World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam

[CampFreddie]

It has been done for small private jets, but yeah, commercial planes are a different beast. Current estimation for commercially short distance flight is around double the capacity of current batteries.

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I'm no expert, but I suspect the only way to get environmentally friendly flight would be some sort of synthetic fuel (made using renewable electric power and maybe some sort of crop-based starting material).
Batteries are just really heavy and their energy-per-unit-weight will always be pretty low compared to a combustible fuel. Flight is also going to be hard if you're limited to propeller engines, since I assume there's no way to get jet power (or the equivalent of jet power) from electricity.
Fuels also have a significant advantage in being ejected as they are spent (jettisoning their weight), while batteries have to be carried to the landing point. Between a quarter (~A320 short haul) and a half (~A380 long haul) of an airliner's weight is fuel.

Anyone looking at stories like the OP always needs to remember that we are the baddies. The average Chinese person is responsible for a lot less CO2 than probably anyone here on Era. We're improving slightly (and the EU is a doing a bit better than USA), but we've got a long way to travel and we're running out of road.

 

[Neo C.]

There has been talks about mixing synthetic fuel with kerosene, but without coordinated efforts, it's difficult to implement those measures. Environmental friendly synthetic fuel is costly and can only be done when countries start to accept taxing kerosene.

 

[¡ B 0 0 P !]

Why was this bit in the OP:

The richest 10% of the global population, comprising about 630 million people, were responsible for about 52% of global emissions over the 25-year period, the study showed.

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And this bit out:

Globally, the richest 10% are those with incomes above about $35,000 (£27,000) a year, and the richest 1% are people earning more than about $100,000.

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People don't want to give up their modern lifestyles for the betterment of the environment. They'd rather chose their air travel, PlayStations, and SUVs in the short term over preventing the collapse of our entire system due to environmental disaster in the long term. Most of these people don't consider themeslevs 'rich' as an act of denial or ignorance.

With 7.8 billion people even small percentages of the global population add up to vast amounts of people.

1% of the global population is 78,000,000 people.
15% of the global population is 1,170,000,000 people.
25% of the global population is 1,950,000,000 people.

If us richest 2 billion people radically changed our consumption habits and societies the world would be in a much better place.

 

[Aureon]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

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Yep, this is fantastic.

Ya'll are complicit. 10% of the world is basically the entire developed world.
Car-commuting lifestyle needs to end.
Common air travel needs to end.

And a whole lotta slew of things

 

[Samiya]

people should keep this in mind next time Bill Gates comes out and talks about curbing birth rates in Africa

 

[¡ B 0 0 P !]

people should keep this in mind next time Bill Gates comes out and talks about curbing birth rates in Africa

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Curbing birth rates would do wonders for Africa as it has done for Eurasia and the Americas. It's easier to build infrastructure, educate people, and grow the economy in a sustainable way when you don't have rapid growth.

Societies with a large portion of the population under 14 (every country before the industrial revolution) have always been unstable ones prone to poverty, conflict, misogyny, and authoritarian governments.

So while curbing African birth rates would do little to help climate change it would do everything to help Africa.

 

[John Doe]

Does the article talk about Co2 emissions caused by the business ventures of the rich?

How are phones, Playstations and Macbooks produced? In factories that operate on renewable energy? What about the waste from manufacturing those products?

 

[John Doe]

Curbing birth rates would do wonders for Africa as it has done for Eurasia and the Americas. It's easier to build infrastructure, educate people, and grow the economy in a sustainable way when you don't have rapid growth.

Societies with a large portion of the population under 14 (every country before the industrial revolution) have always been unstable ones prone to poverty, conflict, misogyny, and authoritarian governments.

So while curbing African birth rates would do little to help climate change it would do everything to help Africa.

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There's also the flipside. Without enough young people in the workforce paying taxes, then social nets may falter. Especially if there's a large imbalance between the number of elderly folk and the number of young people. Someone has to pay for their pensions and healthcare.

The birth rate can't just fall off a cliff. That's why a few Western Countries need immigrants right now.

I think your argument is also ignoring the fact that a large explosion in population helped numerous countries grow economically and it was only after economic prosperity was achieved that the birth rate dropped off.

 

[Excuse me]

Does the article talk about Co2 emissions caused by the business ventures of the rich?

How are phones, Playstations and Macbooks produced? In factories that operate on renewable energy? What about the waste from manufacturing those products?

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It centers around income equality and carbon emissions. It has short sinpet about Individual responsibility versus systemic change and some examples to go with it.

