Comment by w4lker

I count being incorporated in Delaware as a high baseline level of regulation vs. random Chinese API providers.

The new coal plants are not planned to run a full capacity (or at all) they are meant for backup in case of environmental disaster and geopolitics (war, sanctions, tariffs, etc). So the actual amount of coal being burned is still going down.

Although it is highly suspicious why they are building so much unused capacity, it is as if they expect something to happen soon.

They commissioned 78 GW of new capacity in 2025, but actual coal-fired generation fell slightly (by 90 TWh, ie 10 GW). It might rise again, but it's expected to peak by 2027–28. And of course they added 440 GW of renewable capacity, 64% of global installations.

I certainly agree there's other motives (renewables even net them significant trade, like EVs) but it's not as though 'caring about' climate impacts requires selfless virtue, they stand to lose $trillions/year like everyone else.

From my understanding, yea they still stand up coal fire plants because world demand for Chinese manufacturing and the energy demand it creates exceeds how fast they can build reactors. So they build coal fire with the intention to replace that capacity with renewables later. Been awhile since I looked, but China has like 30-some odd plans for nuclear reactor construction with quiet a few of them having already broken ground, but that was about 5 years ago.

China builds literally everything for all countries, so why wouldn't they bring coal online? Very tiring arguments IMO.

Are you sending them extra money to fund nuclear?

"big number bad" isn't a great way of analysing the data, because China has a massively larger population.

The US emits 49% more CO2 per capita than China. And even with the much larger rate of increase, 0.79% to US' 0.3%, it'll still require 81 years to catch up to the US per capita rate [0].

The US aren't the good guys here, not by any means. Compared to my country, for instance, the US' emissions are 3x per capita that of the UK. If you want to argue that we shouldn't be using per capita (although we absolutely should), then that's 45x the UK's CO2 emissions.

[0] log(13.59/9.13) / log(1.0049) = 81.4 years

USA emits 2165574,97709 times more than Faroe Islands. Sounds like they should be forced to limit that to some reasonable level say 2x of that of Faroe Islands. Don't think it would be too big ask right?

Kind of a meta point but for those who don't know, its fun to track this comment and its responses through time. I want to nominate it for the hall of fame in classic HN post genre. It will be two decades soon!

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=21&prefix=false&q...

One interesting thing would be to see how the numbers change over the years alongside the otherwise identical debates.

They make literally everything, including all the pieces for a renewable / low emission economy.

"Clean coal"

> "Whataboutism" or "whataboutery" (as in, "but what about X?") refers to the propaganda strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of offering an explanation or defense against the original accusation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

This is a counter accusation and not a defense, ergo, whataboutism.

Especially because the original criticism is usually a stand-in for an overarching moral condemnation. "Whataboutism" was a US defense for the fact that it was an apartheid state while criticizing political and financial liberties in the Soviet Union.

It also worked. The shame built up in the US so quickly that laws started being struck from the books. The US entered WWII with a segregated military, and by the time it marched into Korea, it was rapidly desegregating. The Soviet Union had successfully made its case that the US had no moral high ground, although it had not made its case for its specific set of limitations of financial and political liberties.

"Whataboutism" is just ad hominem for dummies. But if the real argument is about who is the better man, or what is the better system, ad hominem isn't a logical fallacy. It's simply a change of subject.

my understanding is that you can speak ill of the government publicly? like they'll nuke your billibilli if you talk shit about xi, but you can complain privately to a friend

not saying i agree with it, i'm saying it isn't as severe as the west makes it out to be

Thank god. I'd been hearing we screwed up catastrophically by electing an admin that took a chainsaw to our foreign aid programs, killing millions in the developing world. Such a relief to learn we were never doing that stuff in the first place.

Hey but it’s wrapped in gold foil, much like its president’s domestic interiors.