Finland, France and other countries can lower the price of electricity just by disconnecting neighbours like Germany from their grid.

Germany can be a leader in Green AI or emission neutral Chatbots.

>> Until very recently the EU stated that being carbon neutral by 2050 was of overriding importance[1].

I'm ok with that. Not every continent/country/economic bloc has to have the same goals. Competing with the US or China in the 'AI race' is a race you're probably going to lose anyway. And it's going to make fuck all difference to the vast majority of the population anyway. Healthcare, education, life/work balance. All much more important and don't require competing in the 'AI race'. The EU has made some missteps with its tech regs but it's worth it to be able to download or delete my data from any service and that's something Americans are also benefiting from as most companies didn't bother geo-locking it.

You could argue economic success has a knock on effect on everything else in a country and it does to some extent. But, while many European countries have their problems socially and politically over the last decade none of them have come anywhere close to the train wreck that is US.

>Healthcare, education, life/work balance. All much more important and don't require competing in the 'AI race'.

Neither of which will improve by us being "carbon neutral".

Europe not being dependent on foreign oil is a worthy goal as well, it's not the US whcih could supply it's oil use domestically.

A lot of green infrastructure is also expensive upfront, but cheaper over the full lifespan. It's the kind of investment I like to see goverment making.

> Europe not being dependent on foreign oil is a worthy goal as well

Forget oil, Europe is going to be dependent on foreign everything.

I think taking care of the environment rather than burning through resources needlessly will improve life for us. But if you're looking for a more specific example, moving to renewable energy and getting off Russian gas and oil would be beneficial in many ways for Europe and at a most basic level would hopefully eventually lead to lower and more predictable energy prices for consumers.

> Not every continent/country/economic bloc has to have the same goals.

One potential outcome of that would appear to be a mostly deindustrialised Europe with low carbon emissions and no growth, and the rest of the world politely trying not to laugh?

> And it's going to make fuck all difference to the vast majority of the population anyway

https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-upda...

"In 2024, the eight highest emitting economies - China, USA, India, EU, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil and Japan - collectively contributed to 66.2% of global GHG emissions. Only the European Union and Japan decreased their emissions compared to the previous year (-1.8% and -2.8% respectively), while all others either kept them rather stable (China: +0.8%; USA: +0.4%; Brazil +0.2%) or increased them (India: +3.9%; Russia: +2.4%, Indonesia: +5% - the highest relative increase).

In absolute terms, India has the largest increase with 164.8 Mt CO2eq more emissions released in 2024 compared to 2023."

Nuclear energy is carbon neutral according to the EU definition

Is it not? What is it instead? Carbon negative?

Greenpeace was founded to oppose nuclear energy, because it would lead to nuclear war (that was their position at least), which illustrates that, even now, nuclear power is considered not-green.

Being "green" is like being "organic" compared to being carbon-neutral which is something you can just calculate.

Greenpeace is a big part of the problem, especially with most of the European left being aligned with them on nuclear hate.

Germany turned down all of its nuclear plants and is actively demolishing them. Good luck with that.

China's target is 2060.

> China's target is 2060

"China plans to keep building coal-fired power plants through 2027 in regions where they are needed to meet peak power demand or stabilise the grid, according to government guidelines"

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...

And yet they used less coal in 2024 than they did in 2023.

Maybe it's just an economic downturn. But... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-m...

I just don't buy that renewables necessarily result in expensive energy.

China doesn't have one side of the political spectrum trying to shutter any talk of renewables, they're just installing them at breakneck speed.

We just need to execute the side of the political spectrum that we don't like. That way society will really get ahead.

Keeping the planet habitable, or making line go up? Truly a difficult choice...

More seriously: what is the benefit for the citizens of Europe to chase trends? AI is shaping up to be a bubble. Even if "market remains irrational longer than you stay solvent", what is the purpose? Clean air, clean water, all that has value. Line going up, what does it give me?

>More seriously: what is the benefit for the citizens of Europe to chase trends?

If you sit out the trend, somebody else will have more money (or bigger army, or just an army that can actually shoot at things and people) and you will not be able to choose what trends to chase.

Exactly. Also, whatever those AI leaders invent, two months later the whole world has it.

I mean when GPT 3.5 came out it seemed amazing, but requiring a 8x Nvidia N100 or whatever guaranteed that id never have it at home. A year or so later llama 3.1 accomplished similar results on pc at home. It's a race but the winners are only slightly ahead and wasting a lot of money doing it.