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China Installed More Solar Panels Last Year Than the U.S. Has in Total
(www.ecowatch.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Good news for one of the planet's most polluting countries.
That is producing for the rest of the world and especially for the west. It’s hypocritical to blame china while buying stuff that had to be cheaper and cheaper.
The average consumer doesn't actually have a choice in the matter. Unless you are wealthy enough to purchase only local artisan made goods near everything you can afford is made in China or made in China adjacent.
That's not really the point. The point is their emissions will be higher because they're producing all the stuff everyone else purchases. The production is what creates pollution. If they stopped producing then other countries would and they would increase their pollution.
It's not saying don't buy products from China. It's saying China polluted because things are bought from them. The pollution would be wherever production is taking place.
That is exactly my point. Thanks for elaborating it!
Did you forget about the existence of regulations to control the pollution that manufacturing is allowed to produce? How about the countries who are allowing pollution to happen on a ridiculous scale fix their environmental regulations? It's not like they are under the rule of the USA and have to pollute because we say so.
They do. I boycott Chinese made goods, and I don't make much money. It just requires a small amount of introspection on if I need the item. It has actually turned out I buy much much less because what I do buy is of quality and lasts.
Cosmetics, Household goods and food are easy and generally fairly locally made and produced, unless you insist on buying exotic fruits or stuff way out of season.
Clothes, shoes, anything fabric, again easy. Massive market of quality eco-friendly EU/US/UK made stuff that means I pay $30 for a lovely shirt that will last me decades than $5 a shirt that was made by a child in Myanmar and fall apart within the year. So I am slowly developing a modest wardrobe of high quality natural fibres.
You don't really need much else. But it just takes a moment to Google and consume conscientiously.
Some stuff is nearly impossible and is actually outside of your control like fuel and SOME electrical devices. But nothing can be perfect.
Then you cannot complain about corporations moving jobs overseas. Clearly was the only way for the society to survive.
Just remove "made in China" from your basket. And buy just what you need. It's my a good beginning.
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
If I don't need it to work or live I don't buy it from places I know have a slave labor issue or any other ethics concerns.
Another thing that help, ad block. Honestly advertising is brain rot and why a lot of people feel a compulsion to buy land fill filler.
No, it’s not hypocritical. Yes, anyone with half a brain knows China makes a huge chunk of the world’s stuff.
A nation can make choices as to what energy sources they use and China went balls to the wall with coal. That wasn’t a choice the buyers of Chinese products made.
Lol look what they are spending the money they earn from those industries. At least they are not solely funding decades long genocide but actually doing something about the emissions they take on.
You‘re right. We should move production to cleaner countries.
Production will always have some waste and pollution. China has high pollution because we do a lot of production there. As I pointed out above, on both a per-capita and a per-production basis China pollutes less than many industrialized nations (US. Germany, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Taiwan) and many developing nations (Singapore, Malaysia).
Given current manufacturing data, moving production out of China to other countries would likely increase pollution.
Only way many western countries were able to slow their rise in CO2 emissions. Despite outsourcing their emissions to China, the US still emits twice the CO2 per capita compared with China.
Actually they are poluting for you to buy your stuff cheaper, who is responsible for the polution of your stuff? Dowa not make any sense to blame them for factories that the west choosed to put there.
They could always say no
polluting to meet the online shopping demands of western countries
A lot of people don't realize how quickly China is changing. Things that were true just a few decades ago are often no longer true.
Once China decided that pollution was a problem they went all in on addressing it. China has massive reforestation projects, huge incentives to switch to EVs, and much tighter energy efficiency standards.
Solar isn't even their only renewable energy source. China gets about equal amounts from solar, wind and hydro https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/energy-transition/013124-coal-still-accounted-for-nearly-60-of-chinas-electricity-supply-in-2023-cec ~~together they make up a little less than half of their total energy production and the ratio keeps improving.~~ correction: those are projected ratios, not current ratios.
Of course, on a per capita basis, China isn't even close to being a top polluter. Unless you think that people in smaller countries deserve to pollute more, per-capita is the better measurement. China looks a little worse if you do that but it's still far from a top polluter by that metric.