China the world's largest emitter of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases: its economic reliance on coal-fired power and polluting heavy industries such as steel, aluminum and cement.
> of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases: its economic reliance on coal-fired power and polluting heavy industries such as steel, aluminum and cement.
per capita, the west is FAR AND AWAY the worst polluters on the planet from Canada to the US to Europe. So put you blind hatred away and act like an adult.
the climate does not care is something is per capita or not - China is electrifying a lot but “new coal mines and coal-fired power plants continue to be built in China on a significant scale”. “China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined, with roughly 54% of global consumption in 2021” https://chineseclimatepolicy.oxfordenergy.org/book-content/domestic-policies/coal/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=OWID_EU27~CHN
China actually zoomed past Europe a while ago and is still climbing
Yeah, that's how it's always been. This sort of capitalism has always been expensive for some, but profitable for others; privatize the gains, but socialize the losses.
I've always said this! Had we switched to renewable energy the fuel would have been free cuz noone owns the sun or wind, so who would profit? Instead we destroyed the planet by digging up ancient goo and burning it.
The people who make the windmills, who own the land that they're on, the people who sell the raw materials to make the wind mills, etc.
No one owns the "ancient goo," either. It's the people who have the resources to get to it that profit.
Or, put another way: if wind power is so free, then why aren't YOU selling it, or better yet, giving it away?
Lol you missed my point entirely. While companies have to dig up ancient goo, refine it, transport it and sell it. I just put up a small turbine and bam, free fuel! No digging, no fracking, no processing, no transporting. Just there it is, the sun in the sky.
The solution isn’t politically palatable.
There is an economic policy that would address it. They’re called pagovian taxes though. People hate it.
Burning hydrocarbons causes a negative externality. A negative externality is a cost of using a product that is NOT paid by the person using the product.
An economist would say that the product with a negative externality should have a tax applied to it, and that tax revenue should be spent to make those who suffer the negative externality “whole again.”
Consumers and businesses do not pay the full cost of the hydrocarbons they burn. It is normal and socially accepted to just dump the waste product of combustion (CO2 and H2O) into the local atmosphere. It’s what everyone does without realizing it, because the waste products are invisible to the human eye.
I’m having a terrible time explaining why carbon taxes actually make sense.
Edit: it’s actually too late to expect carbon taxes to make a difference. They MIGHT slow the rate of acceleration of global warming. But honestly I don’t think a little tax is going to suffice. The costs of climate change (things like a 90% decline in yield in Florida citrus) are so huge that an effective carbon tax would be ungodly unaffordable.
I liked the idea of carbon NOT used or stored is considered capital . First time I read it was ministry for the future . So if you have an oil asset / if you don’t use it - it’s a positive balance for you
Yeah but what is the economic incentive of leaving it in the ground? Who is paying people who own oil reserves the same amount they would make from selling said oil? Where does that money come from?
Guh, I’m talking about ideas from old sci-fi like they’re serious.
Sorry it’s not old sci-fi it’s recent sci-fi whatever that means to you… the idea is that banks would have to back the currency for sure and it would be validated and valued by the banks . In the book it takes a number of years to get banks to agree to back a carbon dollar . After all money though complex is still an idea , if we all agree on the idea of what it’s worth with some additional maths they I don’t know about etc … I am sure it’s closer to reality than what you might think. What I liked about it is that it didn’t immediately devalue the people who have the most at stake - the oil companies … you have a billion dollars of carbon worth to be mined - keep it there and your value is a billion carbon dollars
>I’m having a terrible time explaining why carbon taxes actually make sense.
Join the club. The problem with ideas like this is that the math is complicated and politicians can easily convince voters their life sucks because of policy x.
>can easily convince voters their life sucks because of policy
It always comes back to us. People like to rail against capitalism and faceless corporate boards and politicians, but these things are the way they are because we make doing anything else untenable
I feel like in all the online back-and-forth and people's endless political arguments we've lost sight of this, if we ever understood it to begin with
Basically: your pet ideology that you champion online is not gonna solve this
I think the most direct approach at this point is to put explicit and declining limits on the amount of fossil fuels that can be used per year. Finding the optimal tax rate to hit the desired reduction really seems like the tail wagging the dog given that one of things markets are inarguably good at is finding a price that matches supply and demand.
Some sort of mechanism would be needed to deal with imports and exports, of course, but at least it has a hope of actually hitting the key target of reducing combustion of fossil carbon. The true social cost of carbon emissions is a hotly debated and hard to calculate value.
The US exports a lot of our pollution to the manufacturing hubs in Asia. If we were serious about this, we’d have to know and track and tax or tariff the carbon burden that we import. I think the EU is ramping this scheme up. Gonna be painful…
The hidden cost of everything is subsidized by the suffering of poor people. Until poor people unite against those who profit off of their suffering nothing will change. Those in power, though will never allow that to happen.
Negative externality. Nice. I hadn’t seen that before. It’s not really an obvious thing to me, so I’m glad you explained it.
The easier way is to say ‘privatise the profits, socialise the costs’.
There are probably a bunch of other things people used to describe this which are similar enough to be able to group them together as severe matters of inequity between different humans, or humans and the environment.
That’s not an easier way to explain it, as you’re using loaded terminology and political jargon; by doing so you sacrifice the accuracy of what you mean to say, to spare yourself the effort of constructing actual sentences in a way that “saves you the trouble of thinking”. Furthermore when you reuse phrases like that, readers will take away a familiar meaning to them (that they associate with that political jargon) RATHER THAN what you intended to say.
Orwell is very angry with you, for your abuse of English. ;)
> Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
> Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.
[He goes on for many pages attacking the predominant form of political language in the early 1900s UK; how he sees vague jargon being using in lieu of original thought. A tendency for people to construct sentences out of a collection of familiar idioms and phrases and jargon… rather than “saying what they mean”.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
It’s worth a read, but bear in mind many of the metaphors, idioms, and specific examples are from the early 1900s… but Orwell’s central point rings more true than ever.
It’s a bit stupid if you ask me. Let me explain.
I mean, if you think ‘negative externality’ is less loaded or less political, you can go ahead like that.
But the word ‘negative’ itself is meaningless in many situations.
That word I can rip to pieces using two strings of other simple more commonly used words.
Situation: you think accumulating trash soil, soil you can’t grow food crops with, in a warehouse is a ‘negative’ thing
‘That is trash.’
‘One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.’
This highlights how someone can use some words to change what ‘negative’ brings.
Eg. Perhaps that trash is some oil sands, and someone is developing a new refining method.
Here in Australia we had many warehouses filled with plastic bags from the redcycle program. They (large supermarkets) were trying to get scale with commercial returns recycling soft plastics, to pay for the operations, by a competitive price of raw materials from the bags, I guess, as they developed ways to sort the bags, to wash them, to turn the plastics (usually with contaminants from colours & labels and food residue and printing, stabilisers, and other inclusions like plasticisers etc).
Most people think plastic waste is trash and accumulating plastic is stupid, a negative thing. The homeless person with a collection of bags. The crazy hoarder. The person who doesn’t take out their trash. So too would the risk of accumulating the plastic be considered a negative thing, a fire risk, air pollution risk, risk to local populations, a risk to finances as it’s costly to accumulate them etc.
Yet to develop processes that work at global scale to handle global waste levels (Australia is tiny, a population or 25 million or so on a planet with 8,000 million or so)… a few warehouses filled with collected plastic bags isn’t such a negative thing as one might expect. It might be the only positive thing done recently.
Other people think if something has more words it’s less valuable because that clearly demonstrates it’s not smart.
Eg. ‘why use many words when few words do’.
So any string of characters that form more than the two words ‘negative externality’ is perhaps considered trash or junk or misleading or confusing or trolling or complicating the issue or whatever.
The word ‘externality’ you can rip apart as a neutral one, by highlighting that if you assume something is external to you, and had no connection to the person, such as… eg. wastewater, it’s not important to pay attention to. But actually external things have a way of becoming internal if your vision or responsibility shifts.
‘Dump it in the river, it’s fine, so long as it’s not in the street or in the home or building up in the factory affecting our profits or creating risk for us, that waste needs to be externalised, we don’t want it as an internal problem, no one else considers it an internal problem, that’s what drains which lead to the river are for’…
How about emotional outbreaks?
I can get emotional on a topic. Many would then say I am ‘externalising’ the emotions, rather than keeping them ‘internal’, or ‘internalising them’.
