Grand River Transit

[danbrotherston]

You make some valid points about understanding why others think the way they do, but I feel like this part totally undercuts your argument.

Canada has terrible per-capita emissions, and electric vehicles aren't going to change that. Only a fundamental change to a more dense urban form, more European, will do that. Saying that it's pointless and we can't do anything is EXACTLY the problem. Per-capita we're a terrible emitter of CO2. So unless you have justification for why Canadians should be entitled to more CO2 than other countries, we need to be taking action.

Whether people want car-dependent suburbs or not is as irrelevant as whether people want private jets or not, it's not something we can afford for every person. Our CO2 budget is as real as our economic budget, people just don't like to be told that.

To be clear, I don't fault people for owning cars. I own one too (though an EV, as even if not a solution, they are better). But at a societal level, we need to be making changes to how we build our cities.

I sometimes wonder about this, how valid per-capita emissions are as a measurement of responsibility. If Canada set a specific limit on emissions per capita, it would be fine for a businessperson to make frequent flights as long as someone else (or many other people) in the country have below average emissions to balance it out. But how about globally? Should one country be allowed to have higher per capita emissions if another country is below average? What about emissions per land area? What is the correct measurement? Do we not care about total emissions, just per capita?

If the pope flew a private jet around all the time, the Vatican would have massive per capita emissions, but it would probably be fairly sustainable. So, maybe governments regulating emissions should be taking the size of the population they govern into context. If a country specifically chooses not to grow their population (a luxury most developed countries have available to them, and developing countries could do more on this front though it's more complicated...), but maintains their per capita emissions, then they are doing better than a country that lowers their per capita emissions but grows their population at an even faster rate.

Now of course, Canada wants to grow it's populate at a rate I strongly disagree with, as our population size is probably the single most effective tool we have to lower our total emissions.

So, I wanna break this into two separate parts, per capita emissions fairness, and population.

I think the per capita emissions fairness makes some sense, we all live on planet earth, and should all be entitled to a similar amount of the resources. I don't think it's wrong for some of us to use less emissions to contribute our surplus to others, this is fundamentally been an aspect of our society since society became a thing.

However, I've raised this before, per capita emissions are not measured effectively. The emissions "I" emit are measured based on what Canada consumes, and what fraction of that I consume. It does NOT consider what I import. So if I import an EV, all those emissions that went into build that car, are assigned to another country, probably mostly China where the rare elements are mined, and also whereever the vehicle was manufactured.

I get to look great, "Canada" gets to look great, but only because we have dumped our emissions on another country. This has in fact been a reality of globalism since the very beginning, the ONLY difference here is that we are measuring CO2 as opposed to other environmental pollution, or resource extraction.



In terms of population, I think it's wrong and harmful to question population growth in terms of emissions. Everyone on the planet should have a right to live a life out of poverty, and as a planet and a species we have the resources to make it happen, it isn't a question of supply, even at our current population level, or even our future projected peak population levels. It is only a question of fairness.

Of course, there are real practical concerns about the in between space between now, and that magical future, but, to me, the idea of limiting immigration into our country as a method of limiting global polution by forcing people to stay in lower per capita emissions countries is not morally acceptable. Our focus should be on limiting our own emissions, not trying to force others down. And fundamentally I don't think it would work anyway. Developing countries are exactly that, "developing", in their infrastructure--physical and social--and in their wealth. Those countries will get to our level of properity, wealth, and infrastructure (and privilege). We need to make where we are sustainable, if we want those countries to also be sustainable.

Edit: As a side note, is there a sustainability/climate change thread this could be moved too, it's no longer (directly) GRT related.