Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
What a headline.
China - for the first time - announced an emissions target, and it falls short according to practically all independent experts.
China’s new emissions reduction target, announced at a high-level climate summit at the United Nations in New York, has been judged by experts as “timid” and falling short of the effort needed to meet global climate goals, even though it represents an increase in the country’s climate ambition.
I'm not defending China, but this is all the countries in the world. There is no legal mechanism for everyone to achieve climate targets. Even if Trump never pulled out from Paris Climate deal, the deal itself is nonbinding. Nicaragua was right not to have initially signed it for that every same reason, because the deal will not punish anyone for not meeting climate targets. It is also unfortunate, but not maybe surprising, that the international climate funding became a money laundering, green washing scam because there is no oversight. Like, one construction of a hotel received financing from the fund because it has "green initiative". The funding became source of vanity projects and corruption.
I fully agree that practically no country is on track, but the title literally says, "China leads nations with climate plans". This is outright false.
And just a few years ago China was basically waving off climate change by giving it lip service and then producing well over the emissions they were claiming, basically thumbing their nose at the entire global community. Now they want to play ball. Even if they didn't come with a 30% reduction, this is a major step forward.
China could lead other countries while their effort being insufissant, no contradiction in the article
Every country could lead ... This is also true for China. It could lead, but it doesn't.
Who is leading?
Buthan, Chile, Costa Rica, Ethopia, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, The Gambia look best, maybe one of the countries for which no data is available.
None is on the way to Paris, though.
“Trump wants fossil fuels and the United States is indeed a powerful petro-state,” Bremmer said. “But letting China become the world’s sole powerful electro-state is the opposite of making America great again … at least if you care about the future.”
One thing i've come to understand is that america does not at all seem to care even the slightest bit about having a future. Which, in my opinion, is super weird because it says in the bible (that the christians revere so much) that "when your messiah comes [for the second time] and you happen to have a sapling in your hand, plant the sapling first, then go see the messiah". Which means, especially if you consider it to be the "end times", that doesn't mean you should just not care about what happens after. You should still plant the tree, even if it takes 20 years for it to grow up and produce meaningful amounts of fruit.
But i guess something about wanting to have a future is "communist" or something.
I've been very critical of - well, not so much China or Chinese people as the current regime, but credit where credit is due - they have made an phenomenal effort on the environmental front, and there's plenty the rest of us could learn from that.
Truly shameful for the US. Green energy should have been reframed as national defense long ago. Maybe then some of these fucks would get out of the way.
Heh. I'm reminded of the story of what happened when Donald Sadoway was pitching liquid metal batteries to the US Army. He was asked what would happen if a sniper were to put a .50 BMG into one of them. His response? "Well, it'll leak a little inert non-toxic metal and then self-seal whereupon it'll just keep working".
...We still don't use those for reasons I cannot fathom, despite them being literally cheap as dirt and perfect for grid-level storage.
Every time somebody talk about renewables, some twat also goes "but what about storage?" and has me screaming "WE'VE HAD THE PERFECT SOLUTION SINCE 2009, GOD DAMN IT!".
It is actually even more insane then that. We know how to built electricity grids. The US is a large country, so it is pretty much a given, that it is windy somewhere in the US. Somewhat similar story with solar as well, but of cause nights cause a bit of a problem. The storage needed to run a well connected grid is fairly low. More so the US has a lot of hydro. The water reservoir can be used as a form of power storage, by changing how much water is let out. Obviously there are limits to that, but the potential is massive.
Because they are not feasible. I don't know how many battery stories I have heard over the years and none of them have ever been mass produced. Discovering something in a lab is not the same as mass producing stuff.
Maybe you should look into the operating principles before you declare them 'infeasible'. They're a vessel filled with antimony, magnesium and a liquid salt electrolyte that self-separates according to specific gravity. Since both the anode and cathode are made of liquid metal, there's no structural degradation over time. They can be trivially scaled to just about any size you like and are made exclusively from Earth-abundant cheap elements. Just about the only tricky thing is that the operating temperature of a working cell is 600C, but that's hardly an issue for a grid-level storage facility.
Their emissions per capita are up like 200% in the past couple decades. Meanwhile the UK and most of Scandinavia (not Norway) have cut it in half.
I'm not sure who downvoted you, but China's carbon emissions p/c have more than tripled this century, and for only two years (up to 2022) in that period have they been less than the year prior, and even then, by tiny amounts.
Plenty of countries have worse figures (including the US, Canada, and Australia), but unless the trajectory has changed notably since 2022, it doesn't paint a pretty picture. The US has dropped by a third in the same period, though it's much too high.
Probably because while change over time is important, it's a trickier metric to cross compare.
For example, at the beginning of the century, their per capita emissions were low and also, nearly half of the population was in extreme poverty. So while we can balk at the tripling, it seems unfair since the competition was already high and mostly due to people living it up.
To say China is doing worse than the US because they went up while the US went down, well the per capita for US is still 50% higher than China in absolute terms. Now the UK can claim that in absolute and relative terms they are doing better.
