The big polluters
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Transcript
- Quentin
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That’s a very good question. China is going to play a very significant part, because China at the moment….America consumes I learnt just the other day, is currently consuming I think it’s 10 billion barrels of oil per year. China is now up to 7 billion barrels of oil a year, it’s rapidly matching America, the curve shows that they could accelerate past them. Its these countries….I’m never very comfortable with these terms about ‘the developed world’, and ‘the developing world’, but for the sake of convenience we are going to refer to the US, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, as the developed world, and the others as the developing world, they are very keen to say well look, you’ve got this, you’ve got that, you’ve got the other, they want to have all the kind of luxury items, the privileges that we have, but rather than learning from our mistakes they are just doing the same thing again. And we are encouraging them, so the ridiculous position that we find ourselves in the moment, is not only are China, and I also think India are going to be very significant players, not only are China and India going to become added complications, added polluters, we in the West are encouraging them.
We are selling them our now outdated powerstation technology. We are selling them our old ideas about automobile production, and often what is giving them what they see is the competitive edge, is that they are not subject to the same stringent rules on pollution that we’ve imposed on ourselves. So it’s a loophole, it’s a version of all those things about cheap training shoes coming from corners of Southeast Asia because the label laws aren’t half as tight, and they can employ young people and make them work long hours.
Except you are not just exploiting the people here, you are exploiting the planet. Again somebody has to take the lead and we have to just say we no longer live in a world where we can kind of go, “Oh that’s their problem and this is our problem.” And I certainly think this sort of thing far outranks getting involved in replacing other governments in countries because you don’t like people who are in charge, is to actually get involved and say let’s make sure that the Chinese don’t end up buying our outdated technology and making our mistakes, and we just look the other way because it’s the other side of the world.