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Just how pointless and stupid our climate reductions efforts are


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Tony Keller lays it all out pretty clearly in this Globe and Mail column.

Canada's emissions constitute 1.5% and falling. China's emissions have been increasing at the rate of Canada's ENTIRE emissions every two years. Think about that, those so anxious about the oilsands emissions. The oilsands represent 11% of Canada's emissions. So China alone is adding almost 5 of them every single year! Five new oilsands pop up in China every year! And China isn't alone. Throughout the developing world other countries, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam, all of them are increasing their emissions. The developing world now represents 70% of CO2 emissions and they are not slowing down. They're growing them as fast as possible, adding more coal plants every year.

We're going to bankrupt ourselves making our energy ever more expensive, punishing Canadians and Canadian corporations, punishing Canadian manufacturers so they move to places with no carbon taxes and cheap energy like uh, Vietnam and China and India and Malaysia - while the rest of the world is building coal plants. We're putting every roadblock we can in the way of developing and exporting natural gas that could cause some of those countries to ditch coal while seeking to close down as much of our energy industry as possible.

For what? It's not going to help a goddam thing. All it is is virtue signaling. It's so Trudeau can stand on a stage, lift his chin and look smug and noble.

Take China. It is now the biggest polluter, by far. Its emissions more than doubled between 2002 and 2010, as Canada’s flatlined. China’s emissions grew at a pace equivalent to adding an extra Canada’s worth of carbon into the atmosphere each year, for eight years in a row. China’s growth has since slowed; it’s now adding new carbon emissions at rate of one Canada every two years.

China produces a third of the world’s emissions, more than all of the developed world. That’s more than 20 times Canada’s carbon output.

And China has company. India’s emissions, barely higher than Canada’s in 1990, now equal those of the EU. Indonesia, whose emissions were a third of Canada’s in 1990, is now a bigger polluter than us.

Or consider Vietnam. I travelled the country for a few dollars a day in the 1990s when its official name, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, still meant something. There were no bank machines, the national airline flew Soviet jets inherited from defunct East Germany, cars were a rarity and electricity demand was minimal. In 1990, Britain’s carbon output was more than 2,500 per cent larger than Vietnam’s. By 2021, the two countries were level – because Britain nearly halved its emissions, while Vietnam’s carbon output increased 16-fold.

 

https://archive.is/xMAEs

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35 minutes ago, I am Groot said:

We're going to bankrupt ourselves making our energy ever more expensive, punishing Canadians and Canadian corporations, punishing Canadian manufacturers so they move to places with no carbon taxes and cheap energy like uh, Vietnam and China and India and Malaysia - while the rest of the world is building coal plants. We're putting every roadblock we can in the way of developing and exporting natural gas that could cause some of those countries to ditch coal while seeking to close down as much of our energy industry as possible.

I don't have any problem with pushing towards green energy etc, and do want to see fossil fuels curtailed BUT the bolded part is absolutely right and it makes so much of what we're currently trying to do hopeless and pointless.  

I used to argue with people on here about how dumb Ontario's Green Energy effort was ~10 years ago with the Ontario Liberals.  Heavily subsidizing inefficient/immature green tech and taxing our industries has no effect if corps are just going to outsource production to Southeast Asia.  

The only way to make this work would be to tariff dirty production abroad.  

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China pollutes worse. I get it.

Now try telling the lifeguard that Johnny Rotten is still pissing in the pool so why should I have to stop?

Squeeze your cheeks together and tax your brain until it explodes, maybe you'll get that cuz that's what you're doing.

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Would be a better analogy if Johnny and 100 of his friends were pissing all over the pool deck while you're forced to hold it in until your bladder explodes.  

If we're going to go through pain to make our economy green, we can't leave easy loopholes that just export our production and pollution where the rules don't apply.  ?‍♂️

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2 hours ago, herbie said:

China pollutes worse. I get it.

Now try telling the lifeguard that Johnny Rotten is still pissing in the pool so why should I have to stop?

Squeeze your cheeks together and tax your brain until it explodes, maybe you'll get that cuz that's what you're doing.

Johnny isn't pissing in the pool. He's backed up a tanker truck and has a firehose emptying it of the full load of yellow liquid it downloaded from a cruise ship. The lifeguard is screaming angrily at another boy for pissing in the pool at the other end, while completely ignoring the thousands of gallons pouring into the pool behind him.

I mean, is there ANY room in that smug, lazy little brain of yours for common sense and reason?

Edited by I am Groot
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5 hours ago, Moonbox said:

The only way to make this work would be to tariff dirty production abroad.  

