Socialism and communism

[BTFeather55]

HappySqurriel said:

MikeB said:

@ HappySqurriel

Except for the fact that capatalist democracies tend to have a much better environmental record than any other governmental system ...

That's not true, the US per capita is one of the most poluting countries in the world (maybe some small country like Australia was able to beat them per capita). In absolute figures the US is the most poluting country in the world by far, even beating China with about 5 times as many people.

IMO the best performing countries, show rather a combination of democratic, capatalist and social trades, like many European countries. You can have a country which advocates being competitive, social and is democratic.

For example Switzerland and Sweden generate about 3 to 4 times the wealth the US does per tonne of CO2 emitted. The EU while representing hundreds of millions more people generates less than half the pollution the USA generates.

But the EU could perform much better as well, if not for the US allowing US companies to pollute so much (which is cheaper and thus provides a competitive advantage).

 

So European countries aren't capatalist democracies?

Now, a few things first ... Per Capita CO2 output is an awful metric because it doesn't take into conderation the vast differences that can exist in terms of per-capita productivity; in terms of GDP to Carbon Dioxide the awful United States produces about 5 times as much wealth per ton of CO2 than China, Russia, and India ... and very few Countries produce more than double the wealth per ton of CO2 that the US does ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions )

On top of that, measuring CO2 based on countries borders is remarkably dishonest ... A large portion of the reason why countries are able to massively reduce their CO2 output is by off-shoring their heavy manufacturing to another country. People in Europe are still buying TVs even though they are now being produced in China under few/no environmental regulations.

Thirdly, many of the best GDP to CO2 countires around the world are facing a more massive financial crisis in a large part because of how artificially inflated their economy was due to poor banking practices ... The ratios that the EU currently have will tumble dramatically while I bet that Canada's ratios will remaing remarkably stable.

Finally, CO2 is not a polutant ... No one has proven the Global Warming theory, and popularity doesn't make a theory true ...

For over 10,000 years Antartica has been covered in ice.  It wasn't until the late 20th century when all these pollutants began to be pumped into the air and the o-zone began to grow that Antartica's glaciers started to melt.