We won't be abandoning the tropics. The people who live there will be. And, based on current prevailing attitudes of temperate democracies, those fleeing the uninhabitable zones will be told to simply pound sand. It will be genocide by omission.
regul
joined 1 year ago
The democracy I live under now keeps ignoring or delaying action on climate change in favor of things that are less important than the comfortable survival of our species. If it's trying to convince me it's worth saving it's doing a bad job.
My ideological concerns are secondary to my ecological concerns.
China's solar panel industry isn't a monopoly, much like their auto industry.
The internal competition is part of the reason both are so cheap.
I'm asking you what you think would be different if China was the largest global superpower?
If this is some great fear we're all supposed to have to the point that we'll forestall making progress on decarbonizing then it should be easy to clearly articulate what we're afraid of happening.
What's there to defend? We need more solar panels. The cheaper they are the better.
See above where I said I do not give a shit about how many jobs are preserved on my rapidly warming planet.
The Opium Wars involved armed conflict on Chinese soil. That's the sort of thing nukes deter.
If you'll notice he also increased tariffs on solar panels at the same time.
Did worse than that to, like, China in the 19th c. But I thought you were talking about like France and Spain.
they’d treat us like we (the British empire) treated lesser foreign powers
How's that? Disadvantageous trade agreements? You already have those.
What would "direct power" look like? China invades Canada, a country defended by US nukes, with the PLA? There's a reason Iran and North Korea are still around despite open animus from the US.
My point is largely that these nebulous fears of "Chinese hegemony" are just that--nebulous. Asking people to drill down into what they're really afraid of either reveals the status quo or impossible scenarios.
Yeah but I'm still not clear on what the fear is exactly.
Like how do you envision it changing your life having China "in charge" vs the US?
The average American commutes 20.5 miles each way to work 🙃