China and India will have to ‘justify’ watered down coal pledge–Cop26 president

Might as well write the eulogy now…

“We bred out of control to absolutely bonkers amounts, and taking X% of the earths resources is non-negotiable”?

Imagine if, in the face of climate change, the US response was a movement of 6-8 children per woman. What would that US policy be called?

I'm familiar with discussions dating to the 1970s, in which the Global North (then "first world countries) and the Global South ("third-world", "undeveloped", or "developing" countries) battled over where and how sacrifices should be made.

In the interim, China, and to a lesser extent India, have emerged as global economic powers. Both have done so by dramatically increasing their consumption of both energy resources (much of that from coal and other fossil fuels) as well as other natural resources and extreme amounts of ecological disruption and contamination. Much as Western Europe and North America before them.

China and India also have some rather sharp history with the UK specificially, which the president of COP26 hasn't referenced, though I'm fairly certain domestic coverage in both countries will play up.

Questions of ethics, morality, and justice notwithstanding, what remains is quibbling whilst the world burns, literally and metaphorically. And that quibbling's been going on for well over a half-century (again, with different foci).

I'm digging through an excellent 1970s treatment of the general issue, William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity*. The international dimension begins at roughly page 200. The book as a whole is excellent, as are many of the author's subsequent works, exquisitely researched, argued, written, and referenced. Ophuls's bibliographic notes are a treasure unto themselves.

The work is available for purchase, or at the Internet Archive. I recommend it strongly. Originally published in 1977 it was updated in 1994. I somewhat prefer the original in that the track record of its predictions and observations can be checked against a longer span of subsequent history, and with formidable accuracy.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=ecology+politics+scarci...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecology-and-the-politics-of-s...

http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=ophuls+ecology+politics+scar...

The author maintains a website at which he's published numerous more recent essays directly:

https://ophuls.org/

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

Obviously, this would not happen: historical emitters also have the most political power.

The US and EU's success at killing the "loss and damages" mechanism is an example of this dynamic at play. (This was supported by countries representing 85% of the world's population.)

China has never cared what the west has thought of them beyond analyzing them like an opponent in a poker game. They can’t be shamed any more than you could shame a man mud wrestling with a pig.

If there is no hope for behavior change, then that means there’s an upside to people dying. Generally, bad things happen when there is an implicit upside to death.

A poor man looking for his next meal will not know anything about Paris accords. He will not certainly elect a leader who will starve them to death over sticking to environment commitments by people living in a high castle.

When it comes to developing countries like India, China and Bangladesh - it is a question of subsistence, not comforts. They need rapid growth and cheap energy to come out of poverty and ensure basic quality of life to everyone. Part of the reason, why they can't commit to eliminating coal this fast - without obvious helping-hands from richer countries.

What a load of bullc$ap. Even greta thunberg wouldn't make up things like this.

I find making fun of have-nots from a highcastle of righteousness somewhat disappointing, when its bricks were baked in the homes of these poor gentry.

I don't think it's so simple, actually. My experience is that when people declare big sweeping "simple" solutions to global problems, those solutions tend to backfire and make things worse.

Determining how much CO2 was emitted during the production of any particular good is quite difficult to do. Are you going to parachute some UN Carbon Inspection Team to investigate the BOM for every manufactured good and add up some carbon tally? How will they know whether some wire was made in a solar powered factory or a coal powered factory? And what about the inputs to those factories, etc? And why would China allow such inspectors?

You will not be able to get that type of per-item granularity.

But you can get general info about countries. OK, what do you do with the general info? Apply the same tax on all goods, or just invent some hypothetical carbon burden for each good produced in a given country? That's a great strategy for getting producers to reclassify goods -- e.g. from passenger cars to personal utility vehicles, or for diverting goods from one country to another.

Moreover here, you've switched from trying to use the market to incentivize behavior to collective punishment of producers, where producers who use green energy sources are also forced to pay the tax.

But then why would other producers change behavior? Moreover by adding these extra tariff costs, you are going to be driving producers to look for even cheaper inputs, and that means more fossil fuels.

Moreover, that's just going to result in counter-tariffs and punishment in the reverse direction.

So you will be punching China and getting an equal punch back at you, and none of that will do anything to reduce CO2. All it will accomplish is a lot of punching in all directions -- e.g this is a tantrum-based approach to CO2 policy.

Before the US consumer can claim any kind of leadership, it they must make some real sacrifices.

their whole agenda is to deflect blame and costs to developing countries.

Indian cities do have an air quality problem, but there are other factors at play here. The most densely populated cities in India are landlocked, which means very little wind and no way for suspended particles to disperse. This coupled with practices like crop-burning are what cause "pollution". It has nothing to do with carbon emissions. India doesn't even come close to the per capita carbon emissions of a country like the United States.

It amazes me how even a bar of quality soap comes imported from China nowadays.