There's also the flipside. Without enough young people in the workforce paying taxes, then social nets may falter. Especially if there's a large imbalance between the number of elderly folk and the number of young people. Someone has to pay for their pensions and healthcare.

The birth rate can't just fall off a cliff. That's why a few Western Countries need immigrants right now.

I think your argument is also ignoring the fact that a large explosion in population helped numerous countries grow economically and it was only after economic prosperity was achieved that the birth rate dropped off.

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This is base line for the ever growing economy. We should start looking for other solutions that go beyond just replacing the workforce. Especially since automation is coming so the pension and social networks will probably dry out anyway.

edit. but it's true that overall trend seems to be that after economical stability birth rates will drop off. So we should figure out ways to stop the extraction of wealth from poorer countries. It was kinda ridiculous how much aid money African nations get compared how much wealth is extracted by foreign companies from those very same countries.

 

[bremon]

Yep, this is fantastic.

Ya'll are complicit. 10% of the world is basically the entire developed world.
Car-commuting lifestyle needs to end.
Common air travel needs to end.

And a whole lotta slew of things

Click to shrink...

We had a thread on here a week ago with a poll that resulted in the majority of respondents saying power consumption isn't a concern with next gen consoles. it doesn't seem like much of a difference between 170 watts and 350 but when you scale that to tens of millions of machines running for thousands of hours... a lot more coal gets burned, concrete poured for hydro, etc.

Extrapolate that Era-centric example to any aspect of life and it's easy to see that not only is it unsustainable, but many of us on Era are part of the problem. I'm glad this forum is open to discussion on the matter though. While outright denial isn't as common as it was in my experience, a cynical "we're fucked anyway, who cares?" attitude has largely taken its place.

 

[tokkun]

I think your argument is also ignoring the fact that a large explosion in population helped numerous countries grow economically and it was only after economic prosperity was achieved that the birth rate dropped off.

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I think you are confusing cause and effect. There does not seem to be a clear correlation between increasing population size and increasing prosperity at an individual level. Look at south Asia, which has had very high population density for a long time but still has very high poverty rates.

Rather, the correlation is that after countries achieve high levels of prosperity they tend to self-limit population because people start wanting fewer children. I think in large part that is because people in rich countries do not need to rely as much on their children to support them when they reach old age.

 

[FliX]

Michael Moore depressing interview "It might be too late".

Michael Moore Responds: New Report REVEALS Green Billionaire Attacks On Movie ‘Planet Of The Humans’

Academy Award winner, Michael Moore, discusses the controversy surrounding his latest documentary 'The Planet of the Humans.'About Rising: Rising is a weekda...

youtu.be

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Well this is rather depressing, How have I not heard of this movie before. Will add it to my watch list.

 

[Mezentine]

We need to actually change our lifestyles. There's no other way. Lots of things need to be more expensive

 

[Doggg]

Must watch interview. But beware -it's devastating.

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I appreciate Dahr Jamail's honesty, and I think his is the right approach. I prefer acceptance to bargaining, anger, denial, and depression.

 

[Pet]

I was going to say we Americans need to use far less air conditioning, but I'm also afraid climate change will necessitate the use of heating/cooling far more than what we used to need.

Keeping offices at 70 or 72 is absurd, honestly, though. We should set it at no lower than 76 during warm months and no higher than 65 during cold months.

 

[Aureon]

I'm no expert, but I suspect the only way to get environmentally friendly flight would be some sort of synthetic fuel (made using renewable electric power and maybe some sort of crop-based starting material).
Batteries are just really heavy and their energy-per-unit-weight will always be pretty low compared to a combustible fuel. Flight is also going to be hard if you're limited to propeller engines, since I assume there's no way to get jet power (or the equivalent of jet power) from electricity.
Fuels also have a significant advantage in being ejected as they are spent (jettisoning their weight), while batteries have to be carried to the landing point. Between a quarter (~A320 short haul) and a half (~A380 long haul) of an airliner's weight is fuel.

Anyone looking at stories like the OP always needs to remember that we are the baddies. The average Chinese person is responsible for a lot less CO2 than probably anyone here on Era. We're improving slightly (and the EU is a doing a bit better than USA), but we've got a long way to travel and we're running out of road.

Click to shrink...

General point, yeah.
But the EU isn't doing "a bit better" than the USA.

