[panragon]

This argument is used intensively in my country to argue that we have no reason to do anything, as our population of 5 million has no impact on the world. That's fine argument to go down if you want, but then you'll also have to concede that democracy is pointless and you shouldn't partake in it either, given how little impact you have.

As for the US military polluting too much, that's a political issue and the US citizens obligation to fix. If you don't think you should do something because someone else is worse, I'll remind you that there's almost always a bigger fish. The US military pollution itself is a mere fraction of what China's power grid is using, so why should they bother to change anything until China improves it's own power production either?

[wunderland]

China’s emissions per capita is still about half of the US https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

[panragon]

You initialized this thread by talking about real numbers and not per capita. US military emissions is what, 1-2% of the US' total emissions? So even if you were to change something about the US' per capita emissions, removing their military entirely would barely move the needle. Why then is it the existence of this military in particular that's the reason your country doesn't need to change?

I get that you don't want to do anything, but you can just choose to do that, you know? You don't need to justify it at all, you have every right to simply do as you wish, at least for the moment.

[mjfl]

per capita doesn't matter. Only total matters.

[brabel]

This is such an incredibly arrogant argument.

So that means that my small country of 10 million people is completely free to burn diesel and gasoline and coal as it wishes, but anyone living in China must be severely restricted to only use renewables just because they happen to live in a country with a large population, despite the fact that who put all the current carbon in the atmosphere which is causing the crisis were the small European countries like my own, over more than a century, together with the big brother the USA and its oil thirsty economies? Even today we're still the largest emitters, but feel arrogant enough to tell developing countries they must contribute as much as we do to fix our own freaking mess?! This dumb ass view of the world needs to stop.

[mjfl]

Correct. Green logic is unfair. In order to "prevent the climate crisis" you have to make sure the people of India and China do not reach the same standard of living as those in the West, you have to keep them in the mud. And Belgium can have all the smokestacks it wants. It doesn't matter.

[panragon]

For the environment this is obviously true, but you change the total by treating everyone equally and expecting them to make the same per capita movements. It's not equitable that wealthy small nations have an infinite excuse to do nothing because they can't pollute as much as China if they tried. The citizens of China and India should have to suffer carbon cuts alone because they happen to look like the worst perpetrators when you blob together pollution by countries?

[brabel]

> why should they bother to change anything until China improves it's own power production either?

That one is easy: because the USA (and Europe) have been the ones who pumped nearly all of the carbon that's screwing us up now for the last 100 years or so. If you take the accumulated amount of carbon emissions, I am sure you'll arrive at the conclusion that China must not be blamed for the current crisis (you can only accuse China of not helping solve the mess caused by others - which is valid but something else altogether).

Not to mention that, on a per-capita basis which is what matters when you want to blame people for using too much carbon, China is still much lower than the USA... in fact the USA is off the charts per-capita compared to even the most modern other economies.

[panragon]

OK, so compare the US military to the US power grid then. It's much smaller, why should the military itself change? It's a nonsense argument used to redirect responsibility.

If you don't want to do anything then don't, as far as I care that's entirely within your rights, just don't justify it by pointing to other people or organizations that are worse then you, because they can inevitably do the same to someone else. I really don't care about people doing nothing to solve an issue, but I certainly won't play defence for people who do nothing about the problem while feeling good about because they pinned it all on someone else. Either work on the problem or move on to something else, listening to you whine about how terrible other people you have no impact on are isn't doing anything for anyone.

[coldtea]

>but then you'll also have to concede that democracy is pointless and you shouldn't partake in it either, given how little impact you have.

That would be a very wise conclusion too, given the sham that modern "represenative" democracy has been...

[panragon]

Yes that's true, literally all representative democracies are the same and no political progress has been made anywhere in the world the past few decades. We have seen no advances in equitable social democracies, and gay people are just as oppressed as they've ever been. Access to gender reassignment surgery and abortions? Oh, we've never heard of that. Just don't do anything, it's fine, you literally don't matter!

[coldtea]

Whether gay people are opressed or not has little or nothing to do with the success or failure of representative democracy.

There have been entire eras without democracy when being gay was acceptable or even consider just fine (at different city-states in ancient Greece for one). And there have been democracies were gays have been repressed.

All the examples you gave are about small minorities too, which is not the thing that democracy focuses on in the first place. Those more about changing cultural norms and morals, which can then be encoded into policy, with or without a democratic vote. The same things can happen under any sham democracy or even dictatorship. In the latter it can also just be a official decree. For example, as for "access to gender reassignment surgery" you know that has been a thing in Iran for decades, for example, right?

A lot of these policy changes can also be used as a cultural side show (the "culture wars") to mask the lack of democratic policy in areas that affect everybody, and were those in power have actual interests, such as the economy, foreign policy, surveillance, police brutality, jobs, and so on.

[panragon]

>A lot of these policy changes can also be used as a cultural side show (the "culture wars") to mask the lack of democratic policy in areas that affect everybody, and were those in power have actual interests, such as the economy, foreign policy, surveillance, police brutality, jobs, and so on.

I agree with you here. But do you really want to reach for the economy and police systems to justify how ineffective representative democracies have been since their mass adoption over a century ago?

[coldtea]

I think the boost to the economy was orthogonal to them being democracies or no - and has more to do with the industrial revolution and other technological advances (most of which happened before democracy or with "democracy" with voting confined to rich land-owning men - no women, and no poor/middle class folks allowed, no POC either of course).

And in many ways we're in a more police-heavy system today than over a century ago.