8 of the 10 most polluted rivers in the world are in East Asia. Of the top polluted cities in the world 8 of 10 are in Asia. Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search.
The grandparent is probably pointing to Singapore. That is a state that is infamous for being extremely clean and tidy. At the same time, it is highly consumerist, with so much of its traditional community infrastructure demolished and replaced with shopping malls.
Don't the massive government penalties for littering have something to do with it? It turns out that, yes, after all, laws and punishment do act as a deterrent.
No, time and time it has been proven that the inevitability of punishment is a deterrent, not the punishment itself. A punishment for littering could be 10 years of hard labour, but it doesn't matter a little bit if there's no one enforcing it and there's no police on the streets. Like.....you know why people are speeding? Not because anyone thinks "meh, the fine is only $200, I can afford that" but because they think "I'm not going to get caught today".
Yes. It works in Singapore. In places like japan and Taiwan though, they have much more respect for their country. Even Thailand. In Phuket I’ve seen the locals who live off tourism on the beaches picking up rubbish the tourists leave behind. Never see that sort of thing in the west. Malaysia and Myanmar however they just throw it out the window as they drive.
There is a difference between individual pollution and state level pollution though.
Germany may pollute the air/rivers less than China but come to Berlin; in some neighbourhoods you might think you teleported to a third world country where trash are simply threw in the streets to rot for weeks if not months before the public services finally do something.
The point these examples definitely prove is that within a single country it is possible to find extremes running both ways and that apparently city governments have a lot of impact on the appearance of the cities.
I was about to write that I visited Munich and other places in Bavaria last year and it was very clean, though there were a fair number of cigarette butts around, but nothing like what the OP was saying about Berlin.
Individualistic is a very kind, even positive term for that in my opinion. I would think if we called it a shithole city instead, they would be less inclined to act that way due to the shame.
> I don't see how this makes allocating carbon footprints any more accurate, nor does it indict "individuality" or any other ambiguous concepts.
I'm not sure what you are referencing in the first part of that sentence.
I was replying to "Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search." which is false because it compares two things that are close but have no points of comparison. Heavily polluted asian rivers doesn't mean asians are more or less individualist and has nothing to do with the way they handle urban trash.
8 of the 10 most polluted rivers in the world are in East Asia. Of the top polluted cities in the world 8 of 10 are in Asia. Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search.
Those rivers and cities are all in the manufacturing regions that supply goods to customers in the west. The root cause of the pollution is our consumerism coupled to the governments of Eastern countries enabling exceptionally cheap labor that we exploit. To blame the nations of East Asia for the problem is a pretty poor analysis on your part.