They simply want to use to genuine concern around climate to further their own ends.
Again, these people aren't serious. And their actions prove how the threat is either not real at all, or extremely distant to the point of being irrelevant for us.
If climate change wasn't a real threat... they would act as you said.
If climate change was a real threat to humanity... they would still act in spite of it. Tragedy of the commons. What is a better future? Having done your part, when nobody did, and facing a broken world with a broken economy OR Helped kill the world environment but playing an even field?
That has been China's stance all along, anyways.
The only reason to move toward "renewables" is to not depend on fossil fuel imports. It is about sovereignity, not about morality.
Green energy is making advancements. Unfortunately for them the fossil fuel industry continues to make advancements as well. Every year they get better at drilling, better at harvesting, better at converting from crude to fuel, better at burning, better at extracting energy from what is burned. At least a dozen different metrics get 2% better year over year which keeps fossil fuels competitive and makes it harder for other sources of energy to replace it.
Which is fine. It's all fine. I just want the best energy available. And the way our civilization has historically measured the "best" is through the free market. Green will win eventually. No need to rush it prematurely. It will happen.
No, humankind does not have an energy generation problem. The problem is the side effects of the methods used to generate the energy.
The existential risk is very real, but because it’s still far in the future, only very few people perceive it as such.
Covid is a great example of how incapable humans are to perceive dangers that are far in space and/or time.
The climate crisis is likely the greatest challenge humankind has faced so far. I am starting to think that only true SF fans can actually process this information. It seems one needs to have thought about it for a while before being hit with this information (existential threat to our civilization), to be able to process it fast. SF may have provided people with the prerequisites to understand the situation. Or, alternatively, maybe people who are capable of thinking far into the future are drawn to SF.