Quote:
Originally Posted by jakobnev
Why would reducing the population not be appealing?
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If the population is declining due to war, disease, or hunger, it's not good for obvious reasons. If the population is declining by choice, like in Japan, it poses challenges such as an aging workforce, overburdened retirement/entitlement services, and crowded assisted living and medical facilities.
Social services were conceived with unlimited population growth in mind, and that's the only way it works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
Would you blame us for polluting 50% LESS than you do?
More than half of our energy bill consists of taxes.
We spend about the same amount of money on energy as you do, but we pollute only half - because we get only half the carbon for that money.
We don't spend more, we burn less. I have not seen a single F150 this year, but over a 1000 Teslas, easy.
Tax money flows to the government to spend on roads, welfare and reducing the deficit. And subsidies for green projects.
You're not pulling your weight. Not like we do.
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I don't like to blame anyone for what they're doing, but rather discuss the rationality behind those actions, and consider them in context with everything else.
For instance, the US gives 3x more away in percentage of income than the UK. When you don't have the mindset that the government needs to solve everyone's problems, you take the suffering of others as a personal responsibility.
As I've said before, the proper way to reduce CO2 emissions is to very slowly increase taxes on those activities which produce it. Before that though, problems have to be precisely defined, and actions to address those problems have to consider the cost to implement, the expected benefit, and the opportunity cost. This is entry level economics here; something which politicians have no interest or expertise in.
Global warming doesn't even make the top 25 list of most pressing concerns for the wellbeing of humanity. In other words, money spent in this area is wasted when considering the greater good that could be done by doing things like improving access to contraceptives, or fighting diseases such as TB and malaria.
As I've said above, to which nobody has argued against, the 2 biggest contributors to CO2 is population and wealth. At least contraceptives addresses the population front. We might be on track to solve the wealth problem if communist ideas continue to gain popularity with people like Bernie gaining support.