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Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 23 May 2018, 03:10:27

I understand the theory, in fact I took an undergraduate minor in Economics. But understand that there are now too many people and simply not enough stuff. We are bumping against practical limits almost everywhere. It bends and warps classical economics in wierd and wonderfully obscure ways. Cheap energy was a wonderful panacea that fixed many difficulties, and now that energy will basicly get more expensive forevermore, things have to change. Expectations have to change in particular.

A little forethought on your part can and will avoid the need to consume excess energy. Get in the habit of planning everything days in advance.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 23 May 2018, 07:34:37

dohboi wrote:"they will then consume as the richest 1 billion now."

That is an assumption that we are unlikely to ever live to test, but merely an assumption.

I don't presume to know exactly what is in the heart of every last one of my fellow humans on the planet, not to know exactly how they would respond to every conceivable circumstance.

Those who think they are, in fact, privy to such wondrous omniscience are free, of course, to make whatever claims the choose. :-D

(Who is it that is claiming some sort of superiority again??? :) )


See now you are doing what you always do when pressed.

First you get sarcastic.

Then you evade.

You are right, I’m making an assumption. That all humans are pretty much equal and similar in capability and wants.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 23 May 2018, 07:57:23

dohboi wrote:
It is highly unlikely that anything will cause the most powerful people on the planet (and yes, Ibon, they are not restricted to one country...I don't think I ever said they were, and I certainly never intended to imply it) to either give up their wealth/power or to significanly reduce their lion's share of the annihilation of the living planet and the systems that support it.



Here is why I used the word ad naseum Dohboi. It is something you yourself are recognizing from your comment here.

To what purpose, this late in the game, do we waste our time pointing out the intractable imbalances, in this case severe disparity of wealth, when there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that we can do about it. Why blame rich countries when the socio economics in poorer countries are under corrupt systems by oligarchs that perpetuate an even greater disparity than you find existing in richer countries. And where is the trend heading? In the USA anyway we are rapidly joining the ranks of the third world hallowing out the middle class.

More cynical indeed is the realization that this trend line perhaps is not a bad thing for the ecological stresses on our planet.

What does a strong middle class do anyway but indulge in crass consumption. Better let inequities constrain their discretionary spending. Restricting the wealthy to just 1% and not spreading around the buying power of junk to billions is probably not a bad thing.

We need to socialize the vast majority of humans to consume less. There are two choices, the noble one of educating them to be conscious consumers because our planet is imperiled is a joke at this point. So the other option is to increase the disparity of wealth so you can choke off the economic strength of the poor and horde the vast majority of wealth in the hands of a few.

I mentioned previously what my daughter told me after her first year of studies in Manila Quite astutely she commented that the poor are just too tired trying to feed themselves to have any energy left over for social change and the rich, who have the time and resources, are not interested because they are the beneficiaries of the inequities.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 23 May 2018, 08:22:45

You know, reality sucks but reality is the only game in town. In times of human overshoot what goes into decline along with resources is social justice for all 7 or 8 or 9 billion. The heart hardens.

There is a place somewhere down the slope of correction where a humanistic renaissance will re awaken, but this is not the moment for that.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 23 May 2018, 09:01:46

Nicely said Ibon.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 23 May 2018, 09:08:12

I am presenting facts--that the small percentage of top consumers are doing the majority of the consuming and so the majority of the destruction--and am being met with all sorts of wailing and gnashing of teeth, specifically rationalizations and excuses based on suppositions.

I would like to ask you generally thoughtful and reflective people to take a moment to think and to self reflect about why it is that you find this enormous need to twist yourself and your 'arguments' into pretzels when presented by these simple incontrovertible facts.

It is as if we are in '30's Chicago and someone points out to the ruling gangster mobs that they are doing an inordinate share of the killing by machine gun in the city. But the mobsters immediately start jumping up and down, first pointing to some random other case where a non-mobster killed someone with a machine gun, then hollering that if they all stopped or left, then all the rest of Chicago would take up their habit of machine gun murder, so it's really better for them to proceed with their more moderate mayhem...(and various other sorts of handwaving...I'm sure you can extend the analogy to the other attempts at rationalization if you put your minds to it! :) )

It kind of beggars the imagination, and yes, sometimes I don't find it worth even directly addressing various absurd claims.

But I would also like to point out that, just as with '30's mobsters, it is of course not just the people who happen to make up the top economic (or mobster...same thing, really :) ) echelons of global society, but also the systems that get and keep them there.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 23 May 2018, 09:51:24

dohboi wrote:I am presenting facts--that the small percentage of top consumers are doing the majority of the consuming and so the majority of the destruction--and am being met with all sorts of wailing and gnashing of teeth, specifically rationalizations and excuses based on suppositions.

I would like to ask you generally thoughtful and reflective people to take a moment to think and to self reflect about why it is that you find this enormous need to twist yourself and your 'arguments' into pretzels when presented by these simple incontrovertible facts.

