I agree with you, and to add to your remarks, I suspect if most first world countries implemented a sufficiently strict border adjustment ("carbon tariff") for trade with China, etc it would probably do quite a lot to motivate developed nations to improve as well.
Anyway, I find the criticisms of the West to be both ignorant and tiring. Tiring because the "blame the West for everything" meme is so worn out and ignorant because there's a pretty stark difference between pioneering industrialization centuries before mature climate science and China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences.
The US emits about twice the CO2 per year as India, 3x Russia, 4x Japan, 6x Germany, 7x South Korea, 8x Canada, 10x Mexico, 12x Australia, 13x UK, 14x France, and 18x Taiwan.
By your logic then shouldn't most first world countries also implement a strict carbon tariff on the US?
Maybe they should. But I can't help but comment that you're abusing statistics here. Smaller population countries like Canada and Australia pollute more per capita than the US. Also, the carbon tariff should ideally be applied on an activity-specific basis, not at the national level.
> But I can't help but comment that you're abusing statistics here.
Actually, that was kind of the point. For problems dealing with scarce resources that are shared planet wide (such as the atmosphere or oceans) any fair system to determine how those resources are allocated needs to take into account population, but enforcement of any such allocation has to be done by country. The atmosphere doesn't care about our arbitrary political boundaries, but for enforcement they matter.
Too many people make the mistake of thinking that both enforcement and allocation should be by country.
> Smaller population countries like Canada and Australia pollute more per capita than the US.
Australia does indeed emit more per capita than the US, about 4% more. Canada emits about 4% less. The only countries ahead of the US per capita besides Australia are Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago, Kuwait, Brunei, Bahrain, UAE, New Caledonia, the Dutch part of Sint Maarten, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan.
South Korea is about 25% less. Taiwan and Russia are about 30% less than the US per capita. Germany and Japan are about 40% less. The UK and France are about 65% less. Mexico around 72% less. (China is about 55% less).
> Also, the carbon tariff should ideally be applied on an activity-specific basis, not at the national level.
Correct. The way this would probably best be handled if we had a world government would be a revenue neutral carbon tax on everything. But we don't, so we have to cobble together something else.
I don’t think this makes sense because American productivity depends so much on pollution outsourced to countries like India. For example, if US cars are assembled “greenly” from components that are manufactured dirtily, then it hardly seems meaningful to brag that America’s productivity is “greener”. And do bear in mind that I’m not one of the folks who are determined to make the US out to be the bad guy in every thread.
We don't export a lot of electricity. We do export a decent amount of agriculture, but my understanding is we don't export a ton of meat - which is where the majority of the carbon comes from.
Yes, I'm fully on board with that. No country should enjoy a competitive advantage because they externalize costs onto the environment. I don't think the US is a particularly grievous culprit on the global stage, but if everyone implements fair border adjustments then it's moot.
A good amount of emissions from China go into the goods produced for western countries (such as the U.S.). The pollution has been outsourced and externalized.
That's exactly the point of a border adjustment. China out-competes with clean manufacturing because it is more willing to pollute. Western countries should tax goods that are manufactured in polluting countries so they don't enjoy a competitive advantage over clean alternatives. This is probably "necessary but insufficient" sort of thing, but it solves the problem you're highlighting.
> But the US is worse when it comes to CO2 emmited per capita. That means that US should also be taxed.
China - as all nations - has a responsibility based on its population scale (ie its total emissions output), not just its per capita output. The total output matters far more than per capita, as we're dealing with a matter of planetary survival, not whether it's fair that Monaco has higher emissions output per capita than China.
Other nations are not responsible for China having those 1.4 billion people. China bears that responsibility. Other nations are obviously not responsible for the US having its per capita emissions output, either.
Estonia having 4x the per capita emissions output of the US wouldn't pose a terminal risk for the planet. And sure, maybe it's fair to argue a tax to incentivize per capita behavior of high per capita emissions nations. And what to do about China's total output risk, given it's going to destroy the planet (whereas smaller nations do not pose that risk)? The logical thing would be to apply taxes to both, in a way the keeps the planet from getting destroyed: it means China can never be allowed to have parity with smaller nations that have high per capita outputs.
