If you've ever flown in an airplane and looked down at a town, it's outskirts and interface with nature, and the natural environment that surrounds it, you'll probably know the feeling. Our species, if it's even right to lay some kind of claim to the species or to the amalgam of biological, social, technical processes that we lump under that label, is a great colonial organism pervading a larger body. But like the bacteria that inhabit our bodies, even in the cases of bacterial infestations that are unhealthy for us, there's no ontological distinction between the bacteria and the body. The body is eating itself or burning itself up always like the body of a starving person; in doing so it produces beautiful and complex arrangements and unknowable futures, it produces itself anew and becomes somebody else. When we take moral judgements, which are no more than functional elements at work within the body, and attempt to apply them to the body at large, or to our representational, projected image of it, all we're doing is helping along the same process of self consumption (or immolation) that the body is already undertaking. Whether you press the button or don't press the button, the process, its beauty and its horror, continues along uninterrupted.
To deniers both arguments are valid - just use whichever one is more convincing to the person you're talking to. The objective is continue using fossil fuels no matter what.
To "alarmists" both "climate change does matter" and "China isn't the only problem" are valid arguments because that's a logical AND: "it's a problem and we're causing it, so we should do something". When you inverse it you use DeMorgan's law and you have to disprove one, either "it's not a problem" or "we can't do anything to stop it" but they typically do it in a way where one purported disproof invalidates the other, for some reason. They argue both "it's not a problem" and "it's a problem but we can't do anything to stop it".
To alarmists both arguments are valid - just use whichever one is more convincing to the person you're talking to. The objective is stop using fossil fuels no matter what.
Stop using labeling and listen other opinions better. Your rethoric could be used by other side with switched words - this type of debate does not bring anything new that others could learn from. You belive in something, others don't or vice versa.
I'm pointing out the hypocrisy and the focus people have on developed countries is just signaling. A weird anti-west sentiment from people who almost exclusively live a wealthy life in the west.
I'm not an expert, but from what I have read I believe humans do have an effect on climate. However this doesn't mean that any draconian measure that would essentially impose one world government and population control (which is the inevitable outcome of all of this) is preferable. But more importantly I'm anti stupid measures like restricting air-conditioning because they make a negligible impact and literally kill 100k+ people a year.
China has roughly .4 AC units per person while the USA has roughly 1 AC unit per person. You are simultaneously arguing everyone should have an AC, and that China should stop expanding their usage of AC.
I'd argue everyone should have an AC if they need one (probably China needs more than they have.) But we shouldn't build any more fossil fuel extraction, people who need AC should figure out how to do it with batteries and renewable energy. (Nuclear is fine, if it makes sense economically.) We don't need population control, we just need to add sufficiently large taxes on things we want less of. AC isn't a thing we want less of, it's carbon emissions.
>I'm pointing out the hypocrisy and the focus people have on developed countries is just signaling.
It's not. Many/most people who live in developed countries live lifestyles which use outsized amounts of resources and put lots of carbon into the atmosphere. They're also well-positioned to use their wealth to stop doing that.
>A weird anti-west sentiment from people who almost exclusively live a wealthy life in the west.
Not exactly from people who live a wealthy life in the west. More educated people in general are more likely to understand the complicated issue of climate change. Wealth and education have a close relationship.
>I'm not an expert, but from what I have read I believe humans do have an effect on climate. However this doesn't mean that any draconian measure that would essentially impose one world government and population control (which is the inevitable outcome of all of this) is preferable.
If multiple nations collaborating is your definition of one world government then okay, but no it wouldn't lead to that lol. What?
>But more importantly I'm anti stupid measures like restricting air-conditioning because they make a negligible impact and literally kill 100k+ people a year.
I sorta agree that that's the wrong approach. The issue here is generally large industrial producers and corporations who produce most of the carbon. That said, they are responding to demand from consumers, so attacking demand is a valid way to approach the problem.
Our capabilities are so high and our population so differentiated we basically hold nearly all the records for everything (barring some extremeophile metrics) so it makes sense.
Yeah, cool, what categories do you have in mind? Sure we have bias but not infinite bias.
I'll start!
How about sea urchin destruction? I bet otters and sheepshead fish probably have little bookies keeping track and they know which species or virus hold the records! Very fun stuff! I bet they have little tablets to keep track of their records that go back thousands of years? Oh man, yeah, good point about species bias!
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