While china belches out coal fumes,why do i have to clutter my apartment with recycling cr@p?
Recycling is often cost effective, it reduces energy consumption and pollution which is good for the interests of your country (less energy used = greater energy security) and it’s good ethically. Your moral equation seems to be: China is polluting, therefore it’s fine if I pollute It’s very similar to: Someone out there is a murderer, therefore it’s fine if I murder It’s not exactly the same, however. You assume you deserve more of the world’s resources than a Chinese person. The average Chinese emits approximately 25% of the CO2 of the average American, and lots of Chinese pollution (estimates range from 10-30%) is from exports. Despite being far poorer and less polluting per capita than America or Europe, China has some very ambitious renewable energy targets. It’s just starting building a wind farm which will be bigger than all current US wind farms combined. It plans a total of about 50 coal power stations worth of wind farms by 2020. A recent study given to the Chinese government
