At least that’s a step in the right direction, but a green superpower? Like coal-burning Germany, then? Whatever makes you feel better.
China has concrete plans to transition off fossil fuels that it’s already executing at scale. China now leads in renewables like solar as well as nuclear energy. It’s literally the only major country taking serious action right now.
I’m glad that China has taken the step to stop coal power plant construction worldwide and I’m not disputing that China is taking serious steps to become green eventually. Still China currently has 1000+ coal power plants and will reach peak carbon emission only before 2030 and will be carbon neutral in 2060. According to this report China currently has 249.6 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired capacity under development (97.8 GW) under construction and 151.8 GW in planning), a 21% increase over end-2019 (205.9 GW). The amount of capacity under development (249.6 GW) is larger than the coal fleets of the United States (246.2 GW) or India (229.0 GW).
This leaves China still a gigantic task to become a green superpower and the Chinese timeline is probably not ambitious enough for it’s 2015 pledge to keep the average worldwide temperature rise below 1.5 degrees.
I’d like to see China migrate off using fossil fuels faster as well, but it’s also worth noting that a lot of energy use there is a result of manufacturing goods for western countries. We can directly help reduce emission in China by dropping demand in the west and moving away from consumerism and growth here.
I couldn’t agree more. Not that I wish misfortune to the people of China on the contrary. A unsustainable system of capitalism that demands growth no matter what has brought us into this almost hopeless situation and should be replaced.
Yes! I was a capitalist, but now I believe that capitalistic climate protection is simply impossible. I really can’t see how unregulated economy and climate protection can go hand in hand. We need some form of economical regulation.
moving away from consumerism and growth
Yeah exactly, that’s the only way. Unfortunately it’s hard to persuade people of that.
I think most people do understand it, but they just put short their short term comfort before long term survival of humanity.
You might be right, I just witness so much greenwashing (that can make people feel good about themselves and continue overconsuming as usual) that I can only be extremely suspicious of every published report of article.
I know the person that writes this article; he’s in the CPCanada and is a friend of mine. @yogthos@lemmygrad.ml
small world :)
