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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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I'm whining about China spending very little on current green energy technology while building more and more coal plants and taking advantage of these sort of PR stories.
I can't help it, I'm one of those people who whines about climate change.
'spending very little'???
They produced more new green energy than the total capacity of green energy for the rest of the world combined in 2024.
And yet they keep building more coal plants.
In a generation they went from a famine every decade to the end of famines, in a second generation they went from a industrial age economy with most of its people living in extreme poverty to eliminating extreme poverty and some of its people living on par with those in the wealthiest nations. In this generation they have raised the standard of living of their poorest from a poverty the US hasn't seen in a century to that of middle class Americans in the 1980s. In order to accomplish this, massive amounts of electricity is needed. That lifestyle is naturally wasteful as it takes electricity for granted, but it's better by most accounts. This is on top of being the world's factory and the electricity use that entails.
In short, yes, they need both, and nuclear which they're also the leader in. Unlike the West they do have plans to get off coal as a power source, and the amount of work they've done eliminating coal usage near cities by itself is commendable, compared to its contemporaries like the US.
The poorest parts of China are still much poorer than any middle class. Most rural Chinese still do not complete high school.
And yet they own large farms that are tax free that they can earn money off of. The few low industrialized parts (currently representing less than 200 million) don't have schools or massive infrastructure, but also have guarantees their way of life and making money is secure until they do have access to those things. And Xinjiang alone shows it's not an empty promise; going from one of those regions you're referring to, to a region that rivals Vietnam or Malaysia by itself.
I bet you won't blame Mao for the last famine.
Just don't try to leave if you don't like it.
And no, nobody needs to make climate change worse with more coal plants.
Yeah, mao fucked up, like the US fucked up during its great famine, sorry dust bowl. And then no famine ever again.
To your second point, of course you can't leave if you're a criminal (every nation on earth has this policy) or in severe debt to the government (most nations have this policy), but you can leave under pretty much any other circumstances. I didn't click your link but even you wouldn't be spreading the conspiracy theory of secret global police that kidnap random yellow people for the cpc, right?
To your third point, coal plants and any other steam generators are easy to convert over to each other once built. A nuclear plant and a coal plant share 70% of their equipment. Building one lays the foundation for the other. If you need quick base load expansion, you can't really beat coal or diesel, and continually expanding the quality of life for 1.4 billion people requires constant base load expansion... Even better if it can later be converted into near infinite power sources like nuclear.
Wait, that's a hoax? Fucking TV news, even reposted on youtube where you have trouble telling who's who, they manage to convince people of shit.
I'll be clear though, the CCP is not to be unconditionally trusted. If you wouldn't want a random person you never met to be suddenly world dictator, why trust an oligarchy that has proven they refuse to admit fallibility when they do fuck up? Tianamen square is - regardless of what you believe - no different than the people calling it with conspiracy theories about the US (or the whole "Global West") and "a secret cabal of social elites" (and even if there is no cabal, look where we are now?).
The reason to not forget history is not because you can prevent it from repeating. It's there so we can punish leaders who set themselves up to benefit from it repeating, because we all know where this is leading. Someone is going to commit the last straw, and the bloodbath against leadership in every country in retaliation for exploiting the masses cannot be stopped.
After that, I can't forsee society recovering. We don't want to recover. Too many people just want to murder anyone who, regardless of whether the victim deserved it, doesn't fit into their worldview. Saying they deserved it doesn't make it so. They only deserve it if they want to punish collectives for things, and most of the people who want to kill someone hate collectives, not individuals.
I hate Trump, Vance and Musk, but I don't instantly jump to the conclusion that everyone's already allied with them in the government. The purge is happening, but it's not yet complete and it's not too late to fight back.
Ah yes, once again we hope that in the future, something is done about climate change.
Except China operates and so far has executed multi year long plans that have been incredibly successful. On top of this they're the reason green energy is cheap at all, given they're the world's producer.
Your words:
That is hoping that in the future, something is done about climate change.
Building new coal-powered plants as the Earth continues to warm and we know for a fact what such plants do to contribute to that is not justifiable. It doesn't matter that they are "easy to convert" in the future. The coal is being burnt now.
And they're easier to set up securely than either renewable or the nuclear plants they'll likely later become.
Yes, it'd be great if they weren't sanctioned every other week and threatened with war and could dedicate all of their resources to leap frogging dirty tech... But that's not the world we live in, the world we live in has people that are rising in quality of life and expecting all the benefits. And they simply have more people than the US and Europe combined while only having the GDP of just the US.
It's not ideal, they've admitted as such, but it's a necessary step that all western nations took even when better options were on the table, it's unfair to criticize China when they're also producing more green energy than the rest of the world.
You keep just ignoring my point that "later" is irrelevant.
But good for them for admitting they're helping to destroy our environment so that the current generation has a better quality of life. That's very helpful.
It is more than literally every other country is doing, is my retort to that point. That and unlike western governments, they actually accomplish their goals.
Everyone could be doing more, China is doing the most. If the US especially didn't spend the last century and a half ignoring climate change while most of the world was still pre industrial agricultural societies, we wouldn't be in this mess.
That's just a lie. "Literally every other country" is not building more coal plants.
Plenty are getting rid of them.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/coal-phaseout-UK/index.html
And yet they're not replacing them with green energy. Seems like they're not doing much at all.
That is the second lie you've told.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/uk-renewable-power-set-to-overtake-fossil-fuels-for-first-time/
You're resorting to lying to make China look benevolent for building coal plants. It's not a very good look.
Not a lie, neither the US or EU can compare, https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-renewable-energy
So clearly they're not replacing the capacity with renewables. Or they're actively reducing their total energy capacity. That's also an explanation for those numbers.
But hey, anything to excuse the West deciding on lng for their power.
They are only "clearly" not doing that if you don't actually look at the link. Which you didn't.
Which you did not, because you feel you need to lie in order to make your argument.
Also, this is not excusing anyone. No one is doing enough about climate change. If you have some belief in a cosmic balance where one side of the globe has to be good and the other side of the globe has to be evil, I'm not particularly interested in religious discussions.