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.
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
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/
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).
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.
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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
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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
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.
This
