Well okee dokee, then…
My assertion that the only number which counts is a per capita number? Or that we who consume more bear a greater blame?
In that case, carry on preaching to China that, although they are taking care of 1.3+ billion people with a per-capita CO2 production a third of the US, they are the major polluter.
They are probably also eating more, so lets get on them about that, too. There’s only so much food to go around, and they are eating way more than a single nation’s share, those pigs!
I’ll get out a congratulatory proclamation to the exemplary nation of Qatar. Although their (meaningless) per capita production of CO2 is about 8x that of the average Chinese citizen, hey…assigning them blame for anything is ridiculous. They were clever enough to have a political boundary encompassing only 2 million people, after all.
I’ve also got a solution to the China problem that can be extended to solve all of AGW: Subdivide your political boundaries! Don’t bother to actually reduce a damn thing. The way to absolve blame for anything is to remember that it’s only total production per country that should weigh into the equation. Simply subdivide China into a federation of 10 states and voila!–you go from the worst offender to somewhere in the middle.
Fabulous approach to AGW, XT. We must avoid the blame game lest Al and I have to actually start consuming less stuff or risk getting blamed for our own profligacy. That ain’t gonna work. Not while I have my private jet, it’s not…
In fact, I’m off to get my new golf clubs, right now. (Made in China by those lame AGW sinners. But that counts on their carbon footprint total, not mine.)
[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
In that case, carry on preaching to China that, although they are taking care of 1.3+ billion people with a per-capita CO2 production a third of the US, they are the major polluter.
[/QUOTE]
They ARE the major polluter…they are the largest producer in the world of CO2 gas (not to mention polluting on a truly epic scale in other things…have you been following the air quality debates going on in China for the last 5 or so years?). Period. Full stop. The US is the second largest and the EU is the 3rd. Trying to parse that up into how much each individual in a country uses is meaningless compared to the raw amount of CO2 each country produces, because as far as the environment is concerned that’s all that matters. Why this is so difficult for you to grasp is truly beyond me.
It’s ironic that you’d put this out, since it’s exactly what you are trying to do and really, it just makes you look more foolish. Oh, I know it was supposed to be a snarky dig at me, but anyone following along and actually looking at what you are saying is probably howling with laughter at this point.
Except it’s YOUR strawman, not my solution. I already said that my own solution is market based with regulations, with a heavy emphasis on nuclear energy and niche alternatives. If you aren’t clear what that means, then consider…what’s more likely to lower CO2 emissions? Raising the price of gas at the pump or attempting to put the blame for all the earths troubles on the US (and EU) because their per capital CO2 is higher than China and India? I’m going to go with number one, Alex, especially considering that your method has done dick for us for the last 20 or so years, while the steadily increasing cost has flattened out our own CO2 footprint both here in the US and in Europe. While, ironically, the Chinese subsidies for gasoline have exploded the use of automobiles in China and have added to the fact that China is now the number one producer of CO2 in the world.
At any rate, the thread is pretty much dead at this point man, you and I are the only ones even bother token replies, so I’ll leave it here unless you have something else you want to discuss or unless some others rejoin the discussion. You are wrong that per capita emissions is the most important or even that it’s important at all…the ONLY thing that’s important from an environmental standpoint is the raw amount of CO2 that’s going into the atmosphere. Attempting to parse that number in various ways is just a way of trying to fix or defray the blame, not addressing the actual problem.
I’m delighted that Al Gore and I are not to be assigned any more blame for AGW than is Joe Tanzania.
No-fault AGW: my kinda world, as a heavy consumer!
I’ve been worried sick that AGW is more my fault than Joe’s, given my 170-fold per capita CO2 output over his.
And may the world be blessed with regulation that blisters Joe’s ass should he try to catch up with my degree of consumption. For in so doing, Joe would worsen AGW with his upstart ambitions to be like Al and me.
I refuse to give up…well; until I get bored (which may be soon).
Not period. Not full stop. China is nowhere near the largest CO2 polluter per person, which is the only measure that counts. Period. Full stop. What matters on a global scale is total CO2; what matters on a national scale is CO2 per capita, since any given political system takes care of a variable number of people.
Let me simplify it for you. Imagine that there were only two countries in the world. One has a population of a million people and produces 49% of the world’s total CO2 production. The other has a billion people and produces the other 51%.
In your world of howling laughers, we need to get right on that country with the large population, because “Trying to parse that up into how much each individual in a country uses is meaningless compared to the raw amount of CO2 each country produces, because as far as the environment is concerned that’s all that matters.”
This is the case for you and your laughing colleagues despite the fact that the smaller country is overwhelmingly more destructively impactful. Of course, it’s only more impactful if we “parse out the numbers” that show each individual in the smaller country is harming the earth at a rate of a thousand times that of an individual in the larger country. It would be fine, in your paradigm, to attempt approaches that put forth remedies to both countries under the assumption that we must not assign blame nor parse numbers.
