Terrible framing of global warming, for which victory or defeat is a matter for humanity. Needing your home country to dominate clean energy is not helpful. It is also economically destructive in the case of solar, as 90% of a solar development project costs is other components than solar modules. US policies, whether democrat or republican, will always favour oil dominance, as oil is key to war, and having something to fight over.
China is winning the energy race. Its solar silicon industry annual capacity is 5x the energy of global oil reserves. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/renewables/solar-powers-giants-are-providing-more-energy-than-big-oil/articleshow/110988156.cms?from=mdr
Complaints about China solving humanity’s sustainable energy needs with abundance, by claiming to want to add to global capacity with poorly competing home alternatives is necessarily dishonest protection of home oil dominance, and prioritizing destroying humanity for its oil profit maximization, rather than human sustainability.
The EU is implementing a system known as a carbon border adjustment mechanism, which would tax imported raw materials made through dirty processes — and supporters of the concept hope Trump might pursue a similar approach.
A carbon tax, applied to consumption origin in international trade, is indeed the only worthwhile policy. This can only help China, as anyone, including China, wanting to avoid taxes at home or on exports should install Chinese solar and other clean energy. Much of China’s polysilicon processing is already 100% solar self powered.
If you look at their greenhouse emissions, they’re still increasing. Interesting definition of progress.
There is still the probability that China’s CO2 emissions peaked in 2023. Final tally will come this year. And certainty that they will be even lower in 2025.
I very much agree, we should be treating the climate crisis as a threat to us all collectively, and not turn it into a pissing contest. If there’s an issue that all of humanity should come together to work on, it’s this one.
but if you look at the graphs, you’ll see we make more money in the short term doing this way
The US thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax. The US was never going to win this.
It’s not a good idea to play this as a zero sum game and harm other countries’ climate efforts. At least they are slowly moving towards the paying side iirc from COP29 results
