has about 3 grids, continental Europe has a grid spanning 24 countries. (in fact, there's almost no grids that span exactly one country [1])
- Agriculture doesn't hugely benefit from economies of scale beyond the regional level
- Transport benefits mostly from rail networks, which aren't really bound to borders
You can make a case that population density helps (most obvious in the case of transport, but it is really helpful for lots of things), and being an island makes electricity harder. But in the case of Australia, it has to be noted that the negative effect on electricity from being an island is somewhat lessened by their vast area, and the negative effect of low population density on transport emissions is somewhat lessened by most Australians actually living in pretty high density.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_gri...
When sea levels rise and poor Indians who live near the sea are affected, is the Indian govt going to help them or will the rich countries need to step in like they did during Covid?
You can talk about per capita all you want but in the end who is going to support the affected Indians?
>in the end who is going to support the affected Indians? nobody, but that is besides the point
The marginal effect of removing Australia’s emissions is like a rounding error in the climate equation.
Yes, for the world, and not per country. Otherwise it'd be "better" for the world if larger countries just split into many smaller ones.
All AGW divided by total human population equals one.
So, naturally, The Great Barrier Reef is very concerned with totals.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heihe%E2%80%93Tengchong_Line
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...
If China started charging their factories to offset CO2, Apple and Nerf (or their suppliers) would just find the next country willing to host their polluting factories for a bit less money.
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...
The only reason per capita measures even enter the conversation is because we're all looking for a low pollution path to high energy consumption.
Can clearly see your bias here. Why are you ignoring the emissions by the rich 1B people, they are the ones that can actually do something about it (reduce consumption and invest in research) thanks to their relatively luxurious lives. The others are just trying to survive - for them, consequences of climate change are still much better than the current state of poverty.
The rest of the world has a very low carbon footprint per person, just that the population is much higher. How do you propose reducing the population, birth rates have already been dropping drastically across the globe and human population will peak at ~10B. Do you want to kill them off? Do you feel your life is more important than theirs?
> The rest of the world has a very low carbon footprint per person, just that the population is much higher. How do you propose reducing the population, birth rates have already been dropping drastically across the globe and human population will peak at ~10B. Do you want to kill them off? Do you feel your life is more important than theirs?
I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children. If poor people had 0.5 children on average, then poverty would be eradicated quite quickly. An ever increasing population isn't necessary to have a comfortable life. And we could all emit more pollution per capita while living in a cleaner world.
True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.
> there will be 1 billion less wealthy people
Just wrong. There are lots of ways to reduce emissions without any effect in wealth. Eating less meat is one example.
> for no particular net gain.
Very wrong, there are huge gains: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...
> I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children.
I knew you would say this, I was just waiting for it. Global birth rates have been in freefall for decades now, it's tragic that people don't know about it. You'd assume that supposedly "better" education in western countries would make people more aware, but western governments are only concerned with maintaining global western hegemony which requires falsely accusing the rest of the world and keeping their citizens ignorant. Also, you can't force people to have less children, that's inhumane. I suggest you go through the following links.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
Are you suggesting the majority of a problem is smaller than half?
Eating less meat is pretty stupid as strategies go, it doesn't tackle the root cause (which is too many people).
I'm not clear on what your point is about birth rates trend down in wealthy countries, but that is actually a well known fact. Quite an encouraging one.
The Great Barrier Reef is endangered and will likely disappear for the most part.
And yes our own management of it has been problematic in many ways.
Writing this down to China is stupid.