Add outright sanctions for human rights abuse. Canada should have started down this road while building a trading coalition/bloc of similarly minded countries decades ago.  And all the while pushing hard on a zero emission goal.

That said there's no time like the present to get started on the human rights side but it's likely way to late to to stop the unfolding of a climate crisis.

Edited by eyeball
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25 minutes ago, herbie said:

But Johnny is pissing in the pool all the time !

Such a sane and predictable response.................

And the firehose never stops.

You also mixed up who Johnny is in your own dumb analogy.

Edited by I am Groot
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We would probably be much farther ahead if we focused on adaption rather than prevention.  I don't think anything we do can stop it.

i'm all over reducing pollution in general anyway. It's nice to have smog free cities or the like.  So as tech allows for it to be done responsibly, sure. But sacrificing our people's lives and livelyhood on the alter of climate change when it makes no difference is insane.

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19 hours ago, herbie said:

China pollutes worse. I get it.

Now try telling the lifeguard that Johnny Rotten is still pissing in the pool so why should I have to stop?

Squeeze your cheeks together and tax your brain until it explodes, maybe you'll get that cuz that's what you're doing.

Pissing in the pool is an actual problem. Climate change is a fantasy manufactured by globalist nazis. 

Still waiting for the Day After Tomorrow, 19 years and counting...

Edited by Deluge
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It's such a childish sentiment. 

People in the developed world, looking at people in the developing world trying to rise above poverty and claiming that "If they can pollute, why can't we"! 

China pollutes so much because they account for 1/5th of the world's population and they account for a vast majority of the world's manufacturing of cheap crap. Mexico is gaining on them though, because demographic shifts suggest that Chinese people don't want to work for peanuts anymore. 

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19 hours ago, herbie said:

China pollutes worse. I get it.

Now try telling the lifeguard that Johnny Rotten is still pissing in the pool so why should I have to stop?

Squeeze your cheeks together and tax your brain until it explodes, maybe you'll get that cuz that's what you're doing.

China wants our coal, because they're starting up over 1,000 new coal-fired plants, so they talk to "their guys" in Canada (Trudeau, Notley et al) and "their guys" in the US (Demonrats) and the next thing you know, we're supposed to shut down our coal-fired plants and send our coal halfway across the world to be burned somewhere else "to save the environment". 

Squeeze your butt-cheeks as hard as you want (if you even can anymore), that doesn't make sense. It's like getting a fleet of fuel-efficient taxicabs to reduce emissions in Toronto but they all start their shift 300kms away and commute.

Leftists: "That's a great plan!" 

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22 minutes ago, Boges said:

It's such a childish sentiment. 

People in the developed world, looking at people in the developing world trying to rise above poverty and claiming that "If they can pollute, why can't we"! 

It's not remotely childish and the characterization of it as so severely weakens your argument. 


The argument put forward by those demanding action on 'climate change' is that "if we don't make reductions immediately we will face catastrophic results and the world population is in danger "

Woah - sounds pretty bad.  So - if it's that urgent a crisis we have to do whatever it takes right?

"Well no - in fact the worst polluters won't have to do anything because they're trying to make a buck".

Hold it - is this a serious crisis or isn't it? Do we have to take action or not? It's utterly pontless if we do it by ourselves.

"well it's a crisis and the world could end - but we want to be 'fair' about it so we're not going to address the biggest issues"/

How do you expect ANYONE to take this seriously after that?  Why should we do anything when we know it won't make ANY difference unless we address the big polluters?

Do you think the weather won't get hotter out of respect to the developing nations?

Either this is a serious crisis or it is not. You're saying it is not.

22 minutes ago, Boges said:

China pollutes so much because they account for 1/5th of the world's population and they account for a vast majority of the world's manufacturing of cheap crap. Mexico is gaining on them though, because demographic shifts suggest that Chinese people don't want to work for peanuts anymore. 

Cool story.

But if they won't control their pollution then nothing we do matters.  So don't ask me to care unless you're serious about trying to get them on board. And to say thats "childish" tells me you don't get how math works  and that seriously damages your credibility on the subject.

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29 minutes ago, eyeball said:

Decades ago people were saying that  wheeling and dealing with China would result in them pwning us.

And that turned out to be false.  Buying our politicans resulted in them owning us :)  Wheeling and dealing with them actually gives us a tiny bit of power over them.

29 minutes ago, eyeball said:

Decades ago people were saying spewing CO2 would...

Ahhh yes - that would be the liberals.  So concerned about it that they signed kyoto.  And then did nothing about it ever.

