Maybe the fact that the left supports improved working rights, unionisation, free education, equality of opportunities and between nations, freer borders for people…
It’s not just trying to build solar capacity, it’s building all solar capacity in the planet. Solar photovoltaics is essentially exclusively manufactured in China, as are e.g. EV batteries. China is definitely the leading country when it comes to solar and batteries, while maybe the peak of wind technology is in Europe. They’re also innovating on nuclear and they approved to build the largest hydroelectric generation plant in the planet, producing twice as much as the current largest (three gorges dam, also in China?.
So let’s start hating on the world capital of photovoltaics and nuclear because of a lemmitor’s predictions of energy production over the coming 20 years in China?
Not about altruism, just contradicts your prior claim of “energy security”. Maybe they’re switching to renewables because they do care about the environment and because they’re affordable?
Isn’t most of that radiation blocked by the outer layers of the sun, though? Like, sure, there is a non-negligible amount of high energy photons escaping, but the overwhelming majority of the radiation comes AFAIK from blackbody radiation from the plasma at the temperature of the surface of the sun?
That’s why China is working hard on the greatest desert reforestation projects in the world, and why it exports an insane amount of solar panels instead of keeping them for themselves.
For cumulative that’s debatable. CH4 is the second most important gas, and its half-life in the atmosphere is short enough that over spans of 100s of years it can decompose into CO2 which has a much lesser greenhouse potential.
Per capita annual emissions
See? Moving the goalposts. Moving from cumulative, the real important metric, to per capita current emissions during a renewable transition, because otherwise the data doesn’t fit your preconceived, chauvinistic anti-china views.
Compare GDP PPP per capita. China is very much on a lower place than the US or Germany. China is very developed compared to, say, Philippines, but still developing when compared to Japan or UK.
By which other metric would you compare development? I’m open to debate
The important metric for the moral debate is cumulative CO2 per capita, because that’s the whole reason why we’re measuring coal production history, not because we hate coal per se.
I showed you that, even moving to cumulative coal production, China still has 1/3 that of the US per capita, which is the important metric because why the fuck would we compare a country with 1.4bn inhabitants to one with 340mn without taking population size into account.
So yeah, China still has a lot of margin for coal burning until they reach the evil levels of the US/EU, but thankfully they won’t because they’re the strongest country in renewables, producing essentially 100% of all solar panels in the world.
You’re right, you’re referring to the original source, which is supposedly already in PPP dollars, so I deleted my previous comment. Thanks for the correction. Regardless, that data is 2011, so it’s kinda useless to me because that’s before the energy transition of China.
What’s the point of comparing coal if not for CO2? Most other forms of pollution from coal are local, not global, the international debate here is on climate change, a western-world inhabitant has no right to say what China should be doing with the local pollution. The discussion on coal is started because of its horrendous climate change potential, which comes exclusively from its cumulative CO2 emissions.
But if you want to compare coal numbers, I ran the calculations using this source for US production and this source for China production. Downloading the CSVs from both sources, I get that the US has produced 85643270043 short tons of coal, which at 21GJ of energy per short ton amount to 496731 TWh, whereas China has extracted 617787 TWh, i.e. a bit below 25% more than the USA. Since China has 1411 mn inhabitants and the US has 340 mn inhabitants, i.e. China has 415% the population of the USA, China has along its existence as a country extracted about 1/3 as much coal per inhabitant than the USA.
So yeah, China would have to literally consume twice as much coal as it’s already consumed to reach US values of per-capita historical cumulative coal consumption.
Now what will you come up with? Suddenly coal numbers don’t matter anymore?
If you “aren’t sure” about that, then why the hell are you trying to discuss it making guesses instead of informing yourself?
China, a country with 4-5 times the US population, has half the cumulative historic emissions. And yet you have the fucking nerve to blame china for coal. The US and the EU get to pollute the fucking Earth for 2 centuries, and China does a renewable revolution in its 40 years since industrializing and you cry about how they still have plans for coal.
Just, seriously, stop arguing from ignorance. If you do not know about cumulative emissions, don’t make “Oh I’m not so sure about that because look at the trends for the past 60 years”, as if the US and EU hadn’t been emitting fossil CO2 since the fucking late 18th century.
China is 17% of the world and almost 40% of the emissions.
Deceiving metrics. What percentage of world PPP GDP is China? China doesn’t pollute due to its population, it pollutes because it’s the industrial hub of the world. How comfortable of you to sit in your office and import Chinese products disregarding the effect of that in the pollution metrics of your country and China.
China is only %27 renewables while the EU is 47%
And how long did China take to develop? What are the cumulative CO2 emissions of China vs those of the US or Europe? Furthermore: where are the solar panels that Europe uses manufactured? Europe may have a blossoming wind industry, but photovoltaics are almost entirely Chinese.
What a chauvinistic and anti-Chinese point of view. BTW, you got completely proven wrong on China building more coal than renewables, you’re just spitting disinformation.
How much coal has China cumulatively used in its history compared to the US or Europe? Spoiler alert: much less. Almost as if countries in the process of developing used coal for a reason…
Gotta love how you jump to the whataboutism when it comes to good China news. “Yeah sure, they may be saving the environment by going solar, but what about… Uh… Environmental regulation?”
Like, mate, manufacturing 90% of the world’s photovoltaics is the best thing you can environmentally do.
It’s not about regulation. China has almost the complete photovoltaic production of the world. Essentially all panels installed in the rest of the world are also Chinese. It’s about a smart government knowing which technologies to pursue, instead of things like the Spanish “sun tax” of the 2010s that killed whatever solar industry there might have been in the sunniest country in Europe.
Maybe the fact that the left supports improved working rights, unionisation, free education, equality of opportunities and between nations, freer borders for people…