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by faeriechangling 1719 days ago
...then the westerners turn around and replace their population with immigrants to maintain their standard of living, whom in turn must waste as much power as the local population to be competitive and have a similar standard of living, and whom send remittances to their home countries, in which the reproduction happens. Outsourcing reproduction to other countries doesn't stop pollution any more than outsourcing industry to China means that the west isn't polluting, because in both cases it's western demand for goods and labour driving the engine forwards.

If you want a model of a country with falling emissions, look at Japan, which is actually dropping in population without merely outsourcing reproduction. The western model will never cause emissions to drop, because the point isn't to cause emissions to drop, the point is to maximize gdp growth and standard of living in the medium term, which is a goal that all but guarantees emissions growth. Get ahead now because if we don't, somebody else will, and then we'll be behind when global warming does everybody in!