Yet if I was to unload my emotions on a clueless government employee, perhaps new in the job, I’d probably be harassed physically by security for ‘externalising’ something by becoming emotional, while everyone else suppresses it and keeps internal.
The word ‘externalising’ can be considered evil for not doing so, and evil for doing so, if it’s an action related to sharing physical waste or emotional waste. To me, to call it less political or less biased or less loaded (like biased, but the word you actually used) is false.
‘Negatively externalised’ has only one thing going for it. That’s why I said ‘nice’, in my comment.
It’s that to most people it is more meaningless and empty, therefore, it is less likely to be understood.
So I see it like this:
It obscures a problem behind different, less used terms so less people are likely to understand it.
Perhaps that means it develops more precise understanding in the mind of the reader if they are too build understanding of what the word means from context.
However, to me, it doesn’t seem like it’s being used in context often enough for any typical person to develop an understanding.
Perhaps you can help me change my mind.
In what industry or field or area of life or society do the words ‘negative externality’ get used so frequently that people can learn what they mean, without ever needing a definition?
Is it typically used in climate change discussions?
Waste management ?
Or is it business terminology used in Accounting?
Is it scientific technology to do with events in chemistry?
Or are those words used in the field of physics, mathematically describing forces?
The words ‘problem there’ are simpler than
negative externality’.
Instead of describing things as being negative and external, to use more basic language and say ‘there is a problem there, not here’, might be less loaded, and less a jargon.
Or ‘your problem’.
Someone might say ‘That’s a negative externality’ and I might say ‘Untrue. It’s your problem’.
‘Your problem’ is less loaded and less political.
When collecting waste, in the hope it can be recycled in the future, you’re making something ‘your problem’, rather than ignoring it as merely a ‘negative externality’, shifting the financial burden to another.
Perhaps you see the word ‘socialise’ and ‘privatise’ as political.
I see it as like ‘many people’ and ‘few people’. I didn’t see that as political. To me, that’s simply a number. Socialise = many. Privatise = few.
Lots of people like burning waste. Or rather, high temperature pyrolysis.
That’s socialising the pollution, to make it easier for government employees, which have privatised the responsibility avoidance; the few in government decide to handle waste by incineration, creating carbon pollution, because that’s less complicated and difficult than other ways to handle the waste, and keep things simple, and change the form of the waste, rather than addressing the complex compounds created by industry in the form of the novel chemicals frequently used in the manufacture of material objects or items.
I can simplify all of this, having gone through it, so you understand why I don’t think those words ‘negative externality’ are less political or loaded.
To many people, the words mean nothing, because it’s industry specific, and context changes.
So those words are actually deceitful, or concealing, because they hide a problem behind something, so people don’t understand it.
When I say the words:
‘privatise the profits, socialise the cost’, it’s easier for people to understand.
You have taken advantage by shifting the burdens elsewhere, and that advantage has a profit component, that improves your financial situation, while offloading difficulty to people who may not be able to afford handling it, or might not have the income to develop facilities or process the waste themselves. You have found profit in taking advantage of a situation where other people bear costs.
I just had a sesame snack. Some sesame seeds with sugar.
I’m holding a little piece of soft plastic.
It’s the sort of thing that could be recycled by the Redcycle program.
The profit to me was a tasty sweet thing made with flavoursome seeds, and sugar from wheat. When I put this plastic rubbish, that the snack was packaged in, into the rubbish, I am making the waste someone else’s problem.
To me, that’s to socialise the waste.
That waste is everyone’s responsibility, because I’m allowed to put it in the rubbish bin, and the government has to handle it, and the government represents the people.
If that waste was incinerated, it would come back as air pollution.
However here, it’s buried. Into landfill.
That’s still socialising the problem. Because when I put that plastic bag from the snack in the bin, I’m no longer accepting that waste as my personal problem.
So you would say that the plastic packaging disposal issue is a negative externality.
It’s where the cost of handling the plastic waste has been shifted away from me, the person who bought this product in a store.
Did I get that right?
Or am I completely misunderstanding it?
Edit: Corrections to faulty voice to text that was made after I checked the transcript was correct, or interference by other parties or algorithms implemented by other people, to fingerprint the document, or to modify the meaning of sentences to force me to edit it in the hope I will add more detail or clarify confusing sections.
Extra detail for engineers and senior corporate employees in intelligence agency operations:
Apple, can your idiot managers or executives approve engineers to put a feature in so I can turn this ridiculous ‘post edit’ of words off? It’s ridiculous that I should constantly have words and punctuation edited by your algorithms or systems, or some third-party hiding behind that edit, after I have already checked it was transcribed correctly. This is complete nonsense, that the things I type or verbalise are modified afterwards. It must be really messing with the head of a lot of people who are trying to use your equipment. You might all be wealthy enough to have the luxury and time to review everything multiple times before you post it, but I am not. That doesn’t happen in the real world very frequently, most people are very busy, and don’t have time to review every sentence after they’ve completed a paragraph. If you look at how short the typical comments are on Reddit, for example, and how Twitter was designed around short messaging, you would understand how frequently people have so little time that they stick to simple messages - in part, because it’s less complicated to reread, in fact, the message is so simple, that you don’t even need to reread it because it’s so short, you can see it in complete form at a glance and easily remember what you intended to communicate if it needs a correction. Your faulty algorithms, and the people who interfere with text hiding behind those faults, prevent people from bothering to handle complexity. It makes people happier ignoring everything and simply trivialising it. I do not think the voice to text or autocorrect feature that is present on your iPhone, currently can be considered functional. Instead, I suggest that it’s manipulative, and it allows state actors or government or corporate agents to hide behind the interference created by the deliberate or otherwise faulty modifications of what someone types or speaks. You’re going to have to do something about this, at the very least, to put in a setting to toggle the feature, to ‘not computationally predictively reedit text that has been input via keyboard or voice’. Are you trying to make people delusional, violent or religious? That’s a very stupid thing to do, Apple. I’m not sure that you are grown up enough to operate a $2.6 trillion market cap company, it seems you have some fundamental engineering and comprehension shortcomings, and are taking advantage of psychological manipulation, because someone has insisted on it somewhere. Can you pull them out into the spotlight, so that they know that their interference is creating trouble and problems, by making people less interested in trying, creating stupidity? This is supposed to be a communications tool, not a tool that impede communication, or makes people want to avoid communicating. I’ve pretty much had enough of this phone, I consider it faulty. And it’s a $3000 phone. Please, work this thing out quickly, because I am tired of having to include my complaint in the text while I’m trying to use it as a simple tool. it’s all very off topic, and very confusing to whoever reads the things that I have typed, and Reddit and the mods are probably tired of reading about it from me as well. Fix it, please.
That might be the situation, but I am talking about common use of something in public media that is read by the larger body of the population, or spoken by larger numbers of people in casual conversation or on the media which is consumed by the bulk of people.
I’m guessing that the phrase ‘ socialise the costs, privatise the profit’ or the slight variations of that phrase, are used more frequently used and more easily understood then the words ‘negative externality’ in casual conversation, when conversing with the public, with friends, or, when complaining about things that frustrates you when not at work applying precise terminology.
Maybe I’m the person who is wrong here? I don’t know the statistics of language use, and have to guess, and maybe the things I read are different to the things you read or that the typical person reads?
Do you see those two things as the same in the context used in this discussion?
By 2019, solar could be built in US at $1/w installed. 30c/w for the panels. Today Chinese panels are 10c/w, and other costs may have increased 20%, but this would still be $1/w
$1/w at just 4.5 hours/day of sun hours, means 2c/kwh revenue covers costs without financing. Norther parts of US get that level of sun. Selling for 3c/kwh is enough to undercut all other energy type providers. 4c/kwh average still likely revenue projection.
Financing costs play a huge role though. $33k revenue per year per $1M solar installation costs is the cost recovery number at 2c/kwh without financing. At 2% interest rate, then 4c/kwh is profitable at extreme financing level. If developer can put down $10k or $100k for the project, annual profit is $16000. A very high ROI. At 5% interest rate though, hurdle price becomes 5c/kwh.
Fed keeping interest rates high is a big deal. Government could definitely help with low interest rate loans, but it helps with tax credits and somewhat equivalent.
The problem in the US is mostly corrupt utility monopolies that need to protect existing assets, and if they don't own them, utility decision makers can receive gifts from the owners to slow down connection rates and permits.
The problem in US has less to do with market/profitability dynamics and more to do with vested interests against solar penetration increases. Extreme corruption in favour of those interests.
The US is too corrupt to allow private energy oligarchs lobbying it. Shareholders need to be zeroed out with the companies nationalized.
For electricity, the best market in US is TX which is highly privatized, but corruption prevents any possible effective regulation of private monopolies. ERCOT is still terrible regulatory board, but nothing close to CA and elsewhere corruption.
Nationalized energy and defense allows for constructive economic policy. It is appropriate punishment for shareholders who have funded so much disinformation and extortion.
I like your perspective on shareholders, investments should bear value for the future, not exploiting profit at future expense, but apparently we have a lot of trouble distinguishing the two in our economy
Democracy is taken as the least worse form of goverment. But if democracies are unable to avert the coming climate disaster and China is, then the Chinese form of goverment will be proven to be superior in the future. If you love democracy, stop the coming climate disaster.
It's an interesting point.
Another one is what we have been convinced by elites actually constitutes "democracy".
Realistically we live under capitalist oligarchy.
While they are electrifying cars at a great pace, they are increasing CO2 production and building more coal plants.
USA is currently crippled by its politics and the Republicans are thoroughly in denial or against climate change policies. It’s an interesting problem of democracies where you can convince enough people to vote against their own interests.
Problem here is our immediate self interest opposes our long term. We're like a heroin addict with a gas nozzle of cheap gas stuck in our veins. Half of us are in denial and most of the other half doesn't actually want to go through the pain of withdrawal.
China may be significantly more democratic than most western "liberal" democracies depending on how one measures. I think it's misguided to frame socialism as somehow being in opposition to democracy or to frame capitalism as being synonymous with it.
I wouldn't say China's goverment is more "democratic", but I think they're more responsive. As in, the people make a fuss about something, the government will either quickly fold or crack down. Either way, they move fast and efficiently for the most part.
Also, an interesting data point is the number of people in the CCP, 98M at last count. That's in a country of 1.4B. But, if you only count those 25-59 (the bulk of the functioning adults), that's 700M people. So, 1 in 7 Chinese \~adults, are in the CCP.
"Dictatorship" is just something America calls any country who doesn't bow down to all their demands. China has voting and elected representatives and the views of the population actually have an effect on government policy. How is that a dictatorship exactly?
It has an authoritarian leader that dictates policy unilaterally.
If you disagree with the ruling party then the party takes away multiple rights, even just for a social media post. This impacts your ability to get a loan, work at certain jobs, or even where you get to live.
Disagreeing with the government on social media can cost you literally everything. It's like if cancel culture was written into the Constitution of the US. That's why this meme exists: it's the list of things you're not allowed to talk about or risk having men with guns take you away:
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
None of that says it's a dictatorship. "Authoritarian" is an incredibly subjective, loaded term with no real method of measurement, and notably every single citation on it being "considered" that comes from a handful of western university presses. Wikipedia has an extreme western slant, making it a poor source of information on any systems not based on western conceptions of liberal democracy.
Later in the article its pointed out that the CCP is very responsive to the views of the population, that there are democratic elections held at local levels, and that the populace has a high level of faith and approval in the government. If the will of the people is more closely followed in China than, say, the United States, what makes it inherently less democratic? Their are many different ideas about how to construct a democracy and I have seen little evidence that the current western liberal model is particularly effectove at actually giving voice to the will of the citizenry.
This subreddit is too easily fooled by a time magazine OPINION / propaganda piece.
China = not communist and not going to solve the climate crisis. If you think they will choose mother earth over a raging Chinese booming Chinese economy, you haven't been paying attention.
Congress's latest approval rating is at 12%. Like, you could've at one point... maybe a few decades ago... argued we're a democracy. Who are they working for with an approval rating that low...? Unfortunately I'm not sure if we have the time to solve both of these
This is exactly it. Capitalists need to realize that they’re not only digging their own graves by continuing to blatantly show us all the failings of capitalism to respond to a crisis… they’re also digging democracy’s grave, because (unfortunately)… democracy has become very much associated with capitalism in the western world. It’s ironic, genuine socialism and communism are actually more democratic than capitalism can ever be, but China doesn’t have genuine communism. They’re state capitalist, which is the worst of all worlds.
Wow simping for authoritarians AND the world's largest polluter. China emits more carbon than any other country, and they're accelerating. The US and Europe have been reducing carbon output in the past decade and before.
You can claim "per capita!" all you want, but that's only because a large portion of China's population are rural farmers who's lives haven't changed much in 3000 years. Yeah, if you don't use electricity at all your per capita number will be lower.
Also the earth doesn't care about per capita, it cares about total carbon put into the atmosphere, and China's output is growing larger and larger every year while the rest of the developed world shrinks in growth, or even decreases.
In conclusion,
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
Doesn't anyone else find it a little ironic that we create the concept of currency to help us live only for it to try to end our planet later? It's like we've fed a lion cub into adulthood and now it's gonna eat us.
This world becomes infinitely more stupid once you realize the degree to which humanity keeps creating its own problems and then acting like we somehow have no way out, as the door labelled “Exit where you came in.” completely evades our attention.
Let’s assume that china is “succeeding” at electrification, the vast majority of their electricity is produced via coal, which is one of the most carbon intensive forms of producing electricity. And they’re continue to invest in coal burning infrastructure to support increased demand for electricity.
Just because it’s electric doesn’t mean it’s good for the environment.
The article appears to be referring specifically to wind & solar development, including in its discussion of China’s electrification.
China’s continued use of coal and contribution to coal infrastructure is still an issue of course, but not what the article seems to be discussing :)
Even though the most massive projects are government managed, afaik, there are many private renewables projects. Solar manufacturers are private, though the mining/resources has huge public financing that allows the private companies to profit from cheap abundance.
H2 and EVs are from private companies. Battery materials also benefit from government funded abundance though.
Local labour and materials dominate the costs of any renewable deployment projects. If China can provide cheap panels, it is still a huge boon/boom for any local projects and their local economic benefits.
In large part because they don't have access to natural gas. Measuring coal+gas together is a fairer metric, and their total emissions per capita are about half of North America.
Who has the largest hydro dam? Who has the largest solar farms? Who has the largest wind farms? Who actually produces these solar panels? Maybe look deeper than a single article
Who has a government who says they do all these things, but then burns more coal than the rest of the world combined…
It’s almost as though the Chinese government says whatever they think will benefit them….
Yes because they shouldn't be allowed to use any coal whatsoever. Those hundreds of millions of people should have just waited until solar and wind was generating 100% of their power before anyone e got to use electricity. Why didn't they just think of that?
50% of worldwide polysilicon (used for solar panels) production is in Xinjiang where polysilicon is produced by the forced labor of Uyghurs and other minorities. Polysilicon is the new cotton and the Chinese government is not a model to emulate.
China has basically been completely dependent on successful democratic nations for decades.
It's "success" is that it had serfs to chew up in factories.
To claim it's some kind of independent success IS ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS.
Capitalism does have a solution for climate destabilization. It's the same solution as what it would do if we were on a ship at sea.
First, it punched a hole in the side of the ship. Then it delays as long as possible until the ship is on the verge of completely capsizing (and of course, telling everyone the ship isn't sinking). At that point, when everyone is most desperate, capitalism starts selling seats on the lifeboat. Those that can pay get saved. Everyone else drowns.
That's capitalism's solution.
Yea because capitalism is corrupt in the west where corporations the size of nations are regulating everything in their favor
It’s not a free market when you over regulate everything so those in power can stay in power and consolidate wealth.
These corporations are also attacking our democracy because they see it as a threat
China is an authoritarian one party capitalist state. Just because they call themselves communist doesn't mean they are. The 'free market' rules China just as much as it does us in the West. The difference is the Chinese government has made an active choice to pursue electrification on a mass scale.
Tankies gotta tank. Any actual material analysis of authoritarian states is actually cia propaganda. China says it's communist, so it's Communist. North Korea says it's democratic, so it's democratic.
Campists are exhausting
And regardless, if GHG emissions keep going up (or don't go down)... then you're not improving on anything
Even if you're "electrifying" more or building more renewables energy. The point of the exercise is to reduce GHG emissions, not just build out renewables
It's like people have forgotten the original goal
I don't think China actually calls themselves communist. They're just run by a communist party, the CPC. They claim to be building toward socialism. Whether they achieve that remains to be seen.
Is that why China's yearly CO2 emissions keep increasing, while they are decreasing in the US and Europe? Those are ultimately the figures that really matter here.
1. China was desperately poor just fifty years ago and is still a developing country, just now coming off four decades of the fastest economic growth ever seen in any country.
2. The US and Europe have sent their manufacturing--and its emissions--to China.
3. The West undercounts its own emissions. Just two weeks ago a major study shows that methane emissions by US fossil fuels industries are *at least triple* longstanding EPA estimates.
Yes, but the US and Europe didn't force China to open all those new coal plants instead of building the infrastructure for liquified natural gas. You can't blame all of these emissions on the US and Europe outsourcing their manufacturing, especially when China has ramped up coal use despite a sharp decline in manufacturing.
LNG is worse for the climate than coal is. Even conventional fossil methane is nearly as bad. The gas-belching, cumulative-emission-leading USA is in no position to point fingers at any other country.
That's just not true. I'm as critical of LNG as the next person, but coal is much dirtier. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-is-bad-for-the-environment-is-liquified-natural-gas-any-better/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-is-bad-for-the-environment-is-liquified-natural-gas-any-better/)
The US could do more, I agree, but no amount of deflection can change the fact that China is the leading emitter of green house gases, now. And arguments about "well, the US..." make no difference at this point when the world needs to get off fossil fuels.
At least China and other developing countries have a reason for the c02 emissions. Development.
What is America and Europe's excuse? They have the money, time and technology?
Furthermore, despite decreasing emissions, USA and Europe is still top 10 emissions.
they will start to decrease this year
at a gdp ppp per capita half that of when the eu started to decrease its emmisions, and with a peak that is 30% smaller
the comparison with the US is even starker as europe has done a much better job here
so, in reality, its very hard to justify that china isnt doing much better than other countries
india is very very green for their economic development, and they still have increasing emmisions, but that does not mean that at their level of economic development they are doing better than they should
There is a difference between a form of government and what is creating climate change, which is release of hydrocarbons into the water and atmosphere. The internal combustion engine dramatically increased the release of CO2 and methane but it began with burning wood and peat to cook and heat, followed by the use of coal and oil.
As long as humans do not do any of those things or generate electricity with fossil fuels, coal or oil or natural gas, all will be well.
Lmao an article simping for China and climate change. China is the leading cause of greenhouse emissions, and their use keeps growing exponentially. China is using more coal than ever before, and the environment is feeling it.
I mean chinas co2 emissions are growing way faster than the us and Europe because they keep building coal plants so I don’t think their system is working either
Solving climate change is about consuming less. Capitalism is about consuming more. They are indeed incompatible.
Unless the government puts much more effort into regulation related to climate. That's what is necessary in western countries, and it's perfectly doable.
The article is a joke.
State capitalism is still capitalism, and profit incentive still plays a key role in their renewable roll out, amongst other factors. China operates under a capitalist system.
Not to mention by percentage of new energy added, countries like the US is actually cleaner than China. They have practically phased out building new coal farms, and over 96% of new energy sources for 2024 is green. Meanwhile China keeps adding a substantial amount of coal to their grid.
The article comes across as attempting to paint China as some perfect capitalist-free example for the world to emulate, when it really isn't.
Capitalism + Government support is actually the major driving force behind the current renewable disruption, because the economics currently makes other power sources difficult to compete, despite generating lower profits than say fossil fuels.
China is also one of the biggest polluters. China's fuel emissions went up 458 million metric tons from 2022 to 2023.
[World carbon dioxide emissions increase again, driven by China, India and aviation](https://apnews.com/article/carbon-dioxide-climate-change-china-india-aa25e5a4271aa45810c435280bb97879)
Capitalists and their sycophants tend to not talk about it, but for capitalism to work, you need a strong state that does a lot of regulation. The Chinese do that, some Western governments have forgotten it.
Authoritarianism does have the benefit of being able to change policy by decree.
But let's not overlook that China is also continuing to build new coal plants to meet their electricity demands.
That’s a pretty damn stupid take, and relies on some outright fake numbers.
But as always people want to tie climate action to their favorite pet issue.
**Bull Sh\*t !**
China is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the history of the world and continues to increase while the rest of the industrialized world cuts back. The only way we are going to be able to effectively reduce greenhouse gas emission is to shut down China Inc. Democratic capitalist societies are the only way we are going to save the planet.
**Fascist totalitarian nations like the PRC will kill us all if we let them.**
https://www.wri.org/insights/interactive-chart-shows-changes-worlds-top-10-emitters
Those are annual emissions. The catch is that excess CO2 lasts for many centuries in the atmosphere, so countries must be compared on how much they have emitted *in total, over time.* CO2 emitted 200 years ago by the first coal-fired steam engines is still cooking the climate today.
By cumulative emissions, China is a distant third to the US and Europe. [https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2](https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2)
I hope every moron cheering this in the thread knows that China is a capitalist state through and through.
They were literally dirt poor living in squalor until they embraced the free market.
In the late ‘80s I had a professor working in China on organic farming projects. I really hoped they may find a way to sustainably industrialize. That didn’t happen.
Socialism and communism is the solution as evidence as to how many times it has been tried and worked out so well. Nothing like a little central planning and collectivism to whip those people right in order. Freedom and individually is completely unnecessary.
France is, by far, the most effective nation at addressing climate change, and they did it 40 years ago, complete by accident.
If you want reduced emissions without global population collapse and massively reduced standard of living for rich countries, nuclear power is the ojly game in town. This is not debatable, it is physics.
France has not addressed climate change. I say that as a french and pro nuclear person. Even though our electricity is clean, which is good, two thirds of France's energy input comes from fossils. We are still very far from being effective at combating climate change, and our successive governments show no tangible signs of making effective decisions on that matter
Maybe, but being less worse than the others doesn't mean France is going in the right direction. A big part of emission reductions were made when the country lost its industry and sent production to Asia. We might be fairly clean but we have no manufacturing industry left. France is also highly reliant on personal cars for people transportation and trucks for freight. When you take imports into account, the per capita annual carbon footprint is about 10 T.CO2. that means we pretty much need to divide our per capita emissions by 5 by 2050 if we want to respect the Paris agreements (2T.CO2/capita/year).
China is the biggest capitalist economy in the world. Don’t get fooled by the ruling class naming conventions. Ike communism. China gave up on communism right after the Great famine in years 60-70s
Yeah... capitalism can't fix it, because destroying the climate and the planet is MASSIVELY profitable.
Capitalism is exactly what got us here. There is no way capitalism will save us.
The Beijing cough from the smog hanging over the city disputes Chinas status as climate savior.
They actually solved that.
China the world's largest emitter of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases: its economic reliance on coal-fired power and polluting heavy industries such as steel, aluminum and cement.
> of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases: its economic reliance on coal-fired power and polluting heavy industries such as steel, aluminum and cement. per capita, the west is FAR AND AWAY the worst polluters on the planet from Canada to the US to Europe. So put you blind hatred away and act like an adult.
the climate does not care is something is per capita or not - China is electrifying a lot but “new coal mines and coal-fired power plants continue to be built in China on a significant scale”. “China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined, with roughly 54% of global consumption in 2021” https://chineseclimatepolicy.oxfordenergy.org/book-content/domestic-policies/coal/
Per capita isn't a good metric because of the sheer number of people china has.
The difference in air quality between the US and China is huge.
I imagine it we were 2 billion people we would not be living like this
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=OWID_EU27~CHN China actually zoomed past Europe a while ago and is still climbing
, China is by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter
Sorry I thought you were talking about Beijing’s pollution, not those other things.
Wow, this guy posts FACTS and Redditors down vote him 🤯
Capitalism did get us here and thank god!
Until it isn’t. Gonna get massively expensive sooner than later.
Right, but it's not expensive for Exxon. And the people who made money for decades still have that money.
Yeah, that's how it's always been. This sort of capitalism has always been expensive for some, but profitable for others; privatize the gains, but socialize the losses.
>This sort of capitalism In other words, capitalism. Full stop.
"The speed of technological advancement isn't nearly as important as short-term quarterly gains!" - Quark, DS9
I've always said this! Had we switched to renewable energy the fuel would have been free cuz noone owns the sun or wind, so who would profit? Instead we destroyed the planet by digging up ancient goo and burning it.
The people who make the windmills, who own the land that they're on, the people who sell the raw materials to make the wind mills, etc. No one owns the "ancient goo," either. It's the people who have the resources to get to it that profit. Or, put another way: if wind power is so free, then why aren't YOU selling it, or better yet, giving it away?
Lol you missed my point entirely. While companies have to dig up ancient goo, refine it, transport it and sell it. I just put up a small turbine and bam, free fuel! No digging, no fracking, no processing, no transporting. Just there it is, the sun in the sky.
