Question about Global Warming advocates in US politics?

Question

I believe that there are still many questions that need to be answered as far as what the true cause of global warming is, and if it can be prevented. However, I have noticed that many American politicians, usually on the democratic side, are strong advocates of global warming and pass legislation to reduce the amount of carbon emissions in American industry.

However, this comes at a price - a great price in the increase of production costs inside America, resulting in many jobs being outsourced to places like India and China, developing nations which have little to no environmental restrictions on production.

With that in mind, this leads up to my question of why are politicans focusing so much on America reducing its carbon emissions in industry, while they are letting other countries with many more people and much worse environmental practices do what they please to destroy the environment while allowing them to take jobs from other places around the world?

I think that my point is, why are these politicians not going after countries like India and China first, then worrying about the problems here in America which are not nearly as significant? If they are only worried about preserving the world and environment, wouldn't it make more sense to go after the greater threat first?

It is like making sure that your children and spouse never leave lights on or the water running or throw away recyclables, while watching your neighbor burn huge heaps of trash in his backyard every week without saying or doing anything about it. Yes, it is easier to control your own house first, but if the point is to prevent the world from becoming inhabitable in the somewhat near future, would it not be smart to go after the greater threat to it first?

It's one thing to admit it and do nothing about it (China, India dumping waste into rivers, oceans), and it's another to have safe environmental practices in the first place (America) even if parts of the government do not officially recognize it, which should be the way it is since it is a very controversial issue in science. There is very little sample data we are looking at.

The best example I can give is, imagine a noisy sinuisodal wave, with a period of 10 seconds. Now imagine that you are given a random section of that wave, but only of a range of 250 nanoseconds. That is the proportional amount of time that we are looking at with weather data - 100 years in 4 billion years of data. You can see why it is so difficult to say, either way, whether or not we are viewing a natural or an unnatural change - the slop of the data points that close together, with that small of a range, could just be a noisy section of the sinusoid and does not mean it is going to project out.

Max Marie, I don't understand your point - that is simple economics - businesses will move where production costs are lowest. If Nike didn't move its production lines to China, some other shoe company would have, and sold their sneakers for even less, gaining the greatest market share and allowing them to reinvest into advertising (signing big stars to multi-million dollar contracts). And that is just one example, you can project this anywhere. The point is, if one person/company doesn't take advantage of low production costs elsewhere, they will be put out of business by a company that DOES.

If you expect all companies to play the moral role, you're not living in the real world. Or you're suggesting socialism, which is a whole other mess of an issue that I'm not going to divulge in here.

Hah - so long as America represents the largest market in the world, other nations will cater to the country whether everyone burns their trash in their backyards or recycles everything the use - they don't care!

As far as greenhouse emmissions per capita, there are several things I have an issue with there. For one, America is obviously one of the most well off countries in the world, resulting in more people having access to technology that produces greenhouse emmissions (cars, air conditioners, etc.), while there are millions in countries like China and India who could never afford such things, which is why they don't add to greenhouse emmissions. I get the feeling that some people look at those figures and think "Hey, they must be more "aware" in those countries." Hardly.

And also, the vast majority of carbon emmissions in America comes from motor vehicles. Why not focus on reducing those emmissions instead of in factories, which produce much less, and create lost jobs?

"Engineer" what you're saying about Hurricane Katrina is ridiculous. What proof is there that global warming caused the hurricane to be more powerful? We have been keeping track of hurricanes in that area for less than a few hundred years - for all we know, the most powerful hurricanes in that area occured thousands of years ago. We have no idea!

Even if warmer waters are creating more violent storms, it may be nothing we can control. For instance, the temperature in Mars has increased over the past 30 years - is this due to global warming on Mars? Are Martians there creating greenhouse gases? Of course not. It's a different atmosphere with different effects, and it just goes to show that there are natural climate changes everywhere, and it doesn't always have to do with inhabitants of the planet causing it.

I must say, it is scary how misguided and closed minded some people here are. Already linking hurricanes to human induced global warming, wow.

Thank you Alphastream, for actually answering my question in an intelligent and unbiased way. That makes sense - other developing countries need to consume lots of cheap energy and consequently produce lots of carbon emmissions. So they are going to use every reason they can to NOT reduce the amount of emmissions they are producing, in order to develop at a more rapid pace.

It seems like America can do little about this on a diplomatic scale, and almost as if this is whole Global Warming issue has been fabricated by enemies of America in order to limit its economic growth. Not a bad strategic move at all.

Answer 1

America was, until just this year, the #1 carbon emitter and energy user in the world. China is now tying and surpassing the United States.

Per capita, America is still the king when it comes to contribution to the global warming problem.

For these and similar reasons, American politicians realize they must focus on America's own contribution.

Politically, America would have (and does have) trouble stepping onto on the world stage to ask other countries to limit their carbon output and energy consumption without addressing America's own use. Additionally, developing nations such as China and India argue they should be allowed to do what the US has done and consume energy to become a fully developed nation. European countries argue the US must take concerted action before global agreements can be accepted by all nations.

It is also worth considering that our recent actions on Kyoto (not signing) and our politicians' refusal to set meaningful targets for car efficiency/pollution and overall carbon targets makes us less credible in mandating global action by other countries.

I agree with you that other countries must do more. A global response is needed. However, America must do its part, and bears (given political reality) the responsibility both for setting meaningful targets at home and for negotiating a carbon agreement with developing nations that feel entitled to American levels of pollution.

