Researcher: The US Owes the World $4 Trillion For Trashing the Climate 528
merbs writes: Climate change wasn't created equal. Rich, industrialized nations have contributed most of the pollution and gone way over their carbon budgets—while smaller, poorer, and more agrarian countries are little to blame. The subsequent warming will, naturally, impact everyone, often hitting the poorer countries harder. So should rich countries pay up? Researcher Damon Matthews has quantified how much historically polluting nations owe their global neighbors—and it's a lot.
US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the Chinese bill?
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Informative)
negative according to the study, since they still havent hit breakpoint.
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:4, Interesting)
negative according to the study, since they still havent hit breakpoint.
I thought that was funny when I read your post, but actually you are right, according to the article China is still behind on the polluter curve. If new technology (fusion, batteries + wind) becomes viable, they may never hit breakpoint.
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Insightful)
negative according to the study, since they still havent hit breakpoint.
I thought that was funny when I read your post, but actually you are right, according to the article China is still behind on the polluter curve. If new technology (fusion, batteries + wind) becomes viable, they may never hit breakpoint.
I think the study's methodology is highly suspect.
What of all those people in India and China (and other parts of the world) who burn organics like wood or straw or animal dung for heat, cooking, etc? That puts out far more pollution than a gas or even coal-fired power plant per capita.
The paper is currently paywalled, but I think the study and its methodology deserve some close scrutiny before people start jumping on this bandwagon.
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Insightful)
The paper is currently paywalled, but I think the study and its methodology deserve some close scrutiny before people start jumping on this bandwagon.
Absolutely.
That puts out far more pollution than a gas or even coal-fired power plant per capita.
Remember, the paper is not talking about pollution here, it's talking about carbon, so burning wood is carbon neutral.
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Another question...........how did they put a number on the total damage caused by AGW?
The paper is currently paywalled, but I think the study and its methodology deserve some close scrutiny before people start jumping on this bandwagon.
Absolutely.
That puts out far more pollution than a gas or even coal-fired power plant per capita.
Remember, the paper is not talking about pollution here, it's talking about carbon, so burning wood is carbon neutral.
Burning down virgin forest for firewood or to clear fields is not carbon neutral, at least no more "neutral" than digging up coal and burning that is "neutral". People who burn wood tend not to be using sustainably grown trees to do so.
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Yes, deforestation produces net carbon production. But that's best measured by including a contribution for deforestation, which most models do.
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is sensationalist journalism posing as science. The publication itself looks to target wealth as an indicator of carbon emissions. Its abstract is clearly biased which is just bad science. The article by Brian Merchant is just terrible. I tried reading it and its just slander. The guy touts himself as "Apocalypse spotter, utopianist, science fictionalist." Seriously, this whole article is just a big pile of crap.
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between burning wood, straw or dung is that the CO2 released comes from CO2 that was relatively recently absorbed from the atmosphere by plants so it doesn't change the total amount of carbon in the active carbon cycle. Burning coal or gas on the other hand releases carbon that has been sequestered from the active carbon cycle for millions of years and so increases the amount in the active carbon cycle.
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CO2 is fungible. If I burn one tree's worth of coal, I've changed the amount in the active carbon cycle by exactly the same amount as if I burned the tree instead. The only way this isn't true is if the tree was going to burn anyway.
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There's a good chance it was.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re... [sciencedaily.com]
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No. Most organic sources of carbon are recycled into the atmosphere, over and over again. If you burn a tree, it probably doesn't affect the amount of carbon in the atmosphere much. The tree was going to decompose (via microbes, termites, bugs, etc.), and end up with the carbon back in the atmosphere. Some small percentage of the tree may end up sequestered in the lower layers of soil over time, but it will be a small percentage.
An analogy is to imagine a money economy. On average, there is a certain amoun
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Informative)
CO2 is fungible. If I burn one tree's worth of coal, I've changed the amount in the active carbon cycle by exactly the same amount as if I burned the tree instead. The only way this isn't true is if the tree was going to burn anyway.
It's true that CO2 is CO2 regardless of the source of the carbon.
But the active carbon cycle consists primarily of the carbon that cycles through the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere on relatively short (geologically speaking) time scales. Since the tree you're burning is part of the biosphere it is already part of the active carbon cycle burning it doesn't change the total carbon in the active cycle, just the location. It then becomes available for other trees to take it up continuing the cycle.