It is as if we are in '30's Chicago and someone points out to the ruling gangster mobs that they are doing an inordinate share of the killing by machine gun in the city. But the mobsters immediately start jumping up and down, first pointing to some random other case where a non-mobster killed someone with a machine gun, then hollering that if they all stopped or left, then all the rest of Chicago would take up their habit of machine gun murder, so it's really better for them to proceed with their more moderate mayhem...(and various other sorts of handwaving...I'm sure you can extend the analogy to the other attempts at rationalization if you put your minds to it! :) )

It kind of beggars the imagination, and yes, sometimes I don't find it worth even directly addressing various absurd claims.

But I would also like to point out that, just as with '30's mobsters, it is of course not just the people who happen to make up the top economic (or mobster...same thing, really :) ) echelons of global society, but also the systems that get and keep them there.


Dohboi, it is because we are privileged. And not feeling guilty about it. And not wanting to change. We are the KUDZU APE.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 23 May 2018, 11:35:07

Yes. Not that Kudzu Apes are behaving in any way that is not completely natural. Not that chimps or gorillas or bonobos or baboons would behave any differently than Kudzu Apes, given the smarts to have technology and to access FF's to burn for comforts and extra food and the luxury of reproduction, to have that comforting feeling of being surrounded by your own ape troop.

Those other apes of course never bother to question instinctive behavior, they just DO what comes natural.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Wed 23 May 2018, 11:55:53

dohboi wrote:I am presenting facts--that the small percentage of top consumers are doing the majority of the consuming and so the majority of the destruction--and am being met with all sorts of wailing and gnashing of teeth, specifically rationalizations and excuses based on suppositions.

"The rich" are not responsible for the "poor" countries breeding being frequently out of control for quite a few decades, even as their food supplies are often woefully inadequate. In fact, "The Rich" countries like the US have done a lot to help in terms of food exports and technology exports to improve food production over time.

For example, as a child in middle school, I remember watching a documentary series discussing the implications for the coming 21st century based on policies and trends from the 60's. I was particularly stunned by the fact that the US had helped Mexico increase its crop production by about 100% in the previous decade, but Mexico's high polulation growth had essentially wiped those gains out. ("So what do they do the NEXT decade and the one after that?", I remember wondering.

So do "the rich" consume far more than average? Yes, but on balance they earn far more than average, and pay FAR more taxes than average. And of course, rich countries like the US tend to have a lot of government and private aid and charity activity helping "the poor" as well. The rich countries also tend to have very low population growth, so they're not contributing much to the growing population problem.

Things could be better of course, but laying the entire blame on the plight of "the poor" on the rich is a common game various people play -- but it's not at all accurate, given the big picture.

And of course, now I'll be flamed for not following the party line, by looking at more than one aspect of the overall problem.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 23 May 2018, 13:36:44

You will not be flamed by ME, for plain talking about the facts of life.

But I recognize where dohboi is coming from. The liberal/academic world of the 20th century, based on the "divinely inspired" model of humanity, which is a philosophy that exists in an unbroken line back to the Ancient Greeks. It is a rich heritage and a much-embroidered and thoroughly explored universe that we call a "classical education". Academia developed carefull curriculae to encourage the "correct thinking" of young minds, in an efficient manner, and a popularity contest for the basic academic credential, in the form of a doctoral dissertation. Those that deviated from the canon were thus expelled from the group by their would-be peers, less they contaminate the young minds being indoctrinated.

The first crack in this self-reinforcing, seperate-from-normal-people world of academia nuts were the writings of Darwin, physical evolution of myriad interrelated species gave rise to both physical and cultural Anthropology, which in fact are so different that they should be considered seperate sciences, one based in Paleontology/Biology and one in the "Behavioral Sciences".

But to such classical academic minds, the thoughts that follow the understanding of Man's primate nature are intolerable. The facts that we ARE apes and BEHAVE like apes, and that many carefully-constructed concepts such as the entirely erroneous delusions of Marx/Engels are demonstrated to be nonsense, however much cherished by their admirers, produce much discomfort and are both consciously and unconsciously rejected.

FWIW, I do not doubt that whatever group of apes inherits or acquires control of Earth's precious and limited resources, will use that control to dominate and suppress the others, and to reproduce until surrounded by other apes who smell like relatives, other troop members, extended family groups. Which is what the 1% are doing now. Just as that fortunate 10% are doing in the suburbs, or in the cities. Just as those apes that I have described as "academia nuts" have defended their turf with their own weapons which are peer approval and formal academic credentials, so that they control the campuses that are their own territories.

It's just how primates behave. Here on Earth, the planet of the apes.
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby dohboi » Fri 25 May 2018, 00:35:25

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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby Ibon » Fri 25 May 2018, 07:44:24

We will decline wallowing in our indolence. That else would you have expected?
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 25 May 2018, 08:25:17

The assertion of the title of this topic is inassailable. On the other hand to downplay the prodigious negative impact of our enormous population is not helpful. Our technologies and numbers are both denigrating our habitat and future prospects
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Re: Richest 10% Produce 50% of Carbon Emissions

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 25 May 2018, 10:45:33

When the government clamps down on human reproduction, hard enough to succeed, is when we are likely to have that final war.
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