Regarding China, my position is that “That dude over there isn’t cleaning up, so I’m going to keep dumping trash all over the place too! To, er, spite him!” isn’t really a solid argument for dumping trash everywhere.
In the context of the world’s situation, the possibility that China won’t stop polluting is a problem. In the context of American environmental policy, mentioning China is a diversionary tactic.
I don’t trust the Chinese. I just think that committing that you’re going to do something is better than declaring outright that you’re not, and not only are you not going to do anything, you’re not going to do it because the whole climate change thing is a fraud. Which is essentially the US position on this.
Right now the US has highest the per-capita emissions rates in the world with the exception of the Arab oil producers, and Australia, which has lots of coal and – with all respect for a nice country – more kangaroos than people. Moreover, the Chinese are at least making some (if inadequate) efforts at curtailing emissons; for instance, while the current US administration is doing everything in its power to encourage more coal mining and consumption, China is going in the other direction:
To curtail the continued rapid construction of coal fired power plants, strong action was taken in April of the same year [2016] by the National Energy Administration (NEA), which issued a directive curbing construction in many parts of the country. This was followed up in January 2017 when the NEA canceled a further 103 coal power plants, eliminating 120 gigawatts of future coal-fired capacity, despite the resistance of local authorities mindful of the need to create jobs.
As for US emissions somewhat stabilizing, that has nothing to do with typical emissions patterns or more responsible stewardship. It’s almost entirely related to the increased use of natural gas for power generation in place of coal, and only because it’s cheaper, and it’s only cheaper as a side effect of hugely increased fracking activity in the mad rush for more oil. Not exactly something to pat yourself on the back about.
BTW XT:
The danger I’m talking about is likely worse (if not much is done) than what Assad found in Syria; sure, the main factors for the civil war there are clear, climate change was not the main one. However, climate was a factor that IMHO I can see it as the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Seeing (likely) millions of Chinese displaced by climate change, in the future, will not be a pretty sight for the people in power there. And it is not likely for that unrest to just affect China.
And that is why I do not think that they will avoid the issue, far from it, as other studies I have seen: it is more likely that China will eat our lunch when clean technologies are deployed at a higher rate in the future than it is now.
Cry me a river. Every time I try and have a thread about another country I get bombarded with ‘what about America’ stuff, even when I specifically ask that the discussion not bring up the US. Regarding the last 3 posts, the thinking seems to be that it’s ok because America is bad, and at least the Chinese promised to do something, even if their track record specifically shows that they promise a lot and rarely deliver, especially if it comes into conflict with something the CCP specifically is trying to push…oh, like their economy, say. But yeah, they promised so that means stuff and the US didn’t.
To Wolfpup’s second point, pretty much every country that is cutting emissions is because of market forces or leveraging some greener(greenish) technology like natural gas, so that’s kind of a false lead which normally I wouldn’t point out but in your case I know you know this, so to me it smacks of spin. Be like if Gigo said something like that. If we can’t pat ourselves on the back because of a decade of flattening and even declining CO2 emissions then I’m not seeing how the rest can. Germany has decreased it’s emissions in large part because they outsourced at least some of their energy to countries who still have higher emissions (or to countries that still use a lot of nuclear and export the power).
I guess I know why so many give China a pass (and yeah, that was a strawman of your specific position in this thread, GIGO, but not a strawman of the core issue wrt China signing on to Paris), but regardless of the handwaving about per capita CO2 and the like the fact is they produce more GhG than the other top 5 countries. Full stop. And they shouldn’t get a pass on that, nor a grace period. If you are going to have the US and the others sign on to an agreement then having their main economic competitor get a grace period, especially at their actual stage in their economic development just gives the Chinese a license to further erode other nations economics and makes them more powerful. Later down the road, when they say well, we can’t meet the agreement because reasons there are zero enforcement mechanisms to force compliance or even to punish them…they will just shrug and you’ll have nothing.
Personally, I was for the US signing…I supported Obama in doing so. I was against Trump backing out as well. I think this is one of myriad chances for the US to show leadership, and I also think that there are some economic advantages to us staying in and moving towards encouraging green industries. But it always rankled that the Chinese got a pass, and the attitude on this board about it infuriates me. China cheats and lies pretty much systemically. They do things not only to their own advantage but specifically to the disadvantage of many other nations. And this agreement crafted the way it was that let’s China get a grace period with no enforcement was almost tailor made for them for propaganda purposes. See? China is doing something while bad old US won’t play along.
