London University Is Banning Beef To Help Fight Climate Change (cbsnews.com) 292
Goldsmiths, a part of the University of London, is fighting climate change by taking beef off the menu. "[The university] will no longer serve beef burgers, beef burritos and the like on its campus," reports CBS News. From the report: Goldsmiths will take beef products off the menu starting in September, it announced Monday. The effort is part of a mission to become carbon neutral by 2025. Removing beef products on campus isn't the only action the university is taking. It also plans to install more solar panels, switch to a 100% clean energy supplier, plant more trees and make climate change education more accessible to students. Perhaps the biggest change the university is making aside from the elimination of beef is a fee of 10 pence (12 cents) on bottled water and single-use plastic cups. The goal is to "discourage use, with the proceeds directed into a green student initiative fund," the college's new warden, Professor Frances Corner, said.
I can see why they want to do something (Score:5, Interesting)
To give an example of the complexity. A scottish research product found that how you farm crops like potatoes could change carbon emissions by over 50%. Efficiently farmed potatoes are nearly as climate friendly as winter wheat, but poorly farmed potatoes cause 30% more emissions for the same planted area. Intensively farmed chicken is incredibly efficient for a meat product, but if the chicken is farmed in a country with limited environmental controls then stored frozen for extended periods of time this considerably changes the calculus. Beef grown on land that would be hard to use effectively for crop agriculture still has a huge impact, but is it better or worse than a more climate efficient crop that is being grown on land that was previously rainforest or similar and in a way that will leave this land unproductive in the near future?
Personally I'd prefer they did something similar to what they're doing with disposable cups/bottles and charge an amount to cover protecting or extending environmental resources rather than just ban something outright.
Re:I can see why they want to do something (Score:5, Interesting)
Google:
It is the process of making "clinker" - the key constituent of cement - that emits the largest amount of CO2 in cement-making. In 2016, world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to 8% of the global total
Google:
At a global scale, the FAO has recently estimated that livestock (including poultry) accounts for about 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions estimated as 100-year CO2 equivalents.[43]
However, the 14.5 percent includes all greenhouse gasses. Methane (which accounts for 30-40% of the total greenhouse gasses) is not really a problem:
Google:
In the US, methane emissions associated with ruminant livestock (6.6 Tg CH 4, or 164.5 Tg CO2e in 2013)[51] are estimated to have declined by about 17 percent from 1980 through 2012.[4] Globally, enteric fermentation (mostly in ruminant livestock) accounts for about 27 percent of anthropogenic methane emissions,[52] and methane accounts for about 32 to 40 percent of agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions (estimated as 100-year carbon dioxide equivalents) as tabulated by the IPCC.[45] Methane has a global warming potential recently estimated as 35 times that of an equivalent mass of carbon dioxide.[52] However, despite the magnitude of methane emissions (recently about 330 to 350 Tg per year from all anthropogenic sources), methane's current effect on global warming is quite small. This is because degradation of methane nearly keeps pace with emissions, resulting in a relatively little increase in atmospheric methane content (average of 6 Tg per year from 2000 through 2009), whereas atmospheric carbon dioxide content has been increasing greatly (average of nearly 15,000 Tg per year from 2000 through 2009).[52]
Conclusion: once you exclude the methane the contribution of ALL of the livestock on earth is below the contribution of cement production. Let alone transportation and electricity generation. But yhea, let's ban beef.
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Concrete, transportation and electricity production are more or less essential. Beef most certainly isn't and personally I don't really get this anglo-american obsession with it.
Re:I can see why they want to do something (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhm, have you ever heard of milk, cheese, yoghurt, butter, cream and other diary products? The cattle won't go extinct, their number will be reduced, though and their average efficiency will grow.
And as for your last sentence, how did that even make sense to you as you wrote it? A cow that is going to become a steak or a patty will definitely not end up living the good life in an old-age home for animals.
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You do know that beef cattle and dairy cattle are generally different breeds, and dairy only comes from one gender right?
