Came to say something like this. Also, no other problem is as serious as climate change, and US leadership isn’t going to take real action without pressure from voters.
Below, Wikipedia on global per capita greenhouse gas emissions.
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That map is next to useless though. Our current geopolitical mechanism for solving the issue is on a country by country basis. If we are looking at the problem in those terms then total carbon output per country is much more important than per capita output per country. That map is just useful to try to push the fiction that the US acting alone could somehow fight the tide. I take no pleasure in telling you that is not likely to be the case. Just because I take no pleasure in it doesn’t mean it is false.
By exempting China and India you are conveniently ducking the fact that if these two countries aren’t on board then our reform would be little more than a bandaid on a stab wound.
By my reckoning we would need the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Western Europe, Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India, and Australia on board at a minimum to have any hope of solving this problem.
Do you see any chance in hell of all of these people coming together and agreeing on a way to move forward on this issue?
It just isn’t possible if we are solving this problem as separate countries coming together. There isn’t a decider who can select the best course of action and move forward. We have several competing actors who would all benefit from everyone but themselves making the change, and would be put at a severe disadvantage if they were the only one to act. It is a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma.
No worries. I think we’re (mostly) all aware of what we’re up against and how long the odds are. The map above does show something very important: the average US voter is responsible for far more CO2e than voters anywhere else on Earth. Something needs to be done, and the US is in the best position to do – at least – something.
Here’s a map of CO2 by country. The US is still right up there.
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Not unless the most powerful nation on Earth leads the way. Your position is counter-productive and dangerous.
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Don’t make my position something it is not. I am a pragmatist, not a denier. I think something should be done about global warming. I support my representative voting on doing something about it. I would personally vote on sensible measures to curb carbon emissions.
My position remains unchanged though that my vote and my representative’s vote are a lot less important than many Americans want to think they are.
You are basing you argument on emotion. “If America does it everyone will be overwhelmed by the good will and will follow our lead” My argument is based on cold hard logic. “Even if America does it, there is still no further incentive for others to follow our lead.”
The most attractive position to be in for this particular circumstance is to be the only major economy which does not act to curb carbon emission. That is what I meant by the “prisoner’s dilemma”. If the entire prison riots the prisoners will easily overtake the guards and everyone benefits. The first prisoner to act is taking an extreme risk though and each one to act after him is taking a slightly smaller risk. The best position to be in is to be the last one to act, you get all the benefits of overthrowing the guards but don’t take any personal risks. Thankfully for our prison systems most prisoners view their situation this way. Unfortunately the same concepts can be applied to an issue similar to climate change and encourage inaction on the part of all major economies.
I don’t think it’s completely valueless, as a map. It is by country, but it’s also per capita. This puts the damage on a personal level, which appeals to the individual’s propensity to do their small part to turn back the tide. Now, of course, corporations are people too, just people without feelings or morals, and will need to have their hands held while they throw their empty cans of PCBs and Perchloroethanes into the proper recycling bin.
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Lead the way, or just join the rest of us. You know, something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol for example.
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As we represent about 20%-25% of the world economy, including an “all imports into the US must comply with our climate change standards” clause would seem to do a good job getting the ball rolling elsewhere. Inability to completely solve the problem in one step is not an excuse for not addressing the 1/5 of it that a single country is very obviously able to fix.
We can get our own house in order. In so doing, we encourage ourselves and our trading partners to do so in the most affordable, economically efficient way possible, making it easier for the next country to do the same. Even today you could cut US emissions by at least 1/3 of the current US total at net negative cost, and that fraction will only go up with time, but we just aren’t doing it as a society.
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But this is a problem that absolutely cannot be solved on a personal level. The impact of a single person has about as much impact as a drop of rain hitting the ocean. Looking at these numbers on a per capita level ignores the fact that this is an issue that can only be solved on a country by country basis (even though I am making the argument here that even that is unlikely to happen). The total greenhouse gas contribution per country that was posted later is a much more useful map to use to visualize the nature of the problem here.
That would be nice. It won’t happen because the geopolitical economic climate won’t let us effectively set labor law standards let alone carbon emission standards. The impact carbon emission standards would have on a country like India or China would be at least ten times the impact labor law standards would have. Your argument would carry a little weight if we were able to achieve the first one.
Americans are taught that they are very important to the world, and on most issues, these days, they are. Unfortunately they are not nearly as important to the world as they think they are. You claim we are 20-25% of the problem (and that number is shrinking BTW) but you treat us as though we are 70-80% of the problem, that if we just get our house in order the rest of the world would be okay. It is a hard lesson to learn, but you aren’t that important, your country is not that important.
