Comment by tasty_freeze
1 day ago
For years I've been hearing one excuse for the US not doing more about climate change is that China is polluting more and if they aren't doing something about it then why should we?
The argument always seemed disingenuous. For sure, China produces a lot of pollution as they are modernizing, but they are also investing a lot in the direction of sustainability. If we take the balance of (pollution produced - pollution prevented) for the two countries, the day will come, if it isn't now, that the US is on the losing side of that comparison, and I wonder what the new argument will be for the US not doing more.
Pretty sure the US has always been on the losing side of that, when calculated per capita.
China's numbers did rise quickly on that measure and is above the EU now I think but still way below the US.
And if you don't like per capita, then China with 4x as many people is still behind the US when you compare cumulative CO2.
If you ignore the pollution and environmental aspects, the main geopolitical reason is because the Straits of Malacca are very vulnerable in the event of a hot war and the overland pipelines from Russia and the middle east are insufficient to supply China. Getting rid of the oil dependency is the quickest way to autarchy. There are few other resources they can't produce themselves.
Latest excuse: sustainable energy is a scam.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ending...
They say with a straight face as they tout the merits of "Beautiful Clean Coal." This administration man...what's there left to say?
It's easier to understand that excuse when people realize that Americans tend to start with a conclusion then work their way backwards to support it. As in, 'we aren't doing much about climate change so here's why that's okay'.
I am not familiar with Chinese politics or motivation, but I wonder if it's for the same arguments we have in the US, "save the world" vs. "the strong can do whatever they want". I am not sure China does for the sake of sustainability and environment. Yes I know the end result might be the same but are the reasons the same?
I keep hearing this argument (that China does not care about climate change or the environment so it must be doing it for other reasons) but I just don't understand it. Why would you think they don't care about these things?
The Chinese leadership understands several things very clearly:
- The country has experienced multiple catastrophic natural disasters in the past.
- Such disasters often lead to regime change (losing the mandate of heaven via natural disasters leading to social unrest)
- The leadership is comprised of smart people (and a lot of engineers) and they don't play dumb political games like denying the reality of climate change.
- Climate change will bring far worse problems in future, which threatens the country's economic growth and therefore their hold on power.
So they have massive incentive to care about the reality of climate change and do everything they can to mitigate it and protect their environment.
That's speculation, and probably good speculation.
On the concrete side we do know that they also care deeply about local pollution. They made massive efforts to clean the air for the Beijing Olympics, amongst other many other moves to reduce local air pollution.
2 replies →
I don't understand why you think I am making this argument you're referring to, when I SPECIFICALLY said "I don't understand the Chinese motivation" AND I presented the US side, which I am familiar with.
My whole post was an ask for more information on the Chinese side (each of my 3 phrases were asking this!), which you have provided thank you very much, but I could do without the "you're dumb" when I ask a question.
Maybe China wants to "save the world", in at least as much as they literally run into problems with smog and pollution locally and would like to reduce that pollution for practical reasons, as well as some prestige, especially now that the US is having a hissy fit on the global stage.
But none of that matters, China would pursue massive solar power infrastructure regardless, because they want energy independence. Stupid amounts of solar power means they will no longer be importing lots of oil and fuel, and that means they would be less vulnerable to the US blockading them in some sort of conflict, which is one of their primary geopolitical concerns.
They would do this even if solar power was dramatically less effective or was significantly more expensive, because solar power is the first kind of power generation that it is economical to way overbuild, and have serious redundancy and surplus and excess, because there's no consumables that scale your running costs like if you tried to build massive amounts of coal power plants.
China would like to have that kind of scale for power because they can use it to subsidize things like datacenters running less efficient Chinese made computer components. The fact that power doesn't have to run a profit in China helps this.
The US should be taking fucking notes, about how nationalized infrastructure can be a force multiplier economically, and how infrastructure that doesn't have to be profitable can be even more powerful.
Slaving ourselves to the enrichment of well connected capital owners is harming our country, and preventing a literal energy revolution. We have the option to, for the first time in human history, actually have energy resources that are too cheap to meter.
China also invests in solar/alternative energy because they still import a lot of coal from many other countries (some of which are aligned with the US) and that is something that could be leveraged in case of conflict.
Therefore reaching self sufficiency in terms of power generation will make this threat less relevant and an enemy will no be able to use it to make them back off.