what’s the point of listing historic emissions from the 1800s?
the focus should be on reducing emissions for everyone right now, regardless of their past emissions, bc that shit is already in the atmosphere, there’s nothing that can be done about it, and using past emissions as some sort of gotcha to justify not doing anything about climate change is one of the worst things you can do
It means that rich western countries need to be the first to reduce emissions. Right now they are mainly lecturing developing countries without taking real action.
isn’t this a false dichotomy?
not only do rich western nations need to reduce emissions, but developing nations need to correct their course as to not go through the immensely inefficient industrialization route that current rich western nations took
everyone needs to change, not just western rich countries
Development always produces emissions, through construction, industry, transport etc. There are some potential solutions to reduce these emissions, but so far its still theoretical, and not even used at scale by rich countries. So if poor countries arent allowed any emissions, they can never develop more (which might even be the goal of rich countries, so they can keep their status forever).
There are some potential solutions to reduce these emissions, but so far its still theoretical
since the industrial revolution we have not only invented a lot of things but also identified certain harmful policies, and with inventions and policies-to-avoid in mind, countries can develop with a lot less emissions than current western countries did, and most likely with a higher quality of life per amount of emissions
for example, in terms of harmful-policies-to-avoid, we learned that subsidising a vegan diet and eliminating car dependency in urban planning not only eliminates a ton of emissions, but also increases quality of life; these two things can be easily incorporated into spending/planning policies of any country without any additional investment or technological breakthroughs
electricity generation using solar panes and wind turbines is now cheaper than conventional electricity generation with fossil fuels, so developing countries can to a large degree avoid relying on the latter, but this does require some investment and technological innovation in order to happen (something western nations could help with)
there’s also probably a lot of other similar aspects which would be easily optimized but that i don’t know about
so all in all, there are certainly unavoidable emissions that come with development and quality of life improvements, but developing countries can avoid a lot of these emissions with either no/little investment and technological improvements
One issue is that the countries lecturing newly industrializing nations are doing absolutely nothing to decrease their own emissions. They’re happy to export production and act as a monopsony, putting all the pressure to fix climate change on the poorer nations who don’t have anywhere near the same amount of wealth to invest in costlier and more eco friendly production techniques. Who’s more to blame, western finance capital demanding low prices for garments at any costs, while hypocritically demanding that someone else pay to fix climate change, or the bangladeshi small capitalist who’s trying to bring some value into their country in any way they can?
You can even look at current CO2 emissions per capita, and see that some of the richest countries on earth are still currently the biggest polluters. And we can’t ignore the historical legacy of theft and environmental destruction which gives them absolutely no room to talk.
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/
Too often, I see use of some metric like this as an excuse for inaction or inadequate action. “Well the Chinese just keep on having more and more emissions”. “Well historically blah blah blah”. Data points like this are mostly a distraction from the urgency of the problem.
I don’t really see how historic emissions are relevant to the current rate of CO2 production.
This is akin to the argument that "I don’t see how colonialism is relevant now… most of that happened hundreds of years ago.
2 things wrong here. Western countries are polluting more per capita currently, one of the world’s biggest polluters is the US military for example. Secondly just as hundreds of years of theft made western countries richer at the expense of those they colonized, climate change is a result of decades of damage to the environment by countries who now want to point fingers at anyone but themselves.
t h e e w r o p e a n s m u s t b e h e l d a c c o u n t a b l e
The finger-pointing goes both ways though, with India and China just too willing to play the historical emissions card to postpone tackling their own current massive emissions.
IMHO the west has a moral obligation to help poorer countries to adapt to the already inevitable, but that doesn’t mean other newly rich countries can slack on emission reductions.
lol, whos slacking what? china has a reasonable and realistic date to achieve carbon neutrality while the rest of the world isn’t even trying, this without keeping in mind that they are the factory of the world. ah, yeah, and none of the rich countries are helping shit, so you couldn’t expect third world countries to do miracles while they’re still getting fucked by anglos and europeans
2060 is sadly way to late. Yes other nations are not even seriously trying, but China has set their targets to an entirely self serving and way too late date.
Basically they are saying we will not reduce at all (other then what happens through technological advances).
2060 means that other nations will have to offset what China is polluting (obviously to the economic advantage of China) and if they don’t we are all fucked and China thinks they have an advantage that way too.
Classic game theory argument where China is playing the lose-lose game trying to get out slightly less bad then their “competitors”.
Well duh China wasn’t an indistialized nation until like the 70s
Doesn’t matter. CO2 has an atmospheric life on the order of a thousand years. All that CO2 is still in the system. Therefore, objectively, China and India are a tiny fraction of the contribution to the climate crisis comparef to the other countries pictured. Maybe that should be considered when those countries shame China and India while they haven’t even done much to reduce their own emissions.
We shouldn’t be shaming any geographic region we should be shaming the mindset of unlimited consumption. This is pervasive among humanity as those in power are able to continue exploiting our reaources while distracting the public about their impeding doom by presenting other impending doom that they are also responsible for but presents a much more relavant threat.
All the while remaining in control of what we consume (nutritional, media, etc) and keeping the people who just want to live their lives complacent where they are. eg: “I’m concerned about climate change but I’m even more concerned whether or not the mask off fascists in my neighborhood are going to burn my house down”.
You are right in some ways - its no use pointing fingers while we all roast to death, but it should be possible to acknowledge past outputs are a large part of how we got here.
“We all” will not be roasting to death.
The vulnerable are seeing increased food insecurity and forced migration.
But how can you compare 200 years of an industrial nations emissions with a country that didn’t have a mass presence of cars, automobiles, or even factories until 80 years ago.
