yes, we should not because thats a wrong statment. The correct one is that kids from undeveloped world die from climate change.
Trying to move away from fossil fuels is an extremely delicate operation that requires nuance and patience. It also requires having something to replace fossil fuels that is as cheap otherwise poor nations wont be able to afford it. This means purely relying on market solutions to increase prices and let replacements bubble from the market is a recipe for disaster in the developing world.
In other words, have that replacement in place and available before you start messing with the price of fossil fuels.
I really want to push against this neoliberal "carbon credit" mentality where we think market solutions will somehow provide replacements as needed. If you want to shut down a coal plant, fine first build the nuclear plant, and then switch over to the coal plant. If you want solar and are convinced batteries will work, then fine, build the batteries first and then switch over. Don't just rely on "the market" to allow you to shut something down and assume replacements will just appear.
Unless the new ones are subsidized a lot.
The problem is nature around us is losing this patience. Good luck convincing it!
But I agree just market solutions (carbon pricing) won't cut it, although for the opposite reason - they are acting too slowly.
We are talking about adopting policies that promote human flourishing, and I guarantee you that rising fertilizer prices and fuel prices will kill many more people than rising sea levels. It's just that the people who die of rising fertilizer prices live in Africa and India, not NYC, LA, or Miami.
Obviously, it was a metaphor.
"200 million years ago there were no icecaps and it was a flourishing time for life, with 2000 ppm carbon in the air as well as huge amounts of other greenhouse gases and it led to an explosion of life"
Yes, but the life was adapted to it. Humans are now causing a mass extinction event, and the warming didn't really started yet. The main threat is to human habitat, not life on Earth. We don't really know how dependent on the biosphere we really are, and perhaps we shouldn't try to find out.
"I guarantee you that rising fertilizer prices and fuel prices will kill many more people than rising sea levels"
I think here's your misconception (and also the reason why this needs to be talked about more) - the rising sea levels are (at least in this century) the least of our worries.
Possible heat and drought conditions are a much bigger problem, both directly (certain populated places on Earth might become unlivable) and indirectly (the agricultural output of major crops is expected to decrease). As someone else stated, yes, global warming won't kill you, a war or a famine will.
In any case, even if we didn't have a big problem with global warming, the fossil fuels would run out this century anyway, so if your society is dependent on them for survival (e.g. for making fertilizer), you better try to make the transition to something else (more sustainable) as soon as possible. However, it should be noted, vast majority of the world is not dependent on fossil fuels for survival, but for convenience, and we could easily make most of the transition away from them without any loss of human life. (And in fact thanks to cheap renewables we won't actually have to give up convenience either.)
We dont have to move away from fossil fuels over night if we could reduce consumption. Minimalism is the key
So I’m quite surprised that you think that the climate change will only affect the “under”-developed? Maybe the direct temperature change might, but the ripple effects will be global.
You know what the world was like when the developed world acutally intentinoally supressed the under developed world? Slavery and the slaugther of millions, colonizers forcing people to work on their land and not get the benefits of their People getting their hands cut off if they didn't work enough in the slavers mines.
This spiteful pseudo interlectual left wing bullshit is helping no one. Sure we COULD do better but we are FAR from enslaving lesser developed countries. And it's not like there aren't humanitarian catastrophies SOLELY due to the utter incompetence of these countries and THEIR elected leaders and i'm sick of the double standard we have. Are people from under developed countries to stupid for democracy? To incompetent to elect good leaders? To deficient in their intellect to see an unfair deal when it's offered to them? That's the soft bigotry of low expectations in it's purest form and i'm sick and tired of it.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
[1] Just an example source https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health...
You really ought to look at what France is currently doing in Africa. If you want to disagree with the parent that Africans or those in the developing world are intentionally oppressed, just because millions are no longer slaughtered is no mitigation of their point.
It's an old strategy, Divide et impera - there's a lot to learn from the thousands of years of history of it.
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20210926-mali-accuses-fra...
I would encourage you to read more about Divide and Conquer, the territories mentioned above, French activities there, and resist the temptation to use a single article to generalize what millions of people want.
I think you are hopelessly naive about military affairs, revolt does not work like you think it does and comparing India vs post war Britian and the Boston Tea Party to a much more nuanced contemporary corporatist form of colonialism is ignorant.
But even then, Popehat's Law Of Goats would still apply:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Popehat%27s%...
>Popehat's Law of Goats
>He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities is simply, a goatfucker.
>He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_de_dissuasion
And you couldn't figure that out for yourself because...?
I'm proposing you read the article I linked to, and notice that the actual link and title of the article itself literally has the word "dissuasion" in it.
