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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

> Opinion: Due to Chinese human rights abuses AND the threats against American business, the US should not attend the upcoming Beijing Olympics

In a vacuum, I fully agree with protesting China to the fullest extent; however, if scientists are to be believed, these things (human rights, trade, etc violations) trifle in comparison to the climate change threat, and China has all of humanity by the throat here. We need a cooperative relationship with China for the coming decades, since we can't just move our manufacturing (and thus its pollution) out of China overnight and the climate can't wait for a more gradual approach.

EDIT: Looks like I struck a nerve. Folks, believe me, I don't like the idea of letting China off the hook in the short term for its violations, but if anyone has ideas for holding China accountable while also getting it to meet emissions targets, I'm all ears.

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What’s that quote? It’s something along the lines of “the way to get good people to accept or do evil things is to convince them that the end justifies the means”

I think that's a good general principle, but I think the magnitude of the climate change threat and its timelines are exceptional. This principle doesn't generalize to it in my mind, but I'd be happy to hear how we can apply this principle and save the planet.

Am I to understand that you think we need to turn a blind eye to the bad things that China is doing to their own people so that we have a chance of convincing them to stop doing bad things to the rest of the world?

Not quite. The idea is that climate change poses an existential threat to human civilization as we know it. As bad as China's human rights abuses are, they pale in comparison to its climate abuses. If you have ideas for compelling China to reduce its emissions to meet targets while also holding them accountable for their various other violations, I'm all ears.

>> they pale in comparison to its climate abuses

Ah yes, the old "murdering a few people now is less of a problem than potentially murdering more people down the road" argument.

Yeah, I guess in my mind it’s worth finding face-saving means to alleviate Uyghur suffering in order to save humanity as we know it.

But again I ask: what is your solution?

Plug the leaking holes in the boat and worry about getting the sail replaced when you get to shore.

It's certainly easy to brush it off if you're not a murdered Uyghur.

> Plug the leaking holes in the boat and worry about getting the sail replaced when you get to shore.

This is meaninglessly abstract. Anyone can offer trite platitudes. Concretely, how do we meet climate targets by the end of the century without China's participation? What additional burden does that put on the rest of the world, and how are we going to meet that when no one is on track to meet their current obligations?

> It's certainly easy to brush it off if you're not a murdered Uyghur.

1. No one is brushing anything off.

2. What's the Uyghur death toll, approximately?

3. I can similarly imply that you're being too cavalier about the people who will die of starvation, disease, and poverty, but I don't think these sorts of ad hominem are very productive.

You seem awfully convinced that this is an either/or situation.

I see no direct evidence that trying to help the Uyghurs necessarily inhibits our ability to pressure China to slow their climate destruction.

I think we can try to help the Uyghurs, but I think we have to do so in a way that allows China to save face (in contrast to the sort of cathartic, show-China-who's-boss sentiment upthread). But yeah, Washington and Beijing don't get along well, and a very fragile peace is emerging on climate. I think an aggressive push on the Uyghur issue would set back Chinese climate policy by years, and scientists seem to be telling us that we need to make a certain amount of progress by the end of the decade. So yeah, it kind of feels like a dichotomy to me.

It's not our responsibility you refute your claims. It's yours to prove them. How is turning a blind eye to China's human rights abuses going to force their hand when it comes to climate change? What exactly is your plan here? Clearly explain how we get from point A to point B.

And when has this strategy ever worked? We did the same thing with Poland in WWII and look where that got us. You can't make deals with despots.

> How is turning a blind eye to China's human rights abuses going to force their hand when it comes to climate change?

That’s not my claim.

I wanted to include this in my initial comment but it felt too flippant, but since you asked- I have always outright dismissed the idea of US military action against China for their local human rights abuses until you made me consider the possibility that their global human rights abuses were worse and that you couldn't simultaneously pressure them on both fronts. Congrats, you have made me at least 5% more nihilistic today.

(No, I do not think the US should go to war with China. But if you think that China's climate abuse is an existential threat to humankind surely it has to be considered as a possible solution).

Going to war with China would itself be an existential threat, and thus rightly politically impossible (we in the west can't even muster political support to decommission fossil fuels--how are we going to get ourselves to go to war with our largest trading partner and a fellow nuclear and economic superpower?). Personally I'm going to prioritize solutions that minimize deaths.

This would work about as well as appeasing the Nazis did

Here are a couple of not-rhetorical questions for you:

* Which is worse in your mind? China's treatment of the Uyghurs or global civilizational collapse?

* Does holding China accountable for its treatment of Uyghurs increase or decrease the likelihood that China will cooperate on climate?

Not who you're asking but I feel like answering on my own behalf.

1) the treatment of the Uyghurs, hands down. Sometimes standing on your principles is what you have to do. Justice be done though the heavens may fall.

2) neither. China will do nothing that makes it harder for them to become the dominant economic, social and military force on earth. If burning coal gets them there that's what they'll do, and if lip service buys them time that's what they'll do.

In case you haven't noticed, nobody is holding their feet to the fire on climate change. Turning a blind eye to genocide is not about climate change, it is about access to the lucrative Chinese middle class.

China is a dictatorship. If civilizational collapse or not depends on the mood of the Pooh Bear, we’re fucked.

Luckily, it does not. Manufacturing is already shifting out of China to multiple other countries, and with increasing automation, might even end up back in the West.

We’ll almost certainly have to do a combo of the following anyway:

- limit emissions as much as possible using nuclear and solar

- scrape carbon et al out of the atmosphere somehow

- take a certain amount of warming on the chin and roll with it… again, somehow

Luckily, our species is incredibly resourceful at coming up with hail-mary’s when our lives are on the line (past examples are global trade, fertilizers, vaccines, WW2)

> Luckily, it does not. Manufacturing is already shifting out of China to multiple other countries, and with increasing automation, might even end up back in the West.

