By this logic, we should "forget" all the go green initiatives because China (and Africa) are building a "Green Wall" to stop their respective deserts from widening.
I say this is mainly about China because Africa has modified their green wall project and instead of planting billion trees from East coast to West coast, they are helping communities to thrive by planting trees and reviving land.
China is crazy in this sense, there is a thick patch of shrubs that now border the Gobi desert and mainland China. By 2030 it'll be the largest manmade plantation on Earth.
The trees planted in the Gobi in 2008 are already mostly dead because they couldn’t commit enough water resources to maintain the ones they carelessly selected. As a result, the Beijing dust storms that were gone since 2009 started coming back in 2015.
Whenever the Chinese government does something, don’t assume it will be sustainable by default.
It actually says as much in the article linked by grand parent, but I also remember reading about it a few years ago in china daily or globaltimes (probably the latter), so it has been brought up in the Chinese press as well. Anecdotally as well: I was living in Beijing during the entire time period and noticed the dust storms going away and then coming back.
Fun story: Beijing kids are all required to plant trees on school organized trips (which they must also pay to plant). So they go to places in the hinterland that are designated for tree planting, and plant their trees. After each school group leaves, the trees are promptly dug out so they can be planted by the next group of kids.
I remember reading a Caixin article that says the plant they use in the north to fight desertification actually causes massive allergy to the population that are traditionally pretty healthy.
It looked like a surprise for some posters here, yeah, they seem to didn’t know that the same has been happening in the West since as early as the late 1700s-early 1800s and I’d say it’s still happening. The West is not being criticized as much as it should today for repeating the same mistake it has been doing again and again for almost two centuries now.
Later edit: This forest which got knocked out during a recent wind-storm in the Italian Dolomites [1] looks like being an "artificial" one, at least judging by how the remaining trees all look the same and are almost geometrically positioned. The article does indeed say that the forest was "centuries-old" but I think that only better underlines what I was saying, that the West has been repeating the same and same mistake (i.e. "dumb", non-thought out reforestation) for centuries now. It's too bad that with the recent climate-related changes our tampering with the ecosystem is really shown for what it is: a really, really dumb and non-thought out action.
The Irish Times article is highly critical of the West doing the same today. What's the difference between that and the Yale 360 article linked further above?
Edit: In response to your edit.
Are you sure that isn't native woodland? I would expect the higher reaches of a mountain to be pine trees. The article mentions Stradivarius, violins are made of spruce amongst other woods.
Plus those forests are obviously somewhat sustainable, the Chinese plantings are dying within a few years.
Hard to tell 100% without being present on site but that's my guess, yeah. I've very rarely seen "natural" forests being completely wiped out like this as a result of strong winds, the worst that can happen is some older trees being knocked down here and there, but, as I said, I've not yet seen "natural" forests being completely knocked down as a result of one wind-storm.
I also suspect those were planted forests because you cannot use that wood as raw material for Venice's Arsenal for centuries past without planting something in return. I suspect the planting continued even after the Arsenal itself and wood-shipping in general were no longer a thing.
I doubt theres a forest in Europe that hasn't been touched by man.
Venice would have been very selective about the wood it would have cut for ships etc, you can't just cut any old wood. It needs to be knot free, be straight, or have just the right curvature. They weren't clear felling vast swathes, then replanting. I'm not even sure the was conscious planting at all.
The UN has a definition for "Intact Forest Landscapes". Little of those are left in Europe, the majority in Russia and Scandinavia. Western/Central Europe has only tiny slivers of any.
Artificial forests are bound to be less resilient than wild ones.
The lack of biodiversity is a major concern, since we often take shortcuts by planting cuttings, which are genetic clones, or by using an initial pool that isn't sufficiently diverse.
An artificial forest is better than no forest, off course, but wild, ancient forests are more precious, since they are living DNA libraries.
There is some but its extremely rare. In Germany you for example have the Hambacher Forst, where parts are as old as 700 years. Its scale is however lacking
I've often wondered if those programs would eventually lead to widespread allergies developing among the population due to the rapid increase in a single kind of pollen, like Japanese hay fever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay_fever_in_Japan
If all you really want to do is sequester the sand, why not deploy some large solar concentrators to roam the desert and fuse the sand into larger grains? It would obviously take a while, but you could have relatively unintelligent, solar powered drones just gliding over the sand and sticking it to itself. Bonus if you can figure out how to fuse the sand into bricks, or 3d print walls of fused sand.
News in 10-20 years: massive wildfires decimate Africa. It's pointless and dangerous to have more trees than the waterbed can support. California re-learns this lesson nearly every year.
Sure, but there was a lot more available water in the watershed then also. Agriculture in a lot of ways has been the biggest ecological disaster this planet has ever seen. Man has redirected and pushed water out of nearly every watershed on the planet vastly changing what biome a area can support. I say that fully aware of the benefits that Agriculture has allowed human society, I wouldn't change it if I could in the past but I deeply hope we figure out a way to co-exist with nature in a less destructive way.
We need to switch to just growing our plant food indoors, using hydroponics. It's much more efficient with water than outdoor irrigation, and can be done vertically so it doesn't take up so much land.
Yes, and they burned quite readily and frequently without harming humans. But humans have this peculiar aversion to dying in a fire, and they use tons of groundwater for themselves and for irrigation as well.
How is wildfire automatically a bigger threat with more trees? Is it because with more trees given the same quantity of water, the drier wood helps the fire spreads more quickly? Or perhaps the forest is more densely populated? But that doesn't increase the vulnerable area. Pardon my ignorance, I'd like to know more.
I don't think the article says anything about we should "forget" EVs because China does good busses. If anything it might inspire some more electric busses in the west.
From all the comments under your post I can totally be confident teraforming is an option if we ever need to get off the planet. /s (as in /sarcasm and /scared)
This points out a new opportunity. Why stop at China for electric busses (yes they are probably manufacturing them locally)?
Cities are seeming increasingly more able to be proactive than countries.
Encourage local cities to one by one electrify the bus network and this effect goes global. It’s obvious tangible action that citizens can demand and mayors can visibly deliver.
Game for those playing at home, do a search on what make of buses are used in your home city. Search for if that manufacturer is trialing electric buses. Interested to see what you find.
Here is the right framing of this article. It's a pity the title needs to troll tesla, Musk or EV haters/lovers to make it's (newsworthy) argument. The point of comparison is useful though: 33 cars = 1 bus.
