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Comment by mustafa_pasi | Hacker News Reader

We posted almost the same comment. I do disagree with one point. The US is the country with the most global power and is instrumental in driving global change so I really disagree that they do not hold a huge responsibility.

I mean, Germany is trying to lead by example, but their attempt is pathetic. Nobody is going to care what Germany does and they do not have the economic and political power to enforce global change. But the US does.

I am not saying the US can do it alone, but it has to show both initiative and willingness.

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Not only that, but people see Germany as being fundamentally unserious about climate change when they retire nuclear and keep burning insane amounts of destructive brown coal. I don’t think the electricity mix is even significantly cleaner than the US’s

EDIT: confirmed, the US had 365grams of CO2 per kWh (805lbs per MWh) but Germany had 385g per kWh in 2022.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1247991/annual-power-sec...

People see Germany as a foolish naive nation which is currently hurting itself economically and making a clown of itself. It is having the opposite of the desired effect. Other countries will be more hesitant to transition to green technologies when they see Germany suffering.

Really? Which countries would those be? All the European countries that have far higher renewable use than Germany?

No one considers Germany a leader in renewables. It's just a straw man for the nuclear fanboys.

Germany sees itself as a leader in the green transition even if this is not factually correct.

Oh, well you don't have to worry about other countries being put off by Germany's decisions, because no one else does. Good news, eh!

It's not like Nord Stream 2s destruction was the single largest act of industrial sabotage in human history, alongside the single largest carbon emission in human history. Being complicit in one pipeline being bombed could undermine decades of progress in a single moment.

Good question, I just checked. The numbers I can find for 2022:

Renewables: US: 21.5% Germany: 44%

Nuclear: US: 18.2% Germany: 6%

Fossil: US: 60.2% Germany: 45.9%, 20.1% from lignite (brown coal)

So pretty clear win on the renewables for Germany. Adding Nuclear for "clean energy" it's still pretty ahead. However, Fossil in the US is mainly gas, which is cleaner than lignite. Hard to quantify.

Sources: US: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 Germany: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

It’s not actually that hard to quantify. Per kWh, the US got 365g of CO2 per kWh (804lb/MWh) in 2022 compared to 385g/kWh for Germany.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1247991/annual-power-sec...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity...

That's just electricity generation, which is only a portion of total energy usage. Both countries use about 15% renewables overall. The exact number is hard to measure, complicated by importation and exportation of energy and other factors.

German electricity mix is ~50% renewable (https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm?...).

US renewables + nuclear ist at ~40% (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/us-electricity-energy...).

Also note the growth rate: German renewable electricity fraction went from 26% to 50% while the US went from 12% to 23% (since 2012). So they appear significantly more serious about climate change than the US.

Total CO2/capita/year is also significantly higher for the US (15 tons vs 9 tons, approx.)

Yeah, but total CO2/capita/year is like <4 for France.... That's where nuclear power really shines. Of course these calculations do not really capture all CO2 required for nuclear power.

Electricity mix is a fairly useless number on it's own. Especially for an industrial powerhouse like Germany. Renewable's share of total energy consumption in Germany is about 15%, and has been decreasing.

The number is the US is similar, and has been rising.

You need to be careful with these statistics because Germany is a (large) net importer of electricity. How are imports counted is not always obvious (nor should it be, Netherlands exports electricity to Germany, sometimes it's mostly solar powered, sometimes purely gas)

That certainly complicates the situation, as Germany imports and exports energy. But Germany is a net exporter, not importer, at least in 2022, but I believe it's so for most years.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...

Huge responsibility - sure.

Has to do anything - that statement is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Ethically/morally? Probably.

But that isn’t how international (or national!) politics tends to work!

Practically, why/when should the most powerful nation in the world, with the worlds most powerful military (fossil fuel based, no less), worlds reserve currency (due to the world using it for fossil fuel purchases, and because of the stable US economic system which is currently based on fossil fuels), etc. undermine itself exactly?

If it’s the breadwinner of the family doing the heaviest drinking, but literally everyone is also drinking, it’s going to be even harder to take the booze from the alcoholic - because no one is going to actually try, because they’re all alcoholics.

Realistically, the US will ‘have to do something’ when the current situation becomes actually nonfunctional in some real way, or it becomes so patently obvious that it will shortly become so that a sufficient majority starts being willing to make sacrifices to start the change.

Or someone figures out a way to make “everyone rich” if we switch.

Here’s hoping!

This is a question of perceived cost and benefit. I do not actually think that the US would be undermining itself if it nudged the world's economy to transition to green technologies. I think it would protect itself and even benefit economically.

Not that I used the word "perceived" in my original comment.

The issue here is that ‘nudged’ doesn’t make the actual changes necessary.

‘Nudged’ isn’t transitioning anyone’s military off fossil fuels. Or international shipping. Or major capex outlays in things like home heating when existing (fossil fuel) options are cheaper and more effective, etc. Things that require double digit percent of GDP expenditures, which are often required.

Germany tried (guilt perhaps?) and made a dent - but far from solved the problem, and is still consuming massive amounts of fossil fuels and is now burdened with debt and very high energy bills.

They cut back from a case a day to half a case a day, and are clearly unhappy about it and far from sober.

What do you mean US is the country with the most global power? India and China are polluting more than the US Annual CO₂ emissions by world region shows that China and India are responsible for a majority of carbon emissions since the year 2000, while the US and European rates have dropped in the last 23 years. India and China need to be hugely responsible as they are the ones building new coal plants https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-...

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