Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time (www.carbonbrief.org)
from [email protected] to [email protected] on 16 May 2025 12:38
https://lemmy.world/post/29750111

Wikipedia about the site (seems credible)

The analysis was produced by a Finnish think tank.

#world

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[email protected] on 16 May 2025 12:58 next collapse

[X] Doubt

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 13:08 next collapse

Headline could be misleading, but it basically means that (according to one independent analysis) China’s emissions have just stopped growing this year. They are still the world’s largest contributor by far. This hilariously optimistic chart from the same site shows them relative to the US and almost all of Europe: <img alt="" src="https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/e3ac8aa0-b9f4-4c1c-a8aa-82f01049e0d0.webp">

Still, not gonna knock what is good news, or at least “better than the alternative” news

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 13:15 next collapse

They (IIRC) intentionally increased coal energy production because it’s cheap and easy to spin up.

But at the same time they’re using that power as a stopgap for renewables.

Kinda what Germany is trying to do

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:48 collapse

They keep building coal power plants because the total need of electricity in China is rapidly increasing, but they are also building everything else at an even higher rate so less of the total is actually generated by coal. Also many of them are replacing old obsolete plants with cleaner more efficient ones.

Many of them are also being built specifically because of the increase of renewable sources, to stabilize dips and provide reliability, so the overall usage of those plants has decreased.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:56 collapse

And due to their economic system, they don’t have to profit maximize those coal plants or even use them until the end of their lifespan. They’re free to decrease their utilization or even shut them down as the the need decreases.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:13 next collapse

Yeah this headline is extremely misleading.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:25 next collapse

Given that the EU has 3x smaller population than China and the US 4x, the emission numbers aren’t out of proportion. Add to that the fact that both the EU and US have outsourced large parts of their manufacturing industry to China and the picture changes dramatically. If China can manufacture, mine and process what they do, with its current population, and if emissions have peaked, that would be remarkably positive. Given their massive investment in wind, solar, nuclear and EVs, it might just actually be the case.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:43 next collapse

They are still the world's largest contributor by far.

I mean yeah because they're doing all the manufacturing the West offloaded on them. When you read about emissions in America or Europe going down remember that a big part of that is simply them shuttering heavy industry.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 18:25 next collapse

It’s not like someone is forcing them to manufacture it all

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 20:07 collapse

Yes, but the point is that someone is going to make that stuff so taking your emissions and putting them in someone else's backyard isn't exactly something to brag about.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 20:56 collapse

Tbf China wants to be the one to pump that garbage out since it helps the line go up.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 18:33 collapse

Thank you, came here to say this.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 17:43 collapse

Fuck that graph! Make it per capita, why compare 300 million Americans directly to 1.3 BILLION Chinese?
Same with EU, EU is also way more people than USA, yet we pollute less.
We need CO2 Tariffs on USA NOW!!!

Americans claiming it doesn’t help for them to reduce CO2 because of China are disgusting!
USA abandoning the Paris agreement is disgusting!
The richest country in the world refusing to do their part is disgusting!

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 17:48 collapse

Make it per capita, why compare 300 million Americans directly to 1.3 BILLION Chinese.

Probably because total amount of CO2 is what matters to avoiding ecological doom. Further, economies and CO2 regulations are largely segmented between US, EU, and China.

We need CO2 Tariffs on USA NOW!!!

Yea tbh. I’m in agreement as someone from the US. Anything that potentially reduces CO2 is a good thing.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 17:53 next collapse

This doesn’t make sense when it’s Americans using China’s pollution to justify not scaling back our pollution.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 17:58 collapse

Probably because total amount of CO2 is what matters

Although that’s true it’s still a BULLSHIT argument.
The a target is better measured as a global average per capita, and then the countries can be compared on how close they are to that average.
That would CLEARLY show that Americans are behaving like pigs regarding CO". While both EU and China are way ahead of USA.
The above graph is worthless and a very misleading representation of reality.

Yea tbh. I’m in agreement as someone from the US.

I’ve been arguing this point for more than 20 years now, but the world is apparently still not serious enough to draw the necessary consequences.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 18:10 collapse

To top it off, if the US was pressured to reduce its CO2 as harshly as possible, you’d probably force the US to improve its walking and bicycle infrastructure in cities and add additional pressure to incentivize people to move closer to work, likely drastically improving the average American’s quality of life through shorter commutes, less dangerous driving related deaths, less pollution, and less social atomization.