Though even then you have some hiccups. UK emissions per capita are down and are really low compared to China numbers, fantastic. How much, however, is due to outsourcing the ecologically inconvenient manufacturing to nations like China? If the contribution of imports added to things, how does the picture shift?
On the flip side, the focus on per-capita in the name of fairness also unreasonably gives a pass to huge polluters in China. If a heavily polluting endeavor sets up shop in china, no big deal, they get to just divide their impact by 1.4 billion to not seem so bad, even if the portion of population pertinent to their stuff rounds to zero. So I wonder how much of that ecology impact is actually concentrated among a lot less rosy small population rather than just the consequence of improved quality of life for an average person in the nation.
Solid response, thanks. FWIW, I wasn't trying to suggest that the US is doing well in this regard, just that someone could read the headline and assume that China could reasonably be considered a green country (so to speak).
Regarding the UK, it's certainly true that domestic manufacture has nearly vanished in the last 50 years, so while a reduced dependency on coal, stricter rules on vehicles, and other similar factors are probably important, I agree that they're also likely not the only type of change that affects this – and if so, that really represents the carbon pollution moving elsewhere, as you've mentioned.
Yeah, it's just all a big complicated mess when trying to play a lot of comparative games. You can make China look great or look bad and each angle has a fair point to be made. So folks end up highlighting their point and get reasonable agreement and offense all at the same time...
This doesn't make sense. China's new climate plans are insufficient as per a wide range of global experts claiming the 10% is by far not enough.
it makes perfect sense. even if china is so far behind where they need to be, they're still far ahead of where the US is at. the only reason you're balking at this is your implicit bias that it's not a western country in the lead.
China is ahead of the US, behind the EU and many other (Western and non-Western) countries (with almost no country or bloc is on track to reach the Paris agreement targets). These are simple facts. As the world's largest polluter, China should do much more than it does, but it seems there is not even a willingness to do so.
I won't comment on your accusation of being biased. I am not long here on Lemmy, but the reaction here if and when you criticize China is often weird. It's certainly not all, but some people appear to be personally insulted if you just say something critical of this regime. That's often not a sane reaction.
First, most credit should be based on recent years. You can only ask for relative progress, meaning improving year over year from recent progress instead of going from 0 to 100% renewables by tomorrow.
EU has greatest success in recent years in terms of emission reductions, but only because their energy growth has been slowing. China has much higher renewables growth from a much higher renewables base, but their emission reductions are more modest because of massive energy growth relative to massive manufacturing growth. At the same time, any growth rate at all from here is going to lead to massive emission reductions in upcomming years, just as it can continue in EU.
Trump's UN speech is desperate extortion/war cry on EU and world to end breakthrough dead ender energy extermination on the cusp of clear human victory path.
do you have any data newer than 2023? because if you look at the per capita greenhouse gases in 2023, china is only at 32/33 and usa, canada, russia, australia etc. all have much worse pollution,
and i would like to know please, what statistics you are basing it on, that china is behind the eu, because at for me it feels like china is atleast trying to do a lot, while from the eu countries i only ever hear complains about having to do anything for the enviroment, which only gets worse by this right wing people popping up everywhere. i would like it very much to be convinced that the eu countries are actually doing anything.
So are we not allowed to criticize china for their legitimate failures now? It's all just because we're butthurt because the US isn't doing it? Fuck's sake.
the whole world is failing, and you're picking the country in the lead to criticize? is it racism or what?
Criticizing the most prominent country for still utterly failing (and paying little more than lip-service to the problem) has very little to do with their skin being brown, and everything to do with criticism of the leader of the pack indicting the rest of the pack implicitly. But thank you for delegitimizing everything you might say in response by demonstrating beyond any reasonable doubt that you're arguing in bad faith.
I love when people get called out for being shitty, and the immediate defense is "you're arguing in bad faith"
this wasn't an argument. you said something stupid, I called you out for it. instead of criticizing the western world for doing checks notes fucking nothing about climate change, you're going after the country investing billions into the climate for no other reason than you don't like the government.
I'd be criticizing western countries if this article had been about the western world - but it's not, so that's not really relevant commentary. If I showed up to say something like "why aren't western countries doing better" it would be a valid point, but would absolutely not address the issue - that china is in no uncertain terms absolutely failing the environment. Trying to deflect that with accusations of racism is... transparent, at very least because you have yet to address the criticism but only the form my argument takes.
Why are you so biased that you can't even accept criticism of a group you support might be legitimate in an article explicitly about the actions of said group? People from the US do that all the time, what makes China special?
I’d be criticizing western countries if this article had been about the western world
ok, I didn't even read further than that in your comment because it's obvious you did not read the article at all. even the headline itself should give you a fucking clue, but the article heavily relies on comparing China to the US. you would have known that if you had bothered to get over your knee-jerk reaction long enough to actually read it.
Sigh. 4 out of 13 of the paragraphs in that article are about trump's behavior and there isn't even a mention of another country besides the US and china. Kinda hard to criticize what just isn't there (at least, if you're arguing in good faith...)
Shockingly you continue to not address the criticism, just the form of the argument. I can't imagine why that would be.
here isn’t even a mention of another country
wrong again.
