Judge nations by per capital carbon emissions

Americans continue to generate carbon dioxide at unfair levels

Since Nationalist Public Radio (NPR) constantly says that China is the world's largest carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas producer, and they pass for liberal in these United States, I assume most Americans have a distorted view of how our nation fits into the problem of global warming.

If all people are created equal, we should set an average target allowance that is safe. Then everyone should work to push down the carbon emissions of those who are, in effect, cheating the rest of humanity (and all living creatures) by consuming more than their fare share.

So let's look at a few national averages, remembering that within each nation there are also high consumption carbon emitting individuals, and below average individuals. The following table is a sample. You can find fuller tables at Wikipedia List of Countries by carbon dioxide emissions.

Nation	kilotons CO2 emitted	tons per person
United States of America	5,334,000	16.5
Russia	1,766,000	12.4
European Union	3,415,000	6.7
China	10,540,000	7.6
India	2,341,000	1.8
Mexico	456,000	3.7
Indonesia	452,000	1.8

Of the nations with large populations the U.S.A. clearly consumes far more than its share of carbon per person. The global average is 5.0 tons per day, so we are at over 3 times that.

There are a few nations with per person carbon emission higher than the U.S.: Australia at 17.3, a coal producing nation; and Saudi Arabia at 16.8 are notable. But the E. U., with a standard of living similar to the U.S., is under half.

China is, on a per person basis, is at 46% of the U.S. Its total emissions are higher than the U.S. because of its much larger population (1.38 billion vs. 322 million).

When you throw in history, the unfairness of the situation is heightened. The industrial revolution started in Great Britain in the late 1700s, in Europe in the early 1800s, and in the U.S. around the mid 1800s. So we have had very long periods of carbon emissions compared to the rest of the world.

In the aftermath of World War II pretty much every factory in the world had been damaged. Except the factories of the U.S. With our vast petroleum fields and array of factories, we dominated the world economy and dwarfed the emissions of other nations. Other nations' factories came on line gradually. By the 1970s Americans had to compete again, and had grown soft, and so began losing the economic competition to other nations. We were just so wealthy by then that it took a while for the truth to sink in.

China made stabs at industrializing going all the way back to the 1800s, but did not really start to grow production faster than America, Europe, Japan and Russia until the 1980s.

The competitive advantages to nations that continue to burn fossil fuels are enormous. Clearly, if it were about fairness, the U.S.A., which has done the most historic damage, should do the most to cut its per capita fossil fuel consumption. Instead gasoline and natural gas are cheap right now, so consumption is increasing rather than decreasing.

Fairness is all fine in a game of tennis or baseball, but in the real world people who are unfairly privileged typically don't want to play fair. I've talked to people across the spectrum of American wealth and poverty, and the response is almost uniform. People want scientists to fix the problem without any substantial personal impositions on themselves.

Scientists can't change the laws of thermodynamics. That is why they are called laws. It takes energy to keep buildings warm in winter and cool in summer. It takes energy to move cars and planes around. It takes energy to fertilize farms, plant and harvest food, and get it to markets. It even takes energy to separate silicon from silicon dioxide to make solar panels, or to extract and transport fossil fuels.

It is clear that their are too many people in the world and that their standard of living is too high. In the United States we should probably do our share by immediately limiting families to one child, turning off all air conditioning systems (except, perhaps, hospitals), and adding a punitive tax to sales of fossil fuels, something like $3 per gallon of gasoline. Also all flying of any kind should be prohibited.

But we won't. The rich will buy Teslas and pretend they have done their part. They will meet with politicians in exotic locations and pat themselves on the back for closing the occasional coal-fired generating plant and putting in a few solar panel. The middle class will continue to aspire to the luxuries of the rich, and the working class will aspire to middle-class luxuries.

The coral will die, and the plankton will die, and sooner or later crops will wilt. Nature will will unleash plague and famine, and balance will be restored. Hopefully when humans die off, it won't be entirely random. Hopefully the humans that survive will give birth to an improved species.

Agree? Disagree? You can comment on this post at Natural Liberation Blog at blogspot.com

Indonesia's Atheist Holocaust

The last few days I have been reading Eliza Griswold's well-written, detailed yet fascinating account of the modern proselytizing competition between Christians and Moslems, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. My wife Jan heard Eliza interviewed on NPR, got the book from our local library (that paragon of government-in-business socialism), and allowed me to grab it. I'll have to buy a copy; I want it in my permanent collection.

It reminded me of another "incident" in history that can be characterized as an atheist holocaust. The largest atheist holocaust I know of was run by the Catholic Church's and Adolf Hitler (with help from General Franco and less Catholic fascist leaders like Petain) [see The Atheist Holocaust.]

