As for the climate hypocrisy argument, sorry to hurt your preconceived notions, but it's already proven that most of the waste that ends up dumped in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-environment-plas...
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Philippines-sl....
https://e360.yale.edu/features/plastic-waste-imports-recycli...
But go on, vacillate and down vote in your self righteousness.
Your argument comparing climate protestors and governments who ship garbage to developing countries is bunk, though. Ever thought about who those protestors are angry with?
An intelligent conversation can be had about failing democratic institutions in the west, the need to disincentive wasteful consumption, and (as happens already) what levels of support developed countries owe to developing countries to dissuade the latter from ramping up fossil fuels consumption.
But your finger wagging still doesn't make sense in the context of thinking India or the developing world is any better.
I never implied that India or China are doing any better (although India has taken massive strides which is usually ignored by the West). My gripe is with Western countries criticizing the global south for environmental neglect, when they don't do anything about it and simply ship away their problems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-africa-...
Stop being a parasite and return to India if you hate Europe that much. But no, no, you people seem to hate the places you run off to but don't want to return. Same with Russians enjoying the "decadent gay West" while claiming they hate it and supporting Putin. Same with Turks living on German welfare while loving Erdogan.
Put your money where your mouth is and go back to India. Then you can complain.
He is free to hate the West while living in it. He's not going to prison for it (unlike he would in the countries he likes, ironically). He's not getting deported from the West despite claiming to hate the West or anything.
But I am also free to call him out on it. I have the same freedom, no? Why would he have the freedom to insult me (and you, since you said "our western") but not us to insult him back?
He can call me a hypocrite for West not being perfect and not solving all the problems of the world, and I can call him hypocrite for hating the West and its values yet still living in here for want of luxury. Is it a useful conversation? Not really, honestly, but it is fair.
But more importantly, look up paradox of tolerance and philosophy following from it. You can tolerate a lot, but tolerating too much is suicidal, because the intolerant will eventually take over. This is a general principle - welcoming people in the West is fine, for example, welcoming people who hate the West and want to destroy it is not.
Absolutely anyone under any regime—British or Iranian—can say “then leave if you don't like it”.
Instead, his retort was to tell me to pack my bags and eff off.
"Stop being a parasite." Sure, I will. This is exactly the kind of attitude displayed by hoity-toity Europeans that has led me to this position. Curse on all the immigrants who actually struggled to create a life for themselves, which includes me and a number of my employees who also migrated (mostly from Eastern and Balkan Europe) in search of a better life in the West, by virtue of their talents and skills, while you import the best "doctors and engineers" from across the Med. You can tell my one of my Croatian employees to "stop being a parasite", even though he can't get a house to rent in his preferred locality by virtue of being from a Balkan country, in spite of earning 4x the median wage of the country. Yes, we're the parasites and cockroaches, and like any of those, we'll find a more inviting home (incidentally the US and Singapore are already being touted as options).
But you go on, you poor thing, and keep insulting us from your high and mighty "Europeanness". After all, it's only a few decades now till the end of twilight.
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I am not the original commenter, but let me add here my own observation. In the USA we have a lot of laws and regulations that are supposed to prevent industry from polluting the environment, exploiting child labor, unduly endangering their workforce, etc. You cannot produce a product to place on the shelves of Walmart if you violate these rules. I think most Americans support most of those regulations. But we do not impose those rules on companies from China or India.
This means that a product produced in the USA can cost significantly more than an identical product produced in India. Naturally, USA industry recognizes this and shifts their production out of the USA. You could characterize this as "ship your garbage to other poorer countries." That is, don't allow USA rivers to be polluted but make your money by polluting rivers outside the USA.
I don't suggest that the USA removes its prohibitions from USA industry. I suggest that they impose the same prohibitions on non-USA industry with respect to markets inside the USA. And by this I don't mean raise tariffs. I mean that if a company in Iowa is not allowed to put a product on the shelves at Walmart because their smokestack is too dirty, then a company in Qinghai should not be allowed to do so if their smokestack is too dirty by the same standard.
Oh my goodness, “brash talk”. We Westerners give out a whole laundry list of things that we do contary to our “proclaimed values” and then in the next paragraph say “anyway, if we don't get our act together the third-worlders might stop looking up to us and our values”.[1] It's farcical how arrogant that is.
[1] Mock quote.
Anyway, there is nothing good that came from the last NATO led interventions, did it? Which is part of the problem.
But report me if you want. I'm sure all of us on this site would get banned because we (“we” as in HN, lest you accuse me of misreading again) constantly disagree about how we interpret each other here.
How silly to try to talk about a handful of climate protestors who actually give a shit about the planet in the same breath you talk about garbage exports (citing... Nothing) and then using that to excuse China and India using rivers as their own garbage disposal.