I can’t imagine why that would be.
ah, yes, the good old "you support the CCP because you criticized the US" line. you aren't half as clever as you think you are, liberal, or you would know I'm banned from .ML and Hexbear and my whole post history is me shitting on tankies.
wrong again.
Oh you know what, you're absolutely right. The article (ten more paragraphs!) wasn't loading due to their godawful... comment widget? I'm not sure what happened there. BUT I'll amend my prior claim since Brazil is in there too! And while hardly a western-aligned country, and I am deeply skeptical of their ability to follow through on their claims, I'll give them credit for thumbing their nose at both the US' and China's utterly pathetic showing with those climate targets. Here's hoping they can stick to them, and that COP30 will follow in their example.
Hardly an article relying on contrasting the US and China, though I suppose quoting Xi that much really does throw some spectacular shade by putting trump's whole... thing... as contrast.
ah, yes, the good old “you support the CCP because you criticized the US” line.
Uhm... no, I just think you're arguing in bad faith. That's been my whole thesis, and it's maybe worth introspecting that you've directly jumped to being persecuted for supporting china instead of the thing I keep criticizing you for.
Why are you so biased that you can't even accept criticism of a group you support
Wrong again.
Listen, it’s never gonna work out between us if you don’t even read your own comments. But I’ll give you credit, that’s the first time I’ve seen somebody strawman their own arguments.
Let me know if you ever wanna respond to the substance here (to reiterate: criticizing china is absolutely warranted, especially in light of how much better Brazil is doing) instead of issues to take with the form of the argument, it'll be interesting.
Wrong again.
Bud that's the whole point here - you're supporting the group (edit: in this case the CCP) by rejecting legitimate criticism with bad faith meandering (accusations of racism and classic whattaboutisms). Despite your presumed personal position you 100% are supporting the utterly pathetic chinese environmental goals here.
Despite your presumed personal position you 100% are supporting the utterly pathetic chinese environmental goals here.
Did you ever wonder why everyone else in the comments is congratulating China? It’s because the rest is us don’t see an article about how China is doing the best out of all the countries in the entire world, and automatically go “hmm, it’s China and they’re authoritarian, so it’s not good enough”.
Of course they could do better. You can always do better. The rest of the world could do better. The point here is nobody else is doing anywhere near as well. You chose to focus on criticism because you do t like the politics of the nation leading the pack. China hasn’t even reached their goals, which again you would know if you read the article. But even their meager progress is far better than the goals the US has set, which is to go backwards and adopt more fossil fuels, cutting out as much renewables as possible.
So yeah, I’m supporting the progress China has made in reducing their dependence on fossil fuels. Any progress is progress, and they have more progress than anyone right now.
everyone else in the comments
You're trying to misrepresent reality again - go look at the comments (of which 1/2 are now just us two bickering); and fully 1/2 (7/14 (excluding us two), of the (as of posting) 28 total comments (including us two) (edit: this is confusingly worded, I apologize)) of the other comments in this thread are critical of the claims, most of those criticizing how sorry this promise is from China. You can't just assert easily-verified falsehoods as truth and then claim some kind of victory from that (despite that practically being codified US policy at this point...).
I chose to focus on criticism because they are leading the pack, and their efforts are sad, much like a great many other people in this thread are doing. I suppose a case could be made for that to include their politics, since politics shapes policy, but that'd be a kinda pointless semantic argument to make. My criticism of China has nothing to do with my distatste for the CCP directly and everything to do with them being the #1 global emitter of greenhouse gasses, and then even in lip-service planning to do the barest minimum. I'm not criticizing the US right now because the US is not the leader of the pack, or even relevant in this discussion (beyond being the #2 emitter).
To put in context something, this year if China's planed 10% reduction had gone through instantly at the start of the year, they would still have produced more than double the greenhouse gas emissions of the US. THEY HAVE TO DO BETTER. We all do, yes, but THEY ESPECIALLY have to do better. It ain't fucking racism to criticize the #1 culprit for choosing a target that barely does anything.
It is such a shame that 7-10% reduction is leading today. I know better then nothing, but still no where near enough.
Putting aside the whole actual core subject material...
I find it bizarre to do a remote video attendance to an in-person meeting like that. I hate it when they plan that sort of thing at work. Whenever I am part of that sort of planning, I try to make a 'remote half' either before or after the event and an 'in person half'. It's just seems disrepectful to make a whole bunch of people travel and then waste some of that time listening to a person speak remotely that they could have listened to anywhere.
These are absurdly modest goals considering that their previous 2030 pledges are on track to be achieved by 2027, and these 2035 goals by 2028. All of these goals without any growth in renewables, just continuing pace. They (or I guess someone else) would literally need to nuke their solar production plants from orbit to fail on this track.
Unclear why make such modesty. Invite US to think more fossil fuel investment is smart?
Good for China. I hope the progress is measurable at the end of the day as we really need to get off the fossil fuels.
Plans…
Their renewable capacity has been exploding so its fairly realistic. The issue is that their total energy consumption is exploding even harder, so the ratio of renewables to fossil isnt improving very much.
ITT: .ml users on their 2nd accounts simping for a fascist dictatorship