It is to bad these people do not care how much of a sucky life they are handing their grandchildren. Wait to see what happens when millions of desperate people living south of the 40th parallel start heading north in mass. No wall will stop that.
It's a cryin' shame these people don't care how much of a sucky life they are handing everyone's grandchildren, and not nearly enough people actually cared when we could have still done something about it...
China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that.
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/09/China-Energy-Tr...
(Page 14)
https://www.mining.com/web/chinas-coal-output-hits-record-in...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-top-coal-regi...
That's not really relevant to the topic at hand. No one has said that China is a utopia and paragon of human rights.
With some luck, the net effect will be fewer greenhouse gases than keeping themselves oil-dependent, though that isn't necessarily the, or even a, goal. If it happens, it'll be as a side effect.
The less predictable things become, the faster everyone ramps up potential solutions to bad potential scenarios.
Some are trying to bring that sanity back. Others are trying to increase the chaos as much as they possibly can, and preferably more.
Despite all of that, Electricitymaps predicts that they can generate 48% of their total energy from carbon-free sources at noon-hours.
Now, this is impressive, despite building 50 new coal plants in 2025 alone.
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/france#how-much-of...
China produced 41% of electricity from low-carbon sources last year.
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#how-much-of-...
Interestingly Turkey passed 50% mark apparently. That's also an out of left field revelation for me.
95% and 50% show that France has electric grid with much lower carbon emissions per unit of energy then China.
France build most of its nuclear reactors in 1980s (54 reactors within 15 years), as a reaction to oil schocks in 1970s. This transformation was faster then what is currently in China (again when compared per capita).
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&...
What I'm worried is that people don't understand the energy priorities of China, they are first and foremost: energy independence and cheap plentiful energy. Any decarbonization efforts are pursued only if they are not conflict with the first goal. This is very different from the goals of many European governments of phasing out nuclear energy, fossil energy, even when it causes dependence on energy imports and high energy prices (high when comparing with China, US).
When comparing growth of low-carbon energy in China, France. In 15 years (2010-2015) China's share of energy from low-carbon sources changes from 4% to 12 %. In France (1976 - 1991) from 5% to 38%.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=line&time=...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=line&time=...
The biggest difference between China and France is: China has plentiful coal reserves and mines a lot of coal, France has only small coal reserves and had to import lot of coal.
"Despite its wealth, France has never been self-sufficient in coal, and even at the peak of production in the 1960s, it always imported foreign coal (from Belgium, the UK, Germany, the Soviet Union, Poland, etc.)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_France
I'm perfectly aware that we (we as the whole humanity) are turning our planet to hell with our CO2 emission, but Asian countries is not following the path of European countries of decreasing energy production and Asian countries are building renewables not to replace fossil energy production, but to add to fossil energy production.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Germany/coal_production/
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/France/coal_production/
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/india/coal_production/
China also invested significantly in technology like flue gas desulfurization 10-20 years ago, as well as other approaches which try to mitigate some of the impact of coal burning. So while bringing online coal power plants is obviously and can never be carbon neutral, a more appropriate comparison would be to measure the new plants' additional GHG and SLCP emissions, and compare that to the approach in the US.
If China (and India and …) sees the US and other industrialized doing nothing, why should they do anything?
The most straight-forward way of solving is either through cap-and-trade (like acid rain was dealt with) or 'carbon dividend' (which Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Volker, etc endorsed):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car...
Then you put a 'carbon tariff' on imports for any country that does not have a similar system (e.g., EU's CBAM).
Since they don't seem to consider this as an option, why indeed should China or India do anything?
Half-coal powered electrification is cleaner, greener, cheaper and smarter than sticking to ICE cars and gas heating for homes and industry.
China has gone from 10% of final energy being electricity to 30% this century while US and Europe went from around 20% to just above 20%
My narrative is substantially different because the trend was correct and 1.4 vs 2.0 does not prove a negative.
The massive FUD and misinformation campaigns by industrialist operations, along with opportunist/capitalist denials and misdirection, has successfully confused enough of the US public to withold opinion on the matter. This has allowed politics to treat it as a marginal issue where there are 2 sides, rather than a morally catastrophic eventuality.