The US is dependent on international trade. If they’re the only ones emitting too much, the rest of the world could sanction them, reducing their emissions by collapsing their economy.
With the US making moves on Greenland with no sign of being satisfied after, the EU would probably be up for those sanctions at some point.
One of the issues with dictators is that they reflect the people that put them in power. Every dictator Americans have put in power so far has been a fascist who was bad for the local economy.
European governments and companies want to smelt it in Europe. But due to capitalism Europe does not have incentive structures where the companies profit from doing that, so the companies are not doing the work their shareholders, the government, and their employees want them to do.
So the companies are calling on lawmakers to design a different incentive structure that will result in European private companies performing the desired behavior.
Meanwhile, China wants the industry so it builds the industry and the industry does what China wants.
There is no difference in quality between recycled aluminium and freshly mined and processed aluminium as long as they are the same alloy. If Chinese companies sold a certain alloy as a different alloy, that would be corporate fraud and people wouldn’t be gormlessly complaining about it.
So no, this is just neoliberal capitalists complaining that another economic system is more efficient and begging the government to take more money from the poor to make up for the difference.
“Positivity” is a weird thing. You can be rich and sad because your neighbor is more rich. You can be working yourself ragged and happy because it’s a competition on a topic that you love.
You can be Caribbean pirates dancing with death fighting for life and liberty against cartoonishly evil empires and you can be suffering from depression in safety with people you love.
You can live in the shadow of a toxic chemical plant treasuring every moment you spend with your family or you can have a private island and prosperous family and feel hollow.
Climate change will almost certainly lead to violent clashes between groups and states unwilling to give up unsustainable wealth and privilege and also between them and people just trying to survive, on a scale never before seen on Earth. Nuclear, biological, and mass autonomous weapons may be used. Over a billion violent deaths next century seems likely, and over seven billion violent deaths is very possible.
But that doesn’t mean we have to feel negative all the time while living through that. That depends on what we do and what we’re working for. Building anarchist spaces, I haven’t felt this alive since I was a child. People are facing the risk of permanent injury, prison, and worse, but they look more alive than 99% of wage workers.
We have a chance to build a better world with our own hands as the old one burns, for however many millions of people will be alive in the 22nd century if not for ourselves. Every thing we do matters to us, to our friends, to our comrades, and to the world. Maybe we’ll end up in a place where despair is appropriate, but it is not now.
I don’t know if this counts as a “positive imagined future”, but it is the one we are heading towards and I am happy.
Slightly longer tl;dr: “Pay me or other influencers to attend a conference where we can muse about whether we truly cannot”
Gen Z has D&D, cunnilingus, and bisexuality. Nerds, freaks, and queers. Interracial couples, women in positions of power, and people talking openly on mental health and neurodiversity. Violent political action, vtubers, and rudeness.
They don’t have a stricter moral code than previous generations, just a better one.
Half the western descent into fascism is older generations seeing western culture progress out of their moral overton window and losing their minds trying to resecure a cultural legacy they can be proud of.
As with the Hamas attack on October 7th and Al Qaeda’s on 9/11, as with John Brown’s murder or slave owners on the eve of the US civil war, as with the Indian independence movement outside of Gandhi, as with suffragette terror bombings in the early 20th century, as with unionist terror bombings in Europe in the 19th century, it’s important to put terrorism in the context of the times.
Terrorism is bad, but it usually only exists in the context of far greater evils. Genocide, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, child labor, systeming oppression of women, and yes, climate change.
Of all of these, climate change will be the most deadly (though colonialism probably still has it beat for genocide). Entire nations are already being wiped off the map, and dozens more will follow. Hundreds of millions will die violently, with the people of Berlin as a group killing thousands of them though their present-day emissions.
In that context, focusing on condemning a couple of radicals who didn’t even kill anyone is denying the gravity of the situation.
Every terrorist group was condemned at the time of the events. Many are now considered good in the eyes of history, and most of those have had their actions whitewashed by educational institutes dedicated to the status quo, or have had their results attributed to their pacifist compatriots.
I’m not saying anyone should engage in violence. There are plenty of people who need no encouragement if only you stop condemning and sanctioning them. Diversity of tactics has historically almost always been more effective than pacifism. So let us do our best in the way we like and let them do their best in the way they like.
And before anyone cites Chenoweth at me, read their paper and their later comments about how the paper is being misused to argue for pacifism. Then if you’re surprised, maybe add Gelderloos’ The Failure of Nonviolence to your reading list.