GOP: EPA no longer allowed to regulate greenhouse gasses

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Block
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Re: GOP: EPA no longer allowed to regulate greenhouse gasses

Post by Block »

Hillary wrote:
MKSheppard wrote:As of 2007, China was the largest GHG emitter; contributing 22% of the global total, against 19% for the US and 14% for the EU, with India coming up at the back with 5.5%

China and India will not cripple their own economic growth and stunt the aspirations of their peoples to fulfill the wish-fantasies of environmentalists around the world. Internal growth in those two countries alone will erase any possible gains we make by limiting the first world's GHG.

So why commit economic seppku?
Just on this point. Yes China has the largest GHG emissions; but it also has the largest population. GHG emissions per person, on the other hand, tell a very different story.

Looking at the 2007 stats (yes, Wiki I know), China comes in No 80 in terms of emissions per capita, just over a quarter of that of the USA. India manages 145 on the list, with the US emissions per capita 13.5 times India's level.

If you look at cumulative emissions per country (which of course is the reason we are where we are) it is even more apparent that this is a problem of the first world's making, as well as being one where the first world is still causing much more than its fair share.
I'm sure that's including the hundreds of millions in those countries that still live in abject poverty without running water. That's hardly a real per capita. If you limited it to the people living in the more modern parts of the countries, there would likely be a huge shift.
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Re: GOP: EPA no longer allowed to regulate greenhouse gasses

Post by Simon_Jester »

MKSheppard wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:1) Why would you oppose regulation of CO2 emissions in the First World based on this argument?
As of 2007, China was the largest GHG emitter; contributing 22% of the global total, against 19% for the US and 14% for the EU, with India coming up at the back with 5.5%

China and India will not cripple their own economic growth and stunt the aspirations of their peoples to fulfill the wish-fantasies of environmentalists around the world. Internal growth in those two countries alone will erase any possible gains we make by limiting the first world's GHG.

So why commit economic seppku?
I don't know; I'm not the one planning to do that. Lowering carbon emissions is not economic seppuku- much less so than dozens of things First World economies have already done, like export their industrial base to China in the first place, or get into giant real estate bubbles by folding money and crashing the entire economy. Moreover, it has a real, concrete payoff, in the form of less global warming. Every ton of carbon not burned is less global warming; every extra ton burned is more. Reducing carbon emissions in the first world remains in the first world's interests regardless of what China does. Providing incentives for the Chinese to do the same, without severely compromising their growth potential, likewise.
China can't duplicate the American "car in every garage" process because it isn't 1935-55 anymore.
Actually, they're trying very damn hard at that. 13.7 million automobiles produced in 2009, versus only 2 million in 2000 and 1 million in 1992. Virtually all of the production goes to the internal market, with only a couple hundred thousand being exported.

Auto trade projections being done now estimate that auto production in China will be about 40 million by 2020. That rate of production will be enough to give everyone in China (1.3 bn) a car in 34.6 years.
You're still totally missing the point. By the time China can supply all Chinese nationals with cars at that rate (say, 2050), the price of gasoline will be higher. A lot higher. To the point where the cars will be extremely fuel-efficient hybrids, electric, or unsustainably expensive due to fuel costs, even by the standards of first world incomes.

When it comes to motor vehicles, in the future we will be forced to limit our carbon-burning by default, because we're already at or near peak oil. Gas prices aren't going to stay flat or decrease over the next forty years, and you know it as well as I do. They may be kept under some kind of control by new processing technologies, but if those technologies could produce gasoline at the prices we see it today, they'd already be in use because they'd be competitive with traditional "drill for oil and refine it" technology.
And I would bet a lot that they're not stupid enough to think they can give every family in China a Hummer, for the same reason.
Haw. I suggest you read Xinhua, the most reliable and trusted news service in the world, next to the People's Cyberhourly:

Link from Fall 2010

Demands for sports utility vehicle (SUV) and multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) remained strong in the market. SUV sales surged 120 percent from a year ago to 814,100 units in the first eight months while MPV sales almost doubled to 274,200 units in the period.
Did you miss the definition of "they?" "They" is the people responsible for planning all this. I don't believe for a minute that they're planning on constant fuel prices over the next half-century, in defiance of all experience with the previous half century.

Even if you're in denial about energy costs, that doesn't mean they are. The average Chinese citizen may not care, but they'll damn sure care when the SUV they wanted costs 150 to 200 dollars (or its equivalent in yuan) to refill at the pump.
Hence why China is spending a lot lately on a military with increasingly global reach so they can freedomize people in the name of the MIDDLE KINGDOM to keep the spice oil flowing.

BTW; if you had actually read anything about cars, you would know that small, efficient vehicles are horrible flops in the developing world. People in those countries, when they spend the money to make a vehicle purchase, they want to make a STATEMENT. They want to say that they are rich and affluent. A econobox does not do that.

A Doomvee does that.
What people want now, while fuel costs are approximately controllable, is going to be totally irrelevant within a few decades, because even with a First World standard of living fuel costs will prohibit the average citizen from paying the fuel prices on massive personal vehicles, unless those vehicles' fuel consumption (and therefore carbon emissions) are brought into line with the econoboxes.
They will live in a world where electriciy is more expensive
China certainly won't live in that world.
Once again, Xinhua, the world's most reliable source:
Link to December 2010 Article
China's installed power generating capacity will grow from this year's 950 million kilowatts to 1.885 billion kilowatts by 2020....
...Electricity now costs about 0.6 yuan per kWh in China, the report said, forecasting the price to climb to 0.8 yuan per kWh by 2020.

