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Things to Know About China in the Paris Climate Agreemen
- contingencies 10y agoMelanie Hart is a Senior Fellow and Director of China Policy at the Center for American Progress. Uhuh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_American_Progress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_American_Progress Founder: John Podesta Uhuh. As someone who lives in China, in what must be the world's center for hydropower (the south-east Himlayan region), where a huge number of people get around on e-bikes and you never see a Tesla, I remain skeptical of US commitment to clean energy. So should you. China makes most of everything for everyone, including solar panels. Residential energy consumption per-capita is rising but still far beneath western levels. Industrial consumption frequently has a significant export component and thus that pollution is essentially outsourced... any direct comparison is therefore flawed.
- peteretep 10y ago> Founder: John Podesta > Uhuh. Ad hominem > As someone who lives in > ... world's center for > hydropower ... you never see > a Tesla ... skeptical of US > commitment to clean energy I genuinely fail to understand how your anecdotal points are intended to fit together.
- jakeogh 10y agoCheckout Skippy's email.
- peteretep 10y agoThat is also meant to mean something, but I have no idea what.
- contingencies 10y agohttps://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/ https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/
- nl 10y agoI don't understand this comment at all. Is it attempt to say that - despite your view that we should be concerned that the CAP was founded by John Podesta - what they are saying is correct? Because it appears the article entirely agrees with your point?
- spangry 10y agoUhuh. So if the US did withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, which is what the article is warning against, would you become more or less sceptical about US commitment to clean energy?
- oculusthrift 10y agoJust plug your ears. Close your eyes. And repeat the holy chant, "America is #1". While our rivers run thick with coal sludge, our water is full of lead, and we ravage our environment.
- HalfwayToDice 10y agoedgy stuff
- idra 10y agoThat's what they do in China (of course replacing "America #1" with "China #1"), it's been quite successful so far.
- quonn 10y agoSo successful that people have to wear smog masks in the cities.
- senorjazz 10y agoFrom what I understand, the Chinese know they have a problem. They are not denying climate change, they are not burying their head in the sand and are actively talking about and planning for the future and the changes required. I am fairly sure no high ranking official is blaming it as a "US hoax"
- oblio 10y agoHow is it successful? :-?
- idra 10y agoThe CPC is still in power.
- willvarfar 10y agoThe article says that China isn't trying to 'ravage their environment` - quite the opposite. In fact, that's the whole thrust of the article.
- amarant 10y agoI hate to say it but the Chinese Regime actually looks more fit to govern than Trumps administration...now some might take that as a blow against democracy, but I'd rather think of it as "With great freedom comes great responsibility" Democracy didn't fail, America did...
- bjshepard 10y agoThere is not a single Chinese "regime" - the space of contestation of politics is simply different than in the US. There's an enormous amount of sometimes extremely emotionally intense conflict within the CCP.
- HalfwayToDice 10y agoI read your comment to my Chinese friends in the office. They are still laughing at what you wrote.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dilemma 10y agoEdgy.
- amarant 10y agoGlad I made them smile ;)
- privateprofile 10y agoI wonder if they'd still feel like laughing if their family depended on the State Bureau of Letters and Calls [1] for the defence of their basic human rights. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39137293 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39137293
- mistermann 10y agoWhat do they find funny about it?
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- hutzlibu 10y ago"That commitment requires China to build and install 800 gigawatts to 1,000 gigawatts of new wind, solar, NUCLEAR, and other renewable energy generation facilities by 2030" Nuclear green and renewable? But Ok, this sentence you can understand in another way but not together with: "China has committed to build a renewables-only system that is equivalent to the entire U.S. electricity system by 2030. This nonfossil fuel target is the deepest hook in China’s Paris commitments. It is already creating massive demand for new clean energy technologies" All talking about green, renewable energy and specifically in the context of the 1000 GW from before, what INCLUDES nuclear. And even though I prefer (proper) nuclear plants over coal, I think you can't really put wind and solar energy together with nucleaer in the same bag and label it as green and renewable. So the article is either intentionally missleading, or dumb.
- youngtaff 10y agoSo Nuclear has it's own challenges but it's low carbon compared to coal, and oil (Yes, there's a huge stack of CO2 emitted during concrete production)
- TeMPOraL 10y agoRenewable? Sure, you can't. But just green energy? Any article that does not put nuclear in the green bag is misleading.