29 minutes ago, eyeball said:

Meh...what's the point?

So that we could have a new tax?

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1 hour ago, CdnFox said:

But if they won't control their pollution then nothing we do matters.  So don't ask me to care unless you're serious about trying to get them on board. And to say thats "childish" tells me you don't get how math works  and that seriously damages your credibility on the subject.

China is probably one of the few nations that's actually invested heavily in renewable production. EV adoption is quite high with them. Their increased emissions are a reflection of moving a largely rural society into a more developed one. 

A good question to ask is how do we have a world of up to 10 billion people where as few as possible are hopelessly impoverished without either destroying our climate or running out of Fossil fuels? 

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5 minutes ago, Boges said:

China is probably one of the few nations that's actually invested heavily in renewable production.

But their emissions are going up.

5 minutes ago, Boges said:

EV adoption is quite high with them. Their increased emissions are a reflection of moving a largely rural society into a more developed one. 

But... their emissions are going up.  Climate change doesn't care why.

5 minutes ago, Boges said:

A good question to ask is how do we have a world of up to 10 billion people where as few as possible are hopelessly impoverished without either destroying our climate or running out of Fossil fuels? 

It is a good question. I'm sure the liberals will tell you a carbon tax will solve it :) 

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2 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

But their emissions are going up.

Quote

But... their emissions are going up.  Climate change doesn't care why.

For reasons already cited. They certainly don't ignore the realities of Climate Change. 

 

Quote

It is a good question. I'm sure the liberals will tell you a carbon tax will solve it :) 

I think you know the answer is to pivot to more renewable forms of technology, and not just bury one's head in the sand.

Like with industrialization, the rich nations need to lead the way on this. 

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35 minutes ago, Boges said:

For reasons already cited. They certainly don't ignore the realities of Climate Change. 

IT doesn't make a god damn bit of difference.

Either we have to get emissions down or we dont.  End of story.  If we have to then the reasons don't make a single bit of difference - that's what has to happen.  If we DON"T and it's ok for china's emissions to increase then there obviously is no crisis, and ours going up a tiny bit means nothing.

Your entire argument is that there is ONLY a climate crisis if it's fair. That is NOT how a crisis works. Either there is or there isn't. And if china's can go up then yeah obvoiusly ours can too rather than trash our lives.

35 minutes ago, Boges said:

 

I think you know the answer is to pivot to more renewable forms of technology, and not just bury one's head in the sand.

But we're not going with that. We've gone with the 'stick head in sand' policy. Now we're committed.

If people reallyl cared about climate change they wouldn't support carbon taxes, they'd be demanding better solutions. They woudln't support the liberal party who's been making commitments and breaking them religiously for about 3 decades or more. Harper reduced emissions far far more than trudeau ever did.

I'm sorry but the story is becoming less believable. We have a huge crisis but we're not worried the biggest causes are increasing?  We care about climate change but we keep voting in people who do nothing about climate change? 

But i'm supposed to eat less food and have a lower quality of life because this is so important?

The climate change people are going to lose the audience here pretty quick.

35 minutes ago, Boges said:

Like with industrialization, the rich nations need to lead the way on this. 

Bullshit.  Industrialization was not a 'crisis'.  The world didn't need to 'industrialize' or face catastrophic and devastating catastrophe.

Yet we're being told that's what we're facing now. But - our leaders don't care enough to do anything and apperently the crisis will tolerate china's emissions based on fairness because Eff science.

Whether it's a scam or not it's sure being presented as one.

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26 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

The world didn't need to 'industrialize' or face catastrophic and devastating catastrophe.

You don't think Industrialization vastly improved the lives of the people, in the countries that were able to do it first? 

Just like pivoting to Green Tech will improve the lives of people in Developed countries. Less pollution, less reliance on volatile resources in the hands of despots, the ability to desalinize sea water without polluting more. The list is long. 

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7 minutes ago, Boges said:

You don't think Industrialization vastly improved the lives of the people, in the countries that were able to do it first? 

Irrelevant.  It' wasn't a crisis.

Supposedly climate change is a serious crisis.

7 minutes ago, Boges said:

Just like pivoting to Green Tech will improve the lives of people in Developed countries. Less pollution, less reliance on volatile resources in the hands of despots, the ability to desalinize sea water without polluting more. The list is long. 

Sure - great stuff. I'm all for less pollution and more green as the tech matures and becomes a viable replacement.

But - at the end of the day either we have a climate crisis or we don't. If we do then we need the big polluters to stop polluting or NOTHING we do will help and if we don't then fine, what's the rush. Lets get it done over time as tech matures

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