> This perspective relies on seeing Chinese lives as worth less than American lives.
I'm not sure I follow this. If I was to summarise GenerocUsername's argument it would be "the Chinese government is less concerned with making their economy green, and if the US begins taking an economic/influence hit to make it's economy greener, it'll be yielding an economic advantage to China, which will canabalise more global industry in a non-green way, resulting in a net worse environmental outcome." They're claiming basically a fundamental ideological difference between the countries on climate change that, coupled with a claim of zero-sum international industry, means long term environmental outcomes are better if the US is a dominant international player today.
Sidestepping the argument itself which I believe has a number of key weaknesses (as outlined by others in the comments), can you go over how you're linking that to a devaluation of Chinese lives?
I think you have to define what you mean by "less concerned." I'll take a stab at it, which is that Chinese energy use has grown 7% while US energy use has remained roughly flat. The reason I say that this only works because you devalue Chinese lives, is because Chinese energy use remains less than half (possibly even less than 1/3rd by some measures) what it is in the US per person. If the US reduced energy usage by 10% and China's grew by another 10%, it would still be the case that Chinese people relatively speaking are living in conditions that we in the US would consider extreme hardship, as a direct result of having less energy.
Essentially you're saying that the US should bully the Chinese people into increasing hardship because it's the only way to meet our climate goals.
I'm not sure I follow this. If I was to summarise GenerocUsername's argument it would be "the Chinese government is less concerned with making their economy green, and if the US begins taking an economic/influence hit to make it's economy greener, it'll be yielding an economic advantage to China, which will canabalise more global industry in a non-green way, resulting in a net worse environmental outcome." They're claiming basically a fundamental ideological difference between the countries on climate change that, coupled with a claim of zero-sum international industry, means long term environmental outcomes are better if the US is a dominant international player today.
Sidestepping the argument itself which I believe has a number of key weaknesses (as outlined by others in the comments), can you go over how you're linking that to a devaluation of Chinese lives?