To put that in context, that's 9.14 cents/kWh to 12.18 cents/kWh in US prices.
Right now, PEPCO's most expensive residental rates for Maryland is 11.8 cents/kWh.
...damnit. Johnny Chinaman pays less for his electricity than I do here in the States.
Yep. Wait until 2030, 2040, 2050. Those prices are going up. If they go down, it will be because of shifts in how electricity is generated. See the bit where "prices are forecasted to climb to 0.8 yuan/kWh in 2020?" that's exactly what I'm talking about, and yet you pretend it refutes my argument.
They're getting close to the 500 charge cycles that consumer electronics devices demand as a minimum with the nanowire prototypes, and expect 3,000 cycles by next year, which brings them into viability for vehicles.
In tests, they've gotten power densities of up to eight times that of conventional li-ion batteries.
I tend towards a more conservative 3x density for vehicle applications of this technology.
That brings forth the following specs:
Fine by me. If fuel economy increases, though... we get reduced carbon emissions. Which you just fucking said would be the ruin of modern economies.
sea levels are going to rise
Worst case is 0.7 to 0.8 meters. Even mighty Bangladesh will not die from that.
Nations can be made poor and vulnerable to disaster by conditions much less severe than what it takes to kill them.

Or are you just blithely shrugging off all potential costs and drawbacks of global warming because... um... argument unspecified? Because "rich people can deal with it?" Because you have supreme confidence in the foundations of rich societies' wealth remaining secure no matter what happens to places that aren't rich, or to unavoidable climate effects in places that are?
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Alyrium Denryle
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Re: GOP: EPA no longer allowed to regulate greenhouse gasses

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We've done monetary transfer via taxes to the developing world through official development assistance for the last sixty or so years; and if your premise worked, then Africa would be a global powerhouse, or at least competitive on the world market, not a total absolute shithole.
Sure is a good thing I have not specified that we use our current model. Jesus christ shep, you are good at putting words into other people's mouths and using strawmen.
The Chinese model on the other hand, namely how far the country has come in the last 30 years, shows the superiority of capitalist trade for building up economies.

Use the profit from exporting cheap crap to re-invest in better factories and industries so you can offer more value added goods than cheap injection molded white plastic lawn chairs.
And there is no way whatsoever to hybridize these models :roll:

The problem with this, is that it also increases economic growth in a very assymetrical way. GINI skyrockets.

So, you hybridize the models. Western governments invest in industrial infrastructure either through loans or competitive grants. Help build their roads, give them the technology to build and maintain next generation nuclear reactors and more advanced equipment that does not belch forth CO2 by the megaton.

12 billion dollars can provide clean drinking water to every person on the planet via the most advanced mobile water filtration. You can literally take water liberally laced with raw sewage, put it into a 25 gallon jug equipped with one of these filters, and it comes out clean and tasty. Filter pores are less than 20 microns across. Even prions cannot get through that IIRC. Would you rather have that, or an extra 80 F22s Shep?

Clean drinking water goes a long way to relieving horrific conditions and population growth in the third world, as population growth is driven by the human reproductive response to low life expectancy.

I will also note that the IPCC's sea level rise predictions are conservative, and may well be too low.
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Re: GOP: EPA no longer allowed to regulate greenhouse gasses

Post by madd0ct0r »

Alyrium, do you have any good sources for how fast birth-rate drops off as living standards increase?

because any poverty reduction scheme will have to take that into account (eg. this is enough money/effort to solve it NOW, but the lag in the birthrate means in 5-10 years time the extra people will have brought the average living standard back down below the critical and birthrate rises again.)

I can easily see the West adapting to say, middle-class Vietnamese standard. The official mantra being "one wife, two kids, three floors*, four wheels". Adaption is espcially easy, becuase everyone around you (ie, on your street, in your office) is at a similar level.
Achieving the last, 4 wheels puts you into upper middle class. Tax on car purchase here is in excess of 100%, and there are no second hand available. The Toyota Innova is most popular, as it allows you to do things a motorbike can't, like transport the entire family.

*Three floors is not as excessive as it sounds, as average house plot here is about 4-5m x 30-50m
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Re: GOP: EPA no longer allowed to regulate greenhouse gasses

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Further to that, is there any hard evidence whether or not the correlation between economic status and birthrate is related to anything more complex than wealthier people having an easier time acquiring reliable birth control?
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Re: GOP: EPA no longer allowed to regulate greenhouse gasses

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Well, good news. The measure failed 50-50. link.

The bad? Had it not been for Susan Collins of Maine breaking ranks with her GOP colleagues and voting against the measure, it would have had a majority of 51-49. That is right, the Democrat majority was unable to muster 50 votes on their own.

Although the measure needed 60 votes to pass, in my opinion it is a pretty bad sign that not even the entire Democrat party was against it and in fact a GOP member was needed to prevent it from getting a majority (if not passage) of votes.
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