I am actually going to email local polticians today. My back-of-the-envelope is that in in my city, converting the bus fleet is equal to converting 1/3 of the private vehicle fleet. They are spending a lot here on plans that don't have a tenth of that potential.
Ireland (where I live) has missed its emmissions target. We're already paying penalties and the current "plan" to get better fast is a huge (>40%) subsidy for €50k executive perk cars, on top of standard EV incentives. Using this article's bus/EV fuel savings ratio (33/1), you have about 33€20k = €660,000 per bus* in your "better than this terrible plan" budget.
From the comments, it seems that e-buses aren't at the "just buy some and done" point. But (like you imply), buses have all sorts of advantages over cars that make this a great target for meaningful short term improvement.
As you say, plans can be implemented by cities. Local politicians talking about private EVs is mostly cheap talk. They can't do much about it. Buses are a decision they make. Also, fuel cost savings are achieved rapidly as buses work full time. You're not paying now for fuel savings in 12 years. Charging infrastructure can be centralized. As specialized utlilitarian vehicles, buses can make all sorts of compromises. Some routes don't need fast buses. It seems downright rational.
Battery-electrics still have major issues with range; buses cannot last a full day on a single charge, and midday charging takes too long. And if it gets cold or the route has hills, you're completely out of luck. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/01/electric-bus-...
I use these on a regular basis, for urban environments, electric busses combined with overhead superchargers at the end-of-line terminals work really well.
Hills are the primary use case for electric buses already (electric has much better torque), and have been for a very long time. The only thing is now instead of using overhead lines, batteries can be used instead.
>Hills are the primary use case for electric buses already (electric has much better torque)
A typical fairly modern city bus is geared to top out at low highway speed. Having the maximum amount of acceleration is possible for a vehicle that is pulling in and out of traffic all day which is why they are geared so low. Buses will happily roast the tires from a stop (an impressive sight, I highly recommend) if not electronically prevented from doing so peak power is basically available as fast as the transmission can shift down a gear or two.
Acceleration in practice is primarily limited by the cargo's propensity to complain and secondarily by the coefficient of friction between the tires and the ground. Regardless of EV vs ICE these limitations are going to result in electronic controls that prevent the driver from getting an instant response when the hammer the throttle it
Maybe on a long, hill climb near top speed you'd run out of power but that's a peak power limitation issue and EVs will have it too. Commercial people movers are only ever lacking for power when they are intentionally spec'd out that way.
The "muh torque" circle jerk really isn't an advantage of EVs except when you're intentionally making a lopsided comparison (Model S vs Civic). Besides, as much as I'd love to see a bus twist and lift up a front tire leaving a stop I assure you the average person does not want to be subject to that kind of acceleration so both the EV bus and the ICE bus are going to get an electronic nanny between the go pedal and the power source.
Have you seen Seattle hills before? Yes, you can service them with diesel if you have to, but ride times suffer, and it’s a very crappy ride. San Francisco uses trolley buses for similar hill routes as well, as does almost every city with hills outside of the USA. This has been known well before EVs became a thing, since the 1940s at least. Since battery tech wasn’t good enough, they were powered by overhead lines instead.
You're completely ignoring the efficiency aspect. ICEs simply cannot compete with EVs when operating at low and variable speeds: the EV will get far better overall energy efficiency. Sure, you can get a lot of torque from a diesel engine by gearing it down, but you're just not going to get very good efficiency when it's constantly braking and accelerating at low speeds. And electric motors develop peak torque at stall; ICEs always have to use clutches or torque convertors to avoid a stall, and their peak torque is very high in the rev range, so you need an even bigger engine when operating at low speeds primarily.
There's only one deficiency with EVs compared to ICEs, and that's energy storage. On every other metric, they easily win.
The comparison of how much faster our electrified trolley busses here in hilly Seattle compared to traditional busses is pretty stark, the instant, linear torque is really hard to come close to equaling with a combustion engine.
eBikes with mid-drive motors like the BBSHD also have this kind of torque, it can be really fun to ride them due to that. With electric motors, you choose between torque and top RPMs based on how thick your wire is, the thicker the copper the more torque you'll see (and consequently, lower top speed).
A city bus (regardless of ICE vs EV) is limited in acceleration by what the manufacturer thinks people will tolerate (a city probably won't buy your bus if their limited trial results in people complaining about getting tossed around) so you get an electronic throttle with some fine tuning on top. Pretty much every modern vehicle has this. The EV manufacturer probably tunes their electronic nanny to give you more torque right away because "muh torque" is a selling point and they want the city reps taking a test ride on the bus to feel that.
LOLOLOL, the electric busses here in Seattle definitely do not have a torque limiter set to prevent throwing people back in the bus. There are many times I've boarded one and gotten thrown back on the walkway (its less of an issue on ICE busses, but still a problem).
Trolleybuses are great for hills because they are constantly drawing power from the grid. It’s why Seattle has committed to trolleybus expansion for its hilly network.
Regenerative braking is very straightforward, making hills a great place to use electric. A nice additional benefit of regenerative braking is stop-and-go driving, like buses do, is hell on brakes and efficiency. Regen allows improved efficiency while saving the brakes. And incidentally, my ears - buses and trucks with worn out brakes make terrible screeching noises which IMHO are among the most unpleasant components of city noise. Regen braking saves the brakes and mostly eliminates this problem.
It's not so much that electric buses are the problem as that BYD in particular is just a shitty bus maker.
Every transportation agency in the US that's purchased BYD vehicles has had major issues with the vehicles. Most agencies have cut short their orders, and a number of agencies cancelled them altogether. (LA's Metro system also experimented with BYD buses. During their short tenure in operation, the BYD buses were less reliable than buses that were over two decades old. The contract was suspended pending review.)
Milton Keynes has had electric buses since 2014, which top up their batteries via induction chargers at the end of each route throughout the day: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25621426
The opposite is occurring in places like Seattle. The overhead electric trolley lines are coming down as batteries become good enough to support electric buses without the PITA of going off line (electric was already needed for many routes in Seattle because of hills).
Electric also makes more sense in Seattle because 70% of its electrify comes from hydro.
> The opposite is occurring in places like Seattle. The overhead electric trolley lines are coming down as batteries become good enough to support electric buses without the PITA of going off line (electric was already needed for many routes in Seattle because of hills).
A good option (which is being implemented in Lyon) is IMC buses, battery-supplemented trolleys (or electric buses with pantographs): they can go off-grid for segments where the grid hasn't been built (not enough traffic or whatever) and it allows for spot-charging at bus stops.
Ya, the new first hill trolley is sort of like that already.
