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Comment by simmerup | Hacker News Reader

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>They must be happy they managed to get a ‘white man bad’ comment in there.

What a strange way to phrase ‘reported a fact’.

They could report any number of facts if they wanted. They could spend all day writing about what their dog had for lunch today and it would be purely factual. They only include specific facts for a reason. They could probably do an analysis and find that e.g. gay people cause a disproportionate amount of carbon emissions (which they do, since they're far more likely to live in higher-income economies) but never would since that's homophobic.

The Chinese list has more Chinese billionaires than the American list has of American billionaires.

I guess it depends on which facts are truthier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...

_Openly_ gay people, possibly. Within an economy you could make the opposite point - openly gay people are underrepresented in the economic and political elites.

Prefacing the fact by calling it ‘a growing problem’ isn’t just reporting a fact.

It didn't say that, it said: "A less discussed but faster-growing problem is inequality within countries.". The reports linked in the article show the growing inequality, please feel free to present your sources showing otherwise.

Ah, the mental gymnastics of the privileged to convince the rest that inequality is not a problem

I thought climate change was about the environment. Now it's a social justice tool.

You forgot the part where the privileged are found to be polluting the most, aka TFA.

Could you explain to us what a 'social justice tool' is?

I think it's pretty self explanatory but ok: in this case pushing a political agenda via an environmental concern.

The problem with this is a lot of people don't agree with this political agenda but do understand the real problem of climate change. It would probably serve the environmental cause to not mix the two together.

Now this group of people who are all about environment but also think that inequality is fine (presumably because they are on top of it) will hopefully realize that these issues turn out to be connected in interesting ways ;)

Ok, I couldn't find any time it's been used to mean that.

What political agenda do you think is being pushed here?

It is always surprising to know for the minority how poor people actually are ..

IMO it's because the stock photo of "the 1%" is a superyacht or a private jet, which makes people like HNers think that they themselves are far below the threshold.

A private jet in the case of this article. I bet that's not how HNers would illustrate us as a group. Quite a nasty rhetorical trick, really.

It depends on whether you're talking about the top 1% of the US, or the top 1% of the world. The latter is a much lower bar.

> They must be happy they managed to get a ‘white man bad’ comment in there.

They also dedicated a whole article to complaining that it's whites doing the most for environmental movements. Their conclusion is always the same, no matter the facts.

Why are so many white men trying to save the planet without the rest of us? Climate change affects minorities and women, the elderly and the poor. But the leadership of the environmental movement is pale and male. That doesn't look like progress - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/08/white-...

Yeah it's totally fine that a group of people that took upon itself to get everyone else to not take airplanes to not eat meat to buy less to recycle more etc. also turns out to be polluting the most...

The fact that you’re willing to stigmatise the people trying to make a difference just because theyre white and male is exactly why racist rhetoric is bad

When you point out that some minority is committing most of the crimes it doesn't make you racist if it helps you solve the problem of crime.

If you point out those at the top of increasingly inequal world are of one race and gender it's not racist or sexist if it helps you solve the problem of inequality.

Labeling things that are inconvenient for you as "racist" is lazy.

Much of environmentalism is aimed at developed, mostly white countries. You frame it as whites lecturing others, but much of it is whites lecturing other whites.

Any tortured logic will do, so long as it finds the right culprit.

Totally. No one is shaming developing countries for burning coal and Taiwan with its insanely strict and unforgiving recycling and trash collection policy is oh so very white and developed.

The truth is that it's important to not pollute but if it turns out that its main preachers both pollute the most and conspicuously fall in the same gender-racial category then it undermines the whole point since people world over would rightfully be cynical about the idea

> No one is shaming developing countries for burning coal

I deliberately said "much", not "all". You want them to completely ignore the developing world, that, unlike during the industrial revolution, has wind and solar options, even as they preach for the West to have even fewer children, despite already having sub-replacement fertility?

In any case, this is tangential to blaming whites for the inaction of non-whites - despite the article's framing, environmental activism is not a scarce resource that whites have monopolized - anyone can do it.

Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-...

Having a child is the grandest act of climate destruction - https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/having-a-child-is-the-gr...

Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them. - https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/science-proves-kids-ar...

BirthStrike: The people refusing to have kids, because of ‘the ecological crisis’ - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/05/health/birthstrike-climat...

Climate change is making people think twice about having children - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/12/climate-change-is-making-peo...

Would you give up having children to save the planet? Meet the couples who have - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/give-up-having...

A World Without Children - A generation facing an intractable problem debates whether to bring a new generation into the world. - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/09/millenn...

No Children Because of Climate Change? Some People Are Considering It - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/climate/climate-change-ch...

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