Is it actually? The results of the recent census paint a picture of a country which, in the long run, might become the largest economy in the world, but will struggle to maintain growth - more so than the west.
It's ironic that you raise China in your comparison, because the chinese people have been massive beneficiaries of global capitalism.
Cool. Now, do something useful and suggest a better option. Utopia doesn't exist.
Does this account for the goods exported from China to the US? These should be added to the emissions caused by the US. The west exported much of their environmental problems to poorer nations, including China.
In reality China is just "greener" (in CO2 emission) than the USA if you measure more reasonable metrics like CO2 emission per capita.
No they shouldn't, China sells products in the global market. The emissions belong to them, along with the price they charge for the product.
> The west exported much of their environmental problems to poorer nations, including China.
Well, globalist corporations and politicians exported their environmental problems, I agree. The solution is not to give dirty polluting countries a free pass, it is to account for the externalities in tariffs.
Well, emissions caused by burning oil would belong to Saudi Arabia, then. I believe the ultimate consumer of a product bears responsibility for its emissions. Without a consumer, the product would not have been made.
That's a nice way to pass the buck from the executives who actually make the decisions
But Saudi should not get a free pass either, and should be made to pay for its profiteering from carbon pollution along with all other people, corporations, and countries accordingly.
And your last sentence is not some kind of proof of your belief. Without a dirty cheap producer then a cleaner producer who has paid for the environmental externalities they created might have made the product.
> China is a dirty old dinosaur of an economy, it has double the carbon emissions of the US while only generating 2/3 of the GDP! Horrific carbon intensity. Not to mention all the other environmental destruction it causes. The worker exploitation, the corruption, the human rights abuses, the bullying of its neighbors.
The U.S. produces roughly double the emissions of China per capita. Ignoring population is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. As for bullying neighbours, the U.S. lost both those legs after a long string of funding terrorists, assassinations, and aggressive wars.
> It's modernization strategy consists of copying from the west, and little else innovative, certainly not for its size and wealth. A single American company started less than 20 years ago has already surpassed its entire space program, which sees it losing control of its rockets in orbit and crashing them all over the globe.
Wikipedia has a quote from Alexander Hamilton:
> American founding father and first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton advocated rewarding those bringing "improvements and secrets of extraordinary value" into the United States. This was instrumental in making the United States a haven for industrial spies.
Industrial espionage was how the U.S. caught up to the UK and Europe. All developing countries will try to copy what's already been discovered because it gets you to the point where you can actually start competing on new technology much more quickly than trying to reinvent the wheel.
It is neither misinformative or ironic, and it's clearly talking about today and in future.
> The U.S. produces roughly double the emissions of China per capita.
I'm not talking about per capita. Per capita is about the worst metric to use for this, because 1. the environment doesn't care about per capita, it cares about total emissions, and 2. acting like lower per-capita is better creates perverse incentives to increase population and suppress quality of life. Carbon intensity is the relevant metric.
> Ignoring population is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.
Rubbish. I'm talking about facts that have no relationship to population.
> As for bullying neighbours, the U.S. lost both those legs after a long string of funding terrorists, assassinations, and aggressive wars.
That doesn't address what I wrote I'm afraid. I never said "China does this and USA does not".
> Wikipedia has a quote from Alexander Hamilton:
Also irrelevant. America (and almost all the world) had slaves. That doesn't stop me from saying any nation that uses slave labor will never be a leading country and will always be looked down upon, at least until [the use of slave labor] is dismantled.
It's very nifty. As long as all the vices are conveniently offshore in the places that people already don't really think or care about (or buried deep enough in the underbelly of your society, where it has the same effect), you can extol only the virtues and continue to reject any useful change.
I'm starting to think that from a global lens the economic system doesn't even matter - none could really have mitigated the unbridled greed combined with the population explosion of humanity in the 20th century. Now most of us are stuck relying on the poverty and deprivation of others to support the vaunted quality of life of the 21st; food, clothes, etc can only be so cheap when somebody is willing (or even forced) to take pennies to produce them.
It would be lovely to say this was a new chance, but since Chiquita and the other banana companies had local farmers killed by local militia for their land in the 70-80ies the whole thing has been rotten to its core, and probably even before that.
The prison labour of America is just crazy, and it’s only a thing because a very small elite makes a profit of it.