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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> I'm reminded of a comic about global warming, "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?": https://climateactionreserve.org/blog/2012/08/31/environment...

The people who've made the biggest contribution to creating a better world over the last 50 years have been the Chinese; powered largely by coal and petroleum. And in one of the most ironic results in the 21st century, they're now the leaders in solar panel production on the back of the largest investment in fossil fuel energy in global history.

The comic ran into the same problem as the climate change movement in general - they proposed ideas that generally made people worse off. And if measured in terms of CO2 emissions achieved nothing except pushing wealth creation to Asia. Which, in fairness, is probably appreciated by the Asians.

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That cartoon was drawn at the very end of 2009.

BYD had release the first plug in hybrid the year before.

The Beijing Olynpics had made air pollution a hot topic in China in 2007-8.

Wind power had accelerated after their 2005 Renewable Energy Law.

Solar panel production rose around this time, taking over the market from European manufacturers when the Financial Crisis hit and they pulled back investments.

So China at that time, was doing all the things on the cartoon's presentation list, and has benefitted greatly from them.

Many people in Europe want to see green energy transition. But no transition is happening in China.

" “We see addition, not transition,” said Yasheng Huang, a professor of global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School. “China is building alternative sources of energy as well as fossil energy sources, simultaneously. In terms of the global footprint on CO2, China is emitting twice as much as Europe and the United States. I don’t think there’s a transition going on.” "

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/02/yes-china-has...

What an embarrassingly ill-informed thing to say. But when the guy wrote a book in 2023 about the fall of China, he kind of has to say that doesn't he, even as he lives through the fall of the USA.

He's called out in the sub-head as an "expert" but what is he an expert in? Renewables? Energy policy? No, he's an expert in saying that China is too state-led. Why would an expert in that want to downplay their success, apart from all the obvious reasons?

" For Beijing to achieve those goals, Climate Action Tracker says China needs "clear targets for coal consumption reduction" in its new 5YP. However, the economic roadmap released in March was not "explicit about how fossil fuels will be constrained," said China analyst Qi Qin of the Finland-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Though Chinese President Xi Jinping promised in 2021 to detail a reduction in coal energy use in the 2026-31 plan, it contains "no clear phase-down plan, no clear fossil fuel cap," said Qin. "The language is much more conservative than many people expected," she told DW. One reason is the continued influence of the powerful coal lobby on Chinese government policy. "

https://www.dw.com/en/china-five-year-plan-energy-transition...

Same person being quoted in the same article:

> New Chinese government guidelines on fossil fuels released on April 22 support the view that the country is willing to move away from finite fossil fuels, strengthen energy independence and still achieve its climate targets, says Qin.

> "The new central guideline talks about strictly controlling fossil fuel consumption, reducing coal and controlling oil. It still leaves room for flexibility, but these are concrete policy levers," Qin said of the document, which also indicated a desire to increase clean energy consumption.

Elsewhere Climate Action Tracker on the USA:

> The Trump Administration is pursuing an executive and legislative agenda to systematically repeal targets, policies, and funding for climate change mitigation and science. The administration is actively obstructing the buildout of renewable energy, while encouraging the production and consumption of fossil fuels, completely reversing the Biden Administration’s course on climate action. This is the most aggressive, comprehensive, and consequential climate policy rollback that the Climate Action Tracker has ever analysed.

They have a worse score than China:

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/

All of which, even the bits quoted to claim "no transition is happening", support my original contention that all the things mentioned in the cartoon were being strongly pushed by China in 2009. They have only gained momentum since and they've profited from doing so.

I agree that the Chinese 5Y plan is better than the US policy "Drill, baby, drill!". But how much exactly, we will see.

Lets drill more into details:

" Against this backdrop, coal has re-emerged as a critical stabilizing force in China’s power system. This helps explain the relatively cautious policy signals embedded in China’s 15th Five-Year Plan. While the plan reiterates long-term decarbonization commitments — including reducing carbon intensity by 17 percent and raising the share of non-fossil energy to 25 percent by 2030 — it still stops short of setting explicit timelines for coal or oil consumption to peak. This reflects a deliberate effort to preserve flexibility as Chinese policymakers balance energy transition goals with near-term electric system stability.

In practice, China’s coal production has rebounded significantly. After nearly a decade of supply-side reforms that kept output around 4 billion tonnes annually, coal production rose sharply following the 2022 power shortages and has continued to increase, reaching a record 4.85 billion tonnes in 2025. "

https://thediplomat.com/2026/04/coal-is-rising-in-chinas-cle...

I would like to note "reducing carbon intensity", doesn't mean reducing total carbon emissions, it's reducting carbon emissions per unit GDP.

This is in strong contrast to EU

"Specifically, the EU has a legally binding headline emission reduction target of 90% by 2040 relative to 1990, with a domestic target of 85% and up to 5% of international carbon credits."

https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/climate-strategies-ta...

Something that has been largely forgotten about is that it used to be routine to see pictures of smoggy Chinese and Asian cities, this was a problem for them that they solved. I can't help thinking we can't get this kind of preventative action on any large scale, we need to have severe issues first and that's not accounting for longer term/cumulative effects.

"Over the past years, the government has implemented various methods to improve the air quality in Northern China. Sandstorms, which were quite common 15 years ago, are now rarely seen in Beijing’s spring thanks to afforestation projects on China’s northern borders. The license-plate lottery system was introduced in Beijing to restrict the growth of private vehicles. Large trucks were not allowed to enter certain areas in Beijing. Above all, the coal consumption in Beijing has been restricted by shutting down industrial sites and improving heating systems. Beijing’s efforts to improve air quality has also been highly praised by the UN as a successful model for other cities. However, there is also criticism pointing out that the improvement of Beijing’s air quality is based on the sacrifice of surrounding provinces (including Hebei), as many factories were moved from Beijing to other regions."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/690823/china-annual-pm25...

CO2 emissions are a different kind of "pollution". They are not visible and diffuse quickly over the whole Earth.

The US had the same issue and fixed it through federal and state environmental regulation. It just happened in the US 100 years before it happened in china Heavy pollution is what lead to the environmental movement that started back in the 60s and that led to the creation of the EPA and whole slate of state and federal regulation that dramatically improved air/water quality in the US. It was a slow process that took a ton of work to build a movement of support, but it can be done.

We can actually address problems when we want to. It's just pretty slow and requires people to actually give a shit and put in the effort to build support.

Mm, there is that.

The unfortunate comparable here is that all the people who care about making sure their AI is safe, regardless of what they mean by that, are beaten to the market by the people who don't.

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