No, Scandinavian countries just have a healthy government. Countries like China have awful, awful climate impacts, much worse off than most other countries. Though, them and France at least have started a nuclear build-out, which is needed to 100% de-carbonize the grid.
China manages to be the manufacturing hub of the world AND have a lower carbon footprint per capita than the United States. We don’t have time to keep pointing fingers and making excuses, we need to be making changes.
How is it not true? Per capital they are lower but that doesn’t mean much when you have over a billion people. I think a more accurate sentence would be most industrialized nations have awful awful climate impacts.
Which is why I said a more accurate sentence would be most industrialized nations have awful climate impact. Diluting their impact behind a per capita graph is misleading. Also out of all my travels in the world China has been the only country I could visibly see that impact without having traveled to it or even being super close. The morning chemical smog I’d see in Korea on a regular basis compares to nothing else I’ve seen and I’ve lived in some pretty dirty regions.
I… don’t think we disagree? China has a corrupt communist government. I was specifically referring to socialist governments, and the ones that are frequently (mis)labelled as socialist are doing a lot better on oil consumption than either China or the United States.
If you’re splitting hairs about communism, socialism, and “mislabelling” (even though socialism is a generic term that encompasses communism…?), why are you describing China’s government as communist? Communism is (ideally, at least) stateless, and like all socialist idologies it is fundamentally anti-capitalist.
You’re right that the Nordic model isn’t socialist, though. It’s a blend of social democracy and corporatism.
The communist and socialist countries aren’t using any less oil either. We can’t fix a problem if we are blaming random things.
I’ve come to accept that there isn’t hope to stop the runaway train of unchecked capitalist greed, at least not without the hard lesson of collapse and rebuild, and that means there will be apologists like you screaming that the ship (Our habitable world) isn’t sinking as you’re waist deep in ocean(city destroying weather events, crop failures, heat deaths, fresh water crises, etc).
That used to bother me, but I’ve come to appreciate you as the comedy relief you are in this tragedy. So by all means, keep crowing about how competition between humans in matters of life and death are “healthy” and how the capital markets will save us from the capital markets that don’t care about any future that is more than a fiscal quarter out, and will do anything they can get away with against the species for an extra nickel for shareholders.
I’m sure the benevolence of the sliver of the population that came to own almost everything through Extensive, merciless exploitation and sociopathy “rational self-interest” will swoop in to save you and your loved ones for your devotion.
Nobody is willing to tolerate a drop in quality of life for the climate. Third worlders like the Chinese have finally gotten a taste for a little meat with supper and they aren’t going to give it up so easily.
I don’t even think this is inherently capitalist. It’s a human issue. Obviously capitalism messes up incentives - so companies like ExxonMobil will deliberately lie about emissions or what have you and create PR campaigns to influence people into more carbon emissions.
So capitalism definitely makes it worse in that regard - but the ultimate cause of this is 8 trillion humans who want access to smartphones, cars, globalized consumer products, laptops, A/C, etc
The only real way to reduce carbon emissions to a point it won’t inevitably fuck up the planet is not to have humans exist in a large scale industrial society. Go ahead and campaign on that as a politician. It ain’t happening. We’re burning this bitch to the ground.
For what it’s worth, it’ll take a couple of centuries before we really start to feel the effects in full. Sure, a few unusual heatwaves here and there seem serious but it’s nothing like what’s coming.
The communist and socialist countries aren’t using any less oil either. We can’t fix a problem if we are blaming random things.
The path forward is nuclear and renewables for the next decades while we wait for grid-scale energy storage problems to be solved.
There are no actual socialist countries, but if you’re referring to, for example, the Scandinavian countries, they use far less oil per capita than the United States.
No, Scandinavian countries just have a healthy government. Countries like China have awful, awful climate impacts, much worse off than most other countries. Though, them and France at least have started a nuclear build-out, which is needed to 100% de-carbonize the grid.
China manages to be the manufacturing hub of the world AND have a lower carbon footprint per capita than the United States. We don’t have time to keep pointing fingers and making excuses, we need to be making changes.
Except that isn’t true
How is it not true? Per capital they are lower but that doesn’t mean much when you have over a billion people. I think a more accurate sentence would be most industrialized nations have awful awful climate impacts.
It’s a bit disingenuous to blame a country for having high emissions when it has 10x the number of people
That means it needs 10x the amount of electricity, vehicle fuel etc.
By the same logic, the Vatican City is a world leader in climate policy.
Should we start comparing China with the Americas and Europe combined? Because that’s a more like-for-like comparison
Which is why I said a more accurate sentence would be most industrialized nations have awful climate impact. Diluting their impact behind a per capita graph is misleading. Also out of all my travels in the world China has been the only country I could visibly see that impact without having traveled to it or even being super close. The morning chemical smog I’d see in Korea on a regular basis compares to nothing else I’ve seen and I’ve lived in some pretty dirty regions.
I… don’t think we disagree? China has a corrupt communist government. I was specifically referring to socialist governments, and the ones that are frequently (mis)labelled as socialist are doing a lot better on oil consumption than either China or the United States.
If you’re splitting hairs about communism, socialism, and “mislabelling” (even though socialism is a generic term that encompasses communism…?), why are you describing China’s government as communist? Communism is (ideally, at least) stateless, and like all socialist idologies it is fundamentally anti-capitalist.
You’re right that the Nordic model isn’t socialist, though. It’s a blend of social democracy and corporatism.
China isn’t socialist by any academic definition.
I’ve come to accept that there isn’t hope to stop the runaway train of unchecked capitalist greed, at least not without the hard lesson of collapse and rebuild, and that means there will be apologists like you screaming that the ship (Our habitable world) isn’t sinking as you’re waist deep in ocean(city destroying weather events, crop failures, heat deaths, fresh water crises, etc).
That used to bother me, but I’ve come to appreciate you as the comedy relief you are in this tragedy. So by all means, keep crowing about how competition between humans in matters of life and death are “healthy” and how the capital markets will save us from the capital markets that don’t care about any future that is more than a fiscal quarter out, and will do anything they can get away with against the species for an extra nickel for shareholders.
I’m sure the benevolence of the sliver of the population that came to own almost everything through Extensive, merciless exploitation and
sociopathy“rational self-interest” will swoop in to save you and your loved ones for your devotion.Nobody is willing to tolerate a drop in quality of life for the climate. Third worlders like the Chinese have finally gotten a taste for a little meat with supper and they aren’t going to give it up so easily.
I don’t even think this is inherently capitalist. It’s a human issue. Obviously capitalism messes up incentives - so companies like ExxonMobil will deliberately lie about emissions or what have you and create PR campaigns to influence people into more carbon emissions.
So capitalism definitely makes it worse in that regard - but the ultimate cause of this is 8 trillion humans who want access to smartphones, cars, globalized consumer products, laptops, A/C, etc
The only real way to reduce carbon emissions to a point it won’t inevitably fuck up the planet is not to have humans exist in a large scale industrial society. Go ahead and campaign on that as a politician. It ain’t happening. We’re burning this bitch to the ground.
For what it’s worth, it’ll take a couple of centuries before we really start to feel the effects in full. Sure, a few unusual heatwaves here and there seem serious but it’s nothing like what’s coming.