[_bxg1]

And what about India? As far as I know it doesn't have an authoritarian government. Europe is also democratic and has been a world leader in environmental policy. It's really just the United States that has the problem.

I don't think the key difference is authoritarian vs. democratic, but "prudent" vs. "proudly ignorant". America has some deep, deep-rooted cultural problems that are really at the heart of our environmental failings. Nearly half of our country still thinks global warming is a conspiracy. Some here in the south modify their trucks to produce more pollution as some kind of twisted badge of honor. You see them belch smog across the freeway like it's 1920. It's really a very specifically American complex.

[bilbo0s]

You make a very good point, and I upvoted it.

That said, ixtli has a very salient point on the subject of how implementing these things is a whole lot easier when you start shutting down factories and arresting scofflaws. But you probably don't necessarily need government as authoritarian as China's to do those things.

[ixtli]

Ya I’ve said to another commenter that I just don’t know enough about Indian post-colonial government to be able to comment effectively.

[dalbasal]

Extremely multi-leveled and complex. Democratic. Corrupt in many places. Idk how you measure authorotarian-ness, but it certainly isn't totalitarian. Ie, A central national authority does not exercise a lot of power over people's lives. As you move down the power ladder to local scale, there is a lot of variance and there are pickets of totalitarian power... not the kind of power that'd be implementing environmental policies though.

I'd say more similar to the west than china, in terms of stuff pertinent to the thread.

More generally still, I don't think the high-level system is a driving force. I think it's mostly pretty straightforward.. environmental issues have become a thing people care about more in china and India, governments and publics.

[_bxg1]

Right- law and order when it comes to corporations are what's needed, which isn't incompatible with democracy. It is incompatible with the values held by much of America, unfortunately.

[cptskippy]

Don't forget the new trend of purposefully parking their trucks in EV parking spots to deny EVs the ability to charge.

[rob74]

Unfortunately, it looks like the US are exporting this "proud ignorance" - see the recent victory of Jair Bolsonaro, who has been dubbed the "Brazilian Trump" because of his similar views on gun control, the environment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jair_Bolsonaro#Environmental_p...) and general firmly populist right-wing attitude. Maybe India, China and others will be able to offset the increased rate of deforestation in Brazil, but still, a planted forest is not the same as an untouched tropical rainforest...

[_bxg1]

For various reasons the American mindset is more common in less-developed countries. To a degree that's natural - when you're just trying to get your economy off the ground, it makes more sense to get out of the way of business, as opposed to when you have the world's largest and most impactful economy.

The United States is a country that started out in that situation and never totally grew out of it. It's culturally stunted, stuck romanticizing an earlier stage of development instead of growing up. It's a fifty-year-old that refuses to stop acting like he's twenty-one.

Of course, the UK right now is a counter-example to this way of looking at things.

[rob74]

Well, yes, but India and China are less-developed countries too. I know all developing countries can say "you cut down your forests centuries ago, why can't we do the same thing now?", but at least some are trying to develop without making the same mistakes...