AHC: Screw the environment the most

Napoleonic victory that slides towards totalitarianism, facing off with an even worse Russia, and paranoied authoritarian Britain. Absolutists don't care too much for the environment.
 
Nukes?

You said "no nukes," I'll take that to mean no nuclear war. But they are SO useful for other purposes. Harbors in Alaska, a really worthwhile canal across Central America, BIG space ships with Orion drives--look at all we can do...
 
Start by screwing democracy.

Environmental movements begin when people notice they keep getting sick and their tap water tastes funny. If they don't have a chance to act on this, and the people who make decisions on industrial policy don't know or care what's going on, there's no limit to how messed up things can get. See the former Soviet Union for examples.
This is also why democracies with a highly educated populace also have the lowest environmental footprint.

Wait a minute...
 

mowque

Banned
To be fair, just up the Industrial Revolution by, say 20 years, and you add 20 years of awful environmental management and more devastation. Basically the more you add, the worse it gets. It is a zero sum game.
 
To be fair, just up the Industrial Revolution by, say 20 years, and you add 20 years of awful environmental management and more devastation. Basically the more you add, the worse it gets. It is a zero sum game.

But you need environmental movements to move at only the pace they did OTL, which seems rather unlikely.
 
One good way would be to have bromine based compounds be developed instead of CFCs. Bromine is ~50 times more effective than Chlorine at destroying ozone so if you couple it with a more lethargic respone from the world community then we could have very well ended up with no ozone layer at all.

Which would have been very bad indeed.
 
And of course, capitalist economic development would be all environmentally friendly.

Rly.

It's all relative. In the United States, fracking continues thanks to lobbyist-riddled body politic. See Gasland the movie for in-depth discussion of that, attacking corrupt government, etc: http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking

The punchline is that in Soviet Russia, corrupt government attacks film-maker!


ps, see my previous post! https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=7337838&postcount=16

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And of course, capitalist economic development would be all environmentally friendly.

Rly.

Oberlin University, not known as a bastion of "America F--- Yeah," offers an interesting-sounding course, http://catalog.oberlin.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=30&coid=63345

"HIST 405 - Colloquium: Environmental Disasters in the USSR


Semester Offered: First Semester
Credits (Range): 4 hours
Attribute: 4SS, WR, CD
The course introduces students to key environmental disasters in Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia during the Soviet period, 1917-1991. The disappearance of the Aral Sea, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the Virgin Lands campaign receive particular attention and emphasis. In addition to these key events, readings also investigate the idiosyncratic ways in which the Soviet authorities approached science, the environment, and demography."

I've attached a PDF associated with the course.

Of course, on the other hand, on this article featuring a top-ten "natural and anthropogenic" environmental disasters, http://www.lenntech.com/environmental-disasters.htm the USSR only has one on the list, versus several that took place in capitalist contexts.

(And of course, lots of other stuff, for example, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/49038/richard-n-cooper/troubled-lands-the-legacy-of-soviet-environmental-destruction )
 

Attachments

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To make our planet have an even more screwed-over environment, you'd have to break the global north's monopoly on advanced manufacturing much earlier than OTL. Essentially, have what's going on in China and India these days begin a lot earlier than the 1980s.
 
The course introduces students to key environmental disasters in Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia during the Soviet period, 1917-1991. The disappearance of the Aral Sea, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the Virgin Lands campaign receive particular attention and emphasis. In addition to these key events, readings also investigate the idiosyncratic ways in which the Soviet authorities approached science, the environment, and demography."

The Soviets were all about scientific value-maximising, and worshiped American giants in the field, like Mr.Ford for example. Except they were mostly implementing the same ideas 20 years later, 10 times more enthusiastically, hence the results.

But generally, to screw the environment over some more, all you need is more population and higher per capita consumptions. So the less wars, revolutions, etc. we have, the faster the Aral dries out, Mekong glows in the dark, and so on. The peace dividend when applied widely enough could well kill the planet by 1960. ;)

Also, just because the First World offloads its immediate environmental impact to third-world recipients, doesn't mean there's no impact. Just that it's been exported.
 
To make our planet have an even more screwed-over environment, you'd have to break the global north's monopoly on advanced manufacturing much earlier than OTL. Essentially, have what's going on in China and India these days begin a lot earlier than the 1980s.

Someone sneaks industrialization into China just like someone did to get Industrialization to the United States. It eventually spreads into other countries in the surrounding areas.
 
The Soviets were all about scientific value-maximising, and worshiped American giants in the field, like Mr.Ford for example. Except they were mostly implementing the same ideas 20 years later, 10 times more enthusiastically, hence the results.

But generally, to screw the environment over some more, all you need is more population and higher per capita consumptions. So the less wars, revolutions, etc. we have, the faster the Aral dries out, Mekong glows in the dark, and so on. The peace dividend when applied widely enough could well kill the planet by 1960. ;)

Also, just because the First World offloads its immediate environmental impact to third-world recipients, doesn't mean there's no impact. Just that it's been exported.


True, true.

So, earlier NAFTA then?
 
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