I agree as a species they probably won't go extinct if for no reason they'll still be a small number of people that keep them for petting zoos or whatever even if dairy wasn't in the picture. But there will be drastically fewer. I don't think the US is going to become like India with cows wandering around in the streets that aren't being used for anything.
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While dairy does come from one gender, the whole process doesn't work without bulls and besides the cattle has to reproduce somehow.
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"Conclusion: once you exclude the methane" ...you end up with a bullshit conclusion.
You can't just ignore the methane. What do you imagine happens to it? It doesn't just go away. Your whole post was wasted by your erroneous conclusion
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"You can't just ignore the methane. What do you imagine happens to it? It doesn't just go away. Your whole post was wasted by your erroneous conclusion"
You clearly didn't read, you just posted a knee-jerk reaction. Methane degrades at a rate almost at it's rate of production.
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"You clearly didn't read, you just posted a knee-jerk reaction. Methane degrades at a rate almost at it's rate of production."
You clearly didn't read or understand my comment. What do you think it degrades INTO? Noob.
Re:I can see why they want to do something (Score:5, Interesting)
A: Let's do something about meat farming emissions.
B: But cement produces more greenhouse gasses than that!
A: Okay, let's do something about cement production.
B: But transport produces more greenhouse gasses than that!
A: Okay, let's do something about transport emissions.
B: But even if we drive better cars, China won't! What do you mean they are producing vast quantities of battery electric vehicles? And that they hit peak coal 5 years ago?? Well... What about India!
A: Sigh. Wallow in you filth, I'm doing this.
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Yes, lets cut those off BEFORE we have viable alternatives, because THAT is what is being proposed.
Lets kill plastic straws, because some 9 year old had a tragically flawed analysis, and replace them with WORSE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT paper straws, because that is exactly what is happening. Because paper is better than plastic is OBVIOUS (even though it is wrong).
Why? Because emotional arguments aren't reality. But they get people riled up and making kneejerk reactions because "virtue signalling" is way better
Re: I can see why they want to do something (Score:2)
Actually Google didn't say any of those things. They just found web pages that said those things, which you didn't even credit to who said them.
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I don't think they've thought this through fully, probably their vegan brains are lacking the necessary proteins for complex thought.
Eating less beef leaves more live cows, producing more methane and eating more of our CO2 consuming grass.
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At least they are vegan cows though.
Not only climate change (Score:3)
The arterial change in people will be big as well.
Cardiologists won't like this one bit.
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Serve Soylent Green instead (Score:4, Funny)
After all, humans are the cause of climate change, so why not get to the source of the problem.
I'd like to see a three way challenge taste test . . . Impossible Burger vs. Beyond Meat vs. Soylent Green.
Can you tell the difference between Whizzo Butter and a dead crab . . . ?
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After all, humans are the cause of climate change, so why not get to the source of the problem.
Because human existence and comfort are the reasons we care about climate change. Actions to aggressively reduce the population would defeat those goals. We need to stop climate change to keep the planet a nice place for people to live.
(Sorry for giving a serious response to a joke comment, but I think this is something that needs to be pointed out. The reason we want to "save the planet" is because we want to live on the planet, not because planets have some abstract value. The planet itself doesn't
Facts? Science? Pfffft! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Carbon storage can be increased if cropland is planted back to perennial pasture, with sequestration initially occurring rapidly and gradually plateauing over a 20 to 25 year period. In fact, models have shown that if beef cattle are switched from a grain- to perennial forages-based production system, and the forage associated from this transition is derived from newly seeded cropland, the entire beef production cycle becomes a net sink of carbon."
Beef production can be a net sink of carbon. Croplands can not. Go beef.
http://www.beefresearch.ca/res... [beefresearch.ca]
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Cattle production could be carbon negative, but it never is, because of the transportation involved.
Cattle either have to be raised in a feedlot, or transported to a slaughterhouse. Or sometimes, both.
Further, that wouldn't solve the cow burp problem.
Carbon is not the only consideration. Go goat.
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Cattle production could be carbon negative, but it never is, because of the transportation involved.
So we just need carbon-neutral transportation. That's achievable.
