this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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I kind of get these kind of comics, but isn't the reality that all of humanity is still in a competition with eachother, and doing all the wrong things gives you more power than doing all the right things, so that's what continues happening.
In these climate debates the reality is that it's a global chicken on the road, we all go toward self annihilation at a steady pace, and the first who flinches and tries to take action will get taken advantage of and ruined. So it's slooooooow talks about doing tiny things and kind of maybe a bit cooperating while noone really wants to, because any advantage they can get over another country will be taken advantage of...
Maybe i'm a bit too pessimistic, but it's my assumption that things work like that, and then all this bullshit suddenly makes sense >_<...
Slightly more complicated than that. It's also that some countries are way more affected by changes then others. Sure everyone uses fossil fuels but only specific countries export it so you are basically asking a country to cripple itself for you. Same when people suggest we should just not cut down the rainforests. In both cases it would likely be done if other countries paid for it. But right now it's what you say as well as asking people to handicap themselves
From the view of the global West, I believe this comic still applies. I'm very much not a fan of asking developing countries to not go through the same industrial revolution we went through, it's the lack of action at home that bothers me. Here in the US, we've got half the population railing against EVs instead of wanting to invest in them and find more environmentally friendly ways to produce them; people who want to gut the FDA and EPA and reduce regulation; people who who don't give a damn about those who are going to be the first affected by rising water; those who think terraforming Mars is a sexier (and magnitudes more expensive) project than using those resources here on Earth. And so on and so on. Those, I think, are the target of this comic. It's a very Western perspective, I agree, but I also think the West is in the best position to do anything about it.
It for sure applies to voters, but not to the politicians present at climate conventions as this cartoon portrays. And in the end it's them that have to broker a solution, not individual voters.
They'll of course use such language to their voters since whatever gains votes is fair game, but i very much doubt they themselves are this stupid. Behind the scenes it's just finding ways to screw with the others.
Yup, i wish talking about issues like this would be more common here rather than "what if we accidentally create a better world", and other really populistic views of what's happening.
Well it's more of tragedy of the commons situation than a game of chicken.
How many times do you hear someone say "why should we change if CHINA is going to keep on polluting the air?"
I just counter with, "who's the leaders of the world? Is China the world leader and we can't doing anything until they do it first?"
I can see the point though. The CCP's philosophy is pretty "So what, we're winning. Cry about it lol."
A great example is how we used to do a lot of recycling stateside. They "economy of scale"d it to death and suddenly recycling stateside was no longer worth it and most of it closed up. Now recycled goods aren't worth much to them either so they're like "Oh well who cares." and it never recovered.
So if we compromise first, they'll likely want to take advantage. If they compromise, they're probably convinced (perhaps rightly so), that we'll do some underhanded thing to pull power from them instead.
It's utterly ridiculous seeing as we share a planet, but, yeah...
And even then, China is doing more than the US despite US being the superpower. China’s $890bn investment in clean-energy sectors is almost as large as total global investments in fossil fuel supply in 2023 – and similar to the GDP of Switzerland or Turkey. And republican's are going to let China take the lead of future efficiency through renewable energy all because they want to protect fossil fuel interests. The one good thing out of this is that at least China seem to be taking it seriously and are looking like they will transition even without the US taking the lead. And if they continue, then at least republicans can't keep saying "what about China". They've really put themselves into a corner with that rhetoric.
You're absolutely right. We are driven by evolutionary forces like all life on Earth and that's just part of being a living being.