Seattle used to have a lot of dual electric diesel buses that would be diesel outside of the downtown bus tunnel and then catch onto overhead lines before entering the tunnel. However, this didn’t really work out very well (hooking up to overhead wires was error prone). They just use NG buses these days
What route has been de-eletrified? IIRC Seattle made a big push to invest in the overhead catenary system just a few years ago, as the neighborhoods that have overhead catenary wires were in a frenzy over the mere suggestion that they'd be retired.
The overhead lines do force King County Metro to avoid changing routes (a boon for local riders), and are 50% faster at getting the bus up to speed after a stop. Short of something wrecking the overhead lines on most of a route, I doubt they'll be retired soon.
Ya, I thought they were moving away from it, but it turns out they are improving overhead lines by combining it with battery tech to allow for better performance (less chance of unhooking at greater speeds using batteries to fill in gaps at intersections). See the new first hill street car: https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2015/05/04/first-hill-street-ca...
> Cities are seeming increasingly more able to be proactive than countries.
> Encourage local cities to one by one electrify the bus network and this effect goes global. It’s obvious tangible action that citizens can demand and mayors can visibly deliver.
Cool. I'm glad this idea has a name. I've often thought that higher level politics are really untouchable by the average person because: candidates tend to be chosen by large parties either through appointment or proxy voting, changes made made by the politician are hard to measure because they are often made in places where the voter doesn't reside, policy is determined by the party (and enforced by a "whip") meaning that voters are forced to vote for specific parties rather than the best candidate, etc, etc. Municipal level politics usually has far fewer roadblocks and is much more visible to the average person. Using that to leverage larger changes seems like a doable process.
Electric buses seem to be fairly common in UK city centres. I first saw one in London about 4 years ago - it was surreal when walking past a typical red double decker at a bus stop and it just glided away with the faintest whirr.
I’m all for buses and taxis turning electric to reduce the diesel fumes in cities.
Gliding away silently is often a hybrid. London does own electric buses, but mostly it has hybrids (and lots of conventional diesel buses).
If you were on the bus its engine probably started a minute later, it's still an improvement, and I assume that environmentally not spewing fumes at bus stops helps a little with local air quality, but it's not usually an electric bus.
Considering that most of a city bus's use is at low speed, constantly braking and accelerating from stops, the hybrid should be a huge improvement environmentally; it's the perfect use-case for a hybrid powertrain (where the ICE just runs at constant speed and charges the batteries, known as a serial hybrid vehicle).
Amsterdam also has a number of electric buses, though I'm not sure how many. I'm also glad to see lots of Teslas and Priuses as taxis. Clearly this is the low-hanging fruit for cutting back on fossil fuels: short range city traffic that's in constant use. It also improves the air quality in city centers.
It's too bad Toyota doesn't make battery-electric cars; they'd be the perfect car for a taxi. Teslas are expensive and not that reliable, but if Toyota decided they wanted to capture that market they should be able to dominate it with their reliability ratings.
Not all that surprising when you consider the utilization % of any typical bus versus car. Given a bus may be driving on at least 1 maybe two shifts, means it is driving around 12-16 hours typically per day. (50-75% utilization).
Most cars as personal vehicles(unless they are in a ride hailing service or taxis) will have a typical utilization closer to 2-8% of the time as they drive for maybe 1 or 2 hours a day.
I have similarly found many oil "demand models" not using "electric miles traveled" as a key metric and rather using something more simple like "# of vehicles replaced". Utilization is important, but often ignored or not thought about.
Now they need to get off coal as the source of much of that electricity. I’m not saying they won’t though... I’m pretty sure they are onboard with both cleaning up their environment, and limiting their CO2 emissions.
"The 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant shocked Chinese officials and made a strong impression on many Chinese citizens. A government survey in August 2017 found that only 40% of the public supported nuclear power development."
"The bigger problem is financial. Reactors built with extra safety features and more robust cooling systems to avoid a Fukushima-like disaster are expensive, while the costs of wind and solar power continue to plummet: they are now 20% cheaper than electricity from new nuclear plants in China, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moreover, high construction costs make nuclear a risky investment."
Not to mention solar and wind in the west, if only they the grid to get clean energy where it was needed (which they are working on; at least Lanzhou has been cleaned up a lot).
The US' main problem with nuclear waste is that they still don't have a place to stash it; waste is building up at the nuclear plants and it's becoming a huge risk.
Whereas China can just dig a storage facility in the desert or something; they can disregard locals' complaints easily thanks to being a totalitarian state. I mean so is the US but it's an ineffective one.
Modern reactors produce very little waste. It's a non issue, the technology is here and we can build them today, it just takes decades to recoup investment and no shareholder will consent to margins that slim.
What makes you confident they are onboard with limiting CO2 emissions when they are currently looking the other way at rising CFC emissions which are far more harmful.
They’ve done a ton of stuff to limit emissions, from flat out banning coal furnaces in some regions (somewhat prematurely) and halting all construction for future coal plants, investing in mass transit much more than any country on the planet, prioritizing nuclear energy, leading the world on solar, mandating all electric scooter car and bus fleets across the entire society. Chinese (yes, people are very outspoken and critical about environment even in censored media) and foreign press coverage on the sheer scope of environmental reform happening in China right now is well documented and prolific.
But it’s a big country, so change like this takes time to see the macro effects. You can see it all playing out on the ground if you go in person, but the air won’t totally clean up until power generation fully transitions - I’d give it a decade to be safe (but ask locals now and they’ll tell you it’s at least gotten better).
Meanwhile our president here in the USA is unraveling the EPA and defunding Dept of Energy, even as we’re #1 polluters of the world. I think we are in no position to talk on this one.
All it takes to find this is a little time and an open mind.
> so far, more than 66 billion trees have been planted
That’s...a hell of a lot of trees. The article mentions that a lot die without human intervention, which is pretty unfortunate. Makes you wonder if there’s a more surefire way to prevent deserts from expanding...if there is, it seems like China has the will to do it.
Well, at the start they'll die without human intervention, sure. But wait for 30yrs, let the land be revived and let nature take her course. I am pretty sure that we'll see lush green forest near the Gobi desert and the desert might also be pushed back.
I dislike the dictatorship in China but this effort is unparalleled.
Trees don’t make water come on it’s own. A lot of the planting is intrinsically unsustainable.
That is the problem with top down authoritarian directives, execution is lacking. Follow through is lacking as the government declares success after they sign the order and then forget about it after patting themselves on the back.