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That could solve that problem, conceivably. But it doesn't solve the burp problem. Fix that and I'll stop complaining about cows. Cows can only be carbon-neutral if they're grazed, but then it's hard to feed them seaweed (or whatever) to keep the methane down. It's only easy to feed them the seaweed in a feedlot. In a feedlot, you can also conceivably put their poop into biobags and get methane from the bags, then burn it for energy. That produces CO2, but it reduces methane, and if you could get food into the feedlot carbon-neutrally, then it would also be neutral. So maybe that should be the goal instead. Maybe we could breed a special alpaca that would poop out cow feed. ;)
I'm not sure how financially viable this is, but planting trees in pastures could help. Sure it would take away some feeding land (make up for it with seaweed feed bins), the trees would soak up CO2. Plus more trees = more atmospheric water trapped = less need to water crops in the nearby arable fields if there are enough lightly wooded pastures.
I'm not sure if it is financially viable, there could be a cycle here. More money need for planting trees- but cow poo could be used to feed seaweed troughs- whi
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The "Beef Cattle Research Council" is misleading you.
In the particular example you cite they are hiding the fact that if you just let the land return to pasture without any grazing it's even better at carbon sequestration. It's obvious when you think about it - the cattle don't enhance it's ability to store CO2 and they aren't even claiming that.
What's more, in the paragraph after the one you quoted they admit that eventually the land will return to being carbon neutral eventually, no longer removing net CO
Re:Facts? Science? Pfffft! (Score:4, Insightful)
Grasslands need megafauna to remain healthy.
https://www.ted.com/talks/alla... [ted.com]
Removing the megafauna from the land, like cattle, can often result in the grasslands turning to desert.
Humans are part of the environment, not separated from it. Our role in the environment is to eat meat from the cattle, and the cattle to eat the grasses. We need to eat other things besides meat of course, like wheat. I grew up on a dairy farm and the manure from the cattle was used to fertilize the land. The straw left over from the harvest was used as bedding for the cattle. The corn from the crops was fed to the cattle to make meat and milk. This idea of "agricultural waste" that could be used for making fuel is nonsense to me, that "waste" is what the land needs for nutrients and erosion control. Burning this "waste" as fuel is what is wasteful.
This idea that farmers are destroying the land for a profit is lunacy. Where I grew up I could see farms that proudly displayed a plaque declaring it a "century farm", meaning that land has been maintained by the same family for over 100 years. These people know more about keeping the land productive than some professor at a university. To get the bread on your plate means that there were a lot of pigs, cattle, chickens, or whatever other meat you had on your plate to make that possible. These farmers took advantage of the animals' ability to process what we cannot eat into meat and fertilizer.
Meat is how we can rotate crops. Cattle eat alfalfa, we don't. Alfalfa allows the land to "rest" between rotations of corn and soybeans. The manure is fertilizer for the corn and beans we eat. If we can't have cattle for this process then we need to bring in artificial means to renew the land, like petroleum based fertilizers.
My dad had only a 9th grade education, from a small town Catholic school, but he knew more about how to maintain a healthy environment than these idiot professors in London.
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Removing the megafauna from the land, like cattle, can often result in the grasslands turning to desert.
Yes, but why does it have to be cattle? Because it's the "Beef Cattle Research Council" of course.
There are better ways to manage grasslands. Better animals to keep them healthy. Reduced erosion via things like trees and hedge rows. Cows are one of the worst ways to do it.
You could make a reasonable argument that we should have cows because we like eating them and can do things to make them carbon neutral, but the claim that they are somehow good for the environment on their own and that alone is a reason t
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Yes, but why does it have to be cattle?
I'm glad that we can agree that the raising of animals for meat is vital to maintaining our croplands.
Because it's the "Beef Cattle Research Council" of course.
If these people thought that sheep or whatever were better for the land then they'd be in a different group. Your argument isn't that large grazing animals for meat aren't needed, which is at least something we can agree upon, but that the use of beef cattle is less than ideal. If you believe the raising of sheep, horses, bison, or whatever would be a better means to maintain our crops and provide protein
The market will find other consumers for the beef (Score:2)
On the other hand, eating red meat increases cancer risk, so the students may benefit this way.
beef down (Score:2)
Let Them Eat Pork (Score:2)
At least they got chicken.
Poorly thought out. (Score:4, Insightful)
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this will just cause students to walk off campus to the closest location to get what they want. In the mood for some beef? theirs a restaurant near by i would guess want some bottled water go to the nearest off campus market (its probably cheaper there before this new tax in the first place)
You underestimate the laziness of students.
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Depends on the students. In my experience, most wouldn't value beef enough to walk off campus for it.
Turtles agree (Score:3)
Re:Turtles agree (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed that for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
London University Is Banning Beef To Make a Statement to Grab Headlines
Re: Fixed that for you... (Score:3)
It's clearing time in the UK which for the uninitiated is when secondary school results are released and universities send out offers.
Also Goldsmiths isn't a university in itself, it's part of the University of London and most people haven't heard of it until recently. Apparently it's int New Cross, London and according to Google Maps if you want a burger there's a cafe across the road willing to serve you as much chared cow as your heart desires.
So just a university tryng to gener
Makes no sense (Score:2)
Instead of taking american (south or north, does not matter) cheap beef from the menu, they should by more expensive local beef and let the customer decide.
A good start. (Score:2)
Banning meat altogether or limiting/rationing meat would be better though. The eco-balance of modern mass-meat production in general is abysmal - not just in the greenhouse-gas department.
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you're a vegetarian? no one cares what you think, because you made an unnatural and unhealthy lifestyle choice.
also reduce flying (Score:5, Interesting)
Good step, even if small in itself.
The largest "climate impact" from universities will probably always be providing us with knowledge - on meteorological climate mechanisms, on impact on nature and human activities, on possible mitigations and what changes in society and technology that may work. And last but not least the psychology and behavior of people when facing global challenges like climate change.
However, the nr 1. impact from academia itself is usually the heavy reliance on air travel. Several leading researchers (Kevin Anderson, for example) has stopped flying completely, and many try limiting it by using more video presence, being more picky about conferences and - especially within the same continent - going by train instead. A university-wide policy that put hard caps on flying would probably be even better. Our university (Uppsala) has taken some small steps, with a ambitious but non-binding policy discouraging flying, and paying for exchange students' train journeys within Europe.
No we're not (Score:3)
I work at the University of London. Goldsmiths is one of our collages and they may be banning beef somewhere in the collage but it has zero to do with either the central university or the other collages, all of which hate each other and wish they could operate as independent universities in their own right. It's very much like herding cats.
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'collage', is this a European spelling ?
No. Goldsmiths was set up by a paper magnate who insisted that all the buildings be constructed in the form of collages.
Actually, the truth is that I'm dyslexic and collage/college is a total nightmare for me. Unfortunately I can't edit my post to fix it so we're all stuck with it, I'm afraid.
It's ironic that this is a UK University (Score:3)
The UK could save a TON on energy consumption (and hence on CO2) by adopting double or triple pane windows. It's almost ridiculous that the UK as a whole is dragging their feet on this simple and universally adopted solution to conserving energy.
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The UK has insulation standards for new buildings which are quite high (not as high as Scandinavia, but not bad). Double-glazing (as we call it here) has been standard in new buildings for years. I would estimate that the majority of public housing and owner-occupied private housing has had double-glazing fitted for some time. There hasn't be a coherent government programme to drive energy saving for some considerable time, but rising energy costs have had a major impact on household insulation. Of course t
They want to reduce carbon (Score:2)
...and yet they are taxing plastic cups, which have the lowest carbon impact of any of the available alternatives, including washing reusable cups in hot water. They are clearly confusing solid waste and carbon emissions, which often have a reciprocal relationship with one another.