- hutzlibu 10y agoA technology, where you don't know yet, what to do with the highly toxic waste products and where you have a large area contaminated for a long time in case something goes really wrong, does not really qualify as "green energy" in my opinion. Still better than coal, yes. But not green. Especially not, if you consider this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...
- spangry 10y agoThe RationalWiki page on nuclear waste disposal is surprisingly informative (and non-snarky, by RW standards): http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste As for the list of 'nuclear accidents', given all but one of the accidents listed have a fatality count of 0, I'm not sure what it is that alarms you. To be fair, the WHO projects a total of ~4000 deaths to occur as a result of Chernobyl (increased rate of cancer, using the linear no-threshold hypothesis). For Fukushima, the number seems likely to be either 'small' or 'none' based on WHO projections, although two TEPCO workers died at the time of the incident (they drowned, I believe) and a significantly larger number were killed as a result of the (perhaps overly cautious) evacuation of the surrounding populated areas.
- spangry 10y agoAssuming you're a US citizen... When are you planning to emigrate to China, where you can wait out the dastardly Trump administration?
- dang 10y agoComments like this will get your account banned from HN. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. Inflammatory political comments are especially bad here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13781492 and marked it off-topic.
- kriro 10y agoOne thing Chinese should know about the United States in the Paris Climate Agreement: many people in the U.S., including elected officials and influential folks don't actually believe global warming is a thing. I know it may sound far fetched for a country that hosts the most renown universities in the world but it is what it is.
- boona 10y ago> folks don't actually believe global warming To be nit picky, the belief is no longer in global warming, but climate change. Those who promoted global warming got their predictions terribly wrong, and that's why we refer to it as climate change today. They got it right this time I'm sure.
- nl 10y agoTo be clear, both are correct. The earth is warming, and the climate is changing. In some places that change results in a wetter (and perhaps cooler) climate, so climate change is easier to talk about. But I guess here we all understand the difference between local and global effects, and between climate and weather, right?
- boona 10y ago> The earth is warming Right, but only 0.74ºC in the last 100 years, which may very well be a normal variance. So original projections were wrong, and they had to change the claim being made.
- nl 10y agoWhat original predictions? All the old ones I've seen show exactly what seems to be happening: an accelerating warming. The majority of the 0.74C is in the second half of that 100 years, just like one would expect.
- senorjazz 10y agoDo they really though? I am from the UK and I see it on the news, read it in the newspapers that some elected official comes out with (what I am assuming is the party line) "Climate change is unknown, the science is undecided, humans have no part to play in the change in climate".... But surely, they don't "believe" it. They must be somewhat educated to get elected to office. Surely they see the evidence of 97 scientists saying "yes" and 3 saying "no" who all have ties to big oil. There is no debate about it any more, the scientific is as close to unanimous on the answer as it is possible to get. How can they possibly deny it? Is it purely political? Is it bribes - sorry lobbying - money that blinds them? Is it religion? Is it just ignorance. I just cannot get my head round it. There is no other comparable country with the same view that I am aware.
- necessity 10y agoHum no. Clean energy is precisely less efficient. If it truly was more efficient everyone would be using it. It has a potential to be, but it isn't there yet.
- heroprotagonist 10y agoThat's a good point. The lack of complete efficiency, while keeping it sustainable, is a driving force behind a lot of the innovation in the energy sector. If climate denial in the United States results in them ceding energy innovation to China, then ultimately those parties in China who are building the efficiency gains will gain the most from it. They won't just be manufacturers of the end products anymore. Their companies will potentially dominate the market for various technology as efficiency further improves.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pessimizer 10y ago1 thing that US propagandists consistently fail to mention about China's emissions is that, per capita, they are less than half of those of the United States. If you mention that, they accuse you of "whataboutism" as if comparing the total emissions of Austin, TX and Los Angeles is a reasonable and totally not intentionally deceptive thing to do. It's biased to refer to a system that expects countries with far less per capita emissions to reduce at the same rate as countries with two or three times their rates as "bifurcated." "Bifurcated" could just as easily refer to the rate of the reduction, or to the per capita targets of that reduction. The system can't help but be bifurcated when dealing with polluters as bad as the United States. It's a paranoid work of art to both make China out to be a threat because it could pollute too much, and also a threat because it could develop green technology and apply it too quickly, in the same document.
- jimlawruk 10y agoGood point. In the US, per capita carbon emmissions also vary wildly by state. http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/ http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/
- mistermann 10y agoChina is also the manufacturer on behalf of a lot of other countries, so their statistical carbon output isn't really "theirs".