…but still emits more and more greenhouse gas year over year thanks to increased reliance on coal energy.
For being the world’s factory they sure do a great job, plus what this implies is that by 2030 (the previous estimate, now 2025), they could power themselves using green energy. The coal extraction is probably to sell to countries like Germany, who closed nuclear plants and stop buying Russian gas and are now back using coal. Good job, Ewwrope.
How exactly are they doing a good job when your figure shows that, as a developing country which we can expect will emit much much more in the future as it catches-up with the developed world, already pollutes more than twice per capita compared to some EU countries?
“Being the world’s factory” is buying the rhetoric that there is no industry elsewhere, but China overtook the EU in terms of emissions per capita in 2015, which is a very recent thing and certainly can’t be explained by outsourcing. It is easy to see through it, though: emissions in Europe and in the USA keep decreasing every year whereas those of China keep increasing substantially.
I come to suspect that the multiplication of those articles recently is meant to hide the fact that China is (in facts and in numbers) falling more and more behind and will have to reckon with being the largest polluter when more and more effects of climate change will be felt.
“Developed world” is a classist word, you may have wanted to say imperial countries, or oppresors.
“Being the world’s factory” is buying the rhetoric that there is no industry elsewhere
Are you really going to compare China’s industry with whatever Europe has? Don’t make me laugh, again, if you want China to do a better job, or any other country that is undergoing a process of industrialization to do so in a green way, countries to profited first during the industrial revolution and colonisation of America need to help, otherwise you are simply asking them to hold on on industrialisation because otherwise they are going to hurt the planet, thing you already did and allowed you to be where you are. There are a lot of people talking about this, so don’t try some shitty argument like “the world’s going to end we all need to give in it doesn’t matter who”. Repair the damage you have done, don’t come up with excuses.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/it-is-unfair-to-push-poor-countries-to-reach-zero-carbon-emissions-too-early/ https://finance.yahoo.com/news/developing-nations-struggling-green-transition-220000512.html https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/09/rich-failing-help-fund-poor-countries-climate-fight-warns-un-chief-antonio-guterres https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/03/23/blog032322-poor-and-vulnerable-countris-need-support-to-adapt-to-climate-change https://www.npr.org/2021/11/11/1054809644/climate-change-cop26-loss-and-damage
Let’s see how things are going when your dirty Europe is still burning coal and China can use green energy.
China made a smart decision decades ago to massively ramp up investment in technologies related to sustainable energy. For example they are now by far the largest producer of refined rare earth metals and other green minerals. That decision today seems prescient.
The problem is that their environmental record is spotty at best. The metals they produce are extracted and processed as cheaply as possible, mainly to undercut competition. There is a considerable negative environmental impact to doing so with which they will one day have to reckon.
China has just now started to step away from being an underdeveloped nation, and most of the Co2 emissions under their name are outsourced manufacturing from first world countries. China having been a colonised and oppressed nation, you can’t expect them to advance economically without them either having to pollute, or with the nations that first achieved “first world” status contributing economically to help in a green transition. This is something that’s always being talked about in diplomatic spheres, the need of certain Western countries to contribute to the imperialised ones in order to be able to transition in a better way. The issue is that these countries are not interested in doing so, and still behave like in colonial times. In this way, it’s hard to expect another outcome and it changes the focus from the real guilty here.
China made a smart decision decades ago to massively ramp up investment in technologies related to sustainable energy.
The reason why China is the largest refiner of rare-earth is because other countries are not willing to bear the environmental impact, which in the case of China, is absurd.
This era of pollution outsourcing will soon close to an end, thankfully, with for example the EU introducing a carbon border tax. “capitalism” and “fee market” alone won’t do anything for the poor bastards whose health is being sacrificed by their government’s willingness to undercut and deregulate at all cost.
