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Isn't China taking climate change pretty seriously, though? They are the second largest CO2 producer but seem aware of it and are investing massively in develop

Isn't China taking climate change pretty seriously, though? They are the second largest CO2 producer but seem aware of it and are investing massively in developing lots of green tech. Your claim is actually borderline chauvinist, as if other people than "progressive westerners" could not comprehend the long term effects of climate change.

Syonyk 6y ago
> Isn't China taking climate change pretty seriously, though? It's hard to argue that they're taking it terribly seriously when they continue building out massive amounts of coal power. They've got something north of 50% of the world's coal plants, and are stamping out more at an alarming rate. Regardless of what they say, their actions would indicate that they're happy with other people being concerned about climate change, because then those people will buy Chinese panels, inverters, turbines, etc.
test_alpha 6y ago
China is by far the largest emitter, dwarfing the next country (USA). China emit about as much as all of "the west" combined and will soon overtake them because they are still increasing and are likely to continue increasing for the next several decades while most of the west, even USA, emissions have been coming down for 15-20 years or more. What's more, it's carbon intensity of production is bad, manufacturing something in China as opposed to a cleaner and more efficient country increases emissions. So it makes zero sense to give them subsidies that relatively disadvantage cleaner countries, as part of global efforts to reduce carbon.
- moyasari 6y ago
  Consider boycotting their products: www.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts
- SilverRed 6y ago
  Total emissions of a country is a totally meaningless stat. If you drew a line in the middle of the country and split them in to east and west china, we would have halved the emissions. We could then draw another line and quarter the emissions. Still means nothing. Only emissions per capita matter.
  - test_alpha 6y ago
    Completely wrong, emission intensity is what matters, particularly when developing policy that includes a manufacturing exporter like China, the idea of giving them any further advantage over cleaner more efficient economies is insanity. It's the same as emissions per capita. That's actually worse than meaningless it's actively detrimental because rewarding that metric creates all sorts of perverse incentives around increasing population growth and restricting quality of life. And I didn't bring up total emissions by country, I was replying to someone else who did. Apparently you weren't so concerned about it when it was wrongly claimed that China was the 2nd largest polluter.

Syonyk 6y ago

> Isn't China taking climate change pretty seriously, though? It's hard to argue that they're taking it terribly seriously when they continue building out massive amounts of coal power. They've got something north of 50% of the world's coal plants, and are stamping out more at an alarming rate. Regardless of what they say, their actions would indicate that they're happy with other people being concerned about climate change, because then those people will buy Chinese panels, inverters, turbines, etc.

test_alpha 6y ago

China is by far the largest emitter, dwarfing the next country (USA). China emit about as much as all of "the west" combined and will soon overtake them because they are still increasing and are likely to continue increasing for the next several decades while most of the west, even USA, emissions have been coming down for 15-20 years or more. What's more, it's carbon intensity of production is bad, manufacturing something in China as opposed to a cleaner and more efficient country increases emissions. So it makes zero sense to give them subsidies that relatively disadvantage cleaner countries, as part of global efforts to reduce carbon.

moyasari 6y ago
Consider boycotting their products: www.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts
SilverRed 6y ago
Total emissions of a country is a totally meaningless stat. If you drew a line in the middle of the country and split them in to east and west china, we would have halved the emissions. We could then draw another line and quarter the emissions. Still means nothing. Only emissions per capita matter.
- test_alpha 6y ago
  Completely wrong, emission intensity is what matters, particularly when developing policy that includes a manufacturing exporter like China, the idea of giving them any further advantage over cleaner more efficient economies is insanity. It's the same as emissions per capita. That's actually worse than meaningless it's actively detrimental because rewarding that metric creates all sorts of perverse incentives around increasing population growth and restricting quality of life. And I didn't bring up total emissions by country, I was replying to someone else who did. Apparently you weren't so concerned about it when it was wrongly claimed that China was the 2nd largest polluter.