>In his book La paix nucléaire (1975), French Navy Admiral Marc de Joybert explained deterrence:
>Sir, I have no quarrel with you, but I warn you in advance and with all possible clarity that if you invade me, I shall answer at the only credible level for my scale, which is the nuclear level. Whatever your defenses, you shan't prevent at least some of my missiles from reaching your home and causing the devastation that you are familiar with. So, renounce your endeavour and let us remain good friends.
To dtx1:
See Popehat's Law of Goats.
Your work is enabled by the innumerable underdeveloped countrymen that slave away producing everything for you. This is quite obvious if you think hard enough, just actively ignored by most.
> Are people from under developed countries to stupid for democracy? To incompetent to elect good leaders?
Please read more (1)(2) and learn to have some empathy for the developing people that you indirectly exploit everyday, before making such strong accusations.
(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic (2) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
The developing world is supported by the American hegemony’s control over the global market. And like the other commenter showed, Europe has its own share of colonial control. Wherever you’re from, your lifestyle is still enabled by developing countries.
> maybe then they are civilised enough to join us on fair terms
Honestly, your talking points are from 1900s colonial racism. Not sure what you’re doing in 2021. Please educate yourself ASAP.
I should have marked that as sarcasm I suppose. But it doesn't really matter because the original point stands, if we are suppressing them so badly how come basically every metric for human development had gone up for 20 years straight. How are billions in aid suppressing them? What about the plethora of human rights interventions, international education programs etc. What a sneaky way of supressing people by education and access to clean water. But that idea clashes with leftist dogma therefore it musnt be true.
Upliftment is not providing bare essentials to the enslaved. We’ve already seen this happen with British colonies, where they aimed to “tame the savages”, but just enough to make sure they stay enslaved.
This is what is happening now by the developed elites, as well.
Ironically, despite this whole thread focusing on developing countries - we see the same even within developed countries. Whatever labor/tasks/services cannot be outsourced/imported, need to be performed by the “lowest classes” of the developed nation too. They are mistreated, exploited, and prevented from real upliftment. In fact, even moreso to your point, they have “access” to the best education and resources in that developed country - and yet are “lower class”?
Think about that for a while, and why it happens in the modern world.
Yup thats why africa only gets food, water and shelter and no one there gets internet, access to loans, secondary education or else the slaves would revolt i suppose?
What an insane idea, helping them with development aid and causing measurable increases in human developement is somehow opression. What could we possibly have done that's not somehow opression then? Leaving them alone? Opression. Helping them? Opression. Perhaps we should have nuked afrika, the middle east and most of asia when we had the chance, can't opress dead people.
IMO we should pull the NGOs out and let African nations find their own path forward. The reason why I think this is to look a little more closely at what aid means and how it works.
There are two types of aid:
1. Direct resources. This is the old model of sending in missionaries to start a hospital or university. This can be helpful in some sense but also the aid workers bring their own values with them and evangelize those values, which is something that may not be suitable for Africa. They end up being local power centers on the ground and start managing and administering African governments instead of letting Africans do that. That was one approach used by the Ford foundation to control african governments and guide them into adopting inappopriate governmental structures.
2. Financial aid. Sending dollars to Africa results in those dollars in Swiss bank accounts of local warlords together with an increase in imports which can displace local production.
Trade with Africa is great, but the moment you start giving them aid, that aid comes with strings and we start pressuring Africa to adopt western european standards and structures, which end up creating fragile governments, they stoke ethnic conflict, and they may well impede letting Africa take its own development path and forming its governments according to its own values.
From 1960 to 2020, real GDP per capita in subsaharan Africa has grown by 0.6% per annum.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDSSF
Whereas real global GDP per capita has increased by 1.7%, or three times the rate of growth as subsaharan Africa.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDWLD
So yes, there has been some measurable human development. But Africa continues to fall farther behind the rest of the world -- e.g. the difference in global development between the rest of the world and Africa in 1960 was much lower than the difference today. We see divergence, not convergence.
I can't see that as a success story.
I'd call that a sucess story.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT?locations=Z...
Can you establish what "everything" is? A vast amount of stuff is produced in China - are they underdeveloped?
Also, is clear that the anti-petro propaganda will slow down the growth of poor/developing countries.
> they developed theirselves using their resources
Are there no other people in Brazil, except very poor woodcutters, who might have some other claim to these resources?
"They must find it hard to afford the tools to do so"
With the centenary woods in Amazon and the abundance of gold is not very hard to make money there.
There are the criminals as well, people who go to Amazon just to make money..and those should be hunt, but, since there are very big extensions of land is really hard to get those. Amazon is really huge, it's a Europe.
And since we don't extract the resources and use it to preserve the forest, there is no money to preserve it all. Wealthy countries love to complain but don't give the money necessary to preserve it ($50b/year is the needed).