While this is true, forests do hold a lot of water. One of the problems with dry places is not so much that there is no water, but that the water is inconsistent and only available for a short period of time. Forests act like a sponge and hold water for long periods of time, which can literally transform ecosystems.
That said, I know literally nothing about the Gobi desert ecosystem and whether planting a forest will have the desired effect. Interestingly (to me at least), right at the time that the Edo period in Japan was starting, Japan had cut down most of its trees. One of the effects was that the runoff from mountains was much faster and carried less mineral content. This, in turn, reduced the ability for algae to grow in the shallow regions of the sea around Japan, leading to a very real possibility of mass starvation. Somehow somebody realised this and convinced the Shogun to put a moratorium on logging. Despite the really huge hardship this had on the people, it's likely to have saved Japan. By the 18th century Japan had developed fairly advanced silviculture. Some historians in Japan consider this to be a practical miracle given the very limited knowledge that people had about ecology in the Edo period.
I'm hoping that our cultures will enter a new period where we start to understand that this kinds of "ecological engineering" is necessary for the health of our societies. Whether or not the planting of trees in the Gobi desert is effective or not (I have no idea), the idea that we need to do these kinds of things is very promising and I hope that whatever successes and failures there are will be fed back into a system of refinement for the next try.
You have to do this very carefully. I’ve heard stories about farmers intentionally planting required trees they were given upside down because they thought they would do more harm than good to the soil.
It is interesting to consider the effect of authoritarian power systems and collective land ownership on that kind of initiative. Just after I posted my reply I started to wonder if the Japanese miracle would have succeeded if illegal wood usage didn't result in execution. As you say, social systems are complex and it's important to take that into consideration when implementing any large scale project.
Trees do make rain. Part of what trees do is take water from the ground and expire it from their leaves increasing humidity and thus making rain. This is not the same as making water, but it means a forest will get more rainfall than the desert it replaces.
Trees however require a certain amount of water to function. You can do better by planting grass which can survive better on less rain long term by going dormant. However eventually there isn't enough water for grass to grow either.
Of course everything depends on location. Different locations have different soils, rainfall, temperature... You cannot treat every location on earth as the same.
Pls provide proof. I've seen a list plant 8k trees across a state. I've seen anNgo plant bio diverse forest where I live. So I'd like to know the context that you are talking about
We are already seeing the Chinese air pollution go down in the data. It's still insanely high, but the peak was reached ~2015 (I think) and decreasing very slowly.
They actually reached a regime where more reduction can increase the pollution because some pollutants react destructively with each other (eg VOCs, O3, NOx).
I'll keep pointing out that everyone everywhere hates the strings that come attached to oil dependence. That is except for the US neocon establishment and the countries economically dependent on oil cartels. AKA Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
In ten years the world is going to look a lot different geopolitcially.
I see that they had a goal of 10% by volume[0], I'd really like to see the numbers behind how they'll get that, compared to where there are at now on that. I have my doubts on that number or on any serious execution, sounds dead on arrival:
"By 2020 China wants all gasoline sold in the country to contain 10% ethanol by volume, which is what the United States currently mandates with its Renewable Fuel Standard. Building an ethanol industry is a necessary first step to building the Chinese bioeconomy, but there's a long way to go. China currently produces about 800 million gallons per year (mgpy) of ethanol, with about 500 mgpy derived from corn. Based on expected gasoline demand of 45 billion to 50 billion gallons, to meet the 10% ethanol blending rules in 2020, the country would need between 4 billion and 5 billion gallons of ethanol per year.
It will be nearly impossible to site, build, and ramp up enough new production capacity to supply demand from domestic production alone by 2020. That's why many industry experts expect the Chinese government to turn to ethanol imports to fill the gap -- and only the American market has enough spare capacity to cash in on the opportunity."[1]
This is a very good way to think about the price of goods. When supply and demand are in relative equilibrium price remains stable and reflects the cost of production plus some margin for manufacturers. When you trim demand even slightly by a few percent - which EVs in their various forms will inevitably do - what happens to price? Where is the new demand for oil to compensate? Jet fuel?
I believe price per unit oil will decline until supply is withdrawn to stabilize at a lower value, which may or may not happen. The total market value for gasoline will shrink.
The price of oil is unrealistic, because it does not reflect the terrible damage to our planet. In other words, the current price can be so low because we are "borrowing" the planet from our children and grandchildren. We get cheap oil because they will not have a planet to live on.
If the price were to include a carbon tax, it would likely be at least ten times higher and we would very quickly get rid of our beloved gas guzzlers.
>If the price were to include a carbon tax, it would likely be at least ten times higher and we would very quickly get rid of our beloved gas guzzlers.
Wouldn't you expect a carbon tax to be similar in price to the cost to get the carbon back out of the air?
CO2 released per barrel of oil (when converted to various fuels and burned) appears to be around 300-450 kg [1][2], but we can round up to 500 kg to be conservative and make the math easier.
The cost to take it back out of the air appears to run between $30-$200/tonne depending on how you do it [3][4][5]. I think it's worth speculating that this cost is likely to drop precipitously as the demand and scale at which we need to do it increases, but we can very conservatively stick with $200/tonne for now.
Crude oil is at about $59/barrel today. $200 * 0.5 tonnes = $100. So with the most conservative estimates, it wouldn't quite triple the cost.
> Wouldn't you expect a carbon tax to be similar in price to the cost to get the carbon back out of the air?
If the goal of the tax is to fund carbon removal and if that removal can be done immediately after emission without any damage being done to the environment, then yes. Otherwise you'd want to factor in the damage done.
If someone injected you with snake venom and argued that they should only be fined the amount it costs you for antivenom without consideration of the damage to your body, you would not accept that.
The thing is, if you wait long enough, CO2 will be removed by the plant life anyway so removing it is "free". However if you reflect the price of the removal process which is as _fast_ as it is emitted to the consumer, someone gonna pay through the nose...
> if you wait long enough, CO2 will be removed by the plant life anyway so removing it is "free"
This is a very dangerous misconception and should not be spread around. It is like saying "I don't have to worry about my emissions, because someone else will clean them up for me". Do you have/support enough plant life to clean up your own emissions?
"Long enough" is unfortunately very long because a large part of the fossile CO2 we emit will remain in the atmosphere until it is sequestered back underground by geological processes. These take thousands of years.
>We get cheap oil because they will not have a planet to live on.
Yes they will. Hyperbole is unnecessary and harmful when the real projected outcomes are already bad enough.
>If the price were to include a carbon tax, it would likely be at least ten times higher and we would very quickly get rid of our beloved gas guzzlers.