Answer 2

I understand what you're saying but you have to ask yourself - what right does one country have to interfere with the economics and politics of any other country. Whilst total emissions from China and India are increasing the amount each person produces is tiny compared to the US. China ranks 99th globally on a per capita scale, I can't recall exactly where India is - it's 130 something (a search for 'greenhouse gas emissions per capita' should turn up the resutls).

To put it into context - one in 20 of the worlds population lives in the US but it produces 25% of global emissions - 5 times the worldwide average, 2000 times the amount of the least polluting countries.

On another issue. Outside the US the world has already embraced green technology in a big way and countries that are producing environmentally sound products are gaining large sectors of the global market at the expense of the US. This is perhaps best illustrated by the car industry, giants like GM and Ford have seen global sales plummet because they've chosen not to produce environmentally friendly vehciles whereas those manufacturers that have gone green - Honda, Toyota, Citroen etc are seeing huge rises in sales.

America is in danger of being left behind in the world, it is rapidly becomeing the only major nation on earth that is failing to adopt green technology on a large scale (China and India are both doing more than the US). As a result it's becoming more and more insular and I fear that unless policies change in the near future a situation will develop where America is locked out of many of the global markets.

Answer 3

I would like to make several points.

First point: The United States is actually way behind in addressing global warming if you compare us to Europeans, the Japanese, or even China and India. We basically have been refusing to even admit that there is a problem for the last six years.

Second point: Global warming is a very firmly grounded problem from a scientific point of view. I know you don't believe that, but it is far better established than your question admits.

Third point: The United States stands to suffer massively from the climate changes that global warming is bringing. In fact we all read have. Hurricane Katrina was significantly more powerful than it would otherwise have been because of global warming. As a result a major American city has been devastated and approximately 200,000 Americans have been displaced from their homes for more than two years as a result. The South East United States remains highly threatened by global warming strengthened hurricanes. That threat will only be heightened by rising ocean levels. North coastal Alaskans are also suffering under the effects of global warming due to loss of permafrost and ice flow melting. These two impacts are just two of many that we are already experiencing.

Fourth point: Consider who is responsible for where we find ourselves. The United States has been heavily industrialized for about 100 years now and is the single largest contributor of greenhouse gases to the environment. That is expected to change this year as China becomes a larger total emitter. Even so, Americans are responsible for ten times the emissions per person as compared to the Chinese. But the fact remains that Europe and the United States are responsible for the vast majority of human released greenhouse gases that are currently in the atmosphere, and we are on a per person basis by far the largest current emitters. Therefore we properly have the primary responsibility for doing something about it.

Fifth point: US politicians are obviously responsible for governing the US. They have the most control over US policy and therefore quite properly should focus their global warming mitigation efforts on the US. Given US inaction on this issue that is all the more true.

Sixth point: Global warming is a global problem and will require a global solution. If the world's largest emitter (the US) refuses to do anything to curb emissions - the very unfortunate situation that has ruled for the last 6 years - then why would other lesser emitters, who didn't create the problem in the first place, namely India and China, want to do anything about it? The US needs to do its part to have any moral authority to "go after" other countries.

Seventh point: Your presumption that addressing global warming must cause great disruption and damage to the US economy is highly questionable, and I think likely to be wrong. Certainly there will be some industries greatly harmed, The oil and coal producers come to mind. But there will also be brand new enormous industries created, solar and wind power for instance. Other industries such as auto makers will not suffer at all, unless they refuse to address the issue. Toyota is growing while GM is shrinking for a reason. Toyota innovated and committed to hybrids early, which people now want. GM tried to milk the SUV beyond where the market wanted them and is suffering. Not because of addressing global warming but because of stupid marketing choices.

Rebuttal:
Our knowledge of the link between storm strength and frequency and global warming is developing. While there is no way to prove that global warming either caused or strengthened Katrina the point that global warming does increase the hurricane threat to the South East is highly likely as is the likelihood that global warming caused Katrina to be stronger than it would otherwise have been.
Don't take my opinion as definitive, read the following for an atmospheric scientists opinion: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/09/hurricanes-and-global-warming/

I find it humorous that you accuse me of close mindedness. If indeed you are as open minded as you represent your self to be read up on the Real Climate site.

Answer 4

Well recently in the news about a couple months I should say that their was a meeting between countries and India and China refused to cut down on their emissions because they pointed their fingers at the already industrial countries the ones who have "made global warming such a problem" to solve it our selves. Because those countries don't have or want to spend the money. As for us as a country it's cheaper for them to do our work than for us to do it, money is the way of the world right?

Answer 5

It is a feel good issue. The cute Polar Bears are dying, and the icebergs are melting....etc. It is a cheap shot, and easy way to get votes. Back in the '90's there were articles of
fearing of the ice age one example on the following link from Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,980050,00.html

Also, If we are really worried about global warming, we should add the concern of dirty bombs, or worse, nuclear detonation in the U.S., and ask our self's how much impact on global warming does the possibility of detonation may have an effect? This is the immediate concern, of course if we want to continue to live on this beautiful planet as healthy as we can, so we all can contribute by changing our habits. This is especially true for those whom cry globing warming issues, and then drives monster gas guzzlers. They don't want to change their style of living, but "You should".

Answer 6

When Nike makes sneakers in China for $3 a pair then sells them here for $100, the problem isn't because the cost to make them here is too much. The problem is company greed.

The world's largest pork farm has explanded to over seas production, not because he needed to. Not because he needed the money, but because he saw a chance to line his already fat pockets.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters