China is producing a third of the world’s emissions, and has been approving more coal plants even as we approach critical deadlines, there’s not much the US can do to persuade or force China to change course, we don’t set policy in China, this is one problem that can’t really be laid at the doorstep of the US.
It’s complicated. Those factories are produced because dirty energy is cheap and the world demands cheap shit. The externality of the carbon emissions is something that can be priced into the cost of consumer goods, but again, people want cheap shit and would riot if the cost of Chinese goods went up some non-trivial amount. The fact of the matter is that clean energy is more expensive, and while that gap has been closing, the inescapable consequence is that we need to either consume less stuff or pay more for it.
Perhaps, but consumers can’t even combat things like price gouging in their own countries, the idea that they are the ones tying the hands of the Chinese manufacturing sector doesn’t seem that likely. Even supposing it was within our power to consume less and effect China’s policy, that would essentially be the same consequence for China as if they tapped the brakes on those same economic sectors. If the goal being argued here is that everyone needs to do their part and sacrifice, why would everyone else need to do China’s part for them? It’s seems less direct than China taking responsibility for their own economic outputs, that would naturally result in consumers having to consume less anyway.
The Chinese government is not obligated to continue pushing an unsustainable economic campaign. They’ve built their economy on a house of cards with the idea that they’ll be able to use it to leapfrog over the rest of the world and establish their economic and geopolitical empire in the next hundred years. But none of that is actually critically necessary, it’s just ambition from power hungry elites. They could easily focus on creating something sustainable instead of pursuing growth anywhere and everywhere.
The cost of clean energies has already become competitive with fossil fuels at this point, and much of that affordable tech comes from China so it should be cheap for them as much as anyone.
We could share energy technology to make them less reliant on coal…
They have energy tech though, they have the ability to build solar farms and wind farms etc. It’s just that replacing their grid with clean renewables is an effort that runs tangentially to their geopolitical ambitions. Coal is simply fast and convenient.
Never happen when economies and politics are based on always looking for the upper hand and profits.
Both countries depend on jingonists for political control. Neither, however, are entirely run by them.
The general population doesn’t seem to want to work with distant outside nations. Just the replies to an article you see like this on social media see people unwilling to state what Bernie Sanders is saying. It’s true… like the pandemic, climate change is impact the whole word, but people want to say it is one local political party or another. The faith in humanity coming together over a common positive cause I hope has reached bottom and can improve.
Bernie i love ya man, but this is the same China now selling Weapons to Russia. China is only interested in what makes its ruling party $$$.
Yea well that’s out the window because of decades of unhealthy competition and racism.
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If the United States, China and other industrialized countries do not come together to dramatically decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world we leave our children and future generations will become increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable.
Tragically, the cooperation required to address this existential threat is being undermined by hawks in both the United States and China who are moving us toward a disastrous cold war.
This progress has led the IEA to forecast that renewables will surpass coal to become the largest source of global electricity generation by early 2025, much faster than previously predicted.
Just a few months later, with the nuclear crisis as the background, President Kennedy proposed to the Soviet Union an arms reductions plan which would change the confrontational dynamic that had brought the world to the brink.
Go talk to the people in southern Africa who are starving because of the terrible drought and floods they are experiencing or farmers around the world who can no longer grow their crops because of water shortages.
Perhaps most importantly, go talk to the hundreds of millions of young people in every country on earth who are losing hope, wondering whether they should even have children of their own, given the enormous challenges the climate crisis poses for a normal life.
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