Fossil fuels on the other hand consist of carbon that has not been a part of the active carbon cycle for millions of years (in most cases hundreds of millions of years). Burning fossil fuels releases that carbon increasing the total in the active carbon cycle. Since the balance between the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere in the active carbon cycle remains about the same you get an increase in atmospheric CO2, and increase in hydrosphere CO2 (thus ocean acidification) and an increase in the biosphere with more plant growth. Of those three "spheres" the biosphere is probably the most limited since plant growth depends on other things besides the availability of carbon but the balance between the atmosphere and hydrosphere just depends on Henry's Law [wikipedia.org] as modified by Van 't Hoff's equation. [wikipedia.org]
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The difference between burning wood, straw or dung is that the CO2 released comes from CO2 that was relatively recently absorbed from the atmosphere by plants
Another big difference is that cooking uses 1% of the energy in developed countries, so that is a dumb thing to focus on anyway. Third world cooking maybe less efficient that first world cooking, but their bicycles are way more efficient than our SUVs, and their sweat glands use far less energy than our central A/C.
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Burning wood doesn't add CO2 to the atmosphere. Since the tree captured CO2 during growth, and you are releasing the same amount, the net sum is 0.
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Technically, the same is true of the carbon of fossil fuels, just in a longer time frame.
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Yup. But by the time oil is produced by the Earth from the CO2 within the atmosphere, it will be way too late for the climate.
A tree can grow quickly enough, so that's not that much of an issue.
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Interesting)
As others have explained, burning wood can be carbon neutral. And as I just told Jane [slashdot.org], the only real caveat here is significant land use change, like deforestation. I've also told Jane [slashdot.org] that in the 1990s, the upper bound on CO2 emissions due to land-use changes was less than half of the lower bound on those due to fossil fuel emissions.
This can be confirmed using simple accounting [slashdot.org] or by using 14C isotope ratios. Burning wood releases unstable 14C carbon because it hasn't had time to decay, but there is no 14C in coal. So we actually have several independent ways to see that Jane Q. Public and John O'Sullivan are wrong when they keep blaming developing countries for supposedly emitting "far more" CO2 than developed nations:
I've already told Jane [slashdot.org] this is nonsense, but he refused to retract this Sky Dragon Slayer claim and keeps blaming developing countries for supposedly emitting "far more" CO2 than developed nations. Once again, John O'Sullivan showed the part of Figure 3 [global.jaxa.jp] with the net fluxes in July 2009 but "forgot" to show the fluxes for the rest of the year. Since July is summer in the northern hemisphere, those trees grow leaves which temporarily removes CO2 [youtube.com] from the atmosphere. But this reverses during winter, which might be why John O'Sullivan "forgot" to show those fluxes. "Principia Scientific International" [archive.today] and [archive.is] several [archive.today] others [archive.today] repeated [archive.today] O'Sullivan's [archive.today] misinformation [archive.today].
Ironically, when one isn't talking to Sky Dragon Slayers like John O'Sullivan, it isn't controversial to note that developed countries are responsible for most of the CO2 rise. Here's an interactive tool [gapminder.org] to explore historical CO2 emissions
Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Interesting)
Biomass (what you're referring to) only makes up for a very small proportion of energy consumption. It's actually considered to be 'low carbon' because if those plants weren't harvested then they'd decompose on the forest floor anyway, producing CO2. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, mature forests don't act as effective carbon sinks. Only newly-growing forests have the ability to sequester significant amounts of carbon. Burning biomass is only carbon positive if it results from clearing forests and preventing new growth. The time scale of this new growth is measured in decades (i.e. it's in the global carbon cycle already), whereas fossil fuels represent carbon that has been stored up for millions of years (carbon that is being newly introduced into the biosphere).
So long story short, stop making up excuses and face up to reality.
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Biomass (what you're referring to) only makes up for a very small proportion of energy consumption. It's actually considered to be 'low carbon' because if those plants weren't harvested then they'd decompose on the forest floor anyway, producing CO2. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, mature forests don't act as effective carbon sinks. Only newly-growing forests have the ability to sequester significant amounts of carbon. Burning biomass is only carbon positive if it results from clearing forests and preventing new growth. The time scale of this new growth is measured in decades (i.e. it's in the global carbon cycle already), whereas fossil fuels represent carbon that has been stored up for millions of years (carbon that is being newly introduced into the biosphere).