China, with its 1.4 billion people, would pose a terminal risk for the globe if it reaches per capita emissions output parity with the US (actually it's already approaching that risk now, and it's merely half way to parity). Taxes don't mean much if half the planet is wrecked. China has a different responsibility than Estonia does given China can all by itself destroy the world with its emissions. I use Estonia merely as an example to highlight the point, very obviously the US has a responsibility as well based on its scale. Sure, we can focus a tax in on Estonia in that case, however it's by far not our most pressing matter.
China going from ~28% of global emissions to ~45%, is a very pressing matter. The globe can't afford China to increase at all at this point.
If a country had four billion people, it similarly wouldn't be reasonable for it to reach emissions parity with the US: it would kill everyone in doing so.
The equation of fairness must also consider the scale of the threat being posed, as it's also not fair if one outsized population nation gets to destroy the planet because it has 1.4 billion people. One can live in fantasy (where fairness means every nation gets equal emissions output per capita), or live in reality. In reality it matters how many people you have and what their per capita emissions are. Reality is course the dimension where we can all die from the emissions output of a nation the scale of China.
What matters is fantasy when it isn't politically feasible. The only consensus for an emissions regulatory framework is going to be based on per capita. Growing populous countries with the most say will never agree to anything else which is counter to their interests, i.e. China could propose a framework based on de-growth since the PRC population is set to decline to less than 1B by the end of the century, but western countries that rely on growth via immigration would never be up for it even if ultimately de-growth is the more pragmatic solution. Reality is also going to be that emission standards will be based on historic per capita emissions since developing countries will need to catch up on new infra emissions which western nations hide in historic emission data. Reality is global warming is less politically existential than poverty and development for domestic politics for many countries, as long as it kills others more than yourself, even if it ultimately kills everyone. This highlights the even more unpalatable reality that there are climate change winners and losers.
Climate change discussions remind me of covid19 policy wank and panic control but stretched out over decades. Many of us were fairly confident covid19 was going to be a pandemic we’ll have to live with, that’s just reality when most of the world do not have capability to respond properly. There’s a lot of interventions and technologies leading countries can export to mitigate, but ultimately everyone has to come to an understanding that we can’t stop climate change due to political realities.
We've known the consequences since at least the 70s. Industry has done everything they could to cover it up and propagandize the population into believing otherwise.
> China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences
That if they didn't their population would remain poor, and lacking access to healthcare, food, and water? And in an even worse situation when climate change finally hit? Are you suggesting that if China hadn't concentrated on development, the developed countries would be currently falling over themselves to fix the problem?
My recommendation which China is already seems to be taking is to go for nuclear power and solar in that order. Maybe add some hydropower to the mix but they have a plenty of it.
The chief problem is that they're not ramping up nuclear quickly enough, and it's hard to deploy in desert west of the country.
And thanks to our persistent self-sabotage there's civil unrest related to these power plants.
The nuclear is to be used to ramp production of solar PV and batteries cleanly, then decommissioned. Timeframe would be 25 years.
Decommissioning of current old reactors is a problem already but there's really no alternative - ramping solar PV with standard energy sources would be bad. A lot of reactors are expected to shut down by 2025...
You framed Chinese development as compassion for Chinese citizens. I pointed out that the Chinese government doesn't much care about the welfare of its citizens.
I don't think I said "compassion" anywhere. But today they do obviously care about having an economically strong nation with a good standard of living. It's what will help keep them in power.
We're not talking about today, we're not just talking about the last ~50+ years. And moreover, even today they are pretty happy infringing on many other rights of their citizens.
Anyway, I find the criticisms of the West to be both ignorant and tiring. Tiring because the "blame the West for everything" meme is so worn out and ignorant because there's a pretty stark difference between pioneering industrialization centuries before mature climate science and China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences.