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Comment on take their money and arrest those responsible

hirihit640@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

US and Europe carbon emissions have gone down in the past 20 years, while China’s has grown rapidly. China accounts for %35 of the world’s emissions. Of course lots of manufacturing for goods happens in China, but this just tells me that capitalism is not to blame here, China is. China needs to raise their carbon taxes. Or maybe manufacturing needs to come back to the US and Europe, where it can be properly regulated.

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GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Capitalism moves manufacturing to a location with less regulation or the overhead from regulation, resulting in more profits for the capitalists. This is clearly not because of capitalism.

Spoiler

/s for those who need it.

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- hirihit640@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This is not a result of capitalism. It’s simply the result of competition. Now if you want to erase country borders, that’s a different discussion. But as long as one country doesn’t regulate fossil fuel emissions, it doesn’t matter what economic system they use, capitalism, communism, or whatever, they’re going to be able to produce goods for cheaper. Because they’re ignoring the real costs.
  
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starsoaked_lily@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
nice stats, now lets talk about emissions per person - neat how you picked the stat that ignores the current state of things and only focuses on how even more emissions the west used to produce

also, the reason the wheels haven’t well and truly fallen off of the global economy is because china has halved oil imports recently to avoid the ill advised us war on iran leading to an oil availability cliff. they (regrettably, but perhaps unavoidably) have used coal heavily (in combination with larger oil reserves than the rest of the world combined) to cut their own demand dramatically and abruptly to bail out the rest of the world

it isn’t unreasonable to see china’s short term reliance on more dirty forms of energy as a tool for energy independence (critical when the us can single handedly cause an international fuel crisis) being used strategically while china continues to rapidly switch to renewables at a rate that puts most western countries to shame

in short, maybe china isn’t to blame; capitalism and neoliberalism is

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- hirihit640@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I mentioned this in another thread which tried to use “emissions per capita”, but that isn’t a great metric because it is biased towards low productivity. We had very low emissions pre-1800s, for example. And North Korea has 4x less emissions per capita than China, are we supposed to follow North Korea’s lead?
  
  Also I hate how everybody constantly frames China as a poor helpless victim of capitalism. This was also mentioned in another thread here. China chose to shift to capitalism at the end of the 1900s. And they can choose to impose stricter regulation on fossil fuel emissions. They choose not to because it hurts their bottom line. Simple as that.
  
  The US and EU have controlled their emissions, while China’s continues to grow. China has the highest GDP in the world, and 7th highest GDP per capita, it has no excuse anymore.
  
  China has all the hallmarks of capitalism - widening wealth gap, massive housing speculation, horrible working conditions, etc. If China gets to use dirty energy as a “short term strategy” with some vague promise to do better in the future, then why not the West? We could call all the evils of the world just “short term strategy”.
  
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TheOubliette@lemmy.ml ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Most greenhouse gas emissions occurred when colonizer Western countries were industrialized. They were not “properly regulated”, instead they were offshored in order to discipline labor and extract even greater profits. The offshoring was not exclusive to China, GHGs accordingly increased everywhere that further industrialized as a result of this. This effect is about as capitalist as it gets, trying to maximize profits via labor discipline and opening new fronts for increased exploitation (more profit per worker).

China’s approach to this shift was to realize it was an opportunity to build their own productive forces, that capitalists would give up productive centers and move them to other countries, and those countries should be able to domestically gain and upper hand so long as they ensured that production could broadly increased with every investment. For example, China requires technology transfer as part of direct foreign investment. China was correct in this and it is why it is an exception to the rule for national development as a former peripheral country. Compare ita development to India, which did not require such transfers or focus on building production.

Now, again, this means that industrial production moved outside the imperial core and into other countries, including but not limited to China. That industry did not suddenly become green nor did it become immune to the global economic system. It meant being wed to it. As we all know China’s strategy is one of interdependency with global capitalism even as they try to steer an otherwise anarchic process in a coherent direction via the commanding heights of the economy.

And yet we can see the difference those commanding heights make even on this specific issue. China is the global exporter and consumer of green energy, leading the charge on solar panels that countries like the US sanction and tariff, instead promoting fossil fuels. China is taking the actual steps you’d imagine Western nations doing (even though they never have), like setting public targets and meeting or exceeding them, and sticking to their obligations.

Imagine what could be done if every country could work in concert for those developments. Specifically, against the anarchic tendencies of the market and capitalist profit seeking.

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- hirihit640@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Why are you acting like China is a poor helpless victim to capitalism here. China chose to shift to capitalism at the end of the 1900s. And they can choose to impose stricter regulation on fossil fuel emissions. They choose not to because it hurts their bottom line. Simple as that.
  
  The US and EU have controlled their emissions, while China’s continues to grow. China has the highest GDP in the world, and 7th highest GDP per capita, it has no excuse anymore.
  
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  - TheOubliette@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Why are you acting like China is a poor helpless victim to capitalism here.
    
    I didn’t. I gave a pretty dry analysis. Maybe ask yourself why that feels overly sympathetic to you.
    
    China chose to shift to capitalism at the end of the 1900s.
    
    That’s not a particularly accurate or useful description of China’s gambit to allow (mostly foreign) capital to exploit its people to build productive forces while maintaining overall control over sweeping aspects of their economy. If China simply switched to capitalism one then has to explain why it is so different from every other capitalist country. China’s trajectory is responsible for the vast majority of global poverty index improvements and this runs in dramatic contrast to the rest of the periphery that was already fully capitalist and continues to be. The redirection of funds and productive capacity to infrastructure, education, housing, direct poverty alleviation. The limits/outright bans on the financialization and speculation that characterize imperial core economies. The policy of embedding the party in large firms and turning developed industries into state-meditated co-ops. The lack of imperialist expansion required by monopolized, financialized capital. But I digress.
    
    And they can choose to impose stricter regulation on fossil fuel emissions.
    
    Sure. They could set them to any arbitrary level. What is the correct rate for it to be sustained? Remember, they’re almost alone in meeting targets among countries as advanced as they are. What level of production flight should they unilaterally sacrifice, if any, and who picks up the slack? At which limits do they begin sacrificing that production? Are their regulations too loose or strict for the optimal trajectory? Why are we focusing on one of the only countries meeting their targets and making progress on renewables?
    
    They choose not to because it hurts their bottom line. Simple as that.
    
    It is, in fact, not as simple as that and this ignores the active work and debate within China that produces the results we are discussing. They aren’t making their targets because that’s just what capitalism does. It’s deliberate, literally a result of deliberation, research, modeling, and pulling levers at the commanding heights.
    
    The US and EU have controlled their emissions
    
    lmfao you can’t be serious they can’t even meet their own targets. France is the only one that ever does and it’s because they became a primary source of nuclear weapons materials (producing low emission energy as a nice side effect).
    
    while China’s continues to gro
    
    Everyone’s continue to grow. The targets are set, at the moment, for when they will hit peak and then begin dropping. China’s peak target is set to 2030 and they are slated to beat that.
    
    China has the highest GDP in the world, and 7th highest GDP per capita, it has no excuse anymore.
    
    Which part of “the only ones taking this seriously” is not registering?
    
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    hirihit640@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Everybody’s economy is different, China is no snowflake. But I am not going to debate whether China’s capitalism is “good capitalism” or not, that feels like pulling hairs and is a digression as you yourself said.
    
    How much should China regulate? At the very least enough to stop the growth. I think that’s a simple enough answer.
    
    Everyone’s continue to grow
    
    Not true. The US and EU have been lowering emissions for the past 20 years.
    
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