So long story short, stop making up excuses and face up to reality.
But I'm an American! I don't want to face up to reality, and you can't make me! We'll do whatever we want, and we have the guns to back it up. Oh, and, um, FREEDOM!!!
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how much other damage has the usa caused per capitia due to your 5% of the population using 20% of global resources?
Well, brain damage in anonymous cowards, for one.
Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:2, Insightful)
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China might manufacture the goods, but Americans are consuming them.
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So what. EVERYONE is buying from China, including the Chinese. Tax at the source.
Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:4, Insightful)
China might manufacture the goods, but Americans are consuming them.
Should your employer compensate the people who live near you if you spend your time at home crapping in your back yard and stinking up the neighborhood? They are the ones who buy your services, and that's how you buy the food you leave in digested piles out there, right?
What? The person who's buying your services isn't in charge of how you live your life? Oh.
Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Insightful)
You really need to think that through for a while.
Or do you really think that most of the world pollution happened in the last decade?
Perhaps you think the US had nice solid restrictions in place over the last 100 years?
Of course, what you will want to do is start everyone on a clean slate now, right? to be fair?
After all, the US has finished its major construction, infrastructure, and industrial development - and what could be better than taxing back anyone else who tries to follow.
The whole point is the US has been a major CO2 producer for a long long time - it will take a long time yet for others to catch up to that.
The whole point of this research is to quantify just that - how some countries have been able to become very wealthy partyly by producing a large amount of CO2 over a long time, and that if we are now going to penalise current producers, it is only fair that we also penalise those who dug the hole in the first place.
The flip side is if you dont want to hold the past producers equally responsible, then you cannot expect the current ones to be held responsible.
Make your choice, but you should not expect to have it both ways.
Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:5, Interesting)
The clearest example of this is with cell phones, Most developing countries seem to be skipping straight to 3 or 4G, bypassing all the intermediate steps. Some places in Africa I've heard you CAN'T get landlines, but cell phones are common.
We did all the development, so they get to reap the rewards.
Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion? (Score:4, Insightful)
China spews out more pollutants
China produces more CO2 than America, but only about a quarter as much per capita. Also, China only surpassed America a few years ago. America was the leader for more than a century.
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Granted, the "per capita" argument is relevant in many areas, e.g. the amount of funds needed in taxes - per capita - for a country to do something about the effects of climate change.
"Per capita" isn't relevant when talking about the total damage to the planet's ecosystem. Australia has a very high per capita emissions level (must be all those war wagons and doof warriors driving around the desert), and we should be doing more to bring it down, but the country's total contribution to atmospheric CO2 levels
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China is a newcomer to the polluting game. Up till very recently it put out far less CO2 than the USA. Whereas the USA has been digging up carbon and pumping out CO2 for literally centuries.
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but doesn't produce 5 times the pollutants
They produce more. Once again, we have the dishonest assertion that every pollutant is equal. The US doesn't produce more particulate matter, more mercury, or raw sewage pollution per capita than China does.
but their past is far less damaging to the environment per capita than the US has been
And their present is far more damaging to the environment per capita than the US is now. Maybe we should worry about now rather than some past which has been corrected?
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And their present is far more damaging to the environment per capita than the US is now.
Citation needed.
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"Look, a cloud!"
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Those pollutants are overwhelmingly local. Carbon is global pollution.
Even if that were true, and it's not (for example, Chinese air pollution makes up a detectable portion of California air pollution these days despite having to cross the entire Pacific Ocean), this is the first that anyone has indicated that global versus local matters.
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It's one thing to determine what percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere was released by the US..........it's quite another to convert that to a dollar amount.
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You didn't really read it did you?
That's true, I skimmed it and went straight to the paper. Articles tend to be worthless.
It looks like they are getting it from here [epa.gov], in which case carbon from before 2015 should not be valued at $40 a tonne, they should be valued at a lower price. (Incidentally it makes little sense to value CO2 added later at a higher value, because the CO2 added later has a smaller effect).
