Rising sea levels are going to mess with the internet

Mon Jul 23 18:03:31 UTC 2018

> On Jul 23, 2018, at 08:50 , Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:
> 
> Matt Harris wrote on 23/07/2018 16:13:
>> I'm not sure exactly what this means, but in general, I think it's fair to
>> say that the US has taken a more market-driven approach that includes
>> working with industry to decrease carbon emissions.  During the same time
>> frame the EU, China, and other nations and regions that tend towards more
>> heavy handed top-down regulatory approaches to problems such as this seem
>> to be having trouble making progress and are in fact still headed in the
>> wrong direction.
> 
> The available data does not support your speculation.
> 
>> https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.GHGT.KT.CE?locations=US-EU-CN
> 
> Nick

Actually, the graphic that is at the top of that link does support his claims.

It shows China, the most heavy handed of the three economies in the graphic as having an accelerating growth in carbon emissions. It does show that the EU started a downward trend earlier than the US, but that the downward trend in the EU appears to be leveling off and the US downward trend looks to be steeper now and accelerating.

In addition, if you drill down to the individual EU countries, several of them are, in fact, headed up while the more market-based members of the EU seem to be headed down or having leveled off after a sharp decline earlier.

I don’t want Matt to be right, I’m not a big fan of the “market will solve all” mentality, but, in this case, the data you (Nick) presented does actually appear to largely support his claim.

Owen