Comment by nxm
13 hours ago
It's less that but rather the hypocrisy of promoting burdensome regulations and bans implemented in one county (e.g. Germany) which hurts domestic industry and raises costs for its citizens, all while being silent on countries like China and India continuing to massively build more and more coal fired power plants
1. Germany industrialized 100 years before China. It's been burning large quantities of coal for far longer.
2. Germany or at least the EU can and should impose a carbon fee on imports related to a given nations carbon emissions/reductions.
3. Economically transitioning to renewables is better for a nations economy than continuing to burn fossil fuels anyway. Renewables are cheaper.
Pointing to another bad actor as an excuse to continue to be a bad actor we learn is not a moral position somewhere around 5 years old.
I will say on point one, the rate which a country can scale usage throws this off. For example the first 50 years of Germany's usage likely represents far less than a current Chinese year of usage.
We saw this happen with the Montreal Protocol over CFCs/greehouse gases when everyone went mad and banned just about every fluorocarbon known to science.
This was a case of zealotry and overregulation egged on by puritanical ideologs without full consideration of the consequences.
We correctly banned fluorocarbons as refrigerants in systems where they would not be properly recycled, such as domestic refrigerators, air-conditioning systems incuding those in vehicles, and like. This made for good regulation, and it made sense.
The volume of CFCs with other specislist applications was miniscule by comparison, and for most of these recovery, capture and recycle systems along with protocols for use could have been implemented.
Instead, we stupidy put an outright ban on just about every CFC in sight, many of which have no direct equivalents that are anywhere near as effective as CFCs, and many are dangerous and inflammable and form explosive mixtures with air.
Right, in one fell swoop we banned many of the most useful chemicals ever invented. Little wonder these's now a backlash to overregulation. If Montreal were to be repeated today the zealots would have to take more of a backseat.
Unfortunately there is hypocrisy to go around. Here's the argument China and India will use: "coal and fossil fuel always was for all its history and still is the largest portion of Germany's energy mix. It's hardly in a position to ask other countries to stop."
"China and India have the right to industrialize themselves using the same tools Western countries have used. China is leading the world in alternative energy manufacturing making clean energy profitable and India is the 4th largest renewable energy producer."
China's carbon emissions decreased last year. They build more renewables than anyone else.
If India and China build coal plants, it's because they have coal. If they had natural gas, like the US, they'd build natural gas plants.
China is also building more renewables than everyone else combined.
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