If that doesn’t help, you can’t be helped, I’m afraid.
The environment also doesn’t care where we arbitrarily choose to draw our borders.
Dividing CO2 emissions by country is only relevant if you’re comparing policies, and to compare policies you really have to do it per capita or the figures are meaningless.
Now, of course, China is a big country, with a central government, and we could get more “bang for buck” from convincing them to keep per capita emissions low than, say, Qatar.
But, this task essentially boils down to trying to steer them away from American-style consumption and energy use.
Actually that is just a typical straw-man of an omission, and once again it is typically coming from you.
I can not talk for XT, but the constant message that has not changed from the scientists and experts is also the one that reports that we in the USA need to curb our emissions, regardless of what China is doing right now, because it will be thanks to our changing demands that then manufacturers in China are bound to follow. This does not prohibits us from telling China and others at the same time that they need to realize that their path is also unsustainable.
And again, it is the totality of emissions that is the problem.
And what…people in small countries don’t need to care about their emissions? Because, you know, totality?
Or shall we just tell everyone that is emitting too much, and living unsustainably, to cut their emissions?
I swear I’m trying to follow you, but I just can’t figure out what you are saying.
What, pray tell, is my “typical straw-man of an emission”? What is the straw man, and what did I omit?
The point between me and XT hinges on whether or not a “per capita” parsing of any national figure has relevance. For the reason I illustrated in the example just above, it does.
Whether the mortal sinners (per capita) should be sinning less, or whether their sins render them less of a pulpit from which to chide venial sinners, is not the point of our exchange. XT is having trouble grasping why a per capita quantification is the only one that has significance when yammering about CO2-polluting nations. He’s struggling to understand why the number of people gathered within a given political boundary has any relevance. Sort of like a single fat guy who eats 5 thousand calories a day bitching about a skinny family of five who live on 6 thousand calories a day for their whole clan. The fat guy complains the only thing that counts is the “totality of food consumed” and that the skinny people need to get their act together, consumption-wise. In the fat guy’s mind, there’s no blame to be assigned based on “parsing the numbers per capita.”
And that is also putting words in my mouth, no, developed countries also need to care, the problem here is the position that we should only take care of what the developed nations are doing vs the undeveloped ones, or what the small countries should do vs the big ones, we all have to contribute.
Actually the reply was to deal with the most common point that people in the USA that do not want do much about this issue make: because “China and others are not doing enough”, the problem here from posters like the **Chief **is that the point is inverted and it is still silly. The complaint here is against some environmentalists that are complaining that China should be doing more and claiming that those same environmentalists are not complaining much at what is happening at home, that is not the case… Again, this is omitting what most scientists recommend, and what many environmentalists recommend the USA should be doing. We all have to do something and countries like the USA need to work harder to control emissions.
That’s not an accurate summary from what I’ve seen.
The tangent started with Quartz saying:
This is misleading in many ways.
And your own position seemed to me to be on the “China is the main problem” side with (unsubstantiated) statements like:
Assume for a moment that I take a position that a smaller carbon footprint is the best:
If so, then I am individually responsible for my personal carbon footprint, regardless of the political system or society within which I live. If the nation I live in is doing great as a per capita average, that does not give me license to personally be excessive just because our national average is so good. If my nation is doing poorly per capita, I am not individually responsible if I personally have a small footprint.
At the same time, I am collectively responsible (within the limits of a participatory democracy) for our national carbon per capita footprint, regardless of whether or not our particular system has actually been successful. If I personally have a small carbon footprint but the country as a whole has a horrible per capita average, I have a futher responsibility to try and effect change at a national level.
The thing that will always kill efforts to control AGW is the tragedy of the commons. We will not, on average, sacrifice personally for a collective good. We will assume that the rest of society will on average serve their own personal interests before the common good, and we will leverage that conclusion to justify our personal self-centeredness.
The thing that has made the AGW battle such a farce is not “climate change deniers.” It’s the Al Gores preaching doom while they personally live large. And we are almost all Al Gores. It’s the calls for governments to “do something” while the very individuals calling for something to be done live lives under that government which are antithetical to what must be done.
There is no chance we will collectively make a sacrifice for the future good of the world, even if we were convinced of future harm. AGW is a wonderful Great Cause, and may even evolve to the level of the next Religion, but like other religions, what is written in the precepts by the High Priests is not what will be practiced by the masses. It will not even be practiced by the High Priests. We are all wired to get ours while we can, even as we fret about the consequences of everyone else trying to get theirs.
Climate change activists get a feel-good high preaching their great cause. Then they go back home and begin thinking about a new kitchen. From China.
In fact, few people obey the “Golden Rule.” If a few altruists voluntarily reduce their consumption of carbon fuels, market forces will just lead non-altruists to consume more.