A solution would be give the right of exploration to companies extract the resources in certain areas of land, get the taxes and invest in protection and require these companies to monitor a part of Amazon in exchange for the right of exploration. But since no one can touch there, is really a no mans land.
Ok. Will you please return the money paid for conservation then?
If the world pays $100 per hectare it would be $50 billion/year sent to Brazil. This would make some difference, not the pennies sent here eventually.
You guys really don't know the reality of Amazon, nor the politicians there, and many here as well.
The reality is that there's not a clean picture to be painted, and like a Rorschach test different narratives (i.e., abstractions) can fit the identical ground truth.
The underdeveloped world has been significantly harmed by the developed world in a number of concrete ways. Colonialism, historically, obviously, with some still dodgy things going on in geopolitical interference that could be considered "neocolonialism".
But the underdeveloped world has also been benefited by the developed world. Trade, aid and openness with the developed world undeniably lifts them up. South Korea is a miracle. You can enter the developed club despite having a long history of brutal actual oppression. If we built a wall around some poor country 500 years ago and made a rule that zero contact was allowed - no colonialism, no nothing - would they be better off now or worse? The answer in most cases is they'd be worse off. They'd have a life expectancy of 40 and die often from violence. So this is reason to think that this oppression viewpoint is correct in a gross sense but false in a net sense and is ignoring some real, tangible benefits that the developed world gives to the underdeveloped.
Take a look here at life expectancy and when exactly it started to rise above 40.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFR/africa/life-expect...
Take a look at the correlation between post colonialism and death from violence, in one example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
This isn't a case of 'what have the Romans ever done for us', and few will accept that it's not oppression in a net sense.
An underdeveloped country can be suffering from the consequences of colonialism, while still benefiting significantly on net from technology, trade, and so forth, with the ratio between the former and the latter expected to decline over time. This can all be true simultaneously.
> You create a false dichotomy between a star trek prime directive no contact world and then say in a net sense it was of benefit.
That's not an example of a false dichotomy. It's a hypothetical, or a thought experiment.
> Using the likes of Singapore or South Korea as a counter example is also typical.
Typical != incorrect.
> Take a look here at life expectancy and when exactly it started to rise above 40.
Having the boot of colonialism being lifted is one of many reasons for this graph.
> Take a look at the correlation between post colonialism and death from violence.
Which is confounded by poverty/education/etc, the main drivers of death from violence.
> Having the boot of colonialism being lifted is one of many reasons for this graph.
Here we agree, it's a shame it was ever inserted.
On South Korea; it was valid to bring that up, not only because it shows the positive benefits that the developed world brings to underdeveloped countries, but because it's the counterexample that exposes the incorrectness of the claim that the underdeveloped world is intentionally oppressed in order to maintain our way of living. We in the rich world have benefited from South Korea's, and China's, rise. They make us richer, as we them. This is basic comparative advantage. It's absurd to think that we benefit from Africa's poverty. To put it bluntly, Africa of all places is where we obtain the least benefit. We make more money from Europe and Asia. If they could raise up to $15,000 GDP/annum, we in the rich world would be more rich as a result.
They could maybe argue that underdeveloped countries have been oppressed intentionally for the benefit of the military industrial complex, but that's very distinct to arguing that that happened in order to maintain our lifestyle. As it stands, their statement is factually incorrect, and South Korea shows why.
I believe the truth of that statement may have been different 100-200 years ago, where colonialism was done to pillage resources. No longer so in the modern globalized world.
South Korea & Co are no longer intentionally oppressed. There are many other countries besides them that continue to be.
It's absurd to argue that because the developed countries could benefit more from Africa than they already do, that Africa is not oppressed. South America also.
> They could maybe argue that underdeveloped countries have been oppressed intentionally for the benefit of the military industrial complex, but that's very distinct to arguing that that happened in order to maintain our lifestyle
Every industrial complex besides that too. Raw materials are vitally important. Every act of Foreign Policy is done in order to maintain a lifestyle, to protect national interests. I don't know how you can argue that it is not.
> I believe the truth of that statement may have been different 100-200 years ago, where colonialism was done to pillage resources. No longer so in the modern globalized world.
I think you should really look at what resources are being exracted from Africa and South America, by whom and for what level of profit.
"The comparison is to be made between what could have happened, and what did."
"South Korea & Co are no longer intentionally oppressed."
"Every act of Foreign Policy is done in order to maintain a lifestyle, to protect national interests. I don't know how you can argue that it is not."
You are the one generalizing South Korea to say that intentional oppression does not occur, there is a 'net benefit'. Intentional oppression does not have to be universal to be true, it is selective and opportunistic in nature. The short years of benefit in South Korea do not undo the horrors elsewhere.
The argument that you stand to benefit even more does not invalidate any facts of their intentional oppression, past or present. Don't be absurd.
