temporal1 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 31, 2024 3:00 pm
In the free market, sales USUALLY go to the highest bidders, also, customers with reliable payment history, etc.
If i’m not mistaken, China+India are the world’s biggest polluters, and in place to be the biggest consumers, if not already.
Only if you are measuring on a country-by-country basis and not on a person-by-person basis. Which is the correct way to do the analysis. It is people who do the polluting, not countries.
On a per-capita basis, Americans, Canadians, Australians, and western Europeans still burn vastly more oil and gasoline, and emit vastly more carbon dioxide than either Indians or Chinese. And the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere and will remain there for many more decades is much more due to emissions from North America and western Europe than anyplace else.
I'm no apologist for China. Not in the slightest. But their national energy grid is currently at about 60% fossil fuel generated and about 40% nuclear and renewables, which coincidentally, is nearly identical to the US. They use more coal and we use more natural gas. But both generate CO2. The difference is that coal is dirtier in that it puts out many other types of particulate pollution that natural gas does not. The other difference is that China is transitioning much faster than the US. China is bringing online far more nuclear and hydro projects than the US and is transitioning enormously faster away from fossil fuels in other sectors. In 2023 something like 30% of all vehicles sold in China were electric and that number is increasing rapidly. China is also building low-carbon transportation networks like bullet trains and subways enormously faster than the US where we are still in highway building mode.
Turning to India. In the pasta 10 years, India has electrified virtually all of its vast railway system. Within a year or two it will reach 100% electric. While at the same time greatly expanding its rail network for both freight and passengers. We are doing nothing comparable here in the US. We are increasingly reliant on trucks, private cars, and planes for our freight and passenger transportation systems. Which are all vastly more carbon-intensive than electrified freight and passenger rail. And the average American emits about 10x more carbon dioxide than the average Indian.
Yes, we should most definitely be pressuring China and India to reduce carbon emissions, although our ability to actually do so is somewhat limited. One way to do so might be through a carbon import tax. Which would actually be a tax on Americans and not China or India. But it would, at least, provide an economic incentive for Americans and American companies to source goods from places that generate the lowest amount of carbon-emissions in their manufacture.
