European nations and the US got a 100+ year head start over those places on the overall project of industrialization. It's profoundly unjust for us to outsource our production to them for the cheap labour and lax environmental standards and then simultaneously pin the blame on them for climate change and emissions.
Even if the current state of affairs has the West not producing the bulk of global carbon emissions, there's a solid argument to be made the West still has a responsibility to pioneer technologies that can ultimately be transferred to the planet's largest polluters.
>the West still has a responsibility to pioneer technologies that can ultimately be transferred to the planet's largest polluters.
Or we could stop outsourcing production to those polluters, and do it in countries with better environmental standards instead. It is confusing to me that this isn't the #1 goal of environmentalists right now.
When will those technologies be invented? How long will it take to get them to be used globally? It feels like every few years we're given a new cutoff date for a serious course correction to prevent massive, irreparable climate change from occurring. Do we have enough time? Why do we seemingly prioritize the development of third world economies over climate action?
We do need to compete with production in places with lax standards. Right now it’s apples and oranges, because they aren’t including externalities and modern capitalism is addicted to “too good to be true” stories. Either they need to tax the production fairly, or we do.
Even if the current state of affairs has the West not producing the bulk of global carbon emissions, there's a solid argument to be made the West still has a responsibility to pioneer technologies that can ultimately be transferred to the planet's largest polluters.