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I think that as OCO2's, and next year, OCO3's, data creeps out and ppl realize that the numbers for most of these 'studies' are not adding up, well, even things like this will be considered to be nothing but a joke. [nasa.gov]
Devil's advocate (Score:2)
TFS apparently calculates overall pollution since the dawn of time. In all fairness, it should be calculated since the moment people realized pollution hurts climate.
Re:Devil's advocate (Score:5, Informative)
Disregard the above, I'm an idiot.
GIVE US THE MONEY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Says every shakedown artist in every government on the planet.
Re:GIVE US THE MONEY! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, more or less...
They really just want money... if that money would actually clean and buy back the prior environment, sure... but it won't...
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Great, so STFU about their current production - if it was a problem then, then it is not a problem now.
Or agree that it is and always was a problem, and pay up for your share.
Its pretty simple really, isnt it.
Of course such realities are very unpopular in todays 'me me me' climate of people demanding debt forgiveness and government support without wanting to contribute..
Or do you think those big houses, fancy cars, and latest consumer goods came from working the fields?
Bad timing (Score:2, Insightful)
Just when they'd started to convince people that "climate change" was legitimately about real phenomenon. But, as we suspected all along, it's just another way to loot rich countries for the good of ... who? Who gets the money? Certainly not poor individuals in poor countries -- they never get the money.
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Exactly. How much money did schoolkids (and others) send to Haiti? Did the people in the destroyed town get any of it or see any benefit from it?
I have always thought this was the driver behind the political frenzy of anthropocentric climate change (as opposed to both climate science and Ice Age!)
They tipped their hand a little to early.
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Ah, let me translate that for you.
Isnt it impressive how US run organisations these days see disasters in 3rd world countries as a nice fat cash cow so they can pour millions more into their own coffers and not even lift a finger for the people in need. Go USA!
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/22/haiti-aid
There, fixed that for you.
If you want to avoid such things, its really pretty simple, avoid American charities. There are still a few people in the world who actually work to hel
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It's an economic exercise at best. Economists love attaching arbitrary (though reasoned) dollar amounts on things. Then they couple all of the things that are loosely related (health care costs, investment in tech that should be replaced, cost of replacing the polluting tech for example). Then they come up with a staggeringly large number.
What they don't do is figure out the benefits to using a technology, in this case before we had a greener replacement.
This isn't about an actual bill, or actual transfe
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But they didn't fool you though did they? No siree.
Since he asked the question (Score:4, Insightful)
So should rich countries pay up?
No. The real solution is to lower the birthrate and eventually reduce the world population. Shifting money around wouldn't solve anything.
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1st world nations are already doing that if you don't count 1st gen immigrants.
And how much does the rest of the world owe us? (Score:2, Insightful)
Capitalist societies polluted far less than the communist societies did and still do.
Capitalist societies also lifted billions out of poverty while socialism killed 100 million.
If some bozo wants to start toting up a bill, I'd like to see his calculations for what he rest of the world owes the US.
In other words, fuck off and die, slaver. There are some things you just can't calculate on a balance sheet.
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There were plenty of communist countries during the period covered, and there are still several right now.
Time to take the blinders off, bud.
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[Intelligence needed]
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"Capitalist societies also lifted billions out of poverty while socialism killed 100 million."
Socialism != communism
http://www.diffen.com/differen... [diffen.com]
Socialist countries have healthcare freely available to their entire population and social services protecting the disadvantaged and giving everyone a fair shot at life. The US isn't anywhere close to those levels of social support.
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USSR = Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Nazi = National Socialism
Typing != literacy
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And North Korea calls itself democratic. What a country calls itself and what it is rarely have much in common.
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And East Germany was
DDR = German Democratic Republic.
Just because a name contains a word does not mean that the bearer of that name exemplifies the meaning of that word. Quite often it is the exact opposite.
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And North Korea calls itself a Democratic Republic.
your attempt at a point only further proves your ignorance.
Do we really need to cover how the Nazi party was fascist, not socialist, and the USSR was neither Socialist nor really Communist, but in fact practiced Totalitarianism? It's been done before, and requires only a cursory knowledge of historical fact. I'm sure even you could accomplish it.
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I see. You just redefine a word to suit your newspeak. Problem solved, or at least obfuscated.
