Comment by ralferoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ralferoo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

You seem to think China is the evil polluter here. Just sort by per capita, and you'll see it's not even in the top 10% most polluting per capita.

There are plenty of large (depending on your definition of large) countries above it. Not just US, Australia and Russia that you are excluding for some reason, but also Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Canada all have significantly developed economically important countries. And they all have GDP per capita much greater than China's. What's your rationale for excluding them? There's a whole host of smaller countries with higher GDP per capita than China between those I listed above and China on the CO2 per capita results.

We should agree that ALL countries should be working to reduce CO2 emissions. But it sounds like you have a strong US bias and given Trump not only denies that climate change is even a thing, has withdrawn from international agreements on reducing emissions and even tries to pressure other countries to burn oil instead of investing in windfarms, it seems a bit disingenuous to try to make out that China is the only country that needs to improve. Before commenting on the speck in someone else's eye, first remove the plank from your own, yadda yadda...

> There are plenty of large (depending on your definition of large) countries above it. Not just US, Australia and Russia that you are excluding for some reason, but also Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Canada

None of those countries have more than 50 million people. Most of them have fewer than 10 million. None of them are going to move the needle on climate change.

The US is clearly not a country to emulate when it comes to co2 emissions. I don’t think China is any more “evil” than the US when it comes to climate change.

But their actions are clearly no the actions of a country who “believes in climate change”.

> But their actions are clearly no the actions of a country who “believes in climate change”.

I'd be willing to bet that you've not been to China. Shenzhen is a very green city, I'll go into that later, but also Beijing and Shanghai have historically had serious problems with smog in summer, and this has got significantly better in recent years as local government pushes companies towards renewable energy sources and close down coal power stations.

For example in Shenzhen, all buses and taxis have to be EV, and around 80% of all new privately owned cars are also EVs. That seems like a city that believes in climate change.

You've got vast swathes of desert covered by solar panels providing electricity further east (although sadly, a lot is waste due to transmission inefficiencies). That seems like a country that believes in climate change.

You've got a country that produces 80% of the world's solar panels, and has over 1/3 of the worldwide installation of solar panels. That seems like a country that believes in climate change.

You've got a country with massive windfarms and a net exporter of wind turbines. Combined, over 1/4 of all electricity in China comes from renewables. That seems like a country that believes in climate change.

You've got a country that uses a lot of battery storage to smooth power demand, and exports these units to pretty much everywhere because they're about the best you can get. That seems like a country that believes in climate change.

You've got a country that built the massive three gorges dam project, started in the 1990s and finished nearly a quarter of a century ago. That seems like a country that believes in climate change.

Sure, there's still a long way to go, and due to the massive energy demands, it still has coal power stations providing about half it's electricity generation needs. That needle is shifting over time, but you know what? It's still half coal and yet it still only has 2/3 the emissions per capita compared to the US. But even if it still has a long way to go, its actions clearly ARE the actions of a country that believes in climate change.

I took Mandarin in college. I don’t hate China. I don’t think the US is a good country to emulate with respect to climate change mitigation.

But if you believe climate change is real, and you have authoritarian control over 1/3 of the entire world’s co2 emissions, you wouldn’t be increasing your green house gas emissions, and you wouldn’t have a co2 emission per capita higher than almost all of the developed world.

To be fair, you can replace ""believes in climate change" with "prioritizes energy independence". I would argue the latter is a stronger motivator for China.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com