This one, which took place in Indonesia from about 1965 to 1966 after Suharto made himself an American-friendly dictator.

Some of the victims of the holocaust were without a doubt Communists, which means they were atheists. Most American historians would therefore classify their murders as political, not religious. Okay, legitimate killings, as the only good communist (or anti-U.S. rebel of any kind) is a dead communist.

But of course it could not be that simple, even at the height of the Cold War, when President Lyndon Johnson (the Democratic Party leader) and the United States of America had its hands full committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Vietnam.

According to Griswold (and confirmed by other sources) "militant Islamists manned Suharto's death squads." Further "Since converting to a state-approved religion prevented people from being charged as godless Communists, many Indonesians did ... the state outlawed the Chinese practice of Confucianism; most Chinese turned to Christianity instead."

Any murder is abhorrent for any reason, but in sorting these mass murders out it is important to understand what is going on. Communism angers Capitalists, and vice versa, that at least seems natural. But Christian socialism and Islamic socialism don't inspire the kind of hatred in Christians and Moslems, respectively, as atheistic socialism does. The Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) was participating in the government under Sukarno and had some success getting land redistributed to poor Indonesians. The rich landowners being Moslem, they were able to combine self-interest with religious fervor. Estimates of atheists killed range from a low of about 500,000 on up.

The Wikipedia article, Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966, has a good level of detail.

Comparing this to Hitler's more famous actions against non-Christians, begin with the political element. Hitler's Nazi goons started killing communists and socialists before they started killing people just for being Jewish. Many communist and socialist leaders were Jewish by descent, but not religious Jews. They were atheists; all good Marxists were. That is why the Catholic Church led by the two fascist Popes, Pius XI and Pius XII, engineered Hitler's rise to power. He was the Church's tool to destroy atheism. The biggest group of atheists were in Russian, which just happened to be communist, which the Church did not like much either.

The Tenth Parallel mainly chronicles the battle between Christianity and Islam. The danger of both groups to modern, pagan, agnostic and atheist people is something of a side story.

The Tenth Parallel also reinforces my view that the U.S. government remains anti-atheist and anti-Islamic. Officially, of course, it is impartial. But with a variety of Christian and Islamic (and Jewish) groups killing each other, why is it that essentially all of the groups designated as terrorist by the U.S. are Islamic? Groups that do the same thing, if they are Christian, are not considered terrorists. If you want to give to Christian charities abroad, no problem. Try giving to Islamic charities, and Obama's FBI thugs will be at your door step.

Okinawa, Japan, and China

At the end of World War II, the actions of the United States of America proved that much of Japanese propaganda about the USA had been true. Not only was Japan occupied, but the U.S. refused to support independence for other Asian nations. Under the scheme devised largely by U.S. and British leaders, China was to be ruled by a coalition of warlords headed by Chiang Kai-shek, an American puppet. South Korea was occupied by U.S. troops who installed a right-wing puppet there. The French were encouraged to reoccupy Vietnam. The Dutch went on another of their murderous rampages in Indonesia. Of the nations granted independence by the Japanese during World War II, only Burma was able to retain its independence.

To this day the Japanese government has never has quite been able to stick up for itself and become independent. That seems to be changing.

If the Japanese no longer want a U.S. military base in Okinawa, the U.S. should just withdraw.

After World War II, the Cold War began almost immediately. Although the U.S.S.R. (Russia) soon withdrew from Manchuria, turning it over to Chiang Kai-shek, and from North Korea, the U.S. kept up an imperialist posture. Japan, so recently an enemy, was well-treated because President Truman and General MacArthur wanted to keep make it an ally against the Russian communists. When China was finally united and independent under their native Communist Party's leadership, the U.S. really panicked. China was not quite united because the U.S. used a fleet of war ships to protect Chiang Kai-shek's last citadel, Formosa (now Taiwan).

Today, however, the old communist/capitalist divide has largely given way to new alignments. The Japanese have lived peacefully since World War II. The Chinese have seen some battles, but seem content within their traditional borders. Most East Asian nations have prospered better than most of the world in the last two decades.

China and Japan appear to be ready to set aside their World War II era quarrels. Russia is not much of a threat to anyone in the Far East.

It is time for America to withdraw its troops and war ships from Asia. This would allow all Asian nations to spend less on their military; it would allow the U.S. to spend less on its military.

We should encourage the unification of Taiwan and mainland China (it really is none of our business; it is an internal Chinese matter). We need to close our bases in Japan, Korea and the Philippines. These bases threaten Asian nations and destabilize the region. They are relics from a bygone era. Barack Obama might want to use this opportunity to earn his Nobel Peace Prize.

Our governments all need to focus on the prosperity of the people and on the grave environmental issues that confront all the species on this planet.