Minor addition: I don't believe you can say it's a 'No True Scotsman' situation unless you also consider South Korea to be 'underdeveloped' currently.
Nobody is arguing that there aren’t potential benefits to the oppressed side. Slaves in the colonial days were also kept alive, housed, and fed.
But, since you’re talking about the knowledge and industrial revolutions, do consider that the former is a mutual exchange of ideas which has benefited all (not purely from the developed to the developing) and for the latter, it’s mostly the developing manufacturing for the developed, to this day!
Asia and Africa both had very advanced medical tools, machine, and philosophical and societal structures, which the West adopted innumerable ideas from. The developing countries have had civilisations that benefited their populace, and have had others that resulted in violence and death (just like the West).
I think the main problem with your viewpoint, like the other commenter said, is the false dichotomy you present between colonial oppression and no-contact outcomes.
Moreover, your understanding of world history reeks of “white saviour” principle. Hope you educate yourself one day!
"Slaves in the colonial days were also kept alive, housed, and fed."
"it’s mostly the developing manufacturing for the developed, to this day!"
"which the West adopted innumerable ideas from."
"is the false dichotomy you present between colonial oppression and no-contact outcomes."
What is the net benefit? How are you measuring the relative +/- to the colonised? You can imagine that the colonised would disagree with your colonising assessment.
> you should go and read about comparative advantage.
How is the ability to provide poverty wage manufacturing to the developed countries, a comparative advantage for the colonised people? I’m dumbfounded. You can feel happy that they’re being paid something more than enslavement, but they don’t feel the same way. They are forced to participate in a global extractive economy designed to ensure they are never richer than the developed countries.
> I didn't say otherwise.
But, you keep claiming that the oppression has led to a net benefit, and I fail to see any measured examples in your replies that prove this upliftment that the West has so generously provided as a “benefit”.
> hypothetical is categorically and definitionally different.
What is your hypothetical, exactly? “Imagine the (guaranteed) horrific future for the colonies, had they not been colonised and uplifted by the West”? That’s your opinion, not a hypothesis.
Colonialism covers a wide array of things, but it also includes robbing the people of its narrative. And that is precisely what happened to the two Koreas. Our country was occupied by fascist Imperial Japan in the first half of the 20th century, Korean culture and political participation were severely oppressed, and economic exploitation of the people (to fuel their war economy) was rampant. In this oppressive atmosphere an strange thing happened: Marxists (the far left) and the nationalists (the liberals), finding their common enemy, were able to resolve their differences and cooperate with each other to fight for independence. And after Japan's loss and subsequent independence, most of these two were willing to reconcile their positions through democratic means, and people were generally excited for a new independent democratic nation to be established. Instead, the Soviet influence from the North deliberately gave support to Kim Il-sung and its constituents to push Soviet-style dictator communism in the North, while the US from the South gave overwhelming political and military support for Syngman Ryee and his followers (who was "voted" to become president via manipulated elections) to create an equivalent capitalist dictatorship. After that the rest is history, communist dictatorship hellhole in the North, capitalist dictatorship hellhole in the South. It's only been about 30 years since our country was regarded as a liberal democracy, but even then I question if the country is really a democracy now when the whole system blocks ordinary people from actually participating and having a stake in political issues.
So our history is a fable of crushed potential narratives, the inevitability of both Western authoritarian communism and Western authoritarian capitalism imposed on us with guns and bombs. Maybe without foreign intervention, our place could have been an experimental testbed for a new kind of Asian democratic socialism? Maybe we would have succeeded in creating a more enriching egalitarian nation, or maybe we would have failed, who knows? But regardless of what the outcome would have hypothetically been, this was all robbed of its possibility by Western superpower interests. And being robbed from the people of their self-organization is a dehumanizing experience that I'm sure many colonized countries will empathize with.
Climate change is making this harder, but most of the undeveloped world today is going to be much better off in 100 years in terms of disease, war, and opportunity.
So making catastrophic statements like this are as credible as saying that vaping is going to kill kids.
Those with more wealth and/or the bigger army get the food, water or land.
The other ones suffer or die.
And failing in a single prediction does not invalidate magically all the other models. Ecological problems are complex and chaotic problems by nature. Much more complex that building an app. Being wrong is totally normal, and even necessary to understand and improve the model.
So this would be like discarding an entire program of millions of lines because, gasp, one bug was found. Bugs are expected and even welcomed. They are tests that allow us to improve much faster
If the problem is what was said by <"politician"> from <"random color"> that you dislike, you are attacking the problem in all the wrong ways.
Yeah, apart of saving countless human lives in all countries spending tons of their money and talent to bring us in a time record with the only real solution to this global emergency with a, not one vaccine, a handful of vaccines that in fact work... what they did to help the humanity in this emergency? uh?
Everything?