And, to get back to the actual subject of the OP, this is another reason why many conservatives oppose the idea of climate change. Deals like this smack of politics and ideology, after all. I mean, if folks were REALLY concerned about this stuff then why is the largest emitter getting a pass? Oh, because the US per capita emissions are higher, or China is an ‘emerging economy’, blah blah blah. It smacks of elitist liberals and left wingers wanting to hurt the US and others while giving China advantages. No, I don’t think this is the case (I think that those who did this did it because they knew China would balk if pushed, and also because I think that most folks are clueless about how the CCP actually operates and are blind to what they do), but it’s why many conservatives don’t want to acknowledge climate change.
It would be news to me too, if I had claimed they were. What I said is that they need to stand up to the greens in their own party (and the Green party as well) and push for nuclear as hard as they do for solar.
And especially to do more than talk. In order to shift to nuclear, we need more nuclear plants. Which Democratic politicians have supported the creation of any new nuclear plants in the US in the past decade or two? How many of them supported Yucca Mountain?
I would go further, and say that a genuine commitment to the environment, and in particular to being anti-AGW, almost requires a commitment to nuclear power. But all I ever seem to hear is lip service, and immediately changing the subject to solar.
China emits more than the US and the EU put together.
This is the kind of thing that leads me to believe that Democrats aren’t serious. Every time someone suggests that the problem is serious enough that we should stifle our economy to avert it, and someone else points to the elephant in the room, they try to change the subject.
We aren’t going to do anything about AGW, until we have to. Neither the GOP, nor the Democrats, are serious about it. For different reasons, but neither are. So we won’t, until we are forced to.
My expectation is that we will deal with the problem on a piecemeal basis, until oil prices go up high enough. Then we will switch to whatever is cheapest - maybe nuclear, if reason prevails, or else coal if it doesn’t. Will it be too late by then? We’ll find out.
Regards,
Shodan
I agree that it’s a big danger. Again, this thread is asking why conservatives oppose the idea. I’m not a conservative NOR do I oppose the idea of climate change. As I said, I actually was for the Paris Accords as well as Kyoto, and was against our orange haired idiot backing us out (I was opposed to him getting us out of the TPP as well, but that’s another mater).
Yeah, I agree this is already impacting China. But I don’t think that the CCP thinks that, or they think they can get around it with enough growth. Their focus is basically on staying in power and to do that they need the carrot (they already have the stick part down pat) of constant upward economic growth at all cost…and it’s pretty clear that the environment is down on their list, based on just looking at where it’s at. In addition, they are already planning mega-engineering projects to move water from the west and south to the north (though how they will deal with over half of their waterways being polluted to the point you can’t even use the water for industrial uses beats me). And who knows…maybe they DO plan to phase towards greener energy production. If they can. And after they have wrung all of the economic advantage out of getting a grace period while the other signatories have to start doing the tough stuff. But the fact that the Chinese are putting so many new cars on the road (the vast majority of which are ICE not electric) and building so many new coal plants that will be used for decades to come should flash some warning bells. The downturn in their own recent emissions isn’t due to them working towards compliance but instead reflect a change in their industry and a downturn in their economy (to use Wolfpup’s ‘but what about…!’ that points out our own is due to natural gas usage), and no one thinks this is a long term trend. If they can get their economy going again their emissions will start to climb again. Even if they don’t, they are at such a high level already that it everyone else out there, including the US. The only way to make it palatable and not deal with this fact is to try and divert to per capita usage.
I should have said ‘think they believe’
There is libertarian justification for a small defense force. There is no libertarian justification for the gigantic US military and the adventurism that comes with it.
Yes–it’s just isn’t a conservative argument. This is why the libertarians get put back in their box as soon as the religious conservatives need pandering to.
The primary drive of US conservatives these days seems to be Schadenfreude, really.
Seems to me to be the primary drive of both republicans and democrats, but then this is a far-left board so I expect to get shut down on that opinion.
Oddly enough I hear “liberal tears” as a thing to be desired/enjoyed a lot more often than “conservative tears”. Funny, that.
Why bother? I have nothing against nuclear power, but it seems to have plateaued in terms of cost and efficiency, while solar especially is getting cheaper and more widespread. And it is working, especially in California:
From here.
Relatively few houses in my affluent neighborhood have solar cells, so there is plenty of room for growth. It’s not politics, it is economics and technology.
I’ve never heard of these desired conservative tears. All I ever hear from libtards is how much they want conservatives to stop destroying the world. Weird things they want. Can’t figure it out.
Piffle. Some of them went so far as to say it was okay because some guy in the Bible had a much younger wife. They had signs and everything.