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The USSR was hard left communist, which is an offshoot, and has some of the characteristics, of socialism. In it's origins, it may have held those socialist promise
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Fascism IS socialism. State controls the means of production. The distinction between the State directly owning businesses and factories vs the State co-opting the owners and telling them what to do is a distinction without a difference.
Anyone who thinks there is a significant difference between Communism and Fascism is deluding themselves, and willfully.
Anyone who tries to define socialism so finely as to exclude Communism and Fascism, while at the same time labeling everything else capitalism, is a hypo
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Fascism is a POLITICAL ideology, not an ECONOMIC one...whereas capitalism is an ECONOMIC ideology, not a political one. Comparing the two takes co
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[bigger audience needed]
Good stuff!
Discount (Score:3, Informative)
Don't we get a discount for helping stop Adolf?
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Depends on what his environmental policies would have been, I guess.
China is a carbon creditor nation? What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also: comparing the entire US to individual countries in Europe.
Sorry, but you're talking about smaller populations in individual countries in Europe. If you wanted to compare apples to apples, you'd compare the US to the entirety of Europe since the populations are similar post-War.
The report also compares industrialized countries with non-industrialized countries who are trying like hell to industrialize, like India.
In short, this report does no per-capita analysis /and/ it compares countries that have industrialized with those that haven't gone through that phase fully yet (and lumps the post-1980 industrialization time in china /with/ its previous agrarian economy).
>brazil is a carbon creditor
Yeah, but not when you add in the coal mining and rain-forest stripping.
I am all for reducing pollution and carbon footprints. But the fact that we owe anyone for what went on in the past is nuts, especially to countries that have done the same damn thing or are making efforts to do so. We have been making efforts on pollution ever since the creation of the EPA. To say that the US is a big bad bully when it comes to the environment ignores the other countries that have done the same or are going through their own industrialization process.
I know that this is a schoolyard argument "but the other kid did it too!!" but fingerpointing over who is worse never does anyone any good especially when you go down this road because it becomes circular to the point of absurdity.
It's especially bad when you abuse statistics to do it and frame it as "science."
What is worse is that if I can come up with these criticisms in the time I read that article, the think-tanks for the fucking evil RWNJs disclaiming climate change (it's a fact guys, your insurance company and the Pentagon says it's real, and it's coming out of your pocket - you were saying something about fiscal responsibility, asshole?) will take this and run with it to deep-six any further efforts to reduce pollution, convincing people like Joe The (dumb) Plumber that it's all a conspiracy perpetrated by liberals.
This report is barely worth lining a bird-cage.
--
BMO
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But the fact that we owe anyone for what went on in the past is nuts, especially to countries that have done the same damn thing or are making efforts to do so. We have been making efforts on pollution ever since the creation of the EPA.
Come on officer, so what if I have been beating my wife for the last 20 years, WTF has that got to do with anything! That guy over there just shoved her, arrest his damn arse! Throw the book at him!
Oh, and if you think the EPA has ever lifted a finger to curb any CO2 emissions, then you severely misunderstand how the good ole USA works.
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"Oh, and if you think the EPA has ever lifted a finger to curb any CO2 emissions, then you severely misunderstand how the good ole USA works."
Increased gas mileage==less carbon emissions.
CAFE works when it's not undermined by RWNJs and corporatists that insist everybody drive H-1s.
Your move.
--
BMO
"US Owes the World $4 Trillion" (Score:2)
Yeah, good luck collecting (Score:4, Insightful)
4 trillion? Is that all? Why not make it 10 trillion? How much have industrialized countries given poor countries in foreign aid? Loan forgiveness? Accepting millions and millions of their citizens into our countries for better lives. Infrastructure, education, the list goes on.
The reason that many of these countries are poor is because they are run by dictators. Dictators that steal nearly every penny of foreign aid and either put it into their own pocket or use it to beef up the military to ensure that they are not thrown out of power.
Now some of the countries are genuinely poor and need our help. But many others (I'm talking about you, nearly every country on the African continent. And some south east asian countries - Indonesia and Philippines come to mind) are rife with corruption. Their people are poor not through their own fault but directly at the hands of dictators and ruling families.
Just suppose that we did cough up the 4 trillion. What do you suppose would happen? Does this guy really think that somehow, magically, all the people in these countries would be driving BMW's with their kids in boarding schools and a summer place in The Hamptons? Not fucking likely. It would all go into the dictator pockets.