10x is highly unlikely. At 450kg of CO2 per barrel and even $50/ton of CO2 offset costs that’s about $25 additional per barrel, which puts it at a lower cost than the 2007 era peaks.
As China uses less and there is softening price due to that, other consumers and industry will pick up the slack.
People will drive more, or buy bigger cars, or it fly more, etc. etc...
The price of Oil I think is going nowhere but up even as we deploy electric vehicles, because there are a lot of new people coming into the new economy and they want cars, they want to fly etc.
No need to build and maintain the infrastructure (rail and overhead power lines.)
The ability to navigate the road freely -- trolley buses often have trouble circumnavigating badly parked cars in their way, sometimes causing the driver to get out to reattach the "prongs" to the wires.
Also, trams are somewhat prone to "tram jams" caused by one faulty streetcar blocking the railway. And they simply cannot get around a badly parked car.
Other than the need to maintain rail + power lines, I think these issues are overblown. The badly parked car scenario sounds pretty horrendous in theory - one careless actor causes chaos for an entire city center! In my experience it simply doesn't happen - I think people just know how damaging it could be (and possibly how much trouble they would be in) that they pretty much have to be considerate and self-aware.
However I have seen trams broken down temporarily (a couple of times in the last 7 years of taking 2 trips daily) but these get resolved surprisingly quickly with minimal fuss. Additionally I've only seen a Trolley lose its connection a couple of times, and the resolution took about 1 minute.
This is of course heavily based on personal experience, if you have experience to the contrary I'd be curious where this is. A friend complained a bit about Trolleys in Wellington needing frequently reconnected, but I don't know how common that is or whether they just had some bad luck
>In my experience it simply doesn't happen - I think people just know how damaging it could be (and possibly how much trouble they would be in) that they pretty much have to be considerate and self-aware.
That's not really the why, at least not here. The shortcomings of trams (including derailing and the inability to maneuver past stuck or badly parked cars) are handled by a 24h emergency crew dedicated for just that. I think they move on average less than one car per day, but those missions are much more frequent during wintertime.
Still seems like a trolley bus at least could get out of such a bind with a very small battery that lasts like 3-5 minutes. It could then recharge said battery when it reconnects. That way it won't have to haul ten tons of flammable batteries everywhere it goes.
you way overestimate people - it happens fairly frequently in philadelphia that the trolleys are blocked by illegally parked cars. Cars also try to beat the trolleys at intersections and cause accidents all the time - which when the trolleys are old 50s/60s solid steel beasts - a modern car does not win that fight.
Buses can go where trams and trolleys can't. Buses are everywhere, even in cities that have trams and trolley buses. So it's important that they too go electric.
Trams are horribly, horribly expensive. You can spend hundreds of millions on a line which could be provided at a tenth of the price by a bus lane and some buses. And the bus lane is more flexible because you can use it as a spine for services branching off at either end.
It’s a clickbait title. More appropriate clickbait would be “the United States becomes the #1 producer of oil while China rushes to electric vehicles”, busses and cars:
That revision is still clickbait. The US being the #1 producer of oil doesn’t say anything about usage. Example: a country could simultaneously be a low user while being a huge producer - Norway.
The framing of the article is that oil companies need to be more concerned about the Chinese buses than about Tesla. It's a simple rhetorical device, not a statement that Tesla does not matter.
I've sometimes been concerned that headline writing is (metaphorically) subcontracted to buzzfeed everywhere, NYT, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, just about everywhere.
I would be very surprised if they dont have a clickbaity machine learning algorithm to optimize headlines for more clicks. That would be a very natural thing to do in this kind of business.
People talk about "clickbait" but it's not really new. On a website, or the pages of a paper newspaper, there is a bunch of stuff vying for readers' attention and the headline has always been a way of making stories seem interesting.
We need collective solutions, not individual displays of wealth and awareness like a 40k tesla you take from home to work with 3 empty seats. I saw elsewhere in the thread that 1 bus = 33 cars in terms of congestion savings. Projects like the hyperloop seem vain and childish in comparison. It would be trivial for tesla to design a bus and they already have the ear of LA city hall to dig a half assed tunnel. Musk could make a real name for himself if he helps to convert the second largest bus fleet in North America into EVs.
Why? Are poor people immune to the pollution emitted by a rich person's ICE vehicle? Even if we assume a fully fossil power generation grid, at least the inhabitants of the same city are not breathing as much crap, and that's a huge plus.
I see a lot of news of these "green" vehicles being used in China but few seem to be questioning where that electricity comes from. Coal power is still a massive thing in China.
Pollution in cities causes huge health issues. Displacing that pollution is a big priority.
Centralising electricity generation makes it easier to switch to renewables later on. Also, higher grid usage means more investment. (China is already 24% renewable, about twice the USA.)
No-one living in a city is going to question why they’re switching diesel buses to remotely coal generated electricity.
Then just imagine if shipping tankers became electrified. The world's 6 largest shipping tankers produce more CO2 than all the world's personal vehicles combined.
That’s not true. They produce more sulphur dioxide, a pollutant that cars don’t emit much of in general, and which the heavy fuel used by ships generates in abundance. Somehow the story morphed from “a few ships emit more of this specific pollutant than all cars” to “more pollution” to “more CO2.”
The entire worldwide shipping industry accounts for about 3% of humanity’s CO2 emissions.
Road transport includes all transportation on roads, which isn't passenger vehicles. Passenger vehicles are less than half of that and growth of the CO2 emissions from passenger vehicles is nearly flat year over year. The maritime shipping sector, on the other hand, is growing emissions output as much as 75% every 15 years.
> The entire worldwide shipping industry accounts for about 3% of humanity’s CO2 emissions.
To my knowledge personally owned vehicles account for a similar percentage of total CO2 output, so that number while small is a red herring. People tend to generate more CO2 per capita as a result of air conditioning than from the vehicles they drive.
It's quite believable that passenger cars also account for something the neighborhood of 3% of total CO2 emissions. My point was not to say that shipping is completely irrelevant, it's to point out that it is not so grossly overpowering as your original comment suggested. The idea that a handful of ships match the CO2 emissions of all cars is completely divorced from reality.
If you want to find the exact number that cars account for, I'm sure you can find it. Just don't use whatever source you got that initial CO2 claim from.
> which implies air conditioning uses the equivalent of 176 gallons of gas per year.
Yes, cars do produce more CO2 than air conditioning, but in the context of CO2 emissions, you can't just compare "equivalent of gas gallons".
