It seems like a pretty direct relationship. Your link is comparing who caused the damage to who suffers it, but that's not the same as comparing who caused to who can prevent it. The people who can prevent it are the people still causing it. Notice that Brazil is the same color (red) in both versions of that map. (It's also a misleading comparison because the "harm" side is measuring change in GDP growth per capita, but GDP growth per capita is smaller in developed countries to begin with. And then comparing that per capita number with absolute rather than per capita CO2 emissions.)
> Countries that are vital to stopping climate change because they have huge green areas, ie Brasil, are actually being heavily impacted by climate change and now they are being climateblamed by the first world for chopping down their forests for productive activities. Well if the first world wants the forest to stay they ought to pay for it.
Should we make the same argument all around? Generating electricity is for productive activities. If the third world wants the US stop burning coal then they should pay for it? No. The country doing the bad thing should suffer the cost of stopping it.
> Well then protect it - tax your corporations for carbon emissions and buy up the amazon to protect it. Simple.
It's easier to get tariffs put on a foreign country than pass a tax on your own people. It would be nice if some other countries (China? Europe?) could put some tariffs on the US tied to some CO2 targets as well.
Yeah sure if there were tariffs all around. But the US hegemony was until recently sort of predicated on little tariffs and global trade. So your advocating a sort of ... I don’t even know how to describe it - reverse carbon mercantilism where everybody attacks each other’s carbon emissions through tariffs? That sounds like a good recepy for dramatically worsening international relations.
Because nobody is forcing them to do otherwise. So get somebody to.
> That sounds like a good recepy for dramatically worsening international relations.
Not really, because the point of the tariffs is to change behavior, not to actually collect the tariffs. You impose a high enough cost that reducing CO2 emissions is less expensive than paying the tariffs, so countries do that and then the tariffs don't get imposed because they're only imposed on countries that don't hit their targets.
Essentially the citizenship gets off free for not voting in more responsible politicians, and hey, “it’s the other countries fault for not forcing us to do it”. Hilarious.
It’s like any internal change is impossible i his mind - the only way anything can happen is if other countries tariff each other, and if other countries force the US’s hand... why isn’t he campaigning for change instead of sitting around and saying other, “more responsible” countries, need to force the US to take action?
That’s what I meant with “getting off free”. The population of the US, as far as I can tell, can choose some of their governments direction.
I still don’t understand how you would get this to work unless it was some sort of universal agreement. If it wasn’t such, what would stop it from descending into a carbon war, similar to the trade wars we have now with Trump, with cleaner countries aggressively adding tariffs to poorer, “dirtier” countries? It would just be a form of de-development for poor countries who can’t upgrade.
The main reason would be that the poorer countries as a rule aren't actually dirtier. Countries by CO2 per capita:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
It's basically a list sorted by approximately how rich they are, with rich oil states and big first world countries like the US, Canada and Australia at the top and impoverished African countries at the bottom.
Moreover, actual poor countries like Haiti and Kenya are irrelevant in this game. They're emitting negligible amounts now and for new infrastructure renewables are already cheaper.
This is all about the western countries and BRIC. None of them are "poor" to the extent that they can't be expected to pay the cost to clean up their own house. It's one thing to worry about countries like Ethiopia, but Russia is not that.
Meanwhile the nature of the shift away from carbon makes it an economic stimulus for non-oil exporting countries like India and China because it allows them to stop paying to import oil and instead pay for renewables that can be from domestic producers.
https://medium.com/@indica/climate-winners-and-losers-in-two...
Essentially countries that are causing climate are the industrialised world (obv.). Countries that are vital to stopping climate change because they have huge green areas, ie Brasil, are actually being heavily impacted by climate change and now they are being climateblamed by the first world for chopping down their forests for productive activities. Well if the first world wants the forest to stay they ought to pay for it. They also ought to drastically reduce their carbon emissions.
It’s funny how the same citizen of the same countries who are not doing their share of reducing emissions (US) are claiming in the same breath that Brasil should be punished for destroying a forest the West is desperate to protect. Well then protect it - tax your corporations for carbon emissions and buy up the amazon to protect it. Simple.