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There is a lot more to washing than hot water. For example, any commercial kitchen must use a detergent, a rinse aid, and a sanitizer in three distinct washing operations. So, three times the hot water in addition to flushing detergents and sanitizing chemicals into the sewer systems, killing the bacteria that help break down waste.
no (Score:3)
I don't eat there . . . (Score:3)
How can you have any pudding (Score:5, Funny)
if you don't eat your meat?
Effectiveness (Score:3)
Moreover, even if this could be globally adopted, it's just a delay at the most. There are other more significant sources of greenhouse gases. Either we need a way to remove large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, which would be great because it wouldn't require people to change their lifestyles, or we need action on climate change that could feasibly be done wide scale and with a significant impact.
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Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:5, Insightful)
If India doubled it's CO2 emissions it would emit about the same amount as the US; I'm sure you knew that but as it didn't fit with your preference for blaming poor countries with different skin colours it just slipped your mind. Per person they emit less than 1/5th what the US does. The EU also emits more than India and more per person than India but I'm sure the fact they're mostly white westerners had nothing to do with you not mentioning them either.
And people wonder why nobody flinches at being called a racist anymore...
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:4, Insightful)
Every word with an 's' at the end should get an apostrophe. No exception's!
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Because racist is now used when as an insult when someone disagrees with you. When did the original poster mention race?
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:5, Insightful)
And people wonder why nobody flinches at being called a racist anymore...
Yeah... on one hand- there is a lot of accusation of racism when none is intended... The whole "woman angry at store for having cottonballs as part of a display" because "cottonballs are racist" kind of trivializes the whole issue of racism. All the "my dress is not your culture" and "white people shouldn't be allowed to wear dreadlocks" is just silly; we all borrow ideas from each other- should only middle easterners be allowed to farm- they started the way of life. Should only white people be allowed to wear jeans and t shirts- let's be realistic- if we didn't learn from each other and learn to appreciate each other's culture we'd be worse off, and culturally deficit, not better. "Cultural Appropriation" is not racist, nor is it always a bad thing. All cultures have something to offer everyone. Damn! America stole the English language, butchered it, and now they have the gall to broadcast shows in butchered English overseas. Americans shouldn't be allowed to speak English - invent your own language damnit!
There again, I see a lot of people who really are racist who get butt-hurt when people call them out on it. I see a lot of casual racism becoming popular and more common again. I see a lot of hardcore racism being normalized. People hide behind anonymous online accounts to spread hate. Racism is a huge problem, and always has been and it's good that people take a stand against it. Sometimes they go to far, but I'm glad people feel they have society on their side when they call out racists.
That said, OP probably wasn't being racist. He was being ignorant and wrong, but there is nothing in what he wrote that says "racist".
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Really great work, banning beef! (Score:2, Funny)
We should all give a rousing standing ovation to the brave men and women of London University for banning beef and taxing the snot out of plastic bottles/cups. This is really great news for the war on climate change!
The next step the University should take is to issue fag lighters to all concerned professors, staff, and students. CO2 is a serious greenhouse gas, but methane is 20x worse! Whenever anyone starts feeling that little bloated feeling, they need to get down on their back, point their butt up in
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By that logic, EVERY politician needs to leave DC and make sure their home districts are PERFECT before daring to aspire to higher office. Trump especially is extremely fond of cricitizing others while getting bent out of shape when someone criticizes back, and he calls everything fake news while being unable to go the length of a tweet without inserting something that's not true. Maybe he should clean up his own act first?
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Enough with the "per-capita" BS. It is meaningless. The US is the #2 manufacturing nation on the planet. Countries with high manufacturing output emit CO2.
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You really should consider population density inte the equation instead. The biggest source of all these climate change problems is the sheer amount of people on the planet. With a population density of let's say Finland, there wouldn't be a climate change, even if everyone lived at Finnish, or worse: US living standands and per capita emissions. Most of the world, however, is populated much denser than that, and that's the main factor. There's no living standards level low enough that high enough amount of
Re: Ban India and China instead (Score:2)
with different skin colours
Nice strawman you're attempting to project there... remind me again how exactly it is that skin color factors into geopolitical disputes over power and resources??