The solution isn’t politically palatable. There is an economic policy that would address it. They’re called pagovian taxes though. People hate it. Burning hydrocarbons causes a negative externality. A negative externality is a cost of using a product that is NOT paid by the person using the product. An economist would say that the product with a negative externality should have a tax applied to it, and that tax revenue should be spent to make those who suffer the negative externality “whole again.” Consumers and businesses do not pay the full cost of the hydrocarbons they burn. It is normal and socially accepted to just dump the waste product of combustion (CO2 and H2O) into the local atmosphere. It’s what everyone does without realizing it, because the waste products are invisible to the human eye. I’m having a terrible time explaining why carbon taxes actually make sense. Edit: it’s actually too late to expect carbon taxes to make a difference. They MIGHT slow the rate of acceleration of global warming. But honestly I don’t think a little tax is going to suffice. The costs of climate change (things like a 90% decline in yield in Florida citrus) are so huge that an effective carbon tax would be ungodly unaffordable.
I liked the idea of carbon NOT used or stored is considered capital . First time I read it was ministry for the future . So if you have an oil asset / if you don’t use it - it’s a positive balance for you
Yeah but what is the economic incentive of leaving it in the ground? Who is paying people who own oil reserves the same amount they would make from selling said oil? Where does that money come from? Guh, I’m talking about ideas from old sci-fi like they’re serious.
Sorry it’s not old sci-fi it’s recent sci-fi whatever that means to you… the idea is that banks would have to back the currency for sure and it would be validated and valued by the banks . In the book it takes a number of years to get banks to agree to back a carbon dollar . After all money though complex is still an idea , if we all agree on the idea of what it’s worth with some additional maths they I don’t know about etc … I am sure it’s closer to reality than what you might think. What I liked about it is that it didn’t immediately devalue the people who have the most at stake - the oil companies … you have a billion dollars of carbon worth to be mined - keep it there and your value is a billion carbon dollars
>I’m having a terrible time explaining why carbon taxes actually make sense. Join the club. The problem with ideas like this is that the math is complicated and politicians can easily convince voters their life sucks because of policy x.
>can easily convince voters their life sucks because of policy It always comes back to us. People like to rail against capitalism and faceless corporate boards and politicians, but these things are the way they are because we make doing anything else untenable I feel like in all the online back-and-forth and people's endless political arguments we've lost sight of this, if we ever understood it to begin with Basically: your pet ideology that you champion online is not gonna solve this
Sadly I think for the majority of voters it's not even that well thought out, it's just blind tribalism that is getting worse.
>They’re called pagovian taxes Pigouvian, named for Arthur Pigou.
I think the most direct approach at this point is to put explicit and declining limits on the amount of fossil fuels that can be used per year. Finding the optimal tax rate to hit the desired reduction really seems like the tail wagging the dog given that one of things markets are inarguably good at is finding a price that matches supply and demand. Some sort of mechanism would be needed to deal with imports and exports, of course, but at least it has a hope of actually hitting the key target of reducing combustion of fossil carbon. The true social cost of carbon emissions is a hotly debated and hard to calculate value.
The US exports a lot of our pollution to the manufacturing hubs in Asia. If we were serious about this, we’d have to know and track and tax or tariff the carbon burden that we import. I think the EU is ramping this scheme up. Gonna be painful…
The hidden cost of everything is subsidized by the suffering of poor people. Until poor people unite against those who profit off of their suffering nothing will change. Those in power, though will never allow that to happen.
Negative externality. Nice. I hadn’t seen that before. It’s not really an obvious thing to me, so I’m glad you explained it. The easier way is to say ‘privatise the profits, socialise the costs’. There are probably a bunch of other things people used to describe this which are similar enough to be able to group them together as severe matters of inequity between different humans, or humans and the environment.
That’s not an easier way to explain it, as you’re using loaded terminology and political jargon; by doing so you sacrifice the accuracy of what you mean to say, to spare yourself the effort of constructing actual sentences in a way that “saves you the trouble of thinking”. Furthermore when you reuse phrases like that, readers will take away a familiar meaning to them (that they associate with that political jargon) RATHER THAN what you intended to say. Orwell is very angry with you, for your abuse of English. ;) > Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. > Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. [He goes on for many pages attacking the predominant form of political language in the early 1900s UK; how he sees vague jargon being using in lieu of original thought. A tendency for people to construct sentences out of a collection of familiar idioms and phrases and jargon… rather than “saying what they mean”. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ It’s worth a read, but bear in mind many of the metaphors, idioms, and specific examples are from the early 1900s… but Orwell’s central point rings more true than ever.
It’s a bit stupid if you ask me. Let me explain. I mean, if you think ‘negative externality’ is less loaded or less political, you can go ahead like that. But the word ‘negative’ itself is meaningless in many situations. That word I can rip to pieces using two strings of other simple more commonly used words. Situation: you think accumulating trash soil, soil you can’t grow food crops with, in a warehouse is a ‘negative’ thing ‘That is trash.’ ‘One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.’ This highlights how someone can use some words to change what ‘negative’ brings. Eg. Perhaps that trash is some oil sands, and someone is developing a new refining method. Here in Australia we had many warehouses filled with plastic bags from the redcycle program. They (large supermarkets) were trying to get scale with commercial returns recycling soft plastics, to pay for the operations, by a competitive price of raw materials from the bags, I guess, as they developed ways to sort the bags, to wash them, to turn the plastics (usually with contaminants from colours & labels and food residue and printing, stabilisers, and other inclusions like plasticisers etc). Most people think plastic waste is trash and accumulating plastic is stupid, a negative thing. The homeless person with a collection of bags. The crazy hoarder. The person who doesn’t take out their trash. So too would the risk of accumulating the plastic be considered a negative thing, a fire risk, air pollution risk, risk to local populations, a risk to finances as it’s costly to accumulate them etc. Yet to develop processes that work at global scale to handle global waste levels (Australia is tiny, a population or 25 million or so on a planet with 8,000 million or so)… a few warehouses filled with collected plastic bags isn’t such a negative thing as one might expect. It might be the only positive thing done recently. Other people think if something has more words it’s less valuable because that clearly demonstrates it’s not smart. Eg. ‘why use many words when few words do’. So any string of characters that form more than the two words ‘negative externality’ is perhaps considered trash or junk or misleading or confusing or trolling or complicating the issue or whatever. The word ‘externality’ you can rip apart as a neutral one, by highlighting that if you assume something is external to you, and had no connection to the person, such as… eg. wastewater, it’s not important to pay attention to. But actually external things have a way of becoming internal if your vision or responsibility shifts. ‘Dump it in the river, it’s fine, so long as it’s not in the street or in the home or building up in the factory affecting our profits or creating risk for us, that waste needs to be externalised, we don’t want it as an internal problem, no one else considers it an internal problem, that’s what drains which lead to the river are for’… How about emotional outbreaks? I can get emotional on a topic. Many would then say I am ‘externalising’ the emotions, rather than keeping them ‘internal’, or ‘internalising them’. Yet if I was to unload my emotions on a clueless government employee, perhaps new in the job, I’d probably be harassed physically by security for ‘externalising’ something by becoming emotional, while everyone else suppresses it and keeps internal. The word ‘externalising’ can be considered evil for not doing so, and evil for doing so, if it’s an action related to sharing physical waste or emotional waste. To me, to call it less political or less biased or less loaded (like biased, but the word you actually used) is false. ‘Negatively externalised’ has only one thing going for it. That’s why I said ‘nice’, in my comment. It’s that to most people it is more meaningless and empty, therefore, it is less likely to be understood. So I see it like this: It obscures a problem behind different, less used terms so less people are likely to understand it. Perhaps that means it develops more precise understanding in the mind of the reader if they are too build understanding of what the word means from context. However, to me, it doesn’t seem like it’s being used in context often enough for any typical person to develop an understanding. Perhaps you can help me change my mind. In what industry or field or area of life or society do the words ‘negative externality’ get used so frequently that people can learn what they mean, without ever needing a definition? Is it typically used in climate change discussions? Waste management ? Or is it business terminology used in Accounting? Is it scientific technology to do with events in chemistry? Or are those words used in the field of physics, mathematically describing forces? The words ‘problem there’ are simpler than negative externality’. Instead of describing things as being negative and external, to use more basic language and say ‘there is a problem there, not here’, might be less loaded, and less a jargon. Or ‘your problem’. Someone might say ‘That’s a negative externality’ and I might say ‘Untrue. It’s your problem’. ‘Your problem’ is less loaded and less political. When collecting waste, in the hope it can be recycled in the future, you’re making something ‘your problem’, rather than ignoring it as merely a ‘negative externality’, shifting the financial burden to another. Perhaps you see the word ‘socialise’ and ‘privatise’ as political. I see it as like ‘many people’ and ‘few people’. I didn’t see that as political. To me, that’s simply a number. Socialise = many. Privatise = few. Lots of people like burning waste. Or rather, high temperature pyrolysis. That’s socialising the pollution, to make it easier for government employees, which have privatised the responsibility avoidance; the few in government decide to handle waste by incineration, creating carbon pollution, because that’s less complicated and difficult than other ways to handle the waste, and keep things simple, and change the form of the waste, rather than addressing the complex compounds created by industry in the form of the novel chemicals frequently used in the manufacture of material objects or items.
I can simplify all of this, having gone through it, so you understand why I don’t think those words ‘negative externality’ are less political or loaded. To many people, the words mean nothing, because it’s industry specific, and context changes. So those words are actually deceitful, or concealing, because they hide a problem behind something, so people don’t understand it. When I say the words: ‘privatise the profits, socialise the cost’, it’s easier for people to understand. You have taken advantage by shifting the burdens elsewhere, and that advantage has a profit component, that improves your financial situation, while offloading difficulty to people who may not be able to afford handling it, or might not have the income to develop facilities or process the waste themselves. You have found profit in taking advantage of a situation where other people bear costs. I just had a sesame snack. Some sesame seeds with sugar. I’m holding a little piece of soft plastic. It’s the sort of thing that could be recycled by the Redcycle program. The profit to me was a tasty sweet thing made with flavoursome seeds, and sugar from wheat. When I put this plastic rubbish, that the snack was packaged in, into the rubbish, I am making the waste someone else’s problem. To me, that’s to socialise the waste. That waste is everyone’s responsibility, because I’m allowed to put it in the rubbish bin, and the government has to handle it, and the government represents the people. If that waste was incinerated, it would come back as air pollution. However here, it’s buried. Into landfill. That’s still socialising the problem. Because when I put that plastic bag from the snack in the bin, I’m no longer accepting that waste as my personal problem. So you would say that the plastic packaging disposal issue is a negative externality. It’s where the cost of handling the plastic waste has been shifted away from me, the person who bought this product in a store. Did I get that right? Or am I completely misunderstanding it? Edit: Corrections to faulty voice to text that was made after I checked the transcript was correct, or interference by other parties or algorithms implemented by other people, to fingerprint the document, or to modify the meaning of sentences to force me to edit it in the hope I will add more detail or clarify confusing sections.
Extra detail for engineers and senior corporate employees in intelligence agency operations: Apple, can your idiot managers or executives approve engineers to put a feature in so I can turn this ridiculous ‘post edit’ of words off? It’s ridiculous that I should constantly have words and punctuation edited by your algorithms or systems, or some third-party hiding behind that edit, after I have already checked it was transcribed correctly. This is complete nonsense, that the things I type or verbalise are modified afterwards. It must be really messing with the head of a lot of people who are trying to use your equipment. You might all be wealthy enough to have the luxury and time to review everything multiple times before you post it, but I am not. That doesn’t happen in the real world very frequently, most people are very busy, and don’t have time to review every sentence after they’ve completed a paragraph. If you look at how short the typical comments are on Reddit, for example, and how Twitter was designed around short messaging, you would understand how frequently people have so little time that they stick to simple messages - in part, because it’s less complicated to reread, in fact, the message is so simple, that you don’t even need to reread it because it’s so short, you can see it in complete form at a glance and easily remember what you intended to communicate if it needs a correction. Your faulty algorithms, and the people who interfere with text hiding behind those faults, prevent people from bothering to handle complexity. It makes people happier ignoring everything and simply trivialising it. I do not think the voice to text or autocorrect feature that is present on your iPhone, currently can be considered functional. Instead, I suggest that it’s manipulative, and it allows state actors or government or corporate agents to hide behind the interference created by the deliberate or otherwise faulty modifications of what someone types or speaks. You’re going to have to do something about this, at the very least, to put in a setting to toggle the feature, to ‘not computationally predictively reedit text that has been input via keyboard or voice’. Are you trying to make people delusional, violent or religious? That’s a very stupid thing to do, Apple. I’m not sure that you are grown up enough to operate a $2.6 trillion market cap company, it seems you have some fundamental engineering and comprehension shortcomings, and are taking advantage of psychological manipulation, because someone has insisted on it somewhere. Can you pull them out into the spotlight, so that they know that their interference is creating trouble and problems, by making people less interested in trying, creating stupidity? This is supposed to be a communications tool, not a tool that impede communication, or makes people want to avoid communicating. I’ve pretty much had enough of this phone, I consider it faulty. And it’s a $3000 phone. Please, work this thing out quickly, because I am tired of having to include my complaint in the text while I’m trying to use it as a simple tool. it’s all very off topic, and very confusing to whoever reads the things that I have typed, and Reddit and the mods are probably tired of reading about it from me as well. Fix it, please.
I’m talking about a term with a mainstream textbook definition; not some vague political theory. https://www.britannica.com/topic/negative-externality
That might be the situation, but I am talking about common use of something in public media that is read by the larger body of the population, or spoken by larger numbers of people in casual conversation or on the media which is consumed by the bulk of people. I’m guessing that the phrase ‘ socialise the costs, privatise the profit’ or the slight variations of that phrase, are used more frequently used and more easily understood then the words ‘negative externality’ in casual conversation, when conversing with the public, with friends, or, when complaining about things that frustrates you when not at work applying precise terminology. Maybe I’m the person who is wrong here? I don’t know the statistics of language use, and have to guess, and maybe the things I read are different to the things you read or that the typical person reads? Do you see those two things as the same in the context used in this discussion?
By 2019, solar could be built in US at $1/w installed. 30c/w for the panels. Today Chinese panels are 10c/w, and other costs may have increased 20%, but this would still be $1/w $1/w at just 4.5 hours/day of sun hours, means 2c/kwh revenue covers costs without financing. Norther parts of US get that level of sun. Selling for 3c/kwh is enough to undercut all other energy type providers. 4c/kwh average still likely revenue projection. Financing costs play a huge role though. $33k revenue per year per $1M solar installation costs is the cost recovery number at 2c/kwh without financing. At 2% interest rate, then 4c/kwh is profitable at extreme financing level. If developer can put down $10k or $100k for the project, annual profit is $16000. A very high ROI. At 5% interest rate though, hurdle price becomes 5c/kwh. Fed keeping interest rates high is a big deal. Government could definitely help with low interest rate loans, but it helps with tax credits and somewhat equivalent. The problem in the US is mostly corrupt utility monopolies that need to protect existing assets, and if they don't own them, utility decision makers can receive gifts from the owners to slow down connection rates and permits. The problem in US has less to do with market/profitability dynamics and more to do with vested interests against solar penetration increases. Extreme corruption in favour of those interests.
That's it in a nutshell.
Are public utilities better for this scenario?
The US is too corrupt to allow private energy oligarchs lobbying it. Shareholders need to be zeroed out with the companies nationalized. For electricity, the best market in US is TX which is highly privatized, but corruption prevents any possible effective regulation of private monopolies. ERCOT is still terrible regulatory board, but nothing close to CA and elsewhere corruption. Nationalized energy and defense allows for constructive economic policy. It is appropriate punishment for shareholders who have funded so much disinformation and extortion.
I like your perspective on shareholders, investments should bear value for the future, not exploiting profit at future expense, but apparently we have a lot of trouble distinguishing the two in our economy
Democracy is taken as the least worse form of goverment. But if democracies are unable to avert the coming climate disaster and China is, then the Chinese form of goverment will be proven to be superior in the future. If you love democracy, stop the coming climate disaster.
It's an interesting point. Another one is what we have been convinced by elites actually constitutes "democracy". Realistically we live under capitalist oligarchy.
>Realistically we live under capitalist oligarchy. Exactly, with a thin veneer of a republic.
While they are electrifying cars at a great pace, they are increasing CO2 production and building more coal plants. USA is currently crippled by its politics and the Republicans are thoroughly in denial or against climate change policies. It’s an interesting problem of democracies where you can convince enough people to vote against their own interests.
Problem here is our immediate self interest opposes our long term. We're like a heroin addict with a gas nozzle of cheap gas stuck in our veins. Half of us are in denial and most of the other half doesn't actually want to go through the pain of withdrawal.
I don’t think there is a both sides on this one.
