this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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[Dormant] Electric Vehicles
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Give me a break. China has some of the most lax environmental regulations on the planet which is why all the nastiest shit on the planet is produced there. To pretend like they're some bastion of environmental protection is laughable.
Yes, they are subsidizing green technology but this isn't for the benefit of the people, it's for the benefit of the government as they want the rest of the world to be reliant on them alone. About a decade ago they did this same exact thing with photovoltaics and put a ton of solar manufacturers out of business because nobody could compete with a pocketbook the size of the Chinese government's.
In China, abandoned EVs are piling up all over the place. Can you point out what about this is good for the environment when EVs only begin to offset the pollution created from their production after they've been driven around for a few years?
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/
https://ccpi.org/ranking/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita
Does your gut have any published studies?
They're also building 95% of the world's new coal plants: https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-coal-power-construction-in-2023-report-says/
New coal construction has basically stopped everywhere else, including the US.
"Per capita" is also doing some heavy lifting. Nature doesn't care about per capita. It cares about overall output, and China's is enormous. They'd need to produce over four times less co2 on a per capita basis to be equivalent to US output. They're closer to two times.
Per capita is the only rational way to make comparisons between countries. China is also still largely a manufacturing economy rather than a service economy, and nevertheless it's outperforming Canada and the USA.
Being patriotic sometimes means demanding more from your country not just pretending you're better against the facts.
China's climate action is far more effective, and there are myriad non-partisan organizations ranking it higher than the US and Canada. We're not taking their word for it, it's independently verified.
But sure, start from the conclusion that CHINA BAD and pretend USA is rosy, that'll bring some comfort as we continue to build long-term fossil fuel infrastructure and ship LNG overseas for the next few decades.
Continuing to build coal plants in 2024 isn't just "pretending you're better".
Liquid natural gas production in the US and Canada is rapidly increasing, and although the carbon emissions of burning it are lower than that of coal, methane leakage in the extraction and supply process is a huge problem. Methane is 40x worse as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide.
The only methane leakage numbers that are reported are opt in and self reported. As little as single digit % losses put the environmental impact of natural gas at higher than coal. The self reported numbers are very close to this figure. Many places aren't reporting. Detecting leakage is a very hard problem requiring very expensive equipment all over the supply chain.
In addition, we're building special infrastructure in the form of pipelines, refineries, special cargo ships, and special ports to ship LNG overseas. We're calling it a "bridge fuel" while renewables catch up, but these are decades long projects that are in progress.
Both could be doing better, but China is putting their innovation and money into solar and EVs, and we're putting ours into different fossil fuels.
Give up your blind nationalism and do some research.
I can accept that the US is doing bad things. Can you accept that China is doing bad things?
My thesis is that China is doing better. 50th in the world compared to 60th isn't a celebration of their success.
China scores extra points because they make literally everything we all consume.
Can you concern yourself with how to do more instead of whataboutism?
We should celebrate China subsidizing BYD and solar technology
Here: a fun way for you to learn more https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=I0_Q7qsW19H0Xg52
Maybe you'll trust an American academic's comedy climate channel over me.