Wait, wait…
This would be the ‘dispensationalist’ stance. Remember James G Watt, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior? He’s a scary example of that kind of thinking: By using up the world’s resources, we can trigger the Second Coming. And this faith is so strong that it can’t possibly be a misinterpretation of allegorical tales and wishful prophecy!
Realize also that the conservatives trying to dumb down the textbooks for Texas (because that tends to dumb down the textbooks for the rest of the nation) are doing so for faith-based reasons. In other words, they want to prevent young minds from learning about human-initiated planet-wide climate detriments because to accept that science stuff is to reject scriptural teachings. It’s a mutually exclusive dichotomy; either you believe the Bible is inerrant and true and God will not turn His back on his children) or you believe God’s children have failed as stewards of the land outside of Eden. And, after all, all that science stuff comes out of the Tree of Knowledge which we weren’t supposed to touch.
Even more nefarious: consider that those in power may believe that as resources are destroyed and become scarce, conflict will increase. Such conflicts require arms to wage, and the military/industrial complex (and those who invest in it) reap larger and larger profits.
But wouldn’t this, along with the Israel situation…
…be a GOOD thing to the ultra-biblical? It’s been a long time since I read it, but I thought part of the End Times prophecy included not just the restoration of Jerusalem but also a unifited world government – later to have Mephisto in the seat of power and sixes tatooed on foreheads and all that stuff.
Do they want or not want the Rapture to take them to Heaven?
–G?
The establishment of a large permanent professional military is a post-WWII phenomenon, and while it was ostensibly done to combat Soviet (and later Chinese) communist expansion, it has, as Eisenhower warned, become a massive, self-perpetuating industry, the growth of which is out of proportion to the scale of any plausible threat, particularly in the post-Cold War era. There is an argument for having a modest size permanent military establishment to serve as the basis to stand up a force against a growing global threat as happened in WWII with the combined axis powers, but in reality having a massive military establishment (and the armaments industry behind it looking to justify hugely expensive weapon development programs) has encouraged politicians to look at international conflicts from a military standpoint when they could be addressed through diplomatic and political means. If conservatives were really serious about cutting wasteful government spending, they would start by pruning at the military and looking for functions and development programs that provide little or no utility. That cutting military spending is practical verboten (across partisan lines) but funding for education or infrastructure maintenance is cut to the bone even at a pittance of cost reduction tells you everything you need to know about their actual agenda.
Nuclear fission power production has its place as a reliable baseload in a comprehensive energy portfolio, but the problem with nuclear power is two-fold; we are still using 1960s-era once-through cycle technology requiring a massive amount of refinement and enrichment in the fuel production cycle (which is a serious bottleneck that no one promoting nuclear fission power seems to be aware of) and producing a lot of high-level “waste” that is actually a valuable energy source for more advanced fission technologies. But that aside, solar has the advantage that it is relatively fast and inexpensive to deploy, and thus a preferable alternative to fossil fuel power production for developing nations for which the costs and security issues make nuclear fission a non-starter, and particularly those in equatorial regions that get near maximal solar irradiance. In terms of near term expansion power demands, a broad expansion of solar power production is an obvious and easy way to offset the most polluting fossil fuel power production sources in both industrial and developing nations, while industrial nations put money and effort into development of Generation IV fission (and ultimately nuclear fusion) power production.
Stranger
Then why not just say that instead of denying it?
Hopefully in 30-40 years we can settle on what Pluto is.
Concerning climate change though? I think that there is a hesitancy to be bound by international agreements that will constrain US economic power and political sovereignty.
Changing, in part, due to human activity. Do you know how much the climate would have changed without industrialization? That’s the very tough question to answer.
Mind you, the ski-blue and light red color areas are the regions of uncertainty, as one can notice the temperature where we should be if no anthropologic factors where there is well below the uncertainty range. We are currently at about one degree of an increase in surface temperature thanks to industrialization.
So, when it comes to climate policy, the US should totally ignore the warnings of science and recklessly forge ahead with business as usual, destroying the environment with impunity? In particular, it should avoid any kind of collaboration with other countries to achieve common goals for the planet?
OK. We can use the same template to help out with other decisions, too, like stockpiling the maximum possible quantity of nuclear weapons and refusing to engage in any kind of arms limitation talks.
That actually makes sense, because when one of these nuclear powers blows up the world we won’t have to worry about the devastated environment any more.
That’s why it’s taken quite a few years to answer it. But I’m going to guess that you haven’t read the current release of the IPCC reports and don’t intend to, and prefer to pretend that we don’t have enough information to guide actionable policy.