Good point. Maybe you respond to the extreme event with one percent of your energies.

Is this an integral part of the one per cent doctrine: when there is a one per cent risk of an extreme event you become hyperactive in some displacement activity?

Before moving to substance, I’ll note that it is curious that the person who accuses others of “trying to win some kind of Junior High debate contest” is the same one who refuses to answer a specific and relevant question and instead deploys schoolyard insults.

Moving on: I had a look at the ippr article you linked to. The article is full of high rhetoric about “historical responsibility”, but its policy proposals fail to live up to the rhetoric. At no point in the article is it said that the West should submit to the same per-capita quota as the less-polluting countries. Through the use of shifty argumentation the authors are suggesting maintaining emissions inequality through some kind of quota trading system in which the West would either buy or be granted the right to pollute more.

Also, laughably, the authors talk about the difficulty for West to be “altruistic” enough to give $80G yearly to China and other countries as compensation for polluting less. If such an amount could be used to make significant dents in the level of emissions, why hasn’t the West applied its resources already to lower its own per-capita emission to below the Chinese level? Also, since it is China that is giving the rest of the world over $200G every year through its trade surplus, it seems unlikely that a portion of a $80G-a-year rebate would make a significant change in China’s economic and ecological considerations.

Unfortunately, the approach presented in the article is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Focusing on how others should change rather than on how the West should change is convenient but is both ineffective and immoral.

Or we could restrict their oil supply.

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran. Not to worry about end-times scenarios, the Chinese would have to be able to raise a 300 million man army in order to show up as the biblical dragon from the east… oh, wait.

I hope this is a joke.

I think they [the US and Europe] have a responsibility to do this [contribute towards China’s transition costs (and those of LDCs) in moving to more sustainable economies]

No, I was serious. The West definitely is more responsible for the increase in CO2 concentration, but that does not mean that it has anything of value to give the Chinese as compensation for its past misdeeds, let alone its present misdeed. What do you suggest?

You’re talking about the political equivalent of a violation of the laws of thermodynamics: Logically possible, but so wildly improbable as to be a practical impossiblity.

We pay them.

With what? As it is, they give us (i.e., sell us on credit) much of what we consume. Is there anything we can offer them?

I hope this is a joke. Obviously the US and Europe are in a financial position to contribute towards China’s transition costs (and those of LDCs) in moving to more sustainable economies. I think they have a responsibility to do this because their total historical contribution to atmospheric CO2 far exceeds that of those countries.

Got enough crayons for the invites?