Pope's environmental encyclical: Climate Change a product of human selfishness

[Monoriu]

Unless you can get the Chinese and Indians to care, it doesn't really matter if the right or left in the US cares or not 

[derspiess]

People on the left are drooling over this thing, but they're conveniently ignoring the abortion part.

And if people on the right continue to ignore climate change we are not going to have to worry about whether a fetus has the right to life for much longer.

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

Good luck trying to sleep tonight

[The Minsky Moment]

[hese emissions-reduction frameworks, it is safe to say, are simply insufficient. By themselves, they only offer a small chance of preventing the earth from becoming mostly uninhabitable
– for humans at least — over the next few centuries.

?
I don't think that kind of exaggeration is productive.

[crazy canuck]

Unless you can get the Chinese and Indians to care, it doesn't really matter if the right or left in the US cares or not 

luckily the Chinese are beginning to invest heavily in alternative forms of energy.  And the US is a major player.  Of course it matters what they do.

[crazy canuck]

People on the left are drooling over this thing, but they're conveniently ignoring the abortion part.

And if people on the right continue to ignore climate change we are not going to have to worry about whether a fetus has the right to life for much longer.

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

Good luck trying to sleep tonight

But seriously, it is getting worse.

[The Minsky Moment]

India is also going big into solar, for a lot of reasons it is a good fit for them.

[derspiess]

I read the other day the US and Europe are slapping big tariffs on Chinese solar panels.  That doesn't seem to make much sense.

[Ideologue]

Lots of vegetarians in India, which also helps.

In regards Malthus' point, it's less that the poor becoming rich, than the numbers. A middle class life is totally sustainable if only we'd die back more quickly.  It's happening, but the whole world should've gone with a One Child policy by the time it became clear that 1)Earth can barely sustain our present numbers at our current on-average low rate of consumption and 2)that human labor was going to be capable of being massively replaced by automation. I.e., 1980. Unfortunately, there was freedom.

I also have some ideas about how to use sex-selective abortion to achieve a proper gender balance, around 3 to 1 female to male, but that's a different, hotter program.

[derspiess]

So there's still a population bomb??

[Admiral Yi]

I would like to remind everyone of monger's elegantly simple, and emminently fair idea to impose a worldwide tax on carbon emissions.

If you're rich and consume a lot of power (like Al Gore), you can afford to pay more tax.  If you're poor and don't consume much, you won't pay much.  If the poor get richer, they will consume more and their ability to pay the tax will increase.

[Monoriu]

I would like to remind everyone of monger's elegantly simple, and emminently fair idea to impose a worldwide tax on carbon emissions.

If you're rich and consume a lot of power (like Al Gore), you can afford to pay more tax.  If you're poor and don't consume much, you won't pay much.  If the poor get richer, they will consume more and their ability to pay the tax will increase.

I am not going to pay 

[Admiral Yi]

I am not going to pay 

What does the HK electricity utility do when one of its customers doesn't pay his bills?

[Monoriu]

I am not going to pay 

What does the HK electricity utility do when one of its customers doesn't pay his bills?

Why should the HK electricity companies help enforce such a tax? 

[Admiral Yi]

Why should the HK electricity companies help enforce such a tax? 

Presumably because HK (or HK's boss) signed a treaty that required it to.

[Monoriu]

Why should the HK electricity companies help enforce such a tax? 

Presumably because HK (or HK's boss) signed a treaty that required it to.

I have a hard time imagining that China or Hong Kong will agree to such a treaty.  The Chinese invest in alternative forms of energy to combat smog, not global warming.  Only a very small number of fringe environmentalists care.