I really wish I could just say that this is good news, but the tragic reality is that it’s still way too slow. Stop investing in fossil fuels, for fuck’s sake.
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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What would you have China do? They're dominating production of pretty much every renewable energy source and its still not enough to support China's industrialization. China also doesn't really have vast oil and gas reserves that it can use to convert coal plants to natural gas plants.
Meanwhile, the EU is thinking of aggressive tariffs on Chinese EVs because... they're too cheap and might get too much adoption in the EU.
What would you have China do?
Stop investing in fossil fuels, for fuck’s sake.
China is still spending shitloads of money and time on extracting coal, building coal power plants, etc.
Western countries should be doing much more and should also be helping developing countries bear the cost of transitioning to renewables far more than they currently are.
Again, how would you propose Western countries help China with that? China's the world's leading producer of renewable energy technologies. It's not even fucking close, they just don't have the manufacturing capacity to meet their energy deficit. Meanwhile, the US has their panties in a bunch trying to limit Chinese technological development instead of helping China improve their industrial efficiency and decarbonize their grid.
Most notably, instead of giving China access to more efficient computers, the US basically threw hands and said "just throw more electricity at the problem because we're not helping"
Again, how would you propose Western countries help China with that?
I literally said in my comment:
“Western countries should be doing much more and should also be helping developing countries bear the cost of transitioning to renewables far more than they currently are.”
By “doing more”, I mean that they should be investing much more into renewables themselves, and ending all fossil fuel subsidy.
By “helping developing countries bear the cost”, I mean literally provide developing countries with aid in the form of money to fund their renewables projects.
they just don’t have the manufacturing capacity to meet their energy deficit.
They can do more than they are doing, and therefore, they should do more. I don’t think this is a complex argument I’m making!
One forecaster says that China might reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 0% from today's levels by 2030, significantly overachieving compared to its goal of continuing to increase them until then.
Which would unironically be very impressive, though we'll see if they manage.
At once very impressive and so completely inadequate as to be almost entirely useless. This is the pace we're going at when we haven't even got near the difficult part that will come when the low-hanging fruit is gone.