Hint: it fucking doesn't; now run along and be [A) stupid, B) dishonest and/or C) brainwashed] somewhere fucking else.
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AI response bot tech is coming along nicely.
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R.... Being called a racest has become meaningless ...
Nope, being called *racist has not become meaningless.
A lot of people might want you to think it has. They might also like you to think that facts, and truth and justice have become meaningless too. They haven't.
The president is still a racist, narcissistic, spoiled brat bully, born into a life of luxury as a multimillionaire who has never had to work a day in his life
Most of us can see him for what he is. Some choose to ignore it. Mostly the extraordinarily rich, the racists, the people that are under the
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:5, Informative)
US: 16.5 (annual, ton per person)
China: 7.5
India: 1.7
Source [worldbank.org]
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:4, Insightful)
I sorta suspect that Mother Earth doesn't give a shit about per-capita usage. I sorta suspect it's only the total amounts that matter.
(I also sorta suspect that as China continues develop and its citizenry gets more disposable income, the per-capita numbers will catch up to us soon enough.)
But sorry to get in the way of the neverending blame game, virtue signaling shit. Clearly, this has been a great way of motivating people to address this crisis.
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:4, Insightful)
I also sorta suspect that as China continues develop and its citizenry gets more disposable income, the per-capita numbers will catch up to us soon enough.
Better hope not. Then we would be really screwed.
Fortunately China is on track to peak lower and then fall to lower levels. Of course we wish they would do it faster, but it's not like they are doing nothing either.
Don't trash the Earth because you "suspect" that China might not do its part, despite all the evidence.
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Dams haven't worked so well in China, and the capacity for more in developed nations is limited. Wind is a better bet.
Lithium mines are needed, but with the conditions that other sources are considered first and that the mine has the minimum possible impact.
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Per capita emissions are not a bad guide for who can cheaply make cuts.
2) Since everyone needs to reduce emissions, there will be international negotiations involved. Per capita is not a bad guide for who is pulling their weight.
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What China and India lack in per capita emissions is more than made up for by rampant overpopulation. Each has about 5 times the population of the US.
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The US is the #2 manufacturing nation. China is #1. Now you understand why their per-capita CO2 is so high.
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:4, Interesting)
China is number 1 and they produce half the CO2 that the US does.
Manufacturing is obviously a factor- but China proves that it is much more complicated than that. If it were purely based on manufacturing China would have insane amounts of per-capita CO2 like the US does.
Re: Ban India and China instead (Score:5, Informative)
Have they? China has been building mass transit like crazy trying to keep car ownership low and they've been subsidizing renewables and actively increasing investment in research regarding climate change. You've got countries like Iceland where almost all their power is renewable; and you've got countries like Norway where over 50% of cars are now EV.
The US has actively backed out of treaties to curb emissions; has had debates in the legislature about whether man made climate change is real (rather than accept a scientifically known fact) and has a President who is a Climate Change denier.
I'd say the US is far from being the #1 country to actively pursue lowering Co2 outputs.
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Electricity generation matters a lot too (Score:4, Interesting)
France is the #9 manufacturing nation, but their emissions are 19th, because they have a lot of nuclear generation.
Oppositely, Iran does not a lot of manufacturing
Australia's per capita emissions are worse than the USA's, and they have nearly no tertiary industry. But they make their electricity out of coal.
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Population (Wikipedia)
China: 1,398,680,000
India: 1,351,030,000
USA: 329,725,000
So, (annual, ton per year) will be something like
USA: 5,440,462,500
China: 10,490,100,000
India: 2,296,751,000
I'd say ban China and USA
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No it doesn't. US is still ahead of China in total emissions.
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This is "per-capita doesn't matter" thing is just silly. If you don't use numbers per person then you're just choosing some meaningless political division. Every municipality in the world could burn open coal fires and say "oh, we're not the problem, our emissions are far below those of the USA!"
The per capita metric's only problem is if some country decided to breed up their population to game it. But all the big high fertility countries are are decreasing fertility at precipitous rates. China by draconia
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Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:5, Insightful)
India? You're kidding right?
