3 ms·
> China, though, is still adding coal capacity. It's a bit misleading because China is mostly _replacing_ old coal power plants now. China has probably passed
by cyberax 2y ago
> China, though, is still adding coal capacity.
It's a bit misleading because China is mostly _replacing_ old coal power plants now.
China has probably passed the peak coal consumption this year, or it will in 2025.
- nicce 2y agoThe one thing where dictatorship is very efficient. One man says that let's reduce the pollution and others will do it. Let's see if democracy is ever able to do the same.
- cyberax 2y agoI disagree. Pollution in China was terrible. Pretty much everybody hated it, and it was not possible to hide or whitewash it. The US was in the same position during 60-s and 70-s, and it fixed the worst of the pollution rapidly. The EPA was established during the freaking Nixon administration.
- jfengel 2y agoAnd it had a good fifty years or so before being abolished.
- 7thpower 2y agoI think there were a lot of factors at play behind the will of the leader or form of government, including resources and technologies available to the respective nations.
- ben_w 2y agoAnother anecdote where a democracy can deal with sufficiently bad pollution… eventually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
- tim333 2y agoStill working on it with ULEZ and Oxford Street.
- fragmede 2y agoAmericans will always do the right thing, after they have tried everything else”; often attributed to Winston Churchill
- nicce 2y agoBut these are only examples when the pollution is so bad that it affects even the visibility in your own house. The whole problem of the crisis is that you should also make actions for things that you cannot see. Or if they happen for your neighbor country. That has not really happened yet.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tbrownaw 2y agoWell, they'll at least report that they're doing it. I've heard that autocracies tend to have data quality issues that derive from messengers not wanting to be shot.
- nicce 2y agoThe thing with the air quality is that others can measure it too, or even see from the space. https://dialogue.earth/en/pollution/how-climate-change-complicates-chinas-battle-for-blue-skies/ https://dialogue.earth/en/pollution/how-climate-change-compl...
- hollerith 2y agoThe Soviet Union's environmental record is significantly worse than the democracies.
- nicce 2y agoI don’t recall anyone enforcing pollution reduction in there
- yxhuvud 2y agoProblem is when the dictator is wrong and chose not to address it. Then it doesn't get done. That is not very efficient.
- Taniwha 2y agoI flew across Northern China 5 years ago, you could see open cast mines next to power plants to the horizon .... but they were rapidly filling in the space with wind generation 1000s of turbines using the coal plant's transmission lines - they knew that the pollution drifting east to Beijing wasn't sustainable
- lasc4r 2y agoThere's something to be said for a dictatorship that at the very least thinks climate change is real.
- chii 2y agoThe impetus is more to ensure people don't get pollution in the big cities (which indirectly helps with climate change, but that was never the real goal). Not that this is a problem.
- pclmulqdq 2y agoAir quality issues in Beijing have nothing to do with climate change. China is not acting as though they care about CO2 emissions at all.
- feedforward 2y agoDictatorship of the proletariat
- Animats 2y agoA few decades ago, a French minister was being interviewed on US TV about the French nuclear power program. He was asked how France had managed to get all their nuclear plants approved and built. He said, "We had a vote in the Chamber of Deputies. I understand you do things differently in America."
- Yeul 2y agoWe've been conditioned to think democracy is the perfect form of government but why did people vote for Trump? Why in my country does less than 50% of the voters show up for elections? The masses just want food and security.