That describes global inertia on the issue, it doesn’t speak to why the US shouldn’t provide leadership. To extend your analogy, if the one prisoner who is considering making the first move is 9 feet tall with a stash of body armour, discussions about who moves first are somewhat different. They should at least make it to the table with a meaningful strategy and a willingness to implement it if everyone else is in.
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You make an excellent point.
You are correct that some prisoners are more suited to begin the riot than others. However in the prisoner’s dilemma and in our current geopolitical climate no “prisoner” is able to swing the chance of success enough to make it a good gamble. Let’s say the average prisoner/South Korea has a 2% chance of pulling off a successful riot and everyone rallying behind him. Now the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood/the US might have a 10% chance of success, that still leaves a 90% chance of failure and still stacks the deck against action.
Everything is personal. Some persons possess massive MASSIVE resources, or access to massive resources, far outweighing the contributions of billions of other persons to fixing a problem. Make THEM see the light, and this problem is as good as solved. When it affects them having their beach houses, you can bet they’ll perk up. I’m heading for the mountains with my jug of whiskey, and shotgun, though.
That’s absurd. You’re back to treating all countries and all economies as if they were the same size. Hint: they aren’t.
If the US unilaterally decided “fuck it, let’s do something about this”, and cut it’s own emissions by 50%, that would cut the global emissions by 7%. And the US has a long history of going it’s own way on expensive programmes (the Moon, Manhatten Project, and the Marshall Plan being just three standout examples), so don’t pretend it’s impossible until all 200 economies are lined up.
But at the moment, instead of providing any leadership or acting unilaterally, the US is actively hindering progress (see: Kyoto)
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But you act like this cause doesn’t already have the attention of plenty of people with massive resources. The richest people on Earth have given to this cause yet our situation gets worse and worse each year.
If you are dealing with this on a country by country basis you need to wrangle about a dozen competing countries together.
The only way you have any hope in hell of getting any positive momentum on global warming is if you have a global regulatory body that actually have the ability to exercise authority over all of these nations. If that doesn’t exist then we are right back at the prisoner’s dilemma.
Think about it. If I am wrong, and all of these countries are just waiting to link arms and sing kumbaya and move forward then why haven’t they? If there aren’t incentives against action then why haven’t we seen action? It isn’t for lack of publicity. This subject gets a ton of publicity. It isn’t because of funding. Special interest groups throw tons of funding at it.
The folks on the boing boing boards aren’t particularly any more enlightened than any other random group of people on Earth. You folks haven’t hit on something that everyone else is missing. It isn’t a matter of just the right Congressman seeing the message “if the US led everyone else would follow”. The problem is that premise just isn’t true. It ignores the rational self interest to be the last to act.
I said nothing of the sort. One thing I said is that the rest of the world won’t easily give up trade with the U.S., and if you disagree with that you have no idea what you’re talking about. The other thing I said is that if we force ourselves to develop solutions to our own carbon emissions, it will be cheaper for everyone else to do when when they’re ready to do so.
I certainly hope our influence and our share of the world economy keeps shrinking. If in 100 years it isn’t down at ~5% like our share of population, that would be a terrible failure of global economic development.
What I’m saying is that there’s basically no chance that China or India is going to take the lead on the issue because they can’t. We can, and if we don’t, nobody will. That, in itself is enough reason for us to do it. Is that simple enough for you? We will be in a far better position, globally, in a couple of decades, if we have already developed the technology and infrastructure to do it, and are in a position where we have a solution that we can convince, or if necessary browbeat, the other big players into adopting. Right now, we’ve got nothing but a bunch of howling religious fanatics who’d like to drag us all back into the middle ages.
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The Space Race had a tactical advantage in providing us bragging rights over our chief rival as well as the technological advantage that came with actually accomplishing the task. The Manhattan Project had the obvious tactical advantage of providing us a weapon that can destroy a city in the blink of an eye. The Marshall Plan had the tactical advantage of building our chief trading partners up and making them more reliant on our goods and services than those of our chief political rival at the time.
Being the first mover on greenhouse gas emissions has no such inherent advantage. It just doesn’t. That is why we haven’t moved yet.
Occam’s razor backs me up.
There has been no movement.
My hypothesis is that there is no movement because there is no gain to be had from being the first mover.
Your hypothesis is that there is a gain to be had but our leaders are too short sighted to realize the gain.
My hypothesis requires one assumption, yours requires at least two. Mine is the most likely.