First, not all electricity is generated from fossil fuels (63% in the US, much less e.g. in many parts of Europe).
Second, to produce 6000 kWh of electricity from fossil fuels, you have to burn much more than the theoritical amount, because the efficiency of conversion is much lower than 100% (although in cold climates you may use combined heat & electricity production).
In the end these are irrelevant details, as we must stop burning fossil fuels anyway. Every part of the chain is important, and the argument "but x produces even more CO2 than y, so I keep using y" is of course stupid.
Most days May through September experience an average high of actual temperature of around 120F each day with 100% sunshine. Its the heat index that brings it up to about 140F. You have to understand that during the summer here there is relatively lower humidity during peak sunlight which refracts less light before hitting the ground. The ground here is also highly reflective of heat, which is felt at least 5 to 6 feet off the ground (the height of most people).
Another way to look at (and there is a lot of data on this) is which nations produce the most CO2 per capita and then work backwards asking why that is.
That isn't accurate either. The country that outputs the highest CO2 per capita is Qatar. Qatar left OPEC within the last year because their oil extraction is so low. Qatar's primary hydrocarbon extraction is LNG (liquefied natural gas) which is a low CO2 emitter relative to oil refinement.
Also, most the countries here have a higher than average population density compared to the global average due to a small geographic footprint.
Trinidad & Tobago, Australia, and Turkmenistan are high in addition to Qatar. What they all have in common is they are high LNG exporters, which involves liquifaction trains. LNG liquifaction trains are extremely CO2 intensive, along with heavy oil refining (see Curacao, Aruba, et al per capita CO2)
This is false information that is commonly repeated. The ships produce more of a particular pollutant, sulfur dioxide (SO2), not CO2. Personal vehicles produce barely any SO2 (gasoline contains no sulfur, diesel contains a small amount) so it isn't surprising a few container ships, which burn sulfur-heavy bunker fuel, produce more.
I always want to think of sulfur in HFO are contributing to the total heating value because the stuff used to be 3% sulfur. Realistically it's probably 1%. Sulfur only has about 1/3 the energy content as HFO.
But they are phasing out high sulfur HFO in 2020 I think ships are restricted to 0.5% sulfur.
Afaik shipping tankers are very efficient; among the lowest CO2 per mile travelled per ton of cargo moved.
Trains are 185km/L per ton, and ships get about double that. The only more efficient method is bicycling.
Electrification won’t do much to help because batteries are so big and heavy you’re basically shipping batteries instead of cargo back and forth. There’s been recent advancement in adding sails though, that actually make non-trivial differences. [1]
Nobody sane would give civilians in a poorly regulated sector nuclear fuel and expect them to operate a generator safely.
It is even debatable if the US using nuclear power on their subs/warships is wise. It is great for natural disasters relief (mobile power plant) but terrifying if the US ever loses one.
It's worth noting that, as long as they don't explode (or get stolen), a lost nuclear warhead is pretty benign. They contain a relatively small amount (a few dozen pounds) of low-activity nuclear material and it all tends to stay together.
A reactor contains way more material, probably several tons at least. If it's been operating, it contains lots of nasty, highly-radioactive fission and decay products. Reactors also like to go all melty and sometimes (non-nuclear) explodey when they fail, although I suspect that's less of a factor when it's underwater.
Just for clarification its not anywhere near Miami (that is a small map graphic). It is right off the coast of Savannah, GA. There have been numerous books written about it and there is a wikipedia page about it.
If you must dump an operating nuclear reactor somewhere with no supervision, at least the deep ocean is a pretty good place to do it. I mean, far better not to do it at all, but it could be worse....
Nuclear power plants on land could be used to generate power for producing synthetic hydrocarbons, which would in turn be used for powering ships. But putting nuclear reactors on merchant ships is totally impractical for security reasons.
It's simply not true. It started out as a factoid, but got jumbled into nonsense by a game of telephone:
1. True: 16 of the world’s largest ships produce as much _sulfur_ pollution as all the world’s cars.[1]
2. False: "How 16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world", headline from Daily Mail.[2]
3. False: "world's 6 largest shipping tankers produce more CO2 than all the world's personal vehicles combined", from OP.
While SOx and NOx pollution is extremely bad, they're not as culpable in causing respiratory diseases and climate change, and that's why legislative action has been slow coming.
> Separate studies suggest that maritime carbon dioxide emissions are not only higher than previously thought, but could rise by as much as 75% in the next 15 to 20 years if world trade continues to grow and no action is taken. The figures from the oil giant BP, which owns 50 tankers, and researchers at the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Wessling, Germany reveal that annual emissions from shipping range between 600 and 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide, or up to 5% of the global total. This is nearly double Britain's total emissions and more than all African countries combined.[1]
According to the data it appears I am not completely wrong. The maritime transportation sector is of roughly equal CO2 contribution to the US passenger vehicle fleet in 2007. According to the trend indicated by The Guardian in the next 15-20 years (from a 12 year old article, which would be a few years from now) maritime transportation emissions could rise by 75% while the US passenger auto fleet emissions remain flat thereby indicating a slice of tankers contribute more CO2 emissions than passenger vehicles.
These sources weren't hard to find or read, so I am not sure why you think my statement is false.
Your statement was not that the maritime transportation sector is roughly equal to the US passenger vehicle fleet. Your statement was that "The world's 6 largest shipping tankers produce more CO2 than all the world's personal vehicles combined." Those two statements are several orders of magnitude apart, and the second one more than qualifies as "completely wrong."
I am visiting Tauranga for couple of days - a big port here in NZ. I can smell sulphur quite often around city. Reminds me my childhood when playing with chemicals.
Similarly I can smell NOx out of some modern diesels. Reminds me a jar of nitric acid I used to keep under my desk, until the lid rusted thru...
The problem is that you are assuming that what these ships are burning is [hydrocarbons] when it’s much more than just that. There are various impurities including sulphur, which lead to extremely dirty emissions such as SO2.
The OP is misinformed with regards to the “6 largest ships” claim and the “CO2” claim — as covered elsewhere in comments on this article.
With the amount of optimization that goes around the bunker industry and fueling shipping tankers, I’d would be extremely interesting to see how electrification plays into this. Right now you have such fun cases as a
Bunker company selling fuel cheaper than it bought it yet still making money through discrepencies in volume/weight measures, and by pumping gas or loading gravel into the fuel, and of cause you have such things like false headings on fuel tankers to drive down local prices prior to fueling, with headings then reverting.
