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Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by stanislavb on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @05:44AM (#27589677)
Just a quick note, that this was a surprising move by China which leads the World Heritage Committee as of now. A kind of reprisal that Australia had the guts to say NO to the negative Chinese influence in Australia. In the end of the day, Oz is paying dearly for its non-conformity with China.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by boomboomsubban on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:37AM (#27589992)
> China which leads the World Heritage Committee as of now

What are you basing this on? The World Heritage Sites are run by UNESCO, and China is not on the current Executive board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO#Executive_Board

edit China is on the World Heritage Committee, but so is Australia with every member having an equal ballot.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by talaketu on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:27AM (#27589923)
UNESCO currently has "significant concern" for the World Heritage of the Great Barrier Reef - and this classification has been held for years now, well before any current tensions with China.

Do not be distracted by nationalism - this natural asset is being immeasurably degraded in our lifetime.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by stanislavb on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @05:49AM (#27589707)
What is more, Australia does not exist in vacuum and China is responsible for 28% of global emissions (compared to AU's less than 1%). Of course, the stats per capita are different, yet, the problem can't be solved unless the big players decrease their emissions - China, US, India & Russia.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by bellyfullofbac on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @05:57AM (#27589755)
"Blame China" seems too simplistic, how much of their CO2 is because the rest of the world outsourced their production to China. So your shiny smartphone, or your kids' Nerf guns, how much CO2 did their production cost, and to which nation's balance is it added to?

If China started charging their factories to offset CO2, Apple and Nerf (or their suppliers) would just find the next country willing to host their polluting factories for a bit less money.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by rocknor on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:53AM (#27590094)
Yup, consumption CO2 per capita is what matters:

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by roenxi on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @07:06AM (#27590177)
That is literally the opposite of what matters. Pollution only matters in absolute terms.

The only reason per capita measures even enter the conversation is because we're all looking for a low pollution path to high energy consumption.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by rocknor on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @07:24AM (#27590297)
We're talking about different things here. I said per capita matters because it helps us blame the correct people, and we certainly need to do that because there are >1B people in rich western countries that have an unfairly high CO2 footprint.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by roenxi on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @07:57AM (#27590568)
It doesn't help you blame the right people. The majority of the problem is caused by people who are not them.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by rocknor on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @08:12AM (#27590670)
Bullshit.

Can clearly see your bias here. Why are you ignoring the emissions by the rich 1B people, they are the ones that can actually do something about it (reduce consumption and invest in research) thanks to their relatively luxurious lives. The others are just trying to survive - for them, consequences of climate change are still much better than the current state of poverty.

The rest of the world has a very low carbon footprint per person, just that the population is much higher. How do you propose reducing the population, birth rates have already been dropping drastically across the globe and human population will peak at ~10B. Do you want to kill them off? Do you feel your life is more important than theirs?

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by roenxi on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @08:39AM (#27590892)
I am very biased. But in this case, if the 1 billion "rich people" drop their emissions down to below average then the majority of the problem will still be here. And now there will be 1 billion less wealthy people for no particular net gain.

> The rest of the world has a very low carbon footprint per person, just that the population is much higher. How do you propose reducing the population, birth rates have already been dropping drastically across the globe and human population will peak at ~10B. Do you want to kill them off? Do you feel your life is more important than theirs?

I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children. If poor people had 0.5 children on average, then poverty would be eradicated quite quickly. An ever increasing population isn't necessary to have a comfortable life. And we could all emit more pollution per capita while living in a cleaner world.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by rocknor on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @09:26AM (#27591295)
> if the 1 billion "rich people" drop their emissions down to below average then the majority of the problem will still be here.

True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.

> there will be 1 billion less wealthy people

Just wrong. There are lots of ways to reduce emissions without any effect in wealth. Eating less meat is one example.

> for no particular net gain.

Very wrong, there are huge gains: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...

> I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children.

I knew you would say this, I was just waiting for it. Global birth rates have been in freefall for decades now, it's tragic that people don't know about it. You'd assume that supposedly "better" education in western countries would make people more aware, but western governments are only concerned with maintaining global western hegemony which requires falsely accusing the rest of the world and keeping their citizens ignorant. Also, you can't force people to have less children, that's inhumane. I suggest you go through the following links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by roenxi on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @05:27AM (#27602517)
> True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.

Are you suggesting the majority of a problem is smaller than half?

Eating less meat is pretty stupid as strategies go, it doesn't tackle the root cause (which is too many people).

