This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
Donation or Change?
There are two ways to tackle CO2 emissions 1) Awareness 2) Economics
1) I have chosen awareness because there is a lot of strength in this solution if it comes from the common man’s heart and mind. This is also behavior related hence long term solution. Just like defensive driving.
2) Economic solution is hard to implement cause our behavior does not change, but ways to get around economic enforcement increases. (tax evasion, black market, etc)
Full blog at:
http://yogeshpgupta.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/donate-or-change/
Feyisayo Anjorin 50+
Yogesh Gupta
But awareness is most likely a permanent solution, since the mass population of developing countries would like to replicate the west in future.
Chetan Somani
Though government impose heavy tax duties on vehicles that are imported from other countries and what ever the price of it may be people are ready to pay for it.They has been growth in consumption rate and it has been increasing year on year.
India is among top 10 largest production hub for automotive and its going to be the world's largest automotive industry by 2016.In such a scenario the emission of CO2 will increase year on year.Awareness is one of the best solution in order to make people aware of it and try to reduce the consumption of it.
Automotive is not the only one which results in emission of CO2, they are different sources which even pay path for it.
Economic solution does even play a active role for it but at the end all that matters is to improve the economic stability of the country which in return act as a contradicting factor.
Yogesh Gupta
(Recently when the Indian government reduced the subsidy on fuels and LPG, the government was criticized a lot. This puts the ruling party under pressure as the elections are coming in 2014.
I think it is time that high energy consuming citizens should be also liable to pay more. Together with economic pressure and awareness, the target of CO2 emissions reduction can be achieved. This also gives time for other source of energy to kick in.
Although, it is better to change habits now.. because if all the population of india and china start living like the west right now, we will be out of time in days..
John Smith 30+
International cooperation is key: governments should not allow corporate blackmailing (threats to move to another country) because this creates a race to the bottom. Countries should stand together so that corporations who don't want to improve have nowhere to move to. The same holds for wages, working conditions, pollution standards and taxes.
"(Recently when the Indian government reduced the subsidy on fuels and LPG, the government was criticized a lot. This puts the ruling party under pressure as the elections are coming in 2014.
I think it is time that high energy consuming citizens should be also liable to pay more."
The true costs of energy use should indeed be visible to society but I'm not sure letting the poorest of the poor pay extra is the way to go, unless they're compensated another way so they have a choice between having more money and having the same amount of money instead of a choice between having the same amount of money and having less money.
"Although, it is better to change habits now.. because if all the population of india and china start living like the west right now, we will be out of time in days..."
50 years from now that shouldn't be a problem because of technology, at least if the rich countries grow slower than the poor ones (which does seem to be happening), and the world goes green, but in the meantime there are going to be a lot of catastrophes and conflicts and we have to ensure economic growth does not get usurped by the global rich (millionaires and billionaires).
Yogesh Gupta
Lets take an example of a Chevrolet built in US and exported to China for use.
Well if we start counting the energy spent on manufacturing Chevrolet in US and allocate it to China, then china will need to take more measures to reduce its CO2 emission responsibility. One measure automatically the government would have to take is, to put economic liability on citizens demanding such high energy consuming goods by taxes, etc. People who live in environmentally friendly way, do not have to worry. This would create a mass reduction in imports and also mass reduction is emissions, since demands goes down.
If we now continue to blame US for producing high energy Chevrolet, the person in China will continue to have its demands and US government cannot tax its own companies for exporting. Hence the problem of emission is not tackled.
John Smith 30+
W. Ying 10+
It is because our life goal is to keep our DNA alive rather than be consumerists or CO2-emitters.
The former needs only about 10% CO2-emission of the latter does. Thus, we can cut CO2-emission about 90% easily.
(For details, see 1st article, points 1-3, 14, at https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=D24D89AE8B1E2E0D&id=D24D89AE8B1E2E0D%21283&sc=documents)
John Smith 30+
Yes, that's true: CO2 emission from a factory in China buildings toys for Canada is counted as Chinese emission, not Canadian emission (the opposite, France growing food for Libya, also exists). However, the relative growth of Asian economies compared to those in the West and the tangible emission reductions in the West (cleaner cars for example) are not negligible: overall the Asian economies really have been emitting more CO2 (so has the US, but not Europe). Of course this was to be expected and it's really CO2 emission per capita (that's still much lower in Asia than in the West) that we should look at.