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Originally Posted by Resolute 14
You're actually arguing my point for me. If Alberta separated from Canada, Albertans would not be producing more or less waste at all. The only thing that changes is the artificial line that determines who gets to look worse. At the same time, you are simultaneously arguing - correctly - that Alberta would not become more efficient despite having a lower population than Canada as a whole while giving China credit - incorrectly - for having a very large population.
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Sorry, I honestly don't understand what you are saying here. How does anything I argued support your position that raw totals of waste production (at the national level) is more useful than per capita data?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
On the one hand, you are attempting to manufacture a straw man as nobody has made that argument.
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Didn't mean to make a strawman argument. I just presumed that we were discussing this data in the context of a mutually recognized problem of "human beings produce an unsustainable amount of waste". But not everyone may agree with that premise. Fair enough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
On the other, you nearly touched the truth of the issue. If the amount of waste humanity creates is a problem, then the amount of waste humanity creates needs to be reduced. Everywhere. The moment you start making excuses based on the size of a region's economy, you subordinate environmental concerns to monetary ones. So, yes, we should be looking at reducing waste everywhere. Because one less tonne produced in Canada is worth the same as one less tonne produced in India. And China. And Monaco.
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This, to me, is a gross oversimplification of the problem and the issues. Although waste is an environmental problem, solutions are not solely environmental. There are obvious financial, economic, and human costs to almost every attempt to reduce waste production. The distribution of how those costs are borne (and by who) clearly engages issues of fairness and justice (in my opinion.) Even just on a practical level, if proposed solutions don't seem fair, they won't get any traction.
Generation of pollution and waste is directly and unavoidably (at least for the time being) related to economic growth, production, and development. If you cap (for example) Canada's and India's future waste production at current relative levels, you are essentially also capping Canada's and India's future economic wealth at current relative levels which is great for Canadians but not great for Indians.