I'm not clear on what your point is about birth rates trend down in wealthy countries, but that is actually a well known fact. Quite an encouraging one.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by stanislavb on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:19AM (#27589882)
I agree, all countries should stop outsourcing to China.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by quietbritishjim on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:24AM (#27589907)
That doesn't appear to be the parent comment's point at all. In fact they made almost exactly the opposite point: if we stopped outsourcing things to China then it wouldn't have an effect on overall carbon emissions.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by seaman1921 on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @05:54AM (#27589742)
well don't forget China also holds 19% of the worlds population compared to 0.33% in Australia.

Most of the "big players" you mention are similar so it is not just the "big players" who need to decrease emissions. You should see the per-capita numbers for fair comparision.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by seaman1921 on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @05:57AM (#27589759)
Here are the per-capita numbers btw : India 1.91 United States 15.52 China 7.38 Australia 17.10

Please stop blaming India and China without much research.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by sumedh on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:52AM (#27590084)
> Please stop blaming India and China without much research.

When sea levels rise and poor Indians who live near the sea are affected, is the Indian govt going to help them or will the rich countries need to step in like they did during Covid?

You can talk about per capita all you want but in the end who is going to support the affected Indians?

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by seaman1921 on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @04:51PM (#27610180)
So your point is that since (you think) rich countries are going to help India, they are allowed to have higher emissions ?

>in the end who is going to support the affected Indians? nobody, but that is besides the point

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by Smithalicious on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:21AM (#27589895)
Is it fair to extrapolate like that? Does "reasonable" pollution scale linearly with population, or can we expect large countries to be more efficient because of economies of scale?

Genuinely curious

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by wongarsu on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @07:09AM (#27590199)
Most things don't have significant economies of scale beyond a fairly small country (maybe the size of England). The 3 biggest polluters are electricity&heat, agriculture and transport.

- Electricity and heat benefit from a bigger electricity network (e.g. to get more reliable solar and wind), but electrical grids don't necessarily follow borders. The US has about 3 grids, continental Europe has a grid spanning 24 countries. (in fact, there's almost no grids that span exactly one country [1])

- Agriculture doesn't hugely benefit from economies of scale beyond the regional level

- Transport benefits mostly from rail networks, which aren't really bound to borders

You can make a case that population density helps (most obvious in the case of transport, but it is really helpful for lots of things), and being an island makes electricity harder. But in the case of Australia, it has to be noted that the negative effect on electricity from being an island is somewhat lessened by their vast area, and the negative effect of low population density on transport emissions is somewhat lessened by most Australians actually living in pretty high density.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_gri...

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by kergonath on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:42AM (#27590015)
If you compare the US to any European country you’ll see that really is not the case.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by KptMarchewa on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:42AM (#27590016)
Does that include fact that Australia is the biggest net exporter of coal, or do the get free pass for that?
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by fruityrudy on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:55AM (#27590110)
Net exports contribute 3% global CO2 emissions.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by KptMarchewa on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @12:11PM (#27606159)
A lot for country with 0.3% of global population.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by randomperson_24 on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:03AM (#27589794)
Exactly!
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by fruityrudy on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:57AM (#27590119)
Unfortunately per capita doesn’t matter regarding effects of climate change. It’s the absolute numbers.

The marginal effect of removing Australia’s emissions is like a rounding error in the climate equation.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by La1n on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @07:01AM (#27590141)
> It’s the absolute numbers.

Yes, for the world, and not per country. Otherwise it'd be "better" for the world if larger countries just split into many smaller ones.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by nicoburns on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:32AM (#27589957)
Some further numbers: EU avg. 7.0 UK 5.3
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by edflsafoiewq on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:13AM (#27589843)
Reefs don't care about per capita numbers, nor "fair" comparisons.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by foobar33333 on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:31AM (#27589950)
Ok so if we slice China in half with a border, we have halved their total emissions. If we add another line we can quarter their emissions. I'm sure the reefs feel much better about accounting based on totals.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by TheSpiceIsLife on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @08:09AM (#27590641)
Or, put, another way, anthropogenic global warming, and ocean acidification, is caused by the totality of human activity.

All AGW divided by total human population equals one.

So, naturally, The Great Barrier Reef is very concerned with totals.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by duud on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @11:33AM (#27592970)
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by rocknor on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:46AM (#27590047)
True. So western countries that have extremely high per capita numbers need to reduce their emissions by consuming less and supporting renewable tech research.

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by rocknor on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @06:52AM (#27590085)
Why would you include India and not the EU? They are obviously a bigger player as a bloc in terms of emissions.
Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by jeeeb on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @07:13AM (#27590220)
I’ve seen this spin a lot in the Australian media but it seems like a distraction.

The Great Barrier Reef is endangered and will likely disappear for the most part.

And yes our own management of it has been problematic in many ways.

Re:Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing by ggm on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @05:51AM (#27589722)
This is bullshit. The actual decision will be an open vote.

Writing this down to China is stupid.