How do we rationalize climate change with open free trade?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey what about bringin' all the immigrants here so they can drive cars too eh, how about that one. Do they like those kids that grew up on organic farms with solar panels and a windmill? Nah, they want those coal burning kids from India and China.

The green agenda are just image laundering. You know green washing as it were.

You can go down to the belt way and watch all the liberals sitting on their tails in traffic, driving their half ton of metal around in circles. They spend hours a day doing that. Perfectly happy, that is how they planned their lives. They went out of their way to set their life up so that they have to do that.
Don't mess it up.

Bro those liberals were working from home until Trump issued the Drive Cars in Circles executive order.

Is there any difference in the platforms here? Last I checked this is the one area DC and Trump agreed on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Free trade makes everyone wealthier. If you want the Indians, Brazilians, Chinese, and Nigerians to care about the environment, you have to bring up their standard of living. Trade does that. Compare the average income in China in the 1980s to now. Trade did that. Same for South Korea.

Poor people will burn coal and wood for heat and fuel. Poor people will over fish and cut down forests to graze their animals. Only rich people have the luxury to think about the environment.

Britain basically burned down all their forests prior to turning to coal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Capitalism and its requirement for perpetual growth and prioritization of profits over everything else is inherently at odds with climate change mitigation. It's the increasingly sharpening of these conflicts that is causing the very issues that are throwing everything into chaos.

Capitalism does not have the solutions to the problems we face, free trade or otherwise.

Your solution of removing capitalism, which has uplifted more people out of poverty than any socialist economic policy ever contrived or tried, in order to “fix” a problem that is beyond the scope of human ability because we have not the power to raise/lower earth’s temperature, is absolutely obnoxious.

The climate jig is up. It did not work with ice age fear, population bomb scary stories, did not work with global warming, and is not going to with the new and improved boogeyman of Climate Change.

The only way to enact your wet dream of climate legislation is to enact a totalitarian regime.

Really?
We've caused the extinction of many species, including some--say passenger pigeons--that once numbered in the billions-- our domestically-bred animals now constitute 90% of the mammals on the plant, we managed to punch(and ultimately repair) a gigantic hole in the ozone layer, our forever chemicals and microplastics permeate the globe and the oceans, and you don't think we can pull off a little trick like raising the temperature of the earth's surface? Whatever would make you think that's beyond us?

Besides, this effect was known a century and a half ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This seems to be an often overlooked challenge associated with unfettered free trade - why isn't there more discussion about the impact that massive trade has on our planet? I have seen a statistic where 20-30% of global CO2 emissions are associated with international trade - this doesn't even take into account concept like pollution haven or impact on biodiversity etc.

I would say that preventing further climate change will cost us that much one way or another (directly or indirectly in financial and other ways) so if the plan is to cost us (humans globally) bigly, it would be better to direct the costs at solving that problem rather than something which will not do anything to improve it.

Looks like ocean transport is about 3% of carbon. Tourism is 8%.
Heck, paying high tariffs for imported products so people can't afford discretionary air travel might be worth it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This seems to be an often overlooked challenge associated with unfettered free trade - why isn't there more discussion about the impact that massive trade has on our planet? I have seen a statistic where 20-30% of global CO2 emissions are associated with international trade - this doesn't even take into account concept like pollution haven or impact on biodiversity etc.

There is now virtually no chance of preventing climate change via behavioral modification (indeed this was probably an unrealistic pipe dream all along).

In my view, the vast majority of our resources and energy should be devoted to mitigation and reversal technologies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This seems to be an often overlooked challenge associated with unfettered free trade - why isn't there more discussion about the impact that massive trade has on our planet? I have seen a statistic where 20-30% of global CO2 emissions are associated with international trade - this doesn't even take into account concept like pollution haven or impact on biodiversity etc.

I would say that preventing further climate change will cost us that much one way or another (directly or indirectly in financial and other ways) so if the plan is to cost us (humans globally) bigly, it would be better to direct the costs at solving that problem rather than something which will not do anything to improve it.

Looks like ocean transport is about 3% of carbon. Tourism is 8%.
Heck, paying high tariffs for imported products so people can't afford discretionary air travel might be worth it!

Forgot to mention, that inland shipping and barges would probably be same as ocean. EV trucking and rail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wasteful consumption is the vast majority of pollution, regardless of where it's produced.

True. We have standards.
China has ZERO standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Grow local, buy local, unless Trump."

Exactly! China’s coal plants and slave child labor are awesome now, huh?