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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Justification: We have 2 billion people who need energy. They are going to get that energy, whatever it takes, because we want them to have a decent standard of living.

That is easy to see. Nobody should need to spell that out for the COP26 delegates.

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Not to mention a vast percentage of their energy usage is spent on manufacturing for the West. We're essentially off-loading our carbon output to less developed countries then blaming them for it.

That was true years ago, but China now imports almost as much as it exports. India is a net importer, because their growth strategy isnt focused on manufacturing.

> That was true years ago

Uhh, no. What the parent comment said is true.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/eys0iw/per...

That chart puts China between Greece and Spain in terms of consumption emissions per capita.

China is changing extremely quickly, but it isn't enough to simply look at imports vs. exports, but also the kinds of products being exchanged. China still produces more cheap and dirty products than it imports, so the net emissions considering imports/exports are lower than gross emissions. The trajectory is clearly in the direction of more emissions for consumption though, which makes sense as China is still growing richer quickly.

Only 13 % of Chinese emissions are caused by production for other countries. That 13 % isn’t just the West but the whole world.

> "Despite the large total of CO2 imports and exports, US emissions are only 6% higher and Chinese emissions are 13% lower when CO2 transfers are taken into account."https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/145441012620772147...

I'd like to see the Cop26 president go to rural EM's and personally tell the people, where few to none (state run) corps are really looking to build out any infra for anything, green or not, that they cant use things like coal…

Might as well write the eulogy now…

Cop26 people live in high castle. Poor people is an ugly sight to them. To them poor people should be driving Tesla and eat from wholefood. If they can't is because they are lazy.

Castles of glass and convinced they are made from stone…

Why the assumption that coal is always the cheapest and most easily available? Modern solar is so affordable, it's probably a much more realistic option for those rural areas.

So people who make less than ~$2/day are supposed to now save up (and spend less on food/water/etc) for these "so affordable" panels? And even if they could, how are you going to get those panels (or parts replacements for these "so affordable" systems when they will degrade and break down) to these places that have bad or no roads at scale and struggle to get __anything__ to their regions? And completely eschew local mines and resources that are easier to access with less (upfront) capital? Nuts.

I worked remotely for a nigerian fintech that had to do intergrations between the big banks in western africa (and crypto markets) and farmers trying to sell their crops and they pretty much had to get access to capital (which is hard for most people not already intimately connected to wealth/power) to fund __infrastructure__, even before doing anything else (market places local producers/traders getting access global commodity markets via crypto). Even the big banks in nigeria don't even want to fund infrastructure stuff…

Same is true for many places i've visited within Indonesia (been living thru ME to east asia since 2016), its crazy to see local news about new airport being built in an area with pretty much nothing there for most people who are quick to overlook these types of things because they take it for granted in their everyday life.

Sure, it's possible that the cost on paper of solar is cheaper. But what about the infrastructure? For instance many people I'm sure live in extremely basic homes that aren't setup to be heated using solar. That alone would cost massive amounts of money they don't have.

Coal is cheap, available when needed, requires minimal capital (a mud or brick stove), and is used not just for thermal power generation but industrial use (steel production) and direct thermal heat. In areas with minimal infrastructure, all these are compelling advantages.

There's that long-term downside of destroying the planet. If your planning horizon is next year, or next month, or next week, that might not be a major consideration.

Those who do have a long-term planning horizon must take into consideration those who do not.

Is that without subsidies? Because subsidies are just make believe money to push people in some direction, the money for the infrastructure still has to come from somewhere.

Solar is only cheap when sun is shining bright. Just batteries needed for cloudy days or nights is multiple times more expensive than burning coal. solar+storage might become cheaper than coal by the end of this decade.

The initial cost of installing panels are not cheap, when compared to the continued use of existing coal plants

it's not just upfront cost, but the practical costs of using coal is much lower than having to set up a solar infrastructure.

This has been the tenor of international discussions on global limits (initially with a focus on population and resource availability, over the past several decades with an increased focus on environmental impacts, most notably climate change) for the past 50--60 years.

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/

Is that really a “justification”?

“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?

Idiotic comment.

The proportion of world population from India and China has been almost constant throughout history. They have not "bred more" than the rest of the world.

6-8 children was the norm even in developed countries in the past, economic prosperity and education changed that. European colonization actively prevented both from occurring in these countries, keeping birth rate high.

Post independence, both countries have decreased birth rates drastically, India is at replacement and still decreasing, China below replacement.

Stop using that stupid racist argument.

> 6-8 children was the norm even in developed countries in the past

I would say that's on the low end. Jean Chrétien was the prime minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003, so politically contemporary with George W. Bush. He was born 18th of 19 children.

Long Winters = Many Children's :)

Statistically speaking, as of the present, you are more likely to encounter households with 2+ kids in US or UK, as compared to India. China had a one-child policy with draconian penalities so I am not going to harp on it.

India's population grew because of access to healthcare & increasing life expectancy education, quality of life etc. It is a big country but had a stunted growth till 50s because the life expectancy was <40 years & the poverty gave a double whammy. What can you expect of comforts or wastage, if you were going to school to have a decent breakfast, which was otherwise unavailable (case in point: recollections of my parents elementary school years)

Countries go through population cycles i.e rapid growth, stagnation or declines. The US is ticking, at the moment, faster than China for example (birth + immigration). India touched 1 billion when I was 8. I am going to be 40 soon. Since then it has added only 300 million, not doubled. Talking of resources, I am not aware of resource utilization efficiency, but the gross usage of power & commodities is way higher in developed countries as compared to India or China (mainly due to multiple automobiles, enhanced consumerism, HVAC being omnipresent). Can you imagine how much energy will be consumed in US when one day it hits 1 billion people? I hope you reserve this same sentiment for US then.

I have lived in 5 countries including US, India and China & worked close to the energy sector to speak from experience. Right now the developing countries need to bring almost everyone out of poverty & malnutrition. These arent people who have homelessness by choice (drugs, gambling etc) but by lack of resources for generations. These problems needs cheap energy, which either has to come from sources like coal or highly subsidized from West (Note: It isn't).

I would approach this problem with some sensitivity & humanity if I were in your shoes.

China enacted population controls for most of 40 years that frequently attract sharp criticism.

India has made family planning widely available, through far less harsh measures.

Globally, population growth peaked in 1969, and has fallen fairly consistently since.

The largest population growth presently is in Africa, not Asia. Mostly in countries which are desperately poor and which have low past and present carbon emissions.

And, as noted, India and China's populations have historically been high. As have their relative shares of global GDP prior to the industrialised era (as calculated in reconstructions, largely by Angus Maddison at the University of Gronigen).

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#pastfuture

https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/?lang...

That isn't quite correct. A lot of population growth in these two countries has been due to improved medical infrastructure which resulted in reduced deaths, for both infants and adults.

China is between Sweden and Estonia and India right next to Argentina:

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

And yes the well-being of your Citizens is the only justification a Government needs (maybe hard to understand as a US citizen)

>Imagine if, in the face of climate change, the US response was a movement of 6-8 children per woman.

Imagine India would have two Cars per household like the US, and at least one of them needs to be a SUV, that's not whataboutism, it about not cleaning our own house before pointing fingers to others.

4 out of 6 habitable continents are dominated by western Europeans.

Western Europe is just about the size of India. And had historically low populations because of the harsh winters.

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