Nice try though.
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It's actually much simpler than that. If your culture respects private property your society becomes wealthier over time. If not you don't. There is no reason to help poor countries beyond being a role model showing what creates wealth.
By 2013 estimates... (Score:2)
Well, that would be like $1 in 50000 BC dollars (Score:2)
We'll pay $1, because fuck you.
Livestock? (Score:2)
Payment (Score:2)
Wow, that's almost 22% of our actual debt (Score:2)
Can we replace the real national debt of $18.3 trillion with this $4 trillion chump-change? 'Cause that would be shweet.
Major problem with TFA (Score:3)
I think I'd rather dodge this $4T bill by pointing out something in TFA that pissed me off.
At the top of the article is a picture of some godforsaken hellhole. My first thought was "holy shit, where is that horrible place? Is that somewhere on Venus?" Hovering over the image, told me the answer.
It says "Smog in New Mexico."
Yes, Albuquerque sometimes has a winter "inversion layer", bu there is no place anywhere in New Mexico that looks anything like that. On the worst day of the year during the worst forest fire ever, the sky doesn't look that bad, and hell no does any place in this state have a hundredth of that many tall buildings.
Click through the image credit to the wikipedia page, and they'll tell you it's Mexico City. But the TFA calls it "New Mexico," because some asshat retard who flunked first grade geography and got a job as an editorial intern at vice.com, doesn't know the difference. Oh, fuck YOU!
Re:This is what Climate Change is all about.... (Score:5, Interesting)
What's marxist about it? You break somebody's window, you have to pay them for the repairs. You poison somebody else's garden, you pay for having it replanted. This is pure capitalism and the very model libertarians propose.
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And the glazier benefits from broken windows. That your actions had an effect that was positive for somebody doesn't mean you get out of paying damages. See the broken window fallacy.
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Once you factor in the invention of peanut butter, they owe us.
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And rock'n'roll. Levi's, too.
Hell yeah, they better start paying up. They probably owe us $4 trillion just for Michael Jackson, goddamnit.
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Exactly what kind of bucket are you using where the worlds number two polluter and carbon emitter is a drop in this bucket?
China's putting out more shit than the US, but the US is a close second and has been doing it an awful long time in comparison.
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Or, more reasonably, add an import tariff to anything coming from a country that pollutes
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Great idea. We could call it a "carbon tax".
Why has no one thought of this before?
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You're right. I'm an hypocrite who wants to buy that stuff. However, I don't want it from china. I want it manufactured here. While we have our share of shit product, a lot of the best stuff I own comes from America (note: I'm not an american citizen, though I live there. It's a recent thing. So there's no patriotism involved). It's more expensive for sure, but over the long term, I end up spen
Re:Go after China (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW, This analysis only covers CO2 emissions since 1990, not pollution in general.
What mostly saves china in this cursory analysis their CO2 emissions per capita.
Although china has lots of CO2 emissions (30%), it also lots of people, when you divide it out compared to the US (15%) and EU (11%).
If, however, you compare thing per GDP (adjusting for purchasing power parity in respective localities), thinks look a bit different.
China: 650 kg CO2/1000 USD
Russia: 530 kg CO2/1000 USD
USA: 330 kg CO2/1000 USD
EU: 220 kg CO2/1000 USD
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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/d... [patheos.com]
Re:Biased reporting (Score:4, Informative)
Did you even read the research? China and many Europen nations are also put in the equation.
Re:Biased reporting (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, his title was "biased reporting". When the research talks about all nations, and the reporting talks only about the US, that legitimately is biased reporting. Especially when the US doesn't look so extreme compared to the other "climate debt" nations on a per capita basis.
This said, that bias isn't necessarily bad when your audience is from the US. And I say this as somebody who is not from the US, and who went directly to the article to find out how other countries did.
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"Research", that's funny. This is politics, and only politics.
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If you look at the fine article you'll find a graph that shows total debit/credit in billions of tonnes of CO2 for the most important nations (in terms of CO2). That is straight scientific research as it deals with physical quantities that can be calculated from fossil fuel usage and other factors for each country. Putting a monetary value on that may be somewhat arbitrary but the price of emitting CO2 is certainly not zero.
