Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

You've missed the whole point of the carbon payment system.

The whole point is that it isn't realistic to assume that it's possible to quit oil overnight, buy it's very possible to mitigate its effect by converting some externalities to a concrete price tag and thus creating incentives to abandon the use of at least some fossil fuels and to compensate those who contribute to invert the tendency.




But the "externalities" got shifted from indonesia to somewhere else.

How about this, if indonesia told norway to go to hell, cut down their forests, got rich and then in 20 years paid Laos $1 billion to spare their forests. Would we celebrate indonesia as great environmentalists? Of course not. We'd call them hypocrites, especially when the deforestation just moved to cambodia instead.

At the end of the day, this exercise is just wealthy european neocolonialists trying to feel better about themselves as they keep a underdeveloped country poor. While norway gets to destroy their and other countries resources to enrich itself, they use that ill gotten wealth to dupe poor countries to stay poor.

How about this, lets shift wealth instead. Tax all of europe X amount of money and shift that wealth to indonesia and ASEAN to achieve an equal living standard? This way, indonesia and ASEAN won't touch their forests or resources and their living standard will be equal to that of europe? Now that would make a real difference.

Of course it would mean europeans living standard would have to decline, but europeans (especially norwegians) are such environment loving saints right? They are willing to sacrifice right? Or are they greedy like the rest of us and want others to sacrifice while they themselves enjoy the good life?

Or how about this, we give norway $1 billion to shut down their oil industry? Do you think the norwegians would agree to that? Of course not.


>Tax all of europe X amount of money and shift that wealth to indonesia and ASEAN to achieve an equal living standard?

You're literally the most evil person I have ever seen on the internet. High IQ Europeans, who have secular values, who have the greatest respect for human rights, who invest a lot in their children, and who already suffer under an excessive regulatory/tax burden, do not owe the rest of the world anything.


We've banned this account. Obviously, if you've read the guidelines, you can't comment on HN like this.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


I think you are misreading what I wrote. Obviously I'm not advocating for all of europe to be tax and the wealth shifted. It was an example to highlight my point of Europe minding its own business and Indonesia minding its own business. Norway shouldn't get to tell Indonesia what to do with its own resources and vice versa. Hope that clarified any misunderstanding.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: