China To Cut Fossil Fuel Use To Below 20% By 2060 186
China is targeting a clean energy goal of reducing fossil fuel use to below 20% by 2060, according to an official plan published by state media. The Guardian reports: The cabinet document, released on Sunday, follows a pledge by President Xi Jinping to wean the world's biggest polluter off coal, with a target of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality 30 years later. But the country has been criticized for pushing ahead with opening dozens of new coal-fired power plants. Authorities have also been wanting to ramp up production, with coal prices surging and supplies running low, both factors behind recent power outages. The guidelines come as countries gear up for a new round of climate talks in Glasgow starting on 31 October, from which Xi will be conspicuously absent. China faces a struggle to wean itself off coal, which fuels nearly 60% of its energy-hungry economy.
But on Sunday guidelines published by China's official Xinhua news agency laid out a host of targets in its path towards carbon neutrality. Among them was the proportion of non-fossil fuel consumption reaching about 25% of total energy use by 2030 -- when the nation targets peak emissions. By then, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP would have dropped by more than 65% from 2005 levels, while the total installed capacity of wind and solar power is targeted to reach more than 1,200 gigawatts, Xinhua said. The guidelines also reiterated an earlier aim for carbon emissions per unit of GDP to fall 18% in 2025, from 2020 standards.
But on Sunday guidelines published by China's official Xinhua news agency laid out a host of targets in its path towards carbon neutrality. Among them was the proportion of non-fossil fuel consumption reaching about 25% of total energy use by 2030 -- when the nation targets peak emissions. By then, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP would have dropped by more than 65% from 2005 levels, while the total installed capacity of wind and solar power is targeted to reach more than 1,200 gigawatts, Xinhua said. The guidelines also reiterated an earlier aim for carbon emissions per unit of GDP to fall 18% in 2025, from 2020 standards.
LOL Ok (Score:2, Insightful)
China says a lot of things. You need help if you believe communists.
Re:LOL Ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least they have a motivation to actually get that done. In a democracy, I can easily promise you something to happen in 10 years because I can be fairly sure it's not gonna be me that has to pull through.
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They have motivation to use their official english propaganda arm to tell far left outlets like The Guardian what they want to advertise to its far left readership in the West.
That's all we can read from this story. Everything else is your imagination.
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One of the games they're playing is the "my system is better than your system" spiel. And they know that an eco friendly industry is the big theme of the day. If they can actually pull that off, it sure will impress a couple of people in the west.
So yes, they do have a motivation to accomplish that and work towards that goal.
The question is rather how far they want to take it. Going down to 50% will probably be easy considering they're now one of the biggest polluters in the world. So claiming a big success
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Your point A: If they can actually pull that off, it sure will impress a couple of people in the west.
Your point B: So yes, they do have a motivation to accomplish that and work towards that goal.
To go from point A to point B requires assumption that "a couple of people in the West" or more accurately the "far left Westerners" that I mention above are naturally curious people who would take time to learn the language and the culture and then check if promises are being delivered on.
When in real world, Weste
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You'll notice that the far anything is devoid of curiosity beyond finding something that reinforces their already established ideas of how the world has to be.
Re:LOL Ok (Score:4, Interesting)
Find me a widely read far right news source that is as popular and as extreme as The Guardian. Criteria would be "comparable readership and public acceptance" and "willingness to run the kind of defense of regimes actively engaged in genocide as The Guardian is".
And that's the problem in the Anglo world today. Far Left extremism is widely accepted. Far Right is an anathema. No one in public sphere will offer you a defense of German rail network efficiency in shipping Jews to Treblinka. But you will have The Guardian run the same story about rail efficiency in China in shipping Uighurs. Even with one of those being so far behind us in history, that there are almost no people left alive who actively participate in the former, while latter is an ongoing process.
And so, I focus my attention on what I see as the relevant and existing problem, not a hypothetical one.
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>"willingness to run the kind of defense of regimes actively engaged in genocide as The Guardian is"
Criteria not met. Try again.
Re: LOL Ok (Score:2)
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As someone from Europe, with quite a few people I know in far left circles who routinely site The Guardian Opinion side of the site as sources for their claims, I would disagree. That said, there will always be those who are too extreme even for the extremists.
Which begs the question of the circles you travel in.
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As someone from Europe, with quite a few people I know in far left circles who routinely site The Guardian Opinion side of the site as sources for their claims, I would disagree.
I am in Europe. A true devotee of the far left would be reading something like Socialist Worker and consider the Guardian to be an organ of the bourgeois, with its concentration on middle-class concerns - a far left hardliner is not going to have much time for reviews of the latest expensive tofu. Its writers espouse a number of views on economic and social issues that would not get much support on the far left. Either I doubt the far left credentials of the people you know who claim to be far left, or they
Re: LOL Ok (Score:3)
The Guardian is far left, emphasis on identity politics. Papers like the Socialist Worker and The Morning Star are for the far left still focussed on class war. Different sects, equally far left.
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"No true scotsman" fallacy engaged in the opener. Why am I not surprised?
That said, if you think that The Guardian is a centrist publication, and you consider yourself a centrist, I suppose that's evidence enough of your political leanings toward far left.
Mysterious Preacher addressed the reasoning below.
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Easy measuring stick to apply: Centre left doesn't run defense for past or ongoing communist genocides. Far left does.
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There is no genocide in Xinjiang. Nothing to see here comrade. This is centrism. ... ok. Right. Good luck with that argument.
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China says a lot of things. You need help if you believe communists.
And capitalists corpocrats are somehow more inherently believable? If you believe anybody uncritically, anybody at all, you are the one who needs help.
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Americans say a lot of things too and we don't deliver as well. It is almost like these different political structures and ideologies don't have any tangible differences. What seems to be more effective is when there is an educated, active, and correctly informed group of people who is able to make sure that the people in power are kept in check.
China is being ruled by one political party, America is ruled by two. That isn't really that different nor does it offer the people any real tangible benefits fo
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China is being ruled by one political party, America is ruled by two. That isn't really that different nor does it offer the people any real tangible benefits for the complex issues that we have today.
Some people see a two party system's inherent obstructionism as a feature. If you don't like the agendas of either side, gridlock becomes preferable.
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> China is being ruled by one political party, America is ruled by two.
When Obama, the Clintons and Bush come out to tell Trump to concede the election...
When Bernie Sanders is the front runner for the Democrats but the DNC choses Hillary anyways...
There is one ruling class in the US and they play both sides like a WWE wrestling match.
When an outsider like Trump gains control, that's when they lose it.
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You need more help if you think Chinese government officials are communists in anything but name. One of the many groups they persecute is...actual communists.
I laughed at the headline because it's a hilariously unambitious goal that does nothing to address global warming. They need to be carbon negative by 2060 like everyone else.
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China says a lot of things. You need help if you believe communists.
Like they signed the Paris Accord, and not only met, but exceeded their targets.
Like for the past 40 years they set their GDP growth targets, and met them every year. MSM kept saying they faked their numbers, now their GDP is so large that it was impossible if they didn't had their reported growth in the past 30 years.
Like 20 years ago they said they were going to build thousands of miles of high speed rails around the country, and have done it.
Like about 15 years ago when they left Europe's Galileo projec
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What exactly did China agree to in the Paris Accords? Do you have a source?
Jane says (Score:2)
Re:LOL Ok (Score:5, Insightful)
China has consistently exceeded its climate goals by quite a margin. It is currently 9 years ahead of where it promised to be.
The only problem with this goal is that we'll all be fucked by 2060. They're going to have to exceed it by a lot more than nine years if they want to have a future.
I will stop using fossil fuels completely by 2060 (Score:3)
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Yep, I'll stop using fuel by 2060, too. Actually, I'll be fuel by then. :)
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The only problem with this goal is that we'll all be fucked by 2060
That's not scientific.
Re:LOL Ok (Score:4, Interesting)
We're very nearly fucked NOW, thanks to climate change denialists preventing action until it was too late. We might still be fucked otherwise, but it wouldn't be nearly as grim. And even then, it would've been nice to be able to say "no, the humans weren't so stupid they just stepped on the gas even when it became obvious they were driving straight towards a cliff."
If you want your blood to boil, just think about this: In 2003, 18 years ago, Bush started a war for oil that ended up flushing two trillion dollars of irreplacable wealth down the drain... and that's just the explicit, direct costs. Forget the millions of lives stolen, broken or crippled. Two trillion dollars.
Just imagine where we'd god damn be today if the government had invested two trillion dollars on renewable R&D in the last twenty years.
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with increasing signs that we are close to tripping multiple critical systems into state changes or catastrophic positive feedback
Which multiple critical systems are you talking about here?
Just imagine where we'd god damn be today if the government had invested two trillion dollars on renewable R&D in the last twenty years.
Better than spending it bombing Iraq, that's for sure.
Re: LOL Ok (Score:2)
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So is it true?
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Is that motivated reasoning?
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What unprecedented weather patterns are you seeing that make you think we'll be fucked by 2060?
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Re: LOL Ok (Score:2)
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China are merely taking their cues from the Australian playbook.
Promise a laughably inadequate target and sing your own praises when you trivially smash it.
Why should China do any heavy lifting when its neighbors won't?
One reason might be energy independence. The CCP leadership got an object lesson in energy dependence when they tried to punish Australia over that laughably inadequate AUKUS by boycotting Australian coal. The CCP leadership had to make a very face loosing about face on that and resume coal imports. Thus, I expect a lot of this is motivated as much by a desire to be energy independent as it is motivated by trying to limit public unrest due to adverse effects of climate change. Another reason could be simply
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the price of sunlight and wind has been rock steady at $0.00 per unit for several billion years now.
And on calm days and every night it is worth every penny.
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At least they are doing something, the US is still subsidising coal, because: .... coal is the future!!!.
China is also still subsidizing coal, under their government-controls-everything system it's not a surprise.
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Coal could absolutely by the future. By some estimates there is enough domestic supply to meet our energy needs for the next eight centuries.
For that to work do we need to put emphasis on doing mining, transporting, burning, and ash disposal more cleanly absolutely yes! The truth is the 'lets ban coal crowd' is the very same as the 'American is a evil and should not be worlds greatest power crowd'
Coal absolutely should have a place in America's energy future. We should also 'follow the science' and admit cl
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The focus should be on adaptation rather than abatement at this point if we are honest with ourselves. Not just human adaptation either, we might need to be literally trucking species from certain biomes to different latitudes.
This presents the two things as a false dichotomy. We have to do both adaption and abatement. This is, in a sense a cost optimisation problem. With no further deliberate investment in abatement then the adaption will just be far too expensive and might not even work, if for example some trigger points like methane release lead to non-linear feedback in bad ways. A relatively small investment in abatement can lead to a much lower cost in adaption so it's really worth doing that. On the other hand, even if w
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... and so the US keeps subsidising coal and supporting it because US politicians prefer prostituting themselves to the fossil fuel industry and pandering to people in dying industries to the simple act of facing reality.
Pretty much. However it's still going away despite the subsidies. Fast enough? Probably not.
I don't see where the US gets off criticising China over their energy policy.
China is still building coal plants. They are talking about getting better while still getting worse.
Re: LOL Ok (Score:2)
https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
Beautiful little play button at the bottom.
PS. You've been called.
Re: LOL Ok (Score:2)
https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
Beautiful little play button at the bottom.
PS. You've been called.
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Coal electricity production in US is at a 42 year low.
China burns about 2.3 tonnes of coal per capita each year to generate electricity while the US is burning about 2.2 tonnes per capita per year. Basically both countries need the electricity and can't do without coal, for the moment at least.
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The issue with any government, is that they are people who are looking to gain power, or keep their power.
This power become a Game, so the idea that if someone abuses their power, or doesn't work in the public best interest is no longer what happens in any sort of system. We have seen that they have gamed the system so much, that people will vote against their own self interest, and also the collective interest because the politicians who are in power or want to be in power have found a way to game the syst
Re:LOL Ok (Score:5, Informative)
> China has consistently exceeded its climate goals by quite a margin
If their goal is to be the primary producer of CO2 then they have crushed it.
China produces 29.12% of the world's CO2 pollution and the next biggest offender is less than half of that.
China is pretty low CO2 per capita (Score:2)
Per Population they are about half the USA and Australia.
Per GDP they are about a quarter.
And they have only been pumping CO2 into the air for a couple of decades. If you take the total amount of CO2 over time per GDP the are very tiny compared to the USA.