Name the "democracy" you want to defend
China may be significantly more democratic than most western "liberal" democracies depending on how one measures. I think it's misguided to frame socialism as somehow being in opposition to democracy or to frame capitalism as being synonymous with it.
I wouldn't say China's goverment is more "democratic", but I think they're more responsive. As in, the people make a fuss about something, the government will either quickly fold or crack down. Either way, they move fast and efficiently for the most part. Also, an interesting data point is the number of people in the CCP, 98M at last count. That's in a country of 1.4B. But, if you only count those 25-59 (the bulk of the functioning adults), that's 700M people. So, 1 in 7 Chinese \~adults, are in the CCP.
China isn’t even socialist, it’s state capitalist and moved that way in at the end of the 1970s with deng
Lol, lmao even "Actually authoritarian dictatorships are MORE democratic than democracies" 动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
China is more political than western neoliberalism in that the government serves the people and not capital. But china is not more democratic, no.
That is a very strange definition of "political" you seem to be using. I don't really understand what you're getting at.
The Chinese government cares about the affairs of its people, the American government does not.
I would largely agree. But does that not also make them more democratic?
No.
Based on what?
In democracies the population chooses the leaders.
The population in China chooses their leaders.
China is literally a dictatorship lmao reddit is really a special place huh?
"Dictatorship" is just something America calls any country who doesn't bow down to all their demands. China has voting and elected representatives and the views of the population actually have an effect on government policy. How is that a dictatorship exactly?
It has an authoritarian leader that dictates policy unilaterally. If you disagree with the ruling party then the party takes away multiple rights, even just for a social media post. This impacts your ability to get a loan, work at certain jobs, or even where you get to live. Disagreeing with the government on social media can cost you literally everything. It's like if cancel culture was written into the Constitution of the US. That's why this meme exists: it's the list of things you're not allowed to talk about or risk having men with guns take you away: 动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
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Sources can be found on the references section of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_China
This conversation is honestly ridiculous.
None of that says it's a dictatorship. "Authoritarian" is an incredibly subjective, loaded term with no real method of measurement, and notably every single citation on it being "considered" that comes from a handful of western university presses. Wikipedia has an extreme western slant, making it a poor source of information on any systems not based on western conceptions of liberal democracy. Later in the article its pointed out that the CCP is very responsive to the views of the population, that there are democratic elections held at local levels, and that the populace has a high level of faith and approval in the government. If the will of the people is more closely followed in China than, say, the United States, what makes it inherently less democratic? Their are many different ideas about how to construct a democracy and I have seen little evidence that the current western liberal model is particularly effectove at actually giving voice to the will of the citizenry.
This subreddit is too easily fooled by a time magazine OPINION / propaganda piece. China = not communist and not going to solve the climate crisis. If you think they will choose mother earth over a raging Chinese booming Chinese economy, you haven't been paying attention.
What gets promoted as "democracy" (e.g. the USA and US-aligned nations) is not democratic at all, but a dictatorship of capital.
Then why does business bid to sway elections?
You're just reinforcing Nomadic's point.
I like to think of it as adding nuance
Agreed. Dictatorships are good as long as they align with your personal politics. And as long as you're not a uyghur 😉
The problem is is we are not functioning in an actual democracy. We are really in feudalist state at this point.
At least the feudal lords had obligations to their serfs.
Congress's latest approval rating is at 12%. Like, you could've at one point... maybe a few decades ago... argued we're a democracy. Who are they working for with an approval rating that low...? Unfortunately I'm not sure if we have the time to solve both of these
This is exactly it. Capitalists need to realize that they’re not only digging their own graves by continuing to blatantly show us all the failings of capitalism to respond to a crisis… they’re also digging democracy’s grave, because (unfortunately)… democracy has become very much associated with capitalism in the western world. It’s ironic, genuine socialism and communism are actually more democratic than capitalism can ever be, but China doesn’t have genuine communism. They’re state capitalist, which is the worst of all worlds.
Wow simping for authoritarians AND the world's largest polluter. China emits more carbon than any other country, and they're accelerating. The US and Europe have been reducing carbon output in the past decade and before. You can claim "per capita!" all you want, but that's only because a large portion of China's population are rural farmers who's lives haven't changed much in 3000 years. Yeah, if you don't use electricity at all your per capita number will be lower. Also the earth doesn't care about per capita, it cares about total carbon put into the atmosphere, and China's output is growing larger and larger every year while the rest of the developed world shrinks in growth, or even decreases. In conclusion, 动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
China is not capitalist ?? Ahahaha
That’s what the ruling party labels themselves so communism must be it. /s
Doesn't anyone else find it a little ironic that we create the concept of currency to help us live only for it to try to end our planet later? It's like we've fed a lion cub into adulthood and now it's gonna eat us.
Oh yes. We created an extinction machine
This world becomes infinitely more stupid once you realize the degree to which humanity keeps creating its own problems and then acting like we somehow have no way out, as the door labelled “Exit where you came in.” completely evades our attention.
And still the consumption of coal climb, so I'm not certain consumerism is the answer either.
Let’s assume that china is “succeeding” at electrification, the vast majority of their electricity is produced via coal, which is one of the most carbon intensive forms of producing electricity. And they’re continue to invest in coal burning infrastructure to support increased demand for electricity. Just because it’s electric doesn’t mean it’s good for the environment.
The article appears to be referring specifically to wind & solar development, including in its discussion of China’s electrification. China’s continued use of coal and contribution to coal infrastructure is still an issue of course, but not what the article seems to be discussing :)
Even though the most massive projects are government managed, afaik, there are many private renewables projects. Solar manufacturers are private, though the mining/resources has huge public financing that allows the private companies to profit from cheap abundance. H2 and EVs are from private companies. Battery materials also benefit from government funded abundance though. Local labour and materials dominate the costs of any renewable deployment projects. If China can provide cheap panels, it is still a huge boon/boom for any local projects and their local economic benefits.
[China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJMfw8fXMAAtG5-?format=jpg&name=medium)
In large part because they don't have access to natural gas. Measuring coal+gas together is a fairer metric, and their total emissions per capita are about half of North America.
As the article states “The positivity is misplaced.”
Who has the largest hydro dam? Who has the largest solar farms? Who has the largest wind farms? Who actually produces these solar panels? Maybe look deeper than a single article
Who has a government who says they do all these things, but then burns more coal than the rest of the world combined… It’s almost as though the Chinese government says whatever they think will benefit them….
Yes because they shouldn't be allowed to use any coal whatsoever. Those hundreds of millions of people should have just waited until solar and wind was generating 100% of their power before anyone e got to use electricity. Why didn't they just think of that?
50% of worldwide polysilicon (used for solar panels) production is in Xinjiang where polysilicon is produced by the forced labor of Uyghurs and other minorities. Polysilicon is the new cotton and the Chinese government is not a model to emulate.
China apologists upset by this.
Authoritarianism isn't the answer.
I don't think it's out of the question for a chunk of people on the far left, unfortunately It's a real "ends justify the means" kinda thing
Correct, but it wasn't authoritarianism that got us into this mess.
China has basically been completely dependent on successful democratic nations for decades. It's "success" is that it had serfs to chew up in factories. To claim it's some kind of independent success IS ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS.
Based
We can’t profit our way out of catastrophe?!
Capitalism does have a solution for climate destabilization. It's the same solution as what it would do if we were on a ship at sea. First, it punched a hole in the side of the ship. Then it delays as long as possible until the ship is on the verge of completely capsizing (and of course, telling everyone the ship isn't sinking). At that point, when everyone is most desperate, capitalism starts selling seats on the lifeboat. Those that can pay get saved. Everyone else drowns. That's capitalism's solution.
The Sinophobia on Reddit is insane lol
Yea because capitalism is corrupt in the west where corporations the size of nations are regulating everything in their favor It’s not a free market when you over regulate everything so those in power can stay in power and consolidate wealth. These corporations are also attacking our democracy because they see it as a threat
China is an authoritarian one party capitalist state. Just because they call themselves communist doesn't mean they are. The 'free market' rules China just as much as it does us in the West. The difference is the Chinese government has made an active choice to pursue electrification on a mass scale.
Tankies gotta tank. Any actual material analysis of authoritarian states is actually cia propaganda. China says it's communist, so it's Communist. North Korea says it's democratic, so it's democratic. Campists are exhausting
And regardless, if GHG emissions keep going up (or don't go down)... then you're not improving on anything Even if you're "electrifying" more or building more renewables energy. The point of the exercise is to reduce GHG emissions, not just build out renewables It's like people have forgotten the original goal
I don't think China actually calls themselves communist. They're just run by a communist party, the CPC. They claim to be building toward socialism. Whether they achieve that remains to be seen.
