China, you're just a developing country, so you don't have to sign kyoto

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In summary, China has become the world's second biggest polluter of carbon dioxide, following the United States, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). This highlights the growing role of developing countries in the worsening greenhouse-gas problem. However, the United States, with its advanced technology and larger economy, still remains the biggest polluter. Despite China ratifying the Kyoto protocol, it is argued that the agreement will not be effective if major polluters like China and India do not take significant action.
  • #36
selfAdjoint said:
I notice you always state your numbers per capita, which make China look good because you can divide by their population (how many billions now?). What are the absolute numbers? How does China's total insult to the atmosphere compare to the US one?

You can always find a large enough group of people whose combined contributions compare to the US. If tomorrow, all of Africa became a single country, they would become a dominant polluter.

Your statement that no-one will die if the US implements the Kyoto reductions is unrealistic. The reductions have been evaluated to cause a deep recession in the US, and some people always do die from lessened life style in a US recession. Some people lose their living and commit suicide.

While that's true (and I didn't mean "no one" literally), it's hardly comparable to the damage similar impositions will have on countries like India where an average middle class household can not afford air conditioning at home, to alleviate the misery of 110F summers.
 
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  • #37
Gokul43201 said:
You can always find a large enough group of people whose combined contributions compare to the US. If tomorrow, all of Africa became a single country, they would become a dominant polluter.

And that's irrelevant since China IS a single country already, and IS the second largest polluter, and IS on track to be the first. How good of an idea is kyoto if it can't apply to the number one polluter when China becomes that? It already doesn't apply to her as the number two polluter.

Is the point of the document to ease global warming, or make the west, specifically the USA, clean up the world's mess while giving developing countries an even greater reason to keep slavery wages low?
 
  • #38
phatmonky said:
And that's irrelevant since China IS a single country already, and IS the second largest polluter, and IS on track to be the first. How good of an idea is kyoto if it can't apply to the number one polluter when China becomes that? It already doesn't apply to her as the number two polluter.

You don't think this large number of people deserve their rightful share of emissions ?

China can only reduce it total emissions a significant amount by reducing its total population.

Requiring that it emit much less than 1 MTC per person is unreasonable (this being way below the global average), so all this - making China sign Kyoto and agree to reduce emissions - will do is require a drastic population reduction along with a roughly constant per capita emission.

On the other hand, I think preventing too rapid an escalation is important, and that would be something worth making China/India/everyone else sign.
 

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