What a headline.
China - for the first time - announced an emissions target, and it falls short according to practically all independent experts.
China’s new emissions reduction target, announced at a high-level climate summit at the United Nations in New York, has been judged by experts as “timid” and falling short of the effort needed to meet global climate goals, even though it represents an increase in the country’s climate ambition.
I’m not defending China, but this is all the countries in the world. There is no legal mechanism for everyone to achieve climate targets. Even if Trump never pulled out from Paris Climate deal, the deal itself is nonbinding. Nicaragua was right not to have initially signed it for that every same reason, because the deal will not punish anyone for not meeting climate targets. It is also unfortunate, but not maybe surprising, that the international climate funding became a money laundering, green washing scam because there is no oversight. Like, one construction of a hotel received financing from the fund because it has “green initiative”. The funding became source of vanity projects and corruption.
I fully agree that practically no country is on track, but the title literally says, “China leads nations with climate plans”. This is outright false.
China could lead other countries while their effort being insufissant, no contradiction in the article
Every country could lead … This is also true for China. It could lead, but it doesn’t.
This doesn’t make sense. China’s new climate plans are insufficient as per a wide range of global experts claiming the 10% is by far not enough.
it makes perfect sense. even if china is so far behind where they need to be, they’re still far ahead of where the US is at. the only reason you’re balking at this is your implicit bias that it’s not a western country in the lead.
China is ahead of the US, behind the EU and many other (Western and non-Western) countries (with almost no country or bloc is on track to reach the Paris agreement targets). These are simple facts. As the world’s largest polluter, China should do much more than it does, but it seems there is not even a willingness to do so.
I won’t comment on your accusation of being biased. I am not long here on Lemmy, but the reaction here if and when you criticize China is often weird. It’s certainly not all, but some people appear to be personally insulted if you just say something critical of this regime. That’s often not a sane reaction.
do you have any data newer than 2023? because if you look at the per capita greenhouse gases in 2023, china is only at 32/33 and usa, canada, russia, australia etc. all have much worse pollution,
and i would like to know please, what statistics you are basing it on, that china is behind the eu, because at for me it feels like china is atleast trying to do a lot, while from the eu countries i only ever hear complains about having to do anything for the enviroment, which only gets worse by this right wing people popping up everywhere. i would like it very much to be convinced that the eu countries are actually doing anything.
thank you
So are we not allowed to criticize china for their legitimate failures now? It’s all just because we’re butthurt because the US isn’t doing it? Fuck’s sake.
the whole world is failing, and you’re picking the country in the lead to criticize? is it racism or what?
Criticizing the most prominent country for still utterly failing (and paying little more than lip-service to the problem) has very little to do with their skin being brown, and everything to do with criticism of the leader of the pack indicting the rest of the pack implicitly. But thank you for delegitimizing everything you might say in response by demonstrating beyond any reasonable doubt that you’re arguing in bad faith.
I love when people get called out for being shitty, and the immediate defense is “you’re arguing in bad faith”
this wasn’t an argument. you said something stupid, I called you out for it. instead of criticizing the western world for doing checks notes fucking nothing about climate change, you’re going after the country investing billions into the climate for no other reason than you don’t like the government.
I’d be criticizing western countries if this article had been about the western world - but it’s not, so that’s not really relevant commentary. If I showed up to say something like “why aren’t western countries doing better” it would be a valid point, but would absolutely not address the issue - that china is in no uncertain terms absolutely failing the environment. Trying to deflect that with accusations of racism is… transparent, at very least because you have yet to address the criticism but only the form my argument takes.
Why are you so biased that you can’t even accept criticism of a group you support might be legitimate in an article explicitly about the actions of said group? People from the US do that all the time, what makes China special?
I’d be criticizing western countries if this article had been about the western world
ok, I didn’t even read further than that in your comment because it’s obvious you did not read the article at all. even the headline itself should give you a fucking clue, but the article heavily relies on comparing China to the US. you would have known that if you had bothered to get over your knee-jerk reaction long enough to actually read it.
It is such a shame that 7-10% reduction is leading today. I know better then nothing, but still no where near enough.
I’ve been very critical of - well, not so much China or Chinese people as the current regime, but credit where credit is due - they have made an phenomenal effort on the environmental front, and there’s plenty the rest of us could learn from that.
Truly shameful for the US. Green energy should have been reframed as national defense long ago. Maybe then some of these fucks would get out of the way.
Heh. I’m reminded of the story of what happened when Donald Sadoway was pitching liquid metal batteries to the US Army. He was asked what would happen if a sniper were to put a .50 BMG into one of them. His response? “Well, it’ll leak a little inert non-toxic metal and then self-seal whereupon it’ll just keep working”.
…We still don’t use those for reasons I cannot fathom, despite them being literally cheap as dirt and perfect for grid-level storage.
Every time somebody talk about renewables, some twat also goes “but what about storage?” and has me screaming “WE’VE HAD THE PERFECT SOLUTION SINCE 2009, GOD DAMN IT!”.
Because they are not feasible. I don’t know how many battery stories I have heard over the years and none of them have ever been mass produced. Discovering something in a lab is not the same as mass producing stuff.
Maybe you should look into the operating principles before you declare them ‘infeasible’. They’re a vessel filled with antimony, magnesium and a liquid salt electrolyte that self-separates according to specific gravity. Since both the anode and cathode are made of liquid metal, there’s no structural degradation over time. They can be trivially scaled to just about any size you like and are made exclusively from Earth-abundant cheap elements. Just about the only tricky thing is that the operating temperature of a working cell is 600C, but that’s hardly an issue for a grid-level storage facility.
It is actually even more insane then that. We know how to built electricity grids. The US is a large country, so it is pretty much a given, that it is windy somewhere in the US. Somewhat similar story with solar as well, but of cause nights cause a bit of a problem. The storage needed to run a well connected grid is fairly low. More so the US has a lot of hydro. The water reservoir can be used as a form of power storage, by changing how much water is let out. Obviously there are limits to that, but the potential is massive.
Their emissions per capita are up like 200% in the past couple decades. Meanwhile the UK and most of Scandinavia (not Norway) have cut it in half.
I’m not sure who downvoted you, but China’s carbon emissions p/c have more than tripled this century, and for only two years (up to 2022) in that period have they been less than the year prior, and even then, by tiny amounts.
Plenty of countries have worse figures (including the US, Canada, and Australia), but unless the trajectory has changed notably since 2022, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. The US has dropped by a third in the same period, though it’s much too high.
Good for China. I hope the progress is measurable at the end of the day as we really need to get off the fossil fuels.
ITT: .ml users on their 2nd accounts simping for a fascist dictatorship
Plans…
Their renewable capacity has been exploding so its fairly realistic. The issue is that their total energy consumption is exploding even harder, so the ratio of renewables to fossil isnt improving very much.