A lot of thise optimizations are a sort of cool hyperoptimization that only make sense because of the scale of things. I wonder if electrification, likely through subsidies, would suddenly mean we’d see the tanker industry “weaponizing” weather models to predict which ports can provide cheap wind or solar energy. Or aggressively pushing the battery stacks because even a 0.01% margin is suddenly very attractive.
Not really. A TI-class supertanker has a length of 380m, breadth of 68m, for a surface area of less than 7 acres, and run on a 37,450 kW engine. (Wikipedia). Meanwhile, a 50 MW solar installation in Ohio takes 500 acres of space.(https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/anatomy-of-a-50...). You would need to find a way to increase the surface area by a factor of 10 without ruining the aerodynamics, or use wind power instead.
Using the same density as they achieved in an open field where land is cheap, they could cover 2% of their cost.
Using the latest solar tech in a space-conscious deployment I would assume you could probably 2x that at least. So we’re in the realm of 5% of energy cost.
Give the technology another 10 years and where would we be? Unfortunately panels are already astoundingly efficient going from about 15% in the 60s to 20-25% today. In the lab we can approach 50% so there’s probably one more doubling.
To cover 10% of the energy cost of moving that much cargo just from the sun is mind boggling to me.
It makes me wonder if a different ship design which would scale down to have more surface area per volume, driving the solar power factor up, could actually work economically.
Since the trend has just been bigger and bigger super-freighters this would be an interesting shift.
If a ship's in port, there is no need for using the on-ship engines at all. You could just connect it to the land based grid, which, optimally, uses renewables. Hamburg harbour has project to do this precisely, and it seems Cuxhaven has one too.
Excuse me for this tangent, but when it comes to environmental concerns, why do we still skirt around the largest elephant in the room?
Curbing population growth.
We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire":
X Murder
X Rape
X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving
X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death
X In some countries: Being with whom you love
So why are we resisting laws against "Making babies whenever you want" and not even discussing them without annoyed dismissals and instant shutdowns?
Is it because the people who shape the zeitgeist — First world countries — have yet to experience the horrors of rampant overpopulation?
People who vehemently argue against population control, ought to own up to the fact that we should then guarantee access to food, shelter and healthcare for every new human.
You shouldn't expound one human right only to continue to prevent everyone from many other rights.
Because population growth is expected to decline over the next century already, and because population is not really the problem anyway. We have the ability to improve the carrying capacity of the earth and we have done so repeatedly over time.
Dire predictions of the negative consequences of overpopulation, ever since Malthus, have turned out wrong. The population doomsayers didn't even anticipate the real problem we face today: climate change.
Climate change is not caused by overpopulation, but rather by the industrial output of developed countries. These countries, except for China, are not densely populated and have lower rates of population growth than the rest of the world because obtaining contraception is legal and convenient.
On top of that, regulating reproduction is a violation of the most basic human freedoms.
> We have the ability to improve the carrying capacity of the earth and we have done so repeatedly over time.
At the expense of causing massive climate change, it is worth noting. The era of our ability to "increase the world's carrying capacity" may be coming to an end.
I really, really hope I'm wrong and we're able to get Climate Change under control, but we are heading in the exact opposite direction right now.
Those are not only predictions, but existing examples. I invite you to visit the slums of developing/"third-world" countries, or even just see images/videos of them.
> regulating reproduction is a violating of the most basic human freedoms.
We regulate MANY things that are also basic human freedoms.
> They are not predictions. I invite you to visit the slums of developing/"third-world" countries, or even just see images/videos of them.
Slums are not caused by overpopulation. They are caused by poverty and lack of opportunity, often abetted by bad government policy. Tiny countries with small populations have slums.
There are entire cities, one after the other, that are like one big slum. You can see for yourself on Google Earth etc.
Many of their problems are caused by overcrowdedness, and there are few ways to fix that without stealing even more space from nature and other species.
As for poverty and lack of opportunity, what do you propose would fix that? Honest question, because this will lead to more problems that need to be pointed out.
"developed countries. These countries, except for China, are not densely populated"
Not all developed countries are densely populated, but many are. Netherland and South Korea rank among the most densely populated countries in the world.
'why are we resisting laws against "Making babies whenever you want"'
We already have a fairly effective way to curb population growth: education. Highly educated people tend to have less children than people with little or no education. In fact, education gives plenty of ROI in many areas, so we can tackle this and other issues by investing in better education without explicitly having to ban anything.
That said, I think some mandatory "how to raise kids" training could do a lot of people a lot of good.
It’s a pretty well documented observation that the birth rate in prosperous nations tends to level out without intervention. Additionally, prosperous nations are responsible for orders of magnitude more per capita carbon emissions than the “global south.”
Is your plan to depopulate the wealthy countries responsible for CO2 emissions who already have a replacement level birthrate?
Or is it to artificially prevent population growth and economic development in undeveloped countries? It would be morally unacceptable for the global north to extract wealth from the global south for 500 years, use the wealth to build highly industrialized economies, then prevent the rest of the world from catching up economically.
I completely agree with you. Firstly, it's inevitable that those in developing countries are going to aspire to western lifestyles and that corporations will seek to exploit these markets, thus any argument about the solution being mainly about changing the developed world is flawed. Secondly, we are told that those in the developing world will suffer most from climate change, and thus by not moderating fertility in the developing world we are actually by default causing more suffering. Unless that is, we let them all migrate to the developed world, where they will all adopt western lifestyles, and so we are back to the same problem. It's difficult to take the moral argument against controlling fertility in the developing world seriously (and not think ulterior motives are at play) when said argument falls apart under even a simple analysis. (Supposed) moralists apparently care little about either people or the planet.
Any attempt to discuss population control will be met with accusations of eugenics and genocide. So what you do instead is promote women’s rights, education about contraception and birth control, health care for children, immunisations, etc.
It turn out that education and empowerment of this kind (especially where you can show women that their children will survive and that everyone can get an education and a job) will naturally lead to lower fertility rates. Apparently women aren’t all hormone driven baby factories (who knew?) and given a voice in the matter will generally prefer fewer children (and more time to pursue life outside raising babies).
So if you support zero or negative population growth, you can do a lot worse than donating to Plan International and other charities specialising in education and support of women in developing nations.
You can empower people (especially women, a commonly oppressed class), save the world from overpopulation, uncover the next generation of genius-entrepreneur, and do this all without being labelled a villain.
Our unchecked population growth has already caused/contributed to the genocide of many species in the last 50 years alone – in just one person's lifetime!
That is not a excuse for imposing mandatory birth control or sterilisation, and will become less and less pertinent as we pass through this extinction event and all the humans end up dead anyway.