USA\Canada runs 16.5 tons per capita
China runs 7T per capita
Italy runs 5.5T
France 5T
UK 5.5T
Germany 9T (god fucking damn their move to shut down nuclear and open coal, that was STUPID)

Europe, by and large, did it's job. Not as well as it could have, but emissions fell 23% 1990->2018
USA emissions actually -grew- in the same timeframe, by 5% or so.

China emits, -per capita- more than most of Europe.
Europe's share is now under 10% of the total, and rapidly shrinking.
China has, -now- unacceptable emissions per capita.
The USA (And Canada, and Australia) have insanely high emissions, only beaten by the oil-producing countries - and the suburban lifestyle of car-commuting and frequent air travel is driving this

 

[Chikor]

Curbing birth rates would do wonders for Africa as it has done for Eurasia and the Americas. It's easier to build infrastructure, educate people, and grow the economy in a sustainable way when you don't have rapid growth.

Societies with a large portion of the population under 14 (every country before the industrial revolution) have always been unstable ones prone to poverty, conflict, misogyny, and authoritarian governments.

So while curbing African birth rates would do little to help climate change it would do everything to help Africa.

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The world bank along with the ford and Rockefeller foundation (and other rich people in the developed, white world) thought it would do wonders to India, you should look at how it played out.

India's dark history of sterilisation

The deaths of 15 women at two state-run sterilisation camps in Chhattisgarh has put a spotlight on India's dark history of botched sterilisations.

www.bbc.com

"The time of vasectomy": how American foundations fueled a terrible atrocity in India

The Ford and Rockefeller foundations funded "population control" programs that went horrifically awry.

www.vox.com

We need to get off this mindset.

 

[Regulus Tera]

Remember this when some idiot libertarian complains that the problem is overpopulation.

 

[Amnixia]

Yeah, going vegan would solve a lot. I really would like to know more about electric products as well, since the mining process for rare earth minerals can't be good for environment. Especially seeing how many new flagship phones multiple companies sell every year.

I appreciate any material you have on the issue, hopefully you can link them later on. I'll google stuff as well, obviously. But if people have vetted good sources already that saves me some time.

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up to 73% reduction by going vegan, incidentally it would also save the rainforest and free up a lot of land for nature again.

Science | AAAS

science.sciencemag.org

on a humanitarian note, shit like this will also be prevented:

 

[Pet]

Curbing birth rates would do wonders for Africa as it has done for Eurasia and the Americas. It's easier to build infrastructure, educate people, and grow the economy in a sustainable way when you don't have rapid growth.

Societies with a large portion of the population under 14 (every country before the industrial revolution) have always been unstable ones prone to poverty, conflict, misogyny, and authoritarian governments.

So while curbing African birth rates would do little to help climate change it would do everything to help Africa.

Click to shrink...

Honestly, this sounds a bit eugenics-y. You may not have that intent, but it's really quite something to suggest we should artificially curb birth rates for countries that are less developed. America/Europe/some East Asian countries have a lower birth rate due to the countries having educated and wealthier populations (comparatively), but that only happened after they were allowed to run amok with crazy pollution and whatnot.

It's a really unfair solution and as Chikor pointed out, doesn't even seem to work when we look at when such measures were attempted.

Also China-one-child-policy was strict and quite awful, resulting in gender selection, forced abortion, and forced sterilization. All of those things are not humane. How else would you artificially deflate birth rates until your vision of a built up society manifests?

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

Curbing birth rates would do wonders for Africa as it has done for Eurasia and the Americas. It's easier to build infrastructure, educate people, and grow the economy in a sustainable way when you don't have rapid growth.

Societies with a large portion of the population under 14 (every country before the industrial revolution) have always been unstable ones prone to poverty, conflict, misogyny, and authoritarian governments.

So while curbing African birth rates would do little to help climate change it would do everything to help Africa.

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This is fucking gross

 

[Tsuyu]

We are the 10%.

Everyone knows wealth is gradually consolidated at the top and cost of living for the working class on average is higher while not seeing any meaningful wages growth.

This is why Bernie Sanders resonate with people. The people realize they are nickled and dimed harder as society progresses.

However, in terms of global context and climate change, we are the top 10% that obstruct any measures that would make us confront our consumerism lifestyle. We are the centrists, the Joe Bidens, and quite frankly unless we pirortize collective benefits over individual's, we are not going anywhere with climate change.

It shouldn't take one to feel the full impact of climate change to empathize with folks developing countries who will undoubtedly be hit the hardest.

 

[entremet]

We're part of the 1 percent, folks lol.

Also before people start talking about population control, how about getting off gas powered automobiles and reducing meat consumption?

Seems folks always want to the most drastic solutions when they're staring us in the face lol.