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And South Vietnam. We spread freeance and peeance everywhere we go.
https://youtu.be/EIcBodWDHRA [youtu.be]
Re:That's OK, the World ows us 10x that for.... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) You didn't spell "Republic" correctly. You're not a democracy.
2) Lots of other countries do that. You're not special in a good way.
3) You're assuming that those things wouldn't have been invented anyway. Television was invented by a Scotsman. The Internal Combustion Engine was developed by a Belgian living in Paris. Should I go on?
4) So you're admitting that you control currencies and ruin markets on a whim?
5) Foreign aid is a loan that must be paid back, so don't brag too much about offering someone a credit card to pay their bills. Many other countries offer disaster relief and so forth, as well - in fact, there were a number of occasions where the US demanded control of the relief military (UN) forces, threw a tantrum when they didn't get control, and just let the bad guys steal all the relief supplies.
6) World War 1 was being fought to a standstill. It likely would have ended before too many more years passed without your intervention anyway.
7) The British were going to defeat German, according to US wargaming. There was no way the Germans could keep it up, regardless of your intervention - and much of your intervention involved the transfer of money. Look up "lend/lease" if you want to see that it wasn't just you guys being heroes. Also, the US didn't fight the Japanese out of any ideal for freedom (just ask the Iraqis how free they felt with the US there, soldiers pointing guns at them screaming "I'M HERE FOR YOUR FUCKING FREEDOM!"), they attacked you.
8) The old Russian empire overthrew itself in 1917, you can't claim ownership of that. As for "liberating the remaining remnants of Europe from being ruled by others" (Department of Redundancy Department, anyone?) what are you talking about? If you keep sniffing that crap, it'll kill you.
9) Two things:
i) Second to none? I interviewed a New Zealand soldier who served in Vietnam. I recall very clearly that he told me "The Green Beret is a mighty soldier, and the New Zealand soldier is every bit as good as they are." For fucks sake, the New Zealand territorials ("weekend soldiers") go for a run while carrying a phone pole. US special forces do that and think they're mighty because of that.
ii) You now start spouting how we're lucky you don't invade us and make us all your slaves. (Panama, anyone?) But you are subjugating the world and making us live under your rules: the New Zealand government has funding and advisors from the US, teaching the government how to implement a special form of freedom that allows us to buy, but restricts our other freedoms. Caught with your hand in the till again. I don't want the US influencing my government, but the money and support they gave the current government has allowed them to get elected. Half the reason you get involved in wars is to keep your military ready and trained, just like the Wehrmacht before World War 2.
So, for the above reasons, don't tell me that you're the greatest and we owe you, because the truth is you only ever act in your self-interest. You've been a power conquering and subverting (UN Security Council veto used more than any other country) everyone else for most of the last 100 years, using the militaries and the poor of your country and others to fight wars to support your own business interests.
Your feeling of having the right to make the rest of the world pay marks you as one of the most blinkered and entitled people in the entire world.
Take your own imaginary debt and go home, or we can start discussing what you owe everyone else from history. Sheltering war criminals from us for your own benefit in a war you're waging against other states simply because it reinforces the wealth of the richest in your country, that's just sickening.
Do us a favour: grow up. A lot.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Nope, already done in the UK well before the US.
2) Yeah, you benefitted from immigration, well done. No debt owed to you for taking people from other places...
3) Wow, no. Airplane is a german invention, assembly line was in most of the industrial revolution, solid state electronics began at Manchester University, Digital electronics at Zurich, integrated circuits all over the place, microprocessors likewise. Petroleum based products? Really? In a story about pollution? Wow. And pharmaceuticals. Those one
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget,
10. Kanye and Kim.
Re: (Score:3)
Well they took California from Mexico or Spain and so on, some islands like Hawaii, Cuba and Philippines, and before that most of the US itself from the natives?
The US just didn't have much time to do much more. After World War 2 the era of major countries fighting each other to grab territories was mostly over. You don't get to invade random countries like playing Risk when there are mass media, satellites and nuclear weapons around the world.
Re: (Score:2)
"Climate change is not news for nerds. My mom's basement is perfectly climate controlled and the temperature hasn't changed since I moved down here in 1989."
Re: (Score:3)
You also invented the software patent. Well done! So the US tech giants can operate freely in countries they are worth toilet paper, but the other way around is hardly possible due to litigation and legal costs and need for a "treasure chest".