Actually that argument was only ever used to make the miners - a very powerful group in Poland - vote for whichever political party was in charge at the moment.
The coal industry overall is not a source of growth, but a liability, costing the taxpayers around €2bln annually.
A looming energy crisis and increasing costs of emissions, finally made the current government give in, put their cronies where they wanted them and approve a lot of new offshore wind investments + create a subsidy program for solar power to the tune of €230mln.
I talked with some people from Silesia and even the miners see the writing on the wall - currently 20% of the coal used in Poland is imported, so miners as a group don't have as much leverage as they used to.
If we follow that line of thought, we will always end up at the following conundrum: the planet cannot support the "affluent Western" lifestyle -- think typical Bay Area HN-er -- for all 7 billion humans (as far as I remember, I don't have the sources for that).
Who is going to draw the golden ticket?
I agree that Bolsonaro is an opportunist (like many politicians), and he spews a lot of abominable statements. Unfortunately, his views align with a large section of Brazilian society. A society that was, from the beginning, built on layers upon layers of opportunism, manorialism and slavery. A society that cannot condemn its slave trade past, nor its many dictatorships.
Bottom line -- yes, I think you are in position to judge us.
We can borrow against our future cash flows, there is plenty of underutilized capacity that could be used to transform the world to carbon neutrality.
But so far we have not made this choice, because our power structure is too short sighted. Why? Well, naturally there are true ignorants, some selfish folks manipulating the former group, and so we have ugly inefficient compromises.
There's nothing stopping us from using a lot more GHG-neutral energy. (Eg. nuclear, wind, solar.) We can then use the energy to power whatever processes we want (vertical farms are a lot more efficient than open fields and greenhouses, plus you can put them right next to population centers; beyond meat and impossible foods will be in no time better than the real thing; also if we really want we can simply put pastures under domes to capture the methane, we can put these pastures underground with artificial lights).
Look at how much unemployment there is around the world and how little inflation. This means we are nowhere near total economic output capacity. We can probably double our output if we want, especially if we start doing things on a big scale. (Big scale decarbonization, and eventual carbon capture to offset the remaining GHG emissions.)
Okay, so energy, food, transportation (full EV vehicles), what's next? Shelter. Prefab buildings. Arcologies preferably, because that leaves a lot of green space. After all instead of having an endless sprawl of 2-3 storey buildings it'd be quite better to have parks and ~100 storey ones. And affluent folks like high rises very much.
Standardization of processes drives down cost and increases quality. Yet, naturally, market players don't like that, because with fixed demanded quantity this simply shrinks the market, so they like to sell bespoke solution. (From power plants to housing.) But we are paying a lot more because we are not going big enough. (This applies veeery severely to transportation and other public works [eg power plants again]: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/07/22/new-report-on-... )
Furthermore, current UN/WHO predictions about the peak population is around 11-12 billion people, but most (I mean almost 99%) of the growth will happen in developing countries, in cities, and in particular in Africa. And we can make cities a lot more efficient than they are now.
See also: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/07/29...
So all in all, currently what stands in the way of providing an affluent Western lifestyle to everyone is global coordination toward cooperation instead of a zero-sum competition. (Every country wants to have strategic reserves of food, fuel, knowhow and so on. Which leads to every country inventing their own shitty stuff - see public works above, and protecting those incumbent interests, see subsidies of oil industry and for agriculture.)
I hope this starts to answer your question. If not, I'd like to know why. Thanks!
Brazil already have a rich and sustainable wood industry for decades. Extraction mostly in the southeast, in states like Espirito Santo, south of Bahia, Parana. Mostly eucalyptus and pinus. It is a 70-billion industry that is still growing, and is sustainable.
The extraction from Amazon happens on old trees in a non-sustainable way. Mostly trees affected by CITES, and probably exported illegally from Brazil.
This is not something that will change or economy in a scalable way. This will not generate jobs, and will be a compromise, because those trees take decades to grow.
There are laws in place and all we have to do is follow them, and the industry will keep up.
We just have a president that desperately wants to lax all regulations to appeal to his base, and that includes even stuff like traffic regulation.
So, yes, you are in a position to judge Brazil and Brazilians over this. We are not some small country full of poor people, but apparently we're in a fast track to become one. :(
The environmental impact of industrialization needs to be built into the cost of goods. Capitalism can solve many of these problems, but right now pollution practically has no associated cost to the end price, which is why we use the cheapest materials that cannot be recycled.
America needs to change dramatically before we can make substantial progress here; we can be the world leader in this issue. But I guess I’m not that optimistic considering the politics right now.
I agree with you that capitalism is the origin of many of these problems, though. Doesn’t mean it can’t evolve.
a government official, elected or otherwise, will most likely side with the isolationist rhetoric, if only for votes next election.
The new questionably-elected president keep the appearance of defending a brave isolation that only he is capable of (Even though the coup in brazil was caused exactly because the previous government, corrupt or otherwise, was denying american companies access to new oil reserves already), when in reality he is eating in trump's hand. He just appointed his son, who until before the election was working as a fast food chef in florida, as the brazil ambassador in the usa.
So, yes, a country should be independent and look out for the people. But in this case it is only propaganda/fake news/disinformation. whatever political campaigns are called today.
Just want to point out to non-Brazilian HNers that this view is as fringe as UFO believers or hardcore Breitbart supporters. No one serious in the country is making these claims that sound more like outdated communism than real facts.
To name one counterpoint: the US is oil sufficient thanks to shale / fracking so it doesn't care about Brazilian "pre-salt" oil which is really hard to extract....
Which is not to say that US interest in oil as the reason for the events at issue is a reasonable, evidence-supported belief.
I watched a short documentary about this issue recently on Youtube, and the journalists went to some really remote area and spoke with the mayor of town there. The guy was big supporter of Bolsonaro and he said something that is actually very true. He said US and Europe have no right to tell Brazil what to do with it's natural resources, because they have already used theirs to industrialise and develop and now want to prevent Brazil from doing so.
And as unpleasant as it sounds he is right. People in the western world can wipe their buts with toilet paper made from virgin pulp, but Brazil and other poor countries should hold should preserve the lungs of the planet.