The only people external pressure to reduce CO2 would really hurt are like the richest 10-5% of people here anyway. So I’m all for it even beyond the environmental benefits.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 18:30 collapse

You are absolutely right, there is so much USA could do to improve society.
But the only thing that really counts for half the population, is to ease taxes on the 1%.
IDK why, but that’s apparently a very popular thing for both average and poor people in USA?

I used to have hope for USA, thinking they always turn in the right direction eventually, but since George W Bush was elected for a 2nd term, that hope has been chipped away. Obama did provide a glimmer of hope, but followed by horrible to mediocre to horrible again, so shortly after Bush. That’s a very bad average, and the tendency has been tracking towards worse for a long time now. Hopefully USA is at the bottom right now, but my hopes for that are near zero.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 13:14 next collapse

I always find it amusing that we, in the west, have sent our mining, recycling and manufacturing to China and then clutch our pearls to gasp at how huge China’s CO2 output is.

The problem isn’t only China, the problem is us all.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:17 next collapse

Not only that, another big hypocritical thing is demanding growing countries that they need to slow down “for the environment”. I mean, ok, global warming is everyone’s problem, but the hypocrisy there is unmeasurable.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:33 collapse

Not really. Eternal growth is a dumb idea until and unless we can go interplanetary.

Need to find a stable equilibrium for the long haul.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:46 next collapse

The impossibility of eternal growth doesn’t deny the hypocrisy parent highlights. The CO2 budget we’ve eaten for our development has eaten (and still disproportionately does) the global budget that belongs to all people. We’ve consumed way more of a practically nonrenewable resource than the rest of the world, we continue to disproportionately consume more of it, and then we (some of us) go to the rest of the world and say, sir no sir there’s not enough resource left, you’ll have to do with a lot less, and you’ll have to do it on your own! There’s deep hypocrisy in that, regardless of the state of the resource.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:59 collapse

I don’t disagree with that.

My opinion is that the top consumers need to cut down and likely more importantly this insane push for “the economy” to be wasting resources churning away and accomplishing nothing of substance. That’s the part that needs to end.

Along with the obsession with having more and more and more babies which will grow to consume even more resources.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 15:11 collapse

💯

Some European countries aren’t doing badly in that regard but it’s a drop in a bucket compared to us in NA as well as the top 1% around the globe.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 15:47 collapse

Yep. Or maybe closer to the top 10-25% based on this articles like this:

www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02325-x

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:50 collapse

And there is the hypocrisy I was talking about. Go tell that to someone from third world countries and let me know how loud they’ll tell you to fuck off.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:56 collapse

Guess we all die then. :shrug:

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 15:00 collapse

That’s the inevitable end anyway, since even first world countries aren’t doing much about it, propaganda apart.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 15:03 collapse

Go go gadget defeatism.

We should do nothing because we’re doomed. Better waste everything we can to accelerate it!

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 15:12 collapse

What you are saying doesn’t even make sense. Read again, slowly, what I wrote.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 14:35 next collapse

Yup. There’s probably an analysis somewhere about how much of China’s emissions are ours. I bet it’s a large fraction.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 16:11 collapse

It’s not that much:

According to ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 it’s less than 10% of China’s total emissions, meaning 90% of their emission comes from internal consumption. This is pretty bad considering China’s emissions per capita are worse than the UK adjusted for imports and exports.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 15:06 next collapse

Or that we keep concentrating only on the total output. China has 4.2 times as many people as the US, yet their total Co2 emissions are only 2.4 times higher.

It’s like complaining that a family of four is eating too much food from the buffet when you have over half of their total amount on your own plate.

[email protected] on 16 May 2025 15:39 collapse

Yeah, China, USA, Russia, India, and the EU top countries have made a global problem for all of us.

[email protected] on 17 May 2025 10:34 collapse
  1. It’s 20% higher than it was 8 years.
  2. It’s China. When I worked in the air quality monitoring industry, we had to develop mechanisms to detect when someone had stuffed a rag in front of the air sensor… because of events that only occurred in China.