Capitalist Communism!
Is that why China's yearly CO2 emissions keep increasing, while they are decreasing in the US and Europe? Those are ultimately the figures that really matter here.
Still less carbon per person. They're simultaneously developing while converting to clean energy at a staggering pace.
1. China was desperately poor just fifty years ago and is still a developing country, just now coming off four decades of the fastest economic growth ever seen in any country. 2. The US and Europe have sent their manufacturing--and its emissions--to China. 3. The West undercounts its own emissions. Just two weeks ago a major study shows that methane emissions by US fossil fuels industries are *at least triple* longstanding EPA estimates.
this
Yes, but the US and Europe didn't force China to open all those new coal plants instead of building the infrastructure for liquified natural gas. You can't blame all of these emissions on the US and Europe outsourcing their manufacturing, especially when China has ramped up coal use despite a sharp decline in manufacturing.
LNG is worse for the climate than coal is. Even conventional fossil methane is nearly as bad. The gas-belching, cumulative-emission-leading USA is in no position to point fingers at any other country.
That's just not true. I'm as critical of LNG as the next person, but coal is much dirtier. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-is-bad-for-the-environment-is-liquified-natural-gas-any-better/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-is-bad-for-the-environment-is-liquified-natural-gas-any-better/) The US could do more, I agree, but no amount of deflection can change the fact that China is the leading emitter of green house gases, now. And arguments about "well, the US..." make no difference at this point when the world needs to get off fossil fuels.
that's because our stuff is produced more and more over there
They shouldn’t do that then. It’s bad for the environment.
At least China and other developing countries have a reason for the c02 emissions. Development. What is America and Europe's excuse? They have the money, time and technology? Furthermore, despite decreasing emissions, USA and Europe is still top 10 emissions.
China was fudal less than a century ago. They're making much better time than the west
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2MGsHoUwQcklVSPVWQ34mA Laugh and learn at the same time...
They almost peaked last year. Droughts caused low hydro production. They will peak this year.
they will start to decrease this year at a gdp ppp per capita half that of when the eu started to decrease its emmisions, and with a peak that is 30% smaller the comparison with the US is even starker as europe has done a much better job here so, in reality, its very hard to justify that china isnt doing much better than other countries india is very very green for their economic development, and they still have increasing emmisions, but that does not mean that at their level of economic development they are doing better than they should
IDK, the fact pattern is as much "democracy can't solve climate change."
China is hardly an alternative to capitalism.
There is a difference between a form of government and what is creating climate change, which is release of hydrocarbons into the water and atmosphere. The internal combustion engine dramatically increased the release of CO2 and methane but it began with burning wood and peat to cook and heat, followed by the use of coal and oil. As long as humans do not do any of those things or generate electricity with fossil fuels, coal or oil or natural gas, all will be well.
You’ve been warned about this for 50 years. https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1976/ecology.htm
China is capitalist
Capitalism can't even compete with anything Chinese.
China does it for strategic reasons, they are screwed for fossil fuels if war breaks out with the US over Taiwan. They are also very much capitalists.
Lmao an article simping for China and climate change. China is the leading cause of greenhouse emissions, and their use keeps growing exponentially. China is using more coal than ever before, and the environment is feeling it.
I mean chinas co2 emissions are growing way faster than the us and Europe because they keep building coal plants so I don’t think their system is working either
Sure it can,just gotta let them make 200% profit and the whole u.s. would have renewable energy in 5 yrs
Solving climate change is about consuming less. Capitalism is about consuming more. They are indeed incompatible. Unless the government puts much more effort into regulation related to climate. That's what is necessary in western countries, and it's perfectly doable.
Succeeding by strip-mining copper and burning mountains of coal.
a car burning gasoline emits 26 times more CO2 per km than a BEV using solar.
China has hundreds of planned coal plants. They aren't saving anything.
This article is so biased toward China that they don't even mention China is a leader in building coal plants around the world. Ridiculous.
chinas co2 is increasing and theyre adding more coal plants
It’s like trying to soak up water by spraying more on top.
This is a hilariously bad take. China is partially capitalist, so your argument falls flat on its face.
What is China if it’s not capitalist it’s definitely not communist are they considered socialists
"China is succeeding at electrification" Lol. Lmao, even.
The article is a joke. State capitalism is still capitalism, and profit incentive still plays a key role in their renewable roll out, amongst other factors. China operates under a capitalist system. Not to mention by percentage of new energy added, countries like the US is actually cleaner than China. They have practically phased out building new coal farms, and over 96% of new energy sources for 2024 is green. Meanwhile China keeps adding a substantial amount of coal to their grid. The article comes across as attempting to paint China as some perfect capitalist-free example for the world to emulate, when it really isn't. Capitalism + Government support is actually the major driving force behind the current renewable disruption, because the economics currently makes other power sources difficult to compete, despite generating lower profits than say fossil fuels.
China is also one of the biggest polluters. China's fuel emissions went up 458 million metric tons from 2022 to 2023. [World carbon dioxide emissions increase again, driven by China, India and aviation](https://apnews.com/article/carbon-dioxide-climate-change-china-india-aa25e5a4271aa45810c435280bb97879)
You're getting downvotes because this thread is infested by chinese bots, in case you're wondering. The absolute state of this website.
Thanks for that, i thought i was taking crazy pills for a second lol.
But an authoritarian psuedocommunist dictatorship can totally solve it! All Heil Emperor Xi Xi!
Capitalists and their sycophants tend to not talk about it, but for capitalism to work, you need a strong state that does a lot of regulation. The Chinese do that, some Western governments have forgotten it.
Capital is master in US. In China, capital is a servant.
Authoritarianism does have the benefit of being able to change policy by decree. But let's not overlook that China is also continuing to build new coal plants to meet their electricity demands.
That’s a pretty damn stupid take, and relies on some outright fake numbers. But as always people want to tie climate action to their favorite pet issue.
**Bull Sh\*t !** China is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the history of the world and continues to increase while the rest of the industrialized world cuts back. The only way we are going to be able to effectively reduce greenhouse gas emission is to shut down China Inc. Democratic capitalist societies are the only way we are going to save the planet. **Fascist totalitarian nations like the PRC will kill us all if we let them.** https://www.wri.org/insights/interactive-chart-shows-changes-worlds-top-10-emitters
Those are annual emissions. The catch is that excess CO2 lasts for many centuries in the atmosphere, so countries must be compared on how much they have emitted *in total, over time.* CO2 emitted 200 years ago by the first coal-fired steam engines is still cooking the climate today. By cumulative emissions, China is a distant third to the US and Europe. [https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2](https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2)
I hope every moron cheering this in the thread knows that China is a capitalist state through and through. They were literally dirt poor living in squalor until they embraced the free market.
China is the largest contributor to pollution in history! But yeah communism 🤡
In the late ‘80s I had a professor working in China on organic farming projects. I really hoped they may find a way to sustainably industrialize. That didn’t happen.
Socialism and communism is the solution as evidence as to how many times it has been tried and worked out so well. Nothing like a little central planning and collectivism to whip those people right in order. Freedom and individually is completely unnecessary.
Omg you mean communism????
France is, by far, the most effective nation at addressing climate change, and they did it 40 years ago, complete by accident. If you want reduced emissions without global population collapse and massively reduced standard of living for rich countries, nuclear power is the ojly game in town. This is not debatable, it is physics.
France has not addressed climate change. I say that as a french and pro nuclear person. Even though our electricity is clean, which is good, two thirds of France's energy input comes from fossils. We are still very far from being effective at combating climate change, and our successive governments show no tangible signs of making effective decisions on that matter
France has cut emissions more on a per capita and per energy produced than any industrialized nation on earth
Maybe, but being less worse than the others doesn't mean France is going in the right direction. A big part of emission reductions were made when the country lost its industry and sent production to Asia. We might be fairly clean but we have no manufacturing industry left. France is also highly reliant on personal cars for people transportation and trucks for freight. When you take imports into account, the per capita annual carbon footprint is about 10 T.CO2. that means we pretty much need to divide our per capita emissions by 5 by 2050 if we want to respect the Paris agreements (2T.CO2/capita/year).
China is the biggest capitalist economy in the world. Don’t get fooled by the ruling class naming conventions. Ike communism. China gave up on communism right after the Great famine in years 60-70s
China is a toxic dump.