America has only x% of the world’s population, but consumes y% of z
I am sick and tired of hearing the phrase “America has only x% of the world’s population, but consumes y% of z”.
No matter what z you’re talking about (gasoline, beef, chlorinated water, housing, steel), it’s a fact that the world does not have any z. Z is produced by humans.
Except for times when government gets involved in the steal-and-redistribute game (once upon a time beyond their borders via imperialism; nowadays mostly with in borders via welfare state socialism) folks consume exactly what they produce.
TJICistan has only 1% of this neighborhood’s population, but it consumes 10% of this neighborhood’s books.
TJICistan has only 1% of this neighborhood’s population, but it consumes 50% of this neighborhood’s homemade cheese cakes.
You know, TJICistan has only 1% of this neighborhood’s population, but it consumes 100% of this neighborhood’s hand-produced wooden bowls.
Bah.
Humbug.
You know why we consume X% of the gasoline and X’% of the beef, and X”% of the iron?
Because we willed it into existence in the first place.
Go produce something (besides whiney white liberal guilt and left-wing editorial columns) and quit your moaning, hippies.
May 25th, 2008 at 1:52 am
One of the big one is “The US consumes 25% of the worlds energy, yet the population is only 5% of the world”
What they neglect to mention is the US also produces 25% of the worlds GDP.
Some tribesman in Zimbabwe may not use much, if any electricity, but he doesn’t produce anything either.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:53 am
[quote comment="143788"]You’re missing the point here. The planet has a limited capacity to absorb outputs of Carbon Dioxide without provoking climatic changes which will have disastrous consequences. [/quote]
Unproven.
[quote comment="143788"] So the US, or any other nation, is entitled to use up the planet’s capacity to absorb CO2 only in proportion to its population. [/quote]
For the sake of argument – OK, fine.
Then why have environmentalists fought against clean fission power, forcing us to burn carbon fuels?
[quote comment="143788"] Clearly the US, along with other nations in the developed world, is using up that resource to an extent that is disproportionate to its population and which is unsustainable. Developing nations are copying this pattern [/quote]
We should be encouraging China and others to use fission power.
…but, again, the environmentalists stand in the way of that.
[quote comment="143788"] If the US won’t radically reduce its CO2 output why should anyone else? [/quote]
Aside from widespread adoption of fission, how can we possible reduce CO2 output while retaining a first world standard of living ?
May 25th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Leaving aside the fatuity of the CO2-driven anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, which is wholly dependent on implausible computer models that have never predicted anything successfully and demonstrably at odds with all the current evidence, anyone who uses “birthright” in the same sentence with an assertion about the chemical balance of the atmosphere is beyond all posibility of salvage. He’s demoted the right to life to a position beneath a percentage figure in a table of gas aliquots.
The United States is apparently responsible for everything that anyone dislikes, according to this…person. So we’ll just have to prioritize. And at the top of the priorities list is:
PRODUCE!!!
There are a lot of hungry, naked, unsheltered folks out there. And most of them are a long way away. We’d better get busy.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Another response would be to tell whoever is worried about x% of the people consuming y% of z that they’re free and able to give their “share” of z to someone that’s under-consuming.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:37 am
[quote comment="143802"]I don’t think we should expect to maintain a first world standard of living anyway, whatever happens.[/quote]
At least you’re willing to admit you’d like everyone to live in poverty as a means of reducing available CO2.
May 25th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
He’s bringing up CO2?
Humans are responsible for about 5% of the total CO2 put into the atmosphere.
CO2 is responsible for about 10% of the Global warming temp increase – Watervapor is responsible for most of it.
So, we cause about .5% of the 1F average rise in Temp in the last 100 years. Add in the oceans regulatory effect on total atmospheric C02(gigatons are sitting dissolved in ocean water), and the CO2 hysteria real reason becomes obvious – a means of extorting money out of the first world.
And oh, We’re in a transitory period, we’re actually lower now than we were in the 1500′s. We’ve gone through a cool period, and now the we’re going back up again. This quite frankly, IS A GOOD THING.
May 25th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Because we willed it into existence in the first place.
Damn, it’s great to know the right people.
Travis, when you’ve sorted out this peak oil nonsense and you’ve got a spare moment, please go ahead and will me half a million tons of fresh Atlantic cod, there’s a pal. (Market price, of course.)
May 25th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Besides the obvious idiocy of Chris Hutt’s atrophied ideology, his greenie blog provides some insight into the mindset of the power-hungry people behind the contemporary “environmental” movement.
Here, a snippet from Hutt’s sidebar: “The Victorians got it right”
ORLY? What part did they do correctly? Was it the expansion of the Industrial Revolution that wildly transformed England from a largely agrarian country into a coal-smoke-belching industrial powerhouse? Or, maybe it was the subjugation of brown people worldwide by expansion of the Empire? There’s some cognitive dissonance here, Chris.
Next, there’s “Car parking squeezes out walkers.”
Pfft. That’s the gobsmackingly most ignorant thing that I’ve read lately. Are you trying to walk around in, like, parking lots or in the middle of roads? Because really, I’ve never seen an automobile “squeez[ing] out walkers” where people go to walk: trails, tracks, and pastures, &c. If you are lamenting the fact that people have to disembark from their vehicles upon arrival to a location that they drove to, then that’s something else entirely, but that would still refute any “squeeze” of pedestrians. There’s a reason that there are roads with no sidewalks along side of them…people would rather drive than walk. Contribute even more money to your local government to build sidewalks where autos don’t need to drive, but can the melodrama.
” To me a journey on foot or bike should be a positive experience in itself, not just a means of getting from A to B.”
Spoken disingenuously as a person wealthy enough not to have to undertake an all-day hike to attend to quotidian affairs. I think your utopianistic, sunny outlook would change drastically if you _had_ to walk everywhere you went. Much of the third world is dirt poor because transportation is problematic. Believe me, those people don’t live the pastoral, idyllic life that you seem to think they do.
Above: “The global scientific community seem to be pretty united on this…”
No, that is demonstrably false. The biased, money- and power-grubbing “scientists” that you admire might prefer you to think that “scientists” agree on the causes, effects, and cures of “global climate change,” but it is happily not true. There are tens of thousands of scientists who recognize greenie goals and propaganda for the BS that those goals and propaganda are. They’ve even signed a petition…an empty, symbolic affair that is usually the realm of liberals.
May 25th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
[quote comment="143843"]Because we willed it into existence in the first place.
Damn, it’s great to know the right people.
Travis, when you’ve sorted out this peak oil nonsense and you’ve got a spare moment, please go ahead and will me half a million tons of fresh Atlantic cod, there’s a pal. (Market price, of course.)[/quote]
Oil is an implementation detail. As per Julian Simon’s _Ultimate Resource_, the genius of technology and the market is that end goals (power, etc.) can be satisfied in other ways. We don’t need copper phone wires, we need communication. When copper gets too expensive, we start using sand to pipe our LOL Cats around. When oil gets too expensive, we can/will/would-already-have-except-for-the-Greens use fission.
Atlantic cod existed before man, but Atlantic cod filettes did not.
The price of high quality seafood delivered to markets declines over time, and will continue to do so.
100 years from now, Josh, I’m sure that the price of cod will be far cheaper than it is now. Perhaps a bit higher out in the Belt than here on Earth (or, rather, perhaps the other way around, depending on what the various planets end up specializing in), but, still, so close to “too cheap to meter” that you can have your half a million tons for a trivial bit of labor (mastadon steaks will be similarly priced, I imagine).
May 25th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
“The planet has a limited capacity to absorb outputs of Carbon Dioxide without provoking climatic changes which will have disastrous consequences.”
and
“So the US, or any other nation, is entitled to use up the planet’s capacity to absorb CO2 only in proportion to its population.”
Man, what a mess of poor reasoning and the usual leftoid innumeracy.
The amount of CO2 outputs the earth can ‘absorb’ without some kind of change in our environment (and it may not be climate) is obviously finite. So what, that’s essentially a tautology.
Then we get this ‘every man has equal rights routine’ which ignores the nature of the C-O reaction and that it is a process. Location gets ignored too. Hutt’s idea is like saying that you cannot drink your fill from the Mississippi system in Montana even though Louisiana cannot use the water. Until the Joe the Bushman starts using more of the earths ability to absorb CO2 output I bloody well intend to use as much as I want.
Location: Maybe Mr. Hutt could explain to the Inuit why they should be stuck with the same energy usage as the Bushmen. It’s colder? Too bad you get x BTUs per day and that’s it.
And don’t even get me started on scientific consensus. There is none, and saying there is, is another leftoid bald-faced lie. Further, who cares what a bunch of bit player minor scientific hangers on say. The big guns, including Freeman Dyson say glowball warmening is nonsense.
Ah well, same old, same old. Cui Bono. Leftoids and bureaucrats fattening their wallets and trying to increase their sex appeal and feelings of self worth by telling lies.
Well, Mr. Hutt get it while you can, because I also believe in Canada Bill Jones’ dictum that it is immoral to let a sucker keep his money. So if you can talk the hoi polloi and/or politicians into giving you praise and money by preaching non-existent climatic danger, good for you.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
When oil gets too expensive, we can/will/would-already-have-except-for-the-Greens use fission.
Conventional liquid post-peak oil may last longer, with the radically inefficient fuel cycles we use in fission plants today. Going over to fast breeders and beyond is unwise unless we first solve the anarcholibertarian problem.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
half a million tons for a trivial bit of labor
Well, don’t put yourself out. I’m sentimental about Gadus morhua because of an exciting day I spent with the Marblehead inshore fleet, just at Peak Cod in 1968, when I was at an impressionable age. It’s the thought that counts, though: I’d gladly settle for one of your lovely hand-turned wooden bowls or pepper mills, any time this century or next.
American chestnut, please.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
“Conventional liquid post-peak oil may last longer, with the radically inefficient fuel cycles we use in fission plants today. Going over to fast breeders and beyond is unwise unless we first solve the anarcholibertarian problem.”
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Better to have the lights burning than to avoid unwisdom.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
[quote comment="143872"]
American chestnut, please.[/quote]
Josh, I couldn’t have asked for a better strawman objection to set me up for my response.
You want American chestnut ?
Are you closer to Virginia
,,,or Ohio ?
I’ll hand you your American chestnut bowl on Jan 1, 2100 on Ceres.
…but you’re buying the mammoth steaks (unless we decide to have sushi).
May 25th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
mammoth steaks (unless we decide to have sushi)
The Talmud says that in the world to come we’ll eat behemoth and leviathan, and I always used to wonder why both? Then I realized that there are a lot of Jews nowadays who are much too strict to accept the Almighty’s hekhsher, so (just like at bar mitzvahs and weddings today) they’ll have the fish plate.
You pays your money, and you takes your Rapture. Vat-grown muscle of either flavor is probably kosher, at least by my rabbi.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Speaking of Ceres . . . .
May 26th, 2008 at 2:58 am
@Hutt
First you quote a couple of picture captions without reference to what the pictures show (specific locations near my home). That’s quoting out of context. It’s not clever and it’s not helpful to rational debate.
How’s that? Is your throw-away ideology such that you append trivial captions to “picture[s]?” Is a rational person to read such asshattery and come away with a “Well, he was talking about _that one_ instance portrayed in the photograph?” No, from a more than brief perusal of your young blog, you believe that automobiles are evil incarnate and that people who walk and peddle are the saviours of Mother Gaia.
Backing up: “It might calm you down.
Uh, yeah. Nice attempt, there. You leftard enviroweenies do employ the ol’ “You are hysterically fanatical” strategy, frequently. Reference your own frenzied, “We’ve got to do SOMETHING right now!!!” crap on your own blog. Without any studied knowledge to bolster your claims, you have _just_ the prescription for what ails the earth…more of what you think (and what the ” global scientific community” thinks) will cure all of our collective shortcomings. No thanks, Cap’n Fantastic.
” What makes you think I have a “utopianistic, sunny outlook”? If I did would I really spend my time posting here?”
Well, surely. You said as much on your own blog. You want to be contentious and provoke discussion about (socialistic) programs that will retard growth, promote more walking and biking (that;s your #1 goal, eh?), and shitcan automobiles. I wish you luck with that, but only if you can guarantee me a flying jetpack that I can use to fly to the grocer. Otherwise, you are just another idealistic Eurotrash hooker who thinks that your tiny, insulated world is representative of reality. Not everybody can walk, crawl, or bicycle to their next meal, but it is illustrative of the liberal, privileged mindset that you think that they do. Your microcosmic burgh is not representative of my reality. Your retrograde solution to “greenie” “problems” is not the solution to any real-world conflict, but rather another attempt to co-opt more freedom.
” My point is that quality of life need not depend on the high levels of energy consumption to which many of us have become accustomed.
Naif. You could spend the rest of your life trying to justify that sentence and never make a dent in the time-space continuum. Ignorance is flying about here like dust in the Negev.
May 26th, 2008 at 11:00 am
As for your latter points, I have difficulty seeing how your points relate to mine anyway. What makes you think I have a “utopianistic, sunny outlook”? If I did would I really spend my time posting here?
I have a generally sunny outlook on life (but brother it’s work to maintain it at times) and I enjoy reading/commenting here.