I'm nearly certain that it's not moving out of China into significantly greener countries, and certainly not at a rate that allows us to meet climate targets.

> We’ll almost certainly have to do a combo of the following anyway:

Yes, we will have to do those things anyway, but we in the west aren't even on track to hit targets that are based on the assumption that China and others will do some reasonable share. Unless the west kicks it into gear, we need China.

> Luckily, our species is incredibly resourceful at coming up with hail-mary’s when our lives are on the line (past examples are global trade, fertilizers, vaccines, WW2)

No, our civilization is incredibly resourceful. We've never had an advanced civilization until global temperatures stabilized within a few degrees. And we're threatening that because we're worried about the moral implications of allowing China to save face in order to save the world. Ironically you mention WWII, which involved far more, far worse moral tradeoffs than the one I'm proposing: firebombing and nuking civilians in Germany and Japan, starving the Indian subcontinent, etc. To be clear, those may well have been the right tradeoffs to make, but they cost far more lives and saved far fewer than what we're discussing here.

Any manufacturing moving out of China is a good thing, even if it isn’t to a green country. If Vietnam, Phillipines, et al, then those are countries that can be strong-armed / sweet-talked into getting greener. If the West, well, then it’s even more in our hands.

If we take this far enough, and we will, it also takes power out of China’s hands, meaning we don’t really need them to have the warm and fuzzies when we ask them nicely not to pollute. We tell them to stop polluting or we pull a boycott, divest, and sanctions on them.

WW2 was a last resort to stop a very nearly unstoppable madman, but we pulled together and we did it. The insane tradeoffs made was only needed because it was during wartime. Pressuring China need not lead to WW3 (perish the thought) nor need it involve death on a large scale. What’s needed is an intelligent 5-10 decade economic strategy. We did this to scuttle the USSR and it worked, with minimal total deaths.

Regarding the Uyghurs: a million-person concetration camp isn’t about “saving face”. Human civilization isn’t worth saving if we just let this slide because it’s easy and convenient to do so.

> Any manufacturing moving out of China is a good thing, even if it isn’t to a green country. If Vietnam, Phillipines, et al, then those are countries that can be strong-armed / sweet-talked into getting greener. If the West, well, then it’s even more in our hands. If we take this far enough, and we will, it also takes power out of China’s hands, meaning we don’t really need them to have the warm and fuzzies when we ask them nicely not to pollute. We tell them to stop polluting or we pull a boycott, divest, and sanctions on them.

Maybe given enough time, but there's no way this is happening fast enough to meet climate targets.

> The insane tradeoffs made was only needed because it was during wartime.

This is cyclical reasoning. "We only needed to resort to warfare because we were in a war". Typically we justify warfare by something like, "if we didn't go to war, many more lives would have been lost". And if you can firebomb and nuke entire cities to save millions, can we not withhold a rebuke on Uyghurs to save hundreds of millions?

> Pressuring China need not lead to WW3 (perish the thought) nor need it involve death on a large scale.

If we can pressure China on Uyghurs without risking climate, then great. I'm not confident considering the tenuous relationship between China and the West.

> What’s needed is an intelligent 5-10 decade economic strategy. We did this to scuttle the USSR and it worked, with minimal total deaths.

We had a functional government and a more politically united population in the second half of the 20th century. Today we have one party that largely thinks climate change is a hoax and the other does little more than lip service.

I disagree with you on the Uyghurs but I think there should be more thinking people in politics. You should go into it.

I feel like there’s a disconnect between people who believe climate change is an existential threat to humanity within the next few years and those who believe it’s a problem that will get worse over time, but not an immediate existential threat. It’s worth pointing out that all doomsday prophesies so far haven’t come true, not just about climate change but nuclear warfare, asteroids hitting the earth, over-population, etc. overstating the immediate risks of climate change will lead to ignoring clear abuses like what China is doing to the Uyghurs.

> I feel like there’s a disconnect between people who believe climate change is an existential threat to humanity within the next few years and those who believe it’s a problem that will get worse over time, but not an immediate existential threat.

I agree. One of many disconnects.

> It’s worth pointing out that all doomsday prophesies so far haven’t come true, not just about climate change but nuclear warfare, asteroids hitting the earth, over-population, etc.

Of these, I think only "nuclear warfare" was an alarm bell widely raised by scientists and it was precisely that alarm bell that led to nuclear disarmament and anti-proliferation policy (which averted the disaster). "We should do nothing because it always works out" is kind of silly when it has only worked out because people have done something. See also Y2K.

> overstating the immediate risks of climate change will lead to ignoring clear abuses like what China is doing to the Uyghurs.

Climate change isn't about the immediate risks (wealthy nations can largely live with a little drought, flooding, and wildfire), it's about the next century and beyond. But yes, I do think we should let this existential threat affect our decisions about Chinese human rights abuses, as a special case. Personally, I would love for the world to have invested heavily in nuclear 50 years ago to the extent that we don't have to worry about China's ego threatening all of civilization, but that's a reality we sadly don't inhabit.

>global civilizational collapse

This is not even a remote possibility, or indicated in the IPCC reports.

Hey, pollution is bad, so let's just forget about every other issue affecting humanity.

Sometimes bad things vary in severity.

Using whatsboutism to whitewash the influence of a foreign power in free speech is gross.

What makes you think that you’ll be able to talk about climate change if the Chinese Communist Party decides doing so is against their interest?

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