It's a useless way to frame the issue. Environmentalism is an easy sell. It's much easier to get people to agree with socialism if you use climate change as part of your argument. But framing climate change as "first world vs third world" is just about the dumbest thing you can do because it puts everyone in the first world on the side of the corporations who are actively trying to downplay and obscure climate change.

If you make an actual, internationalist appeal for fighting climate change then you will have no problem getting people on your side. But framing the issue as "this one group of people is hogging all the resources and we need to stop them" will inevitably play into the hands of ecofascist rhetoric that views humanity as a virus on the earth.

Sorry for venting. Feel free to dunk on me in the comments

  • mrbigcheese [he/him]
    8·
    4 years ago

    People are responsible for what their governments do 🤨 people living in the west and other developed countries are responsible for the damage and impending climate collapse through their inaction and enabling of their current governments, there's no going around that. The US has contributed more CO2 emissions over the past century than the next 3 countries combined. Western capitalist interests dominate global economics and drive climate change. People live in these countries, we all share blame for allowing this to happen to varying degrees.

    • Sarcasm24 [none/use name]
      3·
      4 years ago

      This is profoundly anti-marxist and incorrect, damn. People are absolutely not responsible for what their governments do because they have no control over it. That's literally the whole point of government.

        • Sarcasm24 [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Thank you for clearly articulating what my ineloquent ass could only vaguely suggest

        • mrbigcheese [he/him]
          1·
          4 years ago

          Thats why i said to varying degrees. Americans love to detach themselves from everything their government ever did and act as though they're just being taken along for the ride, when in reality a lot of us both actively and unknowingly enable and legitimize this government in many ways. How many people are ignoring the crisis and largely just want to go back to brunch? We really gonna act like Americans haven't been the most apathetic people over the past decades? Saying no one is responsible in any way for what their country does isn't conducive to anything useful. You can't do anything? You can organize opposition and build dissent. You can work to raise class consciousness. We can go grab guns and do something about it right?

    • lvysaur [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      If we break the world up into equal population spheres,

      Europe+ contributes 70%
      China+ contributes 12%
      India about 3%

      (Europe+ includes Russia/NZ/Aus, China+ includes Japan/Korea/Taiwan)

      https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/cumulative-co2-emissions-region.svg