And even then, China is doing more than the US despite US being the superpower.
China’s $890bn investment in clean-energy sectors is almost as large as total global investments in fossil fuel supply in 2023 – and similar to the GDP of Switzerland or Turkey.
And republican’s are going to let China take the lead of future efficiency through renewable energy all because they want to protect fossil fuel interests.
The one good thing out of this is that at least China seem to be taking it seriously and are looking like they will transition even without the US taking the lead. And if they continue, then at least republicans can’t keep saying “what about China”. They’ve really put themselves into a corner with that rhetoric.
I can see the point though.
The CCP’s philosophy is pretty “So what, we’re winning. Cry about it lol.”
A great example is how we used to do a lot of recycling stateside. They "economy of scale"d it to death and suddenly recycling stateside was no longer worth it and most of it closed up. Now recycled goods aren’t worth much to them either so they’re like “Oh well who cares.” and it never recovered.
So if we compromise first, they’ll likely want to take advantage. If they compromise, they’re probably convinced (perhaps rightly so), that we’ll do some underhanded thing to pull power from them instead.
It’s utterly ridiculous seeing as we share a planet, but, yeah…
Well it’s more of tragedy of the commons situation than a game of chicken.
How many times do you hear someone say “why should we change if CHINA is going to keep on polluting the air?”
I just counter with, “who’s the leaders of the world? Is China the world leader and we can’t doing anything until they do it first?”
And even then, China is doing more than the US despite US being the superpower. China’s $890bn investment in clean-energy sectors is almost as large as total global investments in fossil fuel supply in 2023 – and similar to the GDP of Switzerland or Turkey. And republican’s are going to let China take the lead of future efficiency through renewable energy all because they want to protect fossil fuel interests. The one good thing out of this is that at least China seem to be taking it seriously and are looking like they will transition even without the US taking the lead. And if they continue, then at least republicans can’t keep saying “what about China”. They’ve really put themselves into a corner with that rhetoric.
I can see the point though. The CCP’s philosophy is pretty “So what, we’re winning. Cry about it lol.”
A great example is how we used to do a lot of recycling stateside. They "economy of scale"d it to death and suddenly recycling stateside was no longer worth it and most of it closed up. Now recycled goods aren’t worth much to them either so they’re like “Oh well who cares.” and it never recovered.
So if we compromise first, they’ll likely want to take advantage. If they compromise, they’re probably convinced (perhaps rightly so), that we’ll do some underhanded thing to pull power from them instead.
It’s utterly ridiculous seeing as we share a planet, but, yeah…