‘Mind-boggling’ methane emissions from Turkmenistan revealed
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
> "Most of the facilities leaking the methane were owned by Turkmenoil, the national oil company"
Makes me wonder if we should one day have, alongside the crime against humanity, the crime against nature itself.
Unfortunately we all know that those are not the intended targets of that legislation.
More to the point, and putting ecocide and genocide in a similar ballpark, doesn’t anyone remember Rwanda anymore? Or Srebrenica? (this latter labeled technically as a massacre). Does anyone believe that those atrocities could have been stopped by “harsh words” alone? Or by economic sanctions? They weren’t.
Enforcement in this case means imposition of force, which in an inter-state situation means invasion or, at the very least, a military attack (see Kosovo in ‘99, technically not an invasion).
I personally think it should be one instrument on the table as a matter of last resort, mainly for the purpose of deterrence.
This is a popular assumption, but it is not true. At least, definitely not now:
US and Europe invading multiple countries and international community being chill about it had set a strong enough precedent.
C'mon, NATO had recently updated its doctrines to allow it warfare over climate - we have all the preconditions for fun stuff.
( China followed by US, and India ).
If you adjust by per capita - then all the energy producing countries are top - but then they are emitting for other people - Turkmenistan isn't producing all that energy for domestic consumption.
Easy to point fingers.
It's the consumers, not the producers per se that are the problem.
Irrespective of which party is the proximate cause of energy extraction in Turkmenistan, the large volume leakage of methane according to the article is not an inevitable byproduct of oil drilling. What’s more, the incremental costs of controlling methane emissions are tiny. And finally, consumers couldn’t go re-light methane flares at the drill sites even if they wanted to.
All of the discussions around who is a larger consumer are pointless; the point is that they could be doing more, and at a very small cost to them directly.
If you use consumption based accounting, Luxembourg comes out number 1, apparently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions
I get what you're saying here, something like, "we couldn't change it if we tried" but we wouldn't even if we could. We're fighting a proxy war with Russia right now over access to fossil fuel right now. Releasing tons and tons of CO2 for the right to release more CO2 in the future.
Edit: probably changed to possibly. Downvoted immediately because who knows?
Sounds complex. There are open questions as to whether those regions that open up for farming would have the soil to support it. And whether reduction in rainfall elsewhere in Russia would cancel out the gains. They have already benefited from current warming.
I assure you, no one had noticed anything substantial.
Not exactly. “We just need to offer a bigger carrot than Russia does”
You don't assume that the relationships between the West and the Global South is a clean slate, right?
EDIT: And here come the downvotes from the bubble-people. Does the fact that Africa and the Middle East distrust the West surprise anyone, really? Can I maybe refer anyone to President Macron's recent struggles with Africa, or the fact that people in the Middle East aren't really thankful for dronestike politics?
I agree that western nations could take a page out of China's book and look to having more of a presence in developing and underdeveloped nations, including financing and building infrastructure, but hopefully without seeking leverage (e.g., Sri Lanka.. though the incompetent government only has themselves to blame).
It's not necessarily different.
Being a major cause of climate change does not only affect humanity, but future generations and all life on Earth as well. It is an order of magnitude worse than genocide.
When a single entity is responsible for it, because of negligence or malice, the punishment should be more draconian than if it "only" caused harm to humanity.
If we survive, there'll be plenty of time to assign blame.
But right now, any and all methane emissions must be stopped, as best able.
Any and all methane emissions must be stopped, including in the US, where all US citizens reading me should use their democratic power, write to their representants by e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever to try and change the situation. Turkmenistan is a poor country with rampant corruption and therefore it's harder to hold it to the same standards as a developed one.
So why is there sudden medias coverage of this?
I'm now doubting more and more that the politicians and medias really care about any environmental issue and that, like terrorism and pedophilia, it's used to motivate another agenda.
The problem is, unlike terrorism and pedophilia, climate change is an urgent issue that affects every single human in the world, so I really want this to be a genuine concern.
But some part of me now always wonder if somebody, somewhere, is not preparing us to invade Turkmenistan 2 years from now.
a) progress on various other sources (e.g. coal) means remaining issues move up the priority list
b) new satellite measurement techniques let us pinpoint blame, rather than do back of the envelope calculations based on educated guesses and global averages, which were bad enough but less actionable.
2021-10-31: UN launches International Methane Emissions Observatory https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/methane-...
2022-11-11: UN announces satellite-based Methane Alert and Response System https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-annou...
2023-01-19: Kayrros wins contract to supply the satellite data https://www.satelliteevolution.com/post/kayrros-to-supply-un...
2023-03-06: The Guardian publishes their first(?) article about data obtained from Kayrros https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed...
2023-05-09: The Guardian publishes the follow-up submitted to HN here.
Lots of long-running situations are like this, constantly getting reported on at a level below most people's awareness threshold, and then when you stumble across one such report, it suddenly feels like a flood. See also the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
Oh, and btw they don't really fly that much. Not sure which people you meant. ;)
We're way past the point of having to be tolerant of people polluting Earth, air and sea.
If the individual is shamed for throwing cigarette butts on the floor, executives of oil companies, knowingly releasing tons of methane in the atmosphere need to be launched into the Sun itself. Not get a slap on the wrist and go scot-free.
It's impossible to protect private property without a cost.
Usually, private property is protected with laws and guns, but not everyone has access to these, or they come bundled with various external costs, or they fail to provide protection. Which is why Bitcoin is useful.
It also help theft by laundering money.