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It is frustrating as someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money to remove coal that India and China have said FU to the world and increased their c

• Waterluvian 2y ago
  As a Canadian it’s hard for me to be upset given we still emit far more carbon per capita than China or India.
  • brailsafe 2y ago
    I suppose there could be worse problems though. According to Bloomberg, as of a few years ago there were more people in India who didn't have access to electricity at all than live in all of Canada, and not insignificant portion of our population is of recent Indian descent. This source reports ~10% of their population https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/access-to-electricity https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/access... As a Canadian (but not Albertan) I've never had direct access to the residual economic effects of oil resources, or the slight tax offset that comes with having no Provincial Sales Tax, aside from general gov redistribution. I've never not had electricity, and I've never not had renewable electricity, which is quite remarkable.
  • azinman2 2y ago
    But would that be true if Canada had 1 billion people?
    • rootusrootus 2y ago
      IIRC most people's carbon emissions come from transportation, electricity, heat. My guess is the efficiency of scale at ~40M is within spitting distance of what it would be at 1B. So it ought to scale linearly, for the most part?
      • Waterluvian 2y ago
        It depends how we situate ourselves. We have a lot of land and a lot of potential to hypothetically grow to 1B in the dumbest way possible.
      • s1artibartfast 2y ago
        A lot of it comes from consumption, material goods, food ect as well.
    • abdullahkhalids 2y ago
      BC electricity is completely hydroelectric. And they encourage homes to go all electric with no gas. If BC's population went up by a factor of 1.1B/40M = 27.5x, most likely the hydroelectric resources in the province would become insufficient and BC would have to switch to alternate forms of electric power. Maybe that is solar+wind+nuclear, but maybe it's just gas and coal. Please note that in Canada, electricity, heat, and transport emissions dwarf those from all other sectors [1]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?time=latest&country=~CAN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t...
  • 486sx33 2y ago
    “Canada could already be absorbing 20 to 30 per cent more CO2 than we emit” https://financialpost.com/opinion/canada-may-already-be-carbon-neutral-so-why-are-we-keeping-it-a-secret https://financialpost.com/opinion/canada-may-already-be-carb...
    • Waterluvian 2y ago
      If “all this undeveloped land is a huge carbon sink we want to take credit for,” then we’re going to have to take responsibility for the terrible amount of carbon release as peatlands continue thawing. This is frankly a dumb article. It’s an unhelpful reframing of the issue at hand by trying to take credit for what’s happening across large swaths of undeveloped land that happen to be within our border. It will quickly be abandoned the moment the natural carbon release of former permafrost regions cause us to be a colossal emitter instead. Consider how unhelpful it would be if countries began trying to solve their emissions issues by laying claim to vast swaths of ocean, to take credit for algal carbon sinks.
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• bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Note that China's coal usage was basically flat in 2023 and expected to decline in 2024. China's coal capacity is increasing dramatically, but they're increasingly using their coal plants as peaker plants rather than for base production.
  • mrguyorama 2y ago
    For those unaware, China and India do NOT like getting their power from coal. They've both had decades now of abysmal smog and pollution that literally (like, statistically trackable) kills people every year, including people otherwise productive in society. China is absolutely dumping the price of solar panels. A fully renewable energy China is one that is harder for Western countries to sanction, has more prestige with bright blue skies, and exports cheap solar panels to everyone else. India will trend the same way. Every geopolitically relevant country will feel more secure with renewable, and therefore utterly independent, energy generation. A reminder that Texas, a uniparty state literally run by Oil Barron families for decades, still gets at least a third of it's power from renewable sources, because it's so goddamned cheap. It doesn't matter how profitable oil is, or how much you pump, it will always be cheaper, and therefore more profitable, to replace it with power that just manifests itself out of the sky or wind for merely the cost of maintenance. Each oil well requires tens of highly skilled, rather well paid tradespeople to manage, drill, run, explode, etc. An entire field of wind turbines requires one or two small teams of somewhat well paid maintenance engineers.
    • bryanlarsen 2y ago
      China & India get almost all of their coal internally, so coal is also fairly sanctions proof. The rest of your post is spot on, though.
    • cm2187 2y ago
      As far as I am aware, Texas offsets the volatility of renewable with carbon based energy. Those renewable are not viable in a world with no carbon based energy. https://grid-analytics.ece.utexas.edu/chart/fuel-type-generation https://grid-analytics.ece.utexas.edu/chart/fuel-type-genera...
• matt2000 2y ago
  I can understand the frustration from a climate change perspective, but you still get the benefits of cleaner air locally, increasing energy independence and freedom from commodity cost fluctuations.
• dheera 2y ago
  > India and China Oof. Before we start pointing fingers, over 50% of China's energy consumption is manufacturing, and a significant chunk of that manufacturing is western countries outsourcing their manufacturing needs, i.e. claiming to be coal-free while really just burning the coal elsewhere and then blaming the landowner. If you want to truly be coal-free, don't just pay for it to be built in Canada for your wooden house that consumes a few kilowatts. Pay for it to be built in China for all your manufacturing outposts that make your computer, TV, phone, kitchen gadgets, kitchen ware, disposable items, containers for food delivery, and everything else, that take an enormous amount of power to create. They are equally a part of your energy footprint. Do you have iPhones in Alberta? It takes about 1 GJ or 278 kWh to make a single phone [1], which is about enough to heat an entire house for a month. For a computer you're looking at about 1 MWh, about a large house's heating usage in an entire year. [1] https://conferences.sigcomm.org/hotnets/2011/papers/hotnetsX-final56.pdf https://conferences.sigcomm.org/hotnets/2011/papers/hotnetsX...
  • chollida1 2y ago
    I mean, you basically ignored the point about them buying Russian oil/gas, thus enabling the Russian war. But yes, I agree that China makes things. India doesn't really have that excuse for using coal.
    • dheera 2y ago
      India's government is dirt poor in comparison to China's government. Clean energy is expensive. Both governments are actually very pro-clean-energy and more willing to deploy it, given the money, than a certain two ~80-year-old farts that take turns every 4 years playing stupid politics games and picking fights.
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      • lesuorac 2y ago
        > Clean energy is expensive. Eh, nuclear sure but in general no. That's the whole reason solar is becoming so popular is that it's cheaper [2]. If you have to pair solar with storage then it becomes more expensive [1] (general X+Y is more expensive than just X or Y). But uh, people tend to work when the sun shines so you can add a ton of solar to offset the increased energy usage during the day. [1]: https://www.powersouth.com/is-solar-cheaper-than-natural-gas/ https://www.powersouth.com/is-solar-cheaper-than-natural-gas... [2]: https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/natural_gas_vs._solar_cost_analysis_090607.pdf https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/natural_g...
• jogjayr 2y ago
  As an Indian immigrant to Canada, it is frustrating to see people believe it's a choice. I also hear a lot of hate for the carbon tax and rebate program in Canada. I support the program, even though it costs me money. > someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money Which means Canada has money. India is much poorer on a per-capita basis. They can become wealthy by developing their economy. India can't spend as much per-capita on clean energy as Canada or any other wealthy nation. India has much more to lose from climate change compared to Canada. The heatwaves are already horrific, and many cities have water supply problems so drought due to climate change could spell disaster. The air quality in most Indian cities is terrible. No one is burning coal for fun. Gasoline is CA$1.81/l in Mumbai, in a country with a fraction of the per-capita income of Canada. Cars are much smaller on average and most people take public transport. The electricity grid isn't as reliable as Canada and of course most people don't live in houses. It's mostly apartments, often with no assigned parking. Despite that I saw many electric cars and scooters on my last trip, even in small towns. I don't know how they charge. But I began to question why the US or Canada can't build enough charging for apartment-dwellers. The "choice" India and China are making is no choice at all. They can either develop their economies or languish in poverty. Poverty means less food, less medical care, less education. It means lower life expectancy, higher infant and maternal mortality, an overall lower quality of life. Staying poor means when climate change gets worse, they'll have less money to mitigate it. If you want developing countries to decrease their carbon emissions, invest in cheaper clean energy. Support programs and policies that give developing countries subsidies on clean energy technologies.