Commons tragedies are prevented, if at all, by effective and intelligent government.
The way forward for those who want to reduce CO2 emissions, is not personal sacrifice, but political action. Those blaming Al Gore for his carbon footprint are the same nattering hypocrites who ask why Warren Buffett, if he advocates higher taxes on the rich, doesn’t pay higher taxes voluntarily.
When you find that effective and intelligent government, please post back immediately. I just finished reading a nice story about how the current US government isn’t even going to be able apply the sequester reductions to the Joint Strike Fighter program. (You may have other boondoggles in mind from our effective and intelligent government. Feel free to pick a social cause to mock if you prefer. There are certainly plenty of those, too.) Turns out Lockheed was quite a bit brighter than the government about how to protect wasteful spending–they basically spread the work over so many states that it’s now just a jobs program.
In the interim, Mr Buffet will continue to not voluntarily pay higher taxes because he prefers to control where his money goes. He’s not being hypocritical; he just doesn’t think the government knows how to spend his money more effectively and intelligently than he does to save the world.
Mr Gore and and I will continue to consume because, well, we like stuff.
No effective and intelligent action will be taken by government. At all. (Well; maybe a few window dressings and some more wasteful programs, but nothing that actually has a bat’s chance of controlling total CO2) Aside from the fact that governments are neither effective nor intelligent, the reason is that no government wants to make their citizens live like Joe Tanzania by fiat. They wouldn’t be able to hang on to power. As I’ve said many times, we all want to live like Al Gore (except that Begley guy, and I would not be surprised to find him indulging in stuff secretly. It’s very addicting.).
This is not nattering hypocrisy. It’s quite the opposite. It’s an open admission that we’d rather live good now than live crappy in the vain hope the rest of the world will also live crappy so that Gaia’s in better shape for the kids.
Of course that only demonstrates that the points Gore makes are lost, he reports that we should be carbon neutral, it is a caricature, or a strawman to claim that Gore is not taking what he consumes into consideration.
There was a thread I think last year where even the most ardent suppporters of reducing the carbon fooprint were left with only platitudes after the question of what they would possibly sacrifice personally to reduce it.
Again though, there are countries with comparable living standards to the US but with a fraction of the CO2 emissions.
e.g. Switzerland has approximately the same GDP per capita as the US, yet with CO2 emissions per capita less than a third of the US’.
So the implication that the only way to reduce emissions would be to go back to mudhuts or whatever is spurious.
(Yes, obviously a major reason for Switzerland having much lower emissions is that it’s a small country with much greater population density. But it does not explain all the difference.
And even if it did, all it suggests to me is that efforts to reduce urban sprawl and promote public transport could make a big difference.)
As the example of what civilization did when our sewage system was being discussed, we needed to pay for not having to worry about clean water and no cholera. The reality is that even new industries came when we decided to finally do something about the price we needed to pay to get clean water and take care of our sewage.
It was not the end of consumables and we had to sacrifice some economical might but cleaning up the cities was priceless, frankly what many that oppose change do is to actually admit that they hate Joe the Plumber.
The U.S. government has passed the Clean Air Act, freed the slaves and much much more. The insinuation that it can never be effective or intelligent is not only insipid, but defeatist, since, as I pointed out in my post, governments’ actions are the only hope for CO2 reduction.
Did you manage to misread my post badly enough to think the hypocrisy charge was directed against Buffett?? This confirms what I’d already suspected: Your writing skills are better than your reading skills.
Not at all. I believe I said specifically that he his not being hypocritical (and you even quoted me on that). I’m wondering who is hypocritical in your view, and how.
Certainly not Mr Buffett–on that I hope we agree. I find no hypocrisy in a guy who says taxes in general should be structured differently but doesn’t personally choose to optionally pay higher taxes.
But I am wondering who you do think is natteringly hypocritical toward Al Gore in your above post, and how it is they are being hypocritical.
On the government front, I’ll let you figure out over time (as you watch worldwide CO2 emissions continue to rise) the difference between things that directly improve a standard of living for all immediately (or keep the Cuyahoga from catching fire), and things that would require draconian reductions in the current standard of living for all with the benefit to accrue to future generations. To date, not a single strategy advanced (at least, none of which I am aware) has any real hope of actually fixing anthropogenic climate change given the number of Tanzanians coming on line and wanting stuff, coupled with those of us already living well who aren’t about to give up stuff. I will continue to fly private jet when I can, first class when the private jet is not available, and stay at the Ritz before Motel 6. Etcetera. And I’m betting on human nature that I have about 7 billion similarly-minded pals (headed toward 9B plus).
The idea that our effective and intelligent government should do something while the rest of us remain blame free in our consumption is…ineffective and unintelligent. I must be the change I want to see in the world, and that ain’t about to happen.
This confirms what I’d already suspected: Your writing skills are better than your reading skills.