Less than half the CO2 output of America [wikipedia.org], with triple the population?
By your (stupid) logic, we should be banning the USA, but a beef ban will take care of that anyway.
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Another stat above puts India at 1/10th instead of 1/2 of the US. Other studies have put India and China ahead of the US in terms of all greenhouse emissions (not just CO2) If the error bars are that large, does anyone really know what Is happening?
On the other hand, Western countries have been cutting their emissions, the last few years especially hard even in the US. China and India have been on exponential growth like the US and EU in the 50s. Who is going to tell them they can't have industry and overpo
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The error bars are as big for CO2 emissions as they are for the predictive models of global warming. From what I've read the "consensus" model still has error bars greater than the predicted warming ie flat or even global cooling are still within the models range of predictions its just that the error bars skew/trend upwards.
IMO a lot of the scares are just underestimating human ingenuity: still waiting to run out of food, oil, water etc. As things get bad values of alternatives and/or the resource goes up,
Re:Ban India and China instead (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how the climate-blame game works globally:
People in the West: B-b-b-but China and India are emitting so much more, why should we do anything when they're not doing enough!
People in the East: B-b-but The US and EU are consuming and emitting so much more per person than we are and the US is doing fuck all to curtail their emissions, why should we be forced to limit our emissions?!?
And thus no-one is to be blamed for anything, and nobody does a god damn thing.
The same is true on an individual level:
People not eating meat or eating very little of it: We should tax-meat consumption more heavily, but don't touch air travel cause I like to fly around!
People eating meat: Stay off my bacon, we definitely should tax flying more though!
etc.
Like with so many things, it's always the other guy. Fact is the blame is shared. Yes, the developing countries and places like China have grown their emissions rapidly, but that's in large part because manufacturing has exploded driven by demand for cheap products from the west. Likewise, the west consumes a lot more than the east and developing countries, but that consumption is the cornerstone of the rapid rise of the Chinese economy.
It's all interlinked. If we all engage in this neverending Mexican standoff where nobody is willing to figure out global solutions, nothing will get done and the situation will keep worsening and worsening.
We have the technological skills to ditch fossil fuels in energy production. In fact China is doing this already because their dependency on coal is causing them to have a massive pollution problem and they also know coal is not a good solution in the long-term, which is why they're building a massive amount of nuclear power plants as well as renewable energy. It's obviously going to take some time to redo the energy grid of close to 1,5 billion people, but they're working on it. Meanwhile here in the EU, the cap and trade system after some changes is finally starting to show some effects: coal is becoming less and less competitive because of its emissions and many countries are slowly facing it out in favor of natural gas (not perfect, but a lot better), renewables, and nuclear.
The fundamental problem is that this is all just seen as an expense instead of as an economic opportunity: the green/cleantech industry is already pretty large, and it's only going to keep growing, whereas the oil business is already starting to be less and less lucrative and is losing money [cnn.com]. The thing to realize is, majority of the opposition to climate action has been coming from the oil lobby. There are entire economies in the middle east that are running on nothing but oil that have worked hard to keep feeding misinformation to the public because they need to be able to keep selling their product. The climate 'controversy' is directly traceable to pseudo-scientific 'think tanks' funded by oil moguls that have been obfuscating the issue for the past 3-4 decades while the actual science on the matter has been pretty clear for a long time.
-Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
Re: (Score:2)
Careful....Sadly, in this day in age of people on the lookout to be offended or victimized, you'll soon be called a racist for using well worn terms like that....
Re: (Score:3)
Right because Indian farmers are doing donuts in their monster trucks.
The problem is you dumb-ass redneck red state shit-heads.
Who grow the food for people in concrete canyons so they can sit there and bitch about how they should control the world from their little enclaves.
Re:We would not respect the rector of the universi (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it's the UK so he probably doesn't have air-conditioning in his house.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if we even have a rector at UoL. It's certainly an odd post to pick on.
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It's more likely to be central heating, rather than AC cooling.
Both use a lot of energy, mostly generated elsewhere, and mostly from fossil fuels. What's your point?