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allworknoplay | 5 years ago

"For northern countries"

It's absolutely monstrous to think in terms of what's ok just for the global north, here. We've done the vast majority of this polluting, and the global south is, in fact, currently, undergoing catastrophic change because of it.

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Retric|5 years ago

That’s a fair point, however climate change has a much larger impact on temperatures at the poles than the equator. You still get rising sea levels and a PH change in the ocean, but the impacts aren’t evenly distributed. https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warmingpoles.html

Another example is tropical diseases can move to colder areas as their carriers migrate north/south. However, there isn’t a hotter place to for insects to migrate to the equator from.

allworknoplay|5 years ago

Yes exactly -- so to measure just by what happens to us in the north -- particularly when we're causing the problems -- is basically genocidal.

kaliszad|5 years ago

Actually, Europe isn't the low hanging fruit you are looking for. It is the US and China. The current output is much more than the history "head start" of Europe.

For the normal workers in European countries (who might be actually living on a tight budget too), the reality is, they cannot do much about any of this without taking considerable personal toll (so real and fast change mostly doesn't fly politically). They can in certain circumstances e.g. eliminate inefficient heating with coal or oil or maybe drive with a more efficient and less polluting car, which improves air quality in their areas and thus health. This is achievable currently with small incentives and we can also observe most of it happening in richer areas, where there is spare capital in families to invest in such things. All of this has its cost first and the benefit can be felt quite a bit later if at all.

Btw. it will change exactly nothing painting this as a conflict of the global wealthy north against the global poor south (implied). It is not very constructive and quite naive. Don't get me wrong, I am all for healthy environment for everybody as can be seen in my comments elsewhere.