Contrast this with Australia that is a fully developed economy, has the easiest location to install and generate solar, has tons of uranium in the ground that it doesn't have a single reactor to use, and still burns and ships coal to act as an enabler to other coal burning nations.
And yet their emissions are growing at an out of control pace [0].
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emis...
In 10 years will this be the case? Nuclear takes a long time to bring online, they've at least got the process in motion and reasons to be polluting right now. Polluters like Australia don't and that's my point.
Or maybe it'd be better that China stops producing renewable technologies for the rest of the world? One big area I see them improving is with use of electric vehicles. Can't do EV's if your grid can't supply the energy. Should they push gas and diesel vehicles instead for the next decade or two?
I don't understand the dichotomy here. Is the argument that China's production of solar panels is a primary driver of China's pollution and thus cutting pollution in China would significantly hamper their ability to produce PV for the world? That seems dubious to me if I understand it correctly?
Let's make it easy then: Without coal as a large % of base load they'd have to shut down a good amount of their manufacturing and focus on putting less EV's on the road until they could replace the base load lost from shutting off all their coal production. China is #10 on the list of natural gas reserves, far below what the US or Russia has. At their current consumption they are anticipated to run out in a little over 20 years. I do not think it is a viable strategy to throw tons of natural gas online and rely on Russia when it runs out.
Literally nothing the Chinese do with energy policy right now will appease the west. If they put in more hydro for wind/PV storage western press would print headlines about how the big bad CCP flooded over some villages and are destroying their environment.
Serious development and commercialization of small modular nuclear reactors as an alternative to coal would probably do the trick.
And it's still well below Japan in per capita emission. Japan is quite an advanced green economy.
I don't think any reason to put China front and center in this discussion "who should start closing coal power plant".
Edit:
> Focusing on per-capita data inevitably leads to whataboutism
Well, energy usage is a key indicator of human wellbeing. I see no reason this leads to whataboutism. It's a key part of the discussion. Without this, humans are not going to unit in full strength.
> that's exactly the narrative the CCP wants to push!
CCP lifted 600MM+ people out of poverty. I guess they can make a few correct statement, right?
> But when looking at emissions over time, it becomes pretty obvious that some countries are working hard doing their parts while some others are simply polluting at an accelerating pace.
Yes, we can clearly see that China committed to carbon neutral at the critical juncture of economy development [1], and the only large developing country. And we are waiting India [2]. Meanwhile, despite enjoying the most from the carbon emission industry in 20 century, the advanced & developed country continuously insist on equal responsibility for all nations. It's like I eat most of the lunch, and grow so big, now I say that everyone on the table should cut their food consumption by certain percentage... Not fair.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2021/03/08/chi...
[2] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/climate-change/is-india-...
I upvoted you but I didn't dunk on Japan because they do have nuclear energy and are a resource poor nation. They are also the only nation to have legitimate concerns over nuclear technology for reasons I shouldn't have to explain.
>Meanwhile, despite enjoying the most from the carbon emission industry in 20 century, the advanced & developed country continuously insist on equal responsibility for all nations.
This is the core point! I'm making the case that there's a reason they are emitting lots of carbon right now, and unlike many other nations that don't have a reason nor a plan to get off carbon, they do have one. China was practically an agrarian society up until the 1980's, the west squandered a 200 year carbon-burning head start and is painting them as the bad guys.
For how long?
> I don't think any reason to put China front and center in this discussion "who should start closing coal power plant".
Focusing on per-capita data inevitably leads to whataboutism, and that's exactly the narrative the CCP wants to push! But when looking at emissions over time, it becomes pretty obvious that some countries are working hard doing their parts while some others are simply polluting at an accelerating pace.
No matter how many UN councils vote to agree on this, we both know it's not true.
If you do that then the price of Solar PV will skyrocket back up. The key reason we've seen Solar PV prices plummet is because we've seen an increasing amount of manufacturing move to China, now 80% of solar PV are manufactured their.
It takes a tremendous amount of resources and energy to make solar pv and the only way to do it cheaply is to do it someplace that doesn't mind burning lots of coal to extract and process the necessary resources to build them.
Though to be fair, high tariffs that reduced Chinese production would hurt the global economy, which is the only demonstrated method we've seen to reduce emissions. This could be the best path way to improving emissions, but I suspect many people would be unhappy with consequences.
Seems like it might make sense to me.
> and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.
Um, what does this have to do with solving the problem at hand?
This is why I think a carbon tax with border adjustment would be pretty awesome. The border adjustment is the bit that levels the economic playing field between polluting and clean countries.
I thought that Trump was all about building more coal? Didn't it work out?
It maybe slowed down decommission of existing power plants, but nobody would build a coal power plant today from scratch in the west. These things last for a generation, while an administration 8 years at most.
Sure, let's have a tariff on goods made in a country, that scales proportionately to the per-capita CO2 emissions in it.
The United States would be one of the most heavily tariffed countries in the world, if we go down that road. China would be... Middle of the pack.
Again the obsession over per capita data, which totally obscure the fact that the US per capita emissions have been in a constant decline over the last 20 years while China's have been growing at an uncontrolled pace.
Which behavior should we incentivize, unrestrained pollution because they "aren't THE worst yet" or hard work curbing emissions?
I don't care about 'trying' or 'trends'. I care about current results. That's the behaviour we should incentivize. Results. Not 'projected results maybe 20 years from now.'
Oh, and by the way, China's per-capita emissions peaked in ~2013, and have been ~slowly declining since then. [1] If current trends continue without any change, it's going to take another 24 years for the US to hit their level of emissions. [2]
It's odd that whenever people grouse about China's emissions, they never make note of either of those two facts...
- Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%)
- A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%)
Meanwhile for the same period China has had
- a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)
- 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007
Clearly one is not like the other! One of them achieved significant results.
I really should not have to explain on this forum that when you multiply two numbers together, the values of both multipliers matter. Seven times nearly-nothing is not very much. Point-seven times a lot is... Still a lot. It's basic arithmetic.
If you don't want to take per-capita emissions into account, and want to look at absolute numbers, then the US has an even smaller carbon budget to work with - and its way exceeding it.
But okay, let's look at per-capita development times quality of life, instead. (China is ~15% behind the US on the latter - does that mean that its per-capita budget should be dropped by a comparative 15%? It's still doing well by that metric.)
You must realize that development is only possible because of access to energy, services, and material goods. Cut the energy, transportation, and services available to the average American by a factor of 3, as a proxy for bringing it's emissions profile down to China's, and tell me - what will happen to its quality of life?
(My prediction is - a sharp decline, followed by a bloody revolution.)
And China isn't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. One of the many reasons it's cheaper to manufacture in China and why North Americans and Europeans can't compete.
Time to add tariffs on goods produced by states who made the decision of going all-in on polluting power generation, and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.