 

[RedSwirl]

If we're gonna talk about gas and cars and stuff, there's a reason so many Americans have to drive so many miles in their cars every day.

 

[Deleted member 2210]

Curbing birth rates would do wonders for Africa as it has done for Eurasia and the Americas. It's easier to build infrastructure, educate people, and grow the economy in a sustainable way when you don't have rapid growth.

Societies with a large portion of the population under 14 (every country before the industrial revolution) have always been unstable ones prone to poverty, conflict, misogyny, and authoritarian governments.

So while curbing African birth rates would do little to help climate change it would do everything to help Africa.

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Trust me. Increasing birth rates are not the cause of those issues for African nations, by far. By soooooooo much.

Those colonial structures laid way for those conditions and then reinforced them to this day.

 

[Neo C.]

USA\Canada runs 16.5 tons per capita
China runs 7T per capita
Italy runs 5.5T
France 5T
UK 5.5T
Germany 9T (god fucking damn their move to shut down nuclear and open coal, that was STUPID)

Europe, by and large, did it's job. Not as well as it could have, but emissions fell 23% 1990->2018
USA emissions actually -grew- in the same timeframe, by 5% or so.

China emits, -per capita- more than most of Europe.
Europe's share is now under 10% of the total, and rapidly shrinking.
China has, -now- unacceptable emissions per capita.
The USA (And Canada, and Australia) have insanely high emissions, only beaten by the oil-producing countries - and the suburban lifestyle of car-commuting and frequent air travel is driving this

Click to shrink...

China has hidden too long behind their millions of poor people, but their middle class is growing and consumes way more than the numbers would suggest. Their now unacceptable emissions per capita are still watered down by their hundreds of million poor people on the countryside, while the middle class in the cities is living the consumption heavy life-style.

 

[Hasseigaku]

China has hidden too long behind their millions of poor people, but their middle class is growing and consumes way more than the numbers would suggest. Their now unacceptable emissions per capita are still watered down by their hundreds of million poor people on the countryside, while the middle class in the cities is living the consumption heavy life-style.

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It should, of course, be noted that as the manufacturing capital of the world, a significant amount of China's emissions are from making products destined for Europe and America.

If there was a real accounting for this I'd bet China would be lower and Europe would be much higher.

 

[samoyed]

Re: Jobs in an era of global economic contraction

Honestly, this is not that big an issue (in my mind). It is only a function of market capitalism that we all need to spend 2 hours a day commuting to work in gas guzzling cars, where we spend all day in air-conditioned offices. A lot of jobs don't really need to exist for human civilization to sustain itself. If I was a dictator, I could simply give you all jobs just planting trees locally and pay you enough fiat currency to keep you going, obviously I would have to retain all agricultural industry and water/energy utilities. Of course, if I switched a country to a full time tree planting economics, that country would be annihilated in the global economy. So the problem is global competition itself.

The COVID crisis is forcing us into this low-commute future anyway, so we just need to look at how life readjusts to changing conditions and extrapolate that into the future rather than trying desperately to restore the world of 2019.

The old consumerist middle class is not sustainable long term without pursuing genocidal policies. For me, nuclear is not so much a silver bullet as "nuclear would allow us to retain more of that middle class lifestyle we've come to love, and so make the decarbonization process hurt less". Ironically, the more we give up, the more we can preserve, so it comes down to figuring out what is the best trade off for human happiness. Intercontinental flights should go. Diesel cars should go. Air conditioning probably needs to go except for places that depend on it to be livable (and we need to think about migrating away from those areas). If we give up these things we might be able to keep Netflix and gaming consoles, maybe.

If we were to give up cheap Bangladeshi/Chinese labor which produce our Hanes undies, and move those factories back locally, of course the price of undies would go up. And it would be painful for the lower class to lose their source of cheap underwear UNLESS wages also go up across the board. If wages go up, profits go down, which will make capital sad. IMO, fuck em. In the end, it comes down to how much shrinking profits capital is willing to take before we get into the big class war.

 

[leder]

Must watch interview. But beware -it's devastating.

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Is there something like this that's not produced by an RF propaganda outlet?

 

[mario_O]

Is there something like this that's not produced by an RF propaganda outlet?

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Chris Hedges is a top journalist and author, and a great guy. I honestly don't care where he writes or talks. He's legit.

 

[Doggg]

Is there something like this that's not produced by an RF propaganda outlet?

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Both of them have both talked a lot about the subject when not on RT. There are plenty of youtube videos out there.