Comment by twodave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by twodave | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I guess I don’t see how any of this is really relevant today. Can someone help explain? My thought process is telling me that by far the worst environmental offender (China) is on the front end of a population collapse that will pretty much serve to self-correct them from an environmental standpoint. That could take 30 years at most?

I’m not sure there’s any sort of program we could implement in that time frame that really moves the needle, and when it happens most of the world’s capacity to build things like solar cells and wind farms will need to be re-built, because we won’t be getting a lot of those components we need from China anymore.

And who knows? By then maybe we look up at a smaller global population that’s largely de-globalized and decide nothing needs doing.

In the short term it’s a shame because IMO the #1 (by far, not close) contributor to global pollution doesn’t even make it to the table in these sorts of discussions.

China is not the worst offender. You are disregarding per capita, historical cumulative emissions and outsourced emissions. I am willing to bet that they have the resources, will and execution speed to decarbonise fast though, largely due to surplus solar and lots of batteries but also significant investments in wind and Nuclear.

I am not sure why a lot of Americans do not talk about efficiency in their own backyard or are even unwilling to consider a smaller footprint (it is like almost in the DNA of the country)

The US is the worst offender by far, and seems hell bent on getting worse still.

I wish we would acknowledge it, even just among ourselves would be a great start.

A narrow idea of what constitutes freedom ("an F-650 with a full gun rack", but not "guaranteed healthcare for everyone that needs it", or "freedom from having to deal with braindead morons with F-650s and rifles", or "public goods and walkable cities").

And you're spot on as regards China, and India as well. We've had a century or two to get rich off burning this stuff, they have not.

China is #1 in annual emissions and is increasing every year and plans to continue increasing until at least 2030, is a larger annual emitter than all of Europe combined, and is #2 in total emissions since 1750. In fact, has released more than all of Europe combined since 1750.

Per capita is irrelevant. The thermodynamic system doesn't give a shit about how many people there are, all that matters is the amount of CO2. If you want to make some kind of moral argument you can't avoid asking the question of whether it's moral to have a kid at all. Unless you are prepared to consign your children to being a hunter gatherer until they die, they will add CO2 to the atmosphere.

Consider me and my neighbor, I am single and emit 1000 tons of carbon per year, he and his wife emit 3000 tons of carbon per year. They have triplets and increase their emissions by 500 tons per year. But somehow they are better than me now because on a per capita basis their house is only 700 tons per year per person while I'm still at 1000 tons per year? Sorry, I'm not reducing my lifestyle because they like to fuck.

If you want to measure a country or population by some metric other than total emissions, you should measure something like tons per quality of life or human development or something that demonstrates that the emissions are being used efficiently to increase overall human flourishing.

Per-capita is relevant because as individuals, we find it easier to get a mental grasp on the lifestyles of other individuals than the actions of a nation state. Contrasting more/less efficient lifestyles is a way to understand our contribution to this problem.

Do we need to put a leash on our corporations and governments so that they stop making policies that will kill our children? Absolutely, let's do that. Do we need to be more thoughtful about population growth? Certainly.

But when it comes down to crafting policies that will be effective, it has to make sense on the both micro and macro scales. Holding per-capita measures as irrelevant hides the details that we're going to need to fix this.

The rest of east Asia is currently developing at a faster pace (e.g. Vietnam), with increasing demand for goods and services. China provides, therefore their output is increasing.

Perhaps, and also we already know in 40 years many more of their infrastructure projects will lie empty and unused than already do. They’re literally burning their way to their doom, and they may take globalization with them.

Following their real estate bubble, I'm not sure how much more of that we'll see. Xi seems to want to double-down on manufacturing.

They're technically the global leader in solar, scaling up faster than everyone else.

They can’t do any such doubling down without a population to sustain it. And solar can’t supply the world with reliable power unless both battery and transmission tech see some unforeseen advances.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com