Do you think global warming/climate change is real? Do you care about the environment?

submitted by 8thmonitor from self.whatever

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[–]bife_de_lomo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I think it's fairly clear that climate change is happening, and that humans are accelerating it, but the problem does feel a little overwhelming to solve without reducing global consumption.

The West gets a lot of bad press for their emissions, and that's somewhat fair when the US is responsible for 25% of all historic carbon emissions. But China is the real problem here, they have emitted as much carbon in 8 years as the UK has emitted ever so there seems no point fiddling around reducing little bits here and there.

That's not to mention all the microplastics, diesel fumes, coal particulates that are also destroying the environment.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

but the problem does feel a little overwhelming to solve without reducing global consumption.

We aren't ever going to reduce consumption or pollutants to a sustainable level with 8 billion humans on the planet. Population greatly changes the acceptable level of per capita impact, but nobody likes talking about that half of the equation

But China is the real problem here,

Perfect example, their per capita carbon emissions are lower than Americans, much lower actually, the problem is there are 1.3 billion of them

[–]bife_de_lomo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yeah, I'm with you on that one too. I didn't necessarily specify reducing per-capita consumption or total global consumption, but clearly both play a part and population numbers are part of it.

Which is why it seems like an insurmountable problem at the moment.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Haha, yeah sorry, didn't mean to come off as accusatory, just got a little too excited to discuss these issues in a context that isn't arguing about whether or not climate change is a hoax