Immigrants cause global warming

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If he says so, then it must be so.

Interesting idea. Yes, the carbon emissions from the average American is much higher than the carbon emissions from the average Mexican, so immigration does increase carbon emissions, but it does so because the immigrants become wealthier by moving countries. Which helps eexplain why the main cause is people, especially in china, becoming richer.

The cause of global warming is the excessive lifestyle of the West. The "effluents of affluence" if you will. Any process by which people take on that lifestyle, be it immigration or industrialization, will contributed to global warming. So, what we must do is find a way to live comfortably but not so destructively.

China is making much more air pollution than the U.S. The U.S. is a good thirty years ahead of China in the matter of controlling pollution. The air in Bejeing is so thick it can be cut with a saw. The Bejeing pollution is much worse than L.A. is on its worst day.

ruveyn

Also, by being paid to cut lawns with power mowers in the USA, they emit more carbon than if they had stayed in their own countries and cut lawns with machetes.

Per-capita carbon emission in the USA is roughly four times the per-capita carbon emission in Mexico.



The argument is that an individual who moves from Mexico to the USA automatically emits four times as much carbon as he did when living in Mexico, and hence the solution to global warming is to send immigrants back to their countries of origin.

At the very least, it is comforting to blame immigrants for the world's ills.

If the American Indians hadn't been as welcoming to immigrants as they were, then I suspect that carbon emissions in what became the USA might have been less than they are now. The same might be said about Australia.

It's interesting to see this in contrast:

In 2009, there were only 47 motor vehicles per 1,000 people in China (source). Whereas in the USA, most families own two cars or more.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that China has the dirtiest electric generating plants in the industrialized world. The Chinese do not use pollution suppression devices on their coal fired electric plants. That is why the air in the cities is so dirty. But the air out in the farm country is fine. Its just that the people out there make less then 2000 dollars a year. China = 300 million living in industrial (if polluted) splendor and one billion living as impoverished peasants.

ruveyn

ruveyn

ruveyn

Sure China is bad. Of course lets us not forget that we, meaning the US and Europe, have exported much of that problem to Asia. We cleaned up our act well enough by not producing much at all.

I could see it in this sense:

Lots of immigrants open ethnic restaurants. When they serve Americans ethnic food they add way more bells, whistles, and general 'stuff' to where its more like a caricature of their homelands food rather than the real thing - for the sake of being flamboyant, eye-catching, and getting business because...well....Americans have ADHD when it comes to things like that.

Solution: improve your own economy by taking note of what we're doing with education and doing the exact opposite, as far as US neighbors are concerned keep raking in the NAFTA money, and in the meantime we'll try to flood your food service sector with Applebee's and all kinds of so-so crap that will sell so-so, where white collar managers can get together and say "Yeeaahhhhh.....those TPS reports turned out swell...." - bland/crap food - lower carbon footprint.

We produce more electricity than China and pollute the air less. We run several times more cars and trucks than China and we pollute the air less. We produce more food than China and we pollute the air less. And our farmers are not peasants.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 26 Apr 2012, 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

China as a whole does emit more CO2 than the USA, but only about 13% more (source). That's not very surprising considering that China has a 4.3 times larger population. But let's look at coal powered electricity since you brought it up. 33.1% of the electricity used in China is produced from coal. In the USA it's 25.8%, which isn't that much lower. In the entire rest of the world, all other countries combined, it's only 15.6%. In most first world countries, it is less than 4% (source).

You said the USA is decades ahead of China in pollution control, but that's clearly not the case. The energy production in the USA generates slightly less CO2, but that doesn't do any good when the population uses more electricity and produces more CO2 than the population of any other nation on the planet.

Yes that is true ruveyn, but the overall logic of your argument surprises me.

Just curious, but since the highest sources of CO2 emissions are heavy transport, energy generation, heating, and industry, can anyone propose any practical alternatives instead of engaging in gratuitious finger wagging over who puts out the most carbon emissions?

Yes. Look at what Global Thermostat is doing with their technology research into carbon reclamation. AFAIK they have tech that can make power plants carbon negative and its simply a matter of getting the stuff cleared and mass-produced. This way at least we can keep economies going while we search for more feasible/permanent solutions rather than needing to get draconian.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 26 Apr 2012, 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ruveyn had made one suggestion about a future nuclear energy, but that is for the future. It seems even the USA doesn't have it.

thorium reactors, no question.

they cant have a classic meltdown, they produce little waste and they are small cheap and simple compared to regular nuclear reactors.