Hacker News Reader

Comment by schneehertz | Hacker News Reader

The German government subsidizes multinational corporations' oil facilities in China. This article mentions "China" too many times, but what does this have to do with China? Isn't it the multinational companies that are suspected of fraud? Not a single name of any multinational corporation is even mentioned in the article.

View on HN

The part of China in this situation is that the Chinese government does not allow foreign inspectors into China to check if the sponsored projects are actually doing what they claim, and either China does not check these projects itself or does a bad job at it, thus enabling fraud. I don't know why anyone would sponsor a project in China under these conditions in the first place (or anywhere under similar conditions), but that's a different story.

Of course, that does not change that multinational oil companies are the ones conducting the fraud or that a local Chinese competitor fingered them, so that things came to light.

Germans sponsor such projects in China because European emissions aren't growing much and are an irrelevant slice of global output. If you want to subsidize people to reduce emissions you have to go where the emissions are. At this point the developing world completely dominates emissions and emissions growth:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...

China, India and Asia swamp all other contributors in terms of growth and (with the exception of America beating India) also absolute amounts. The entire EU emits around the same as India alone.

> The entire EU emits around the same as India alone.

With only a third of India's population. Don't worry there is still a lot to do in Europe.

> With only a third of India's population.

Therein lies the rub.

The current reality is that US and EU per capita emissions are rather flat ATM whereas those of India and China are on the rise.

There is work to do all about, the EU and US could certainly come down per capita (but by how much) and India and China ideally should be capped (but by whom and how) at less per capita than the EU|US currently .. ideally new technology will achieve that while allowing "modern" expectations of consumption.

The future reality is even should that all come to pass we're still looking at a global net increase in emmissions when ideally we very much want a global reduction.

However we as humans in the world get there it's hardly useful to foster international bickering when we all stand to gain through cooperation.

> The entire EU emits around the same as India alone.

Well, but India is a huge country. It has 3 times the population of the EU.

Which means that pro-capita the EU is emitting 3x more than India.

That's irrelevant though for the purposes of this discussion, which is why are Germans funding projects in China. If you care about absolute levels of emissions the west just isn't relevant. All the decisions that matter are being made in Asia. And as we can see from the fraud rates on these projects, they don't care.

> If you want to subsidize people to reduce emissions you have to go where the emissions are.

Emission is everywhere and EU can work to further reduce the emissions they have. e.g. heat pumps vs Gas heater, insulation. Also, it can be done in Africa, SEA to prevent next big wave of emissions coming from there.

> China does not check these projects itself or does a bad job at it

> I don't know why anyone would sponsor a project in China under these conditions in the first place (or anywhere under similar conditions), but that's a different story.

You answered your question, don't you think?

No, I don't think so. I have a hunch what you are trying to say, but since I try to not second guess, I would like to hear your argument, why and how China's neglect or ineptitude to hold projects accountable would be a positive feature for a sponsor.

If you want to embezzle funds, would you rather do it through a country with strict checks or a country with no checks at all? The choice of China will give a nice cover against an investigation.

The controlling powers will then divert the resources to these jurisdictions. The sponsor (Germany) will not see a net benefit but this is the problem with public funds since they are disconnected from the tax payer.

Thanks for clearing that up! However, we don't have cases of embezzlement but of fraud. Of course the fraudster, ie. the involved corporations, would have an interest in obfuscating their tracks, but the sponsor would not. The controlling power is the sponsor, ie. the federal ministry of environmental protection, and I doubt they wanted to be defrauded. This is why I said I don't get why anybody would sponsor under these conditions. That's a case of ineptitude and neglect, but not malice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com