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by generj 1812 days ago
Doesn’t the poor farmer in China deserve electricity though? US + EU got to use coal (and still do) for 150 years before we even started discussing eliminating its use.

If the West isn’t going to let the world use coal or other carbon heavy solutions, they need to pay the cost differences. It isn’t fair to impose poverty on everyone else after reaping the benefits of carbon emissions. We will never get global buy-in for the needed emission cuts if there is no recognition of this.
1 comments
partiallypro 1812 days ago
You really think the US, etc should have to pay for the second largest economy (by a huge margin) in the world to go green? Your argument doesn't even really hold water. Coal etc was used because it had no real alternative at the time, now there is an alternative.
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generj 1812 days ago
China isn’t the best example of my point. I’m talking about the developing world broadly - we should absolutely foot some of the bill for other countries to go green or pay for geoengineering so they have a longer timeframe to do so. Coal is still cheap and can be much easier to operate than alternatives - unless someone helps make the alternatives easier to install and operate.

How much of China’s energy goes towards producing goods for the West? If the coal is burned to cheaply provide goods for us, aren’t we at least partially responsible for that? Criticizing China while we have higher CO2 emissions per capita AND off source much of our emissions to them isn’t a convincing argument as evidenced by the fact that they are barely paying lip service to emission reductions.

Again, we need to make sure we have global buy-in. The plan needs to offer benefits to small villages throughout the world rather than denying the fruits of electrification and industry to them.

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partiallypro 1812 days ago
If the argument currently is that solar, etc is cheaper than coal, then why would we need to subsidize this when the obvious financial choice for poorer countries is green energy? Why would the poor country use coal, etc when it costs more? The argument doesn't make sense. It's one or the other.

As far as the per-capita argument the US has been falling heavily while China is still accelerating. How much of US consumption goes the the rest of the world? That's not a solid argument for some sort of global warming reparations. The US gives tons of money in foreign aid to other countries, while other wealthy countries do nothing at all. Why is this all the US's responsibility? Why are people so hesitant to hold heavy polluters like China/India/etc responsible?

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