As the environmental disaster gets worse, we will end up sacrificing more species in the pursuit of safety for our own. We might mourn the necessary sacrifice in passing, but ultimately the surviving humans will justify everything in the name of one more day.
Among many other points, more than half the laws you mention are terrible. We shouldn't be banning people in need from taking food or shelter when there's an extreme excess of both, or loving who they want.
Because it’s a delicate subject. Giving someone the power to decide who is and is not allowed/able/encouraged to have babies is scary stuff for many people.
In the end it costs me money, time, and grief to fix your screwups. Example: people who don’t vaccinate can cause problems for the rest as diseases spread more quickly and with greater impact than otherwise. Clear?
Probably the sun and small scale fusion for at least the next thousand years or so. Eventually other stars/large scale fusion/some type of energy production we haven't discovered yet.
>and space
There is enormous amounts of room left on earth. Everyone on earth could have an acre of land to themselves with 10x the current population, and that completely ignores multi-level construction (either above or below the surface). But long term there is a lot of space outside of earth.
> There is enormous amounts of room left on earth.
Bonkers - if we are to believe the environmental lobby (and I generally do), we are already destroying much of the biosphere. You can't have it both ways! Either things get worse for everyone, or humanity starts to control itself.
>Either things get worse for everyone, or humanity starts to control itself.
Controlling itself doesn't have to mean population control. It just has to mean taking care of our environment in a sustainable way. The number of people we have been able to support in a sustainable way has increased by several orders of magnitude over the past tens of thousands of years and I don't see a compelling reason that trend needs to stop. Climate change isn't tied to population, it's tied to greenhouse gas emissions. We already have the technology demonstrating that we don't need to emit greenhouse gasses.
> Climate change isn't tied to population, it's tied to greenhouse gas emissions.
Extinction of other species is also tied to deforestation, mining, pollution (chemical, light and noise) as well as hunting and accidents. All of that only increases as our population grows.
To what end, though? What is the point in endless expansion? I think at this point we're just expanding out of some basic evolutionary urge, but like other such urges that have outlived their usefulness, I feel like we need to revisit this one.
China is a place to look for an example of what happens when you do this. Primarily, too many elderly. Here is an interesting discussion about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5jJDywBHwA
Rape or murder are not natural instincts. In fact people have pretty good safeguards against killing others - seeing the oponent bleeding usually makes even a furious man cool off.
And regarding limiting population growth, what solution could possible be there that would be acceptable in a liberal democracy (i.e. does not require authoritarian regime controlling your every move, or the biggest genocide in history of mankind)?
It's a combination of education, access to birth control and low infant/mother mortality that does it.
Especially the last one - it's shocking how big a killer childbirth is to women without modern medical procedures. Same thing for children: vaccines, hygiene and nutrition make it a rare tragedy instead of a normal part of life.
> It's a combination of education, access to birth control and low infant/mother mortality that does it.
You left out strong social safety net, but that is key: children are literally people's old age and disability support mechanism when there isn't a sufficiently reliable public one.
Population growth is actually slowing worldwide, and we face the very real possibility of a global population decline within the next century. You’re trying to solve a problem that is already “solving” itself.
In this thread you haven't been shut down have you? Lots of carefully thought out arguments.
I am very suspicious of overpopulation arguments because it is a stalking hourse for alt-right style ethno nationalism. Rather than addressing issues it is a veiled attack on "lefties" and liberals. Blaming the entire environmental crisis on our reluctance to adopt authoritarian controls. And playing on perceived inconsistencies in how liberals see the world. Perhaps we have different laws on rape,murder, and consensual sex because they are different things! Your argument only makes sense if you completely ignore any nuance.
I think this is really about fear of immigration and uses climate change as an excuse.
[I've been sampling the right-leaning internet for a few years now to better understand it]
FWIW, the majority of right-leaning folks (at least in the US) are vehemently against things like population controls. Go read some of the articles on Breitbart or InfoWars and this will be clear -- most of their concerns involve the government (which is pictured as an ever-left-leaning entity) overreaching in its restrictions on civil life.
The power of social conservative right wingers has been waning for a decade or so now, c.f. Trump.
I agree. We need to not only stop using polluting vehicles, but also reduce the number of people consuming products.
Honestly, the problem is going to solve itself. We're going to see devastating natural disasters and famines. We're going to see causalities like we've never seen. We're going to see massive die-offs of the poor in countries that are in the direct path- coastal countries, Africa, and middle east.
I know I'm going to get hate for this, but the US and other western countries are going to have to face the realities that they are going to need to lock down their borders as we're going to have massive refugee problems. I don't agree with Trump 90% of the time, but he is putting in place a framework that will be used in the next 10 years to keep the onslaught of refugees. America has it good. We can survive the storm, but most of the world will not be so lucky.
And words cannot express what I feel. This whole thing sucks. It's going to hurt. And it's the kind of thing where we can't save everyone.
Basically if we don't control immigration, the developed world will look like the developing world, and then there will be no more developed world to help out. I think for some this is the intended endgame.
There's no evidence of this. Uncontrolled immigration is what made America great. If there's a problem it causes, it's that it creates a brain drain from the developing world to the developed world; it's often the more talented and enterprising people who leave (though that varies wildly among specific emigrating groups).
> Uncontrolled immigration is what made America great
A massive claim. Care to support it?
As far as I was aware, much of America's success is a simple accident of history, notably: having a massive virtually unoccupied continent with enormous unexploited natural resources, a single unified market with single currency, having no land border with a hostile foreign entity capable of posing a genuine threat, and taking advantage of (or as some argue deliberately creating the circumstances for) the rest of the world being smashed by two world wars.
Yeah, but without immigration during the 19th and early 20th century, the US wouldn't have anyone to work on those resources and the continent would still be virtually unoccupied. The US would have been as empty as Siberia.
So then you admit that immigration was just one part of the puzzle? Or are you asserting that you could take those same immigrants, transplant them anywhere in the world, and have the same outcome?
Are you saying you have no evidence for your claim, but there's a chance it's true anyway? Sure, it could be. But if it happens, it's more likely a coincidence caused by other factors.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/china-great-gree...
I say this is mainly about China because Africa has modified their green wall project and instead of planting billion trees from East coast to West coast, they are helping communities to thrive by planting trees and reviving land.
China is crazy in this sense, there is a thick patch of shrubs that now border the Gobi desert and mainland China. By 2030 it'll be the largest manmade plantation on Earth.
edit: 66 billion trees planted so far!