  • 486sx33 2y ago
    India needs to focus on decreasing its birth rate, which it completely ignores. They can’t just keep making more people and expect things to world out
    • Gibbon1 2y ago
      India's birthrate is 2.01
    • triceratops 2y ago
• NoLinkToMe 2y ago
  Canada emits more Co2 per capita than China today, by 1.5x. But Co2 doesn't only count in 'last years'. It counts as a cumulative effect. The Co2 damage of Canada per capita is way beyond that of China, cumulatively. In cumulative terms, China has emitted 'only' 7.5 times as much Canada despite having 35x the population. In other words, Canada's per capita cumulative emissions are about 4.5x those of China. And that's a lot. It means Canada has damaged way more, and should have a bigger burden to reduce future damage, or undo damage already done. Generally yes it's always frustrating to see any country keep emitting Co2. But Canada is a worse offender, both in the past, as well as now, and that's a pretty sad record for one of the richest countries in the world which also happens to be the country with probably the biggest per-capita natural renewable resources of all time. (land for wind and solar, as well as insane hydro).
  • cm2187 2y ago
    Ratios matter little to the climate. Total volumes do. When you build your infrastructure from scratch, it makes sense not to go for XIX century technologies.
    • jogjayr 2y ago
      I agree. It would be much better if wealthy nations subsidized clean energy technology for developing countries so that they can leapfrog the fossil fuel stage.
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    • SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
      On the other side of the argument, borders also don't matter to the climate, so everyone should be doing everything they can instead of finger-pointing, no?
    • NoLinkToMe 2y ago
      Ratios matter a lot. If everyone behaved like Canadians we'd be fucked. If Canadians behaved like Chinese, we'd be less fucked. I was replying to someone who felt upset with China as a Canadian, and I explained his own country and its population behaves worse.
• maxglute 2y ago
  Canada (and US) has no leg to stand on because domestic emissions reduction is offset by simply choosing to be increasingly large net crude exporters after domestic use. At the end of the day, Canada is trending to enable more net fossil fuel use, whereas PRC is trending to reduce net fossil fuel (coal used for peaking not baseload) and via renewable exports that reduce demand for fossil. As Canadian, the only disapointment is influence ops against Canadian fossil industry has stalled development so much for so long that we're not a larger fossil exporter and reaping in benefits of current geopolitical turmoil. EU could have been buying overpriced Canadian oil + lng.
• t0bia_s 2y ago
  So gaining wealth by burning coal by US or Europe was fine back then and now you want to ban developing country to achive wealth in same way?
• matthewdgreen 2y ago
  >India and China have said FU to the world and increased their coal usage. China is building an unbelievable amount of renewables and nuclear, more than the rest of the world combined. Like every other part of the world, they're backstopping these variable power sources with fossil generation -- mainly by building modern coal power plants that can be spun down when renewable generation is high. They've also developed a framework to pay coal plants not to generate. And of course they're leading the world on the deployment and pricing of battery storage, pumped hydro and HVDC grid upgrades. I'm posting this because your conclusion ("China has said FU" to the world) is almost the polar opposite of what's actually happening. If we survive the climate crisis, it's going to be because of what China is doing with renewable buildouts and manufacturing.
  • 486sx33 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • bryanlarsen 2y ago
      They've massively increased their capacity to build coal by a massive amount. They've also massively decreased the capacity factor of their coal plants. It used to be that their coal plants mostly ran 24/7, now their coal plants mostly just run at night while the sun isn't shining. More coal plants burning less coal. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants
• CMCDragonkai 2y ago
  I really think you should be taking responsibility over your own current and historical consumption and production patterns instead of pointing fingers at countries who have much larger populations and are much more poorer per capita. Lead the world with better technology, show everybody how it can be done. Everybody does their bit and we will all benefit.
• deleted 2y ago
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• CuriousIndian 2y ago
  You do realise that vast majority of India's new electricity generation is renewable right? And Canada just replaced coal with petroleum not green sources. Its amazing how most western countries bash coal so much and then proceed to generate electricity using natural gas. To me it's Canada that is saying FU to the world and then preaching about it.