I would criticize Xi on many things, but he seems to be doing a reasonable job on CO2. Partly because of the pollution problem they have. And partly because they hate being reliant on Australian coal, which will stop abruptly if they invade Taiwan.
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> One of the advantages of being a dictatorship.
Are there any disadvantages? LOL
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translation.
in mandarin.
40 years means.
go f**k yourself
What China didn't tell us is how they get there... (Score:2, Funny)
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> I'm talking about your next President. Donald Trump.
Let's just skip a step and install him instead of Biden. It's a win-win for everyone.
Lefties will have somewhere to focus their hate and people on the right will have a functioning economy again.
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I don't think Bikini Atoll ever attacked the United States. Does that count?
Or maybe we should count unintentional (fractional) nukings, like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima?
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Yeah, those "unintentional nukings" were really serious. Between them, they killed almost as many people as die in traffic accidents on any given day....
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The Attack of the Bikini Atolls! I'd watch that.
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Yes, the problem with Trump is his sheer unpredictability. And ironically, this is what his fans seem to like most about him. They can't even like his ideals because really no one knows what the hell his ideals are because they change constantly. A lot of ignorance out there - "oh he's very very rich, he says so, therefore he knows how to run a major world economy!" even though he can barely run his own businesses.
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Let me save you some time - nothing. What you said was indefensibly false. And it just so happens that your attempt to defend the indefensible included further falsehood - the US pre-emptively invaded exactly one country, and did so with considerable international support and little if any domestic gain.
If past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, we can then expect
I will also reduce my masturbation 20% (Score:3, Funny)
China takes care of China (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the world be damned. It's one reason China has existed for as long as they have. Their selfishness is brutal, but effective.
If they actually do what they said they'll do, it will be because it is in China's interests to do so, not from some sense of moral responsibility to anyone else.
A nation that doesn't care about the welfare of its own citizens cannot be expected by reasonable people to care about the citizens of other nations.
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How is that different to most other nations? When did the UK or US take care of anyone else?
Re:China takes care of China (Score:4, Informative)
Marshall Plan. English style decolonization and Commonwealth project.
Re: China takes care of China (Score:3)
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This is the far left mind at work. "The good thing that my mortal ideological enemy, the Western Capitalists did was not done for purely altruistic reasons. Therefore, it cannot be used as example of them taking care of other nations".
I mean you're not even aware of the different kinds of colonisation that was in existence, and how things like French and Spanish colonial projects ended at the same time frame for largely same reasons, much less how Chinese colonisation projects are actively ongoing.
Pesky rea
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This is the far left mind at work.
No, it's just history. You don't seem to be able to see anything through a very odd left-right political lens which is not even based in the reality of the breadth of left and right.
You also seem to be suggesting I am 'far left' whereas I am centrist.
I mean you're not even aware of the different kinds of colonisation that was in existence, and how things like French and Spanish colonial projects ended at the same time frame for largely same reasons, much less how Chinese colonisation projects are actively ongoing.
The particular question was, I thought, about UK decolonisation. I am very aware of French and Spanish colonial projects, having read history quite widely. That you think I am not aware is quite odd.
much less how Chinese colonisation projects are actively ongoing.
The original post was about an immediately post-WW2 timeframe
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Considering your definition of centrism aligning perfectly with modern far left in the other part of this thread, your own admission in this post of having a highly selective memory in that you just suddenly forget the thread being about China and far leftist deflection of "but US and UK aren't perfect!" with references to colonialism where supposedly we're not even allowed to note the other forms of colonialism for comparison because... no reason given. And this nonsensical narrative about "far left being
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Considering your definition of centrism aligning perfectly with modern far left
This is all in your own head, like the rest of your post. You are presuming to know me. You are not, and seem to be making up nonsense about my political views which are absurd, and any of my friends would be laughing at your for your idea that I am far left. I'd give it up if I were you, or get some sort of grip on reality if you can.
Re:China takes care of China (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it? Single biggest genocide in history, that makes Hitler and Stalin combined look like amateurs? The only ongoing genocide at this point, which demonstrates that lessons learned from past genocides are the exact opposite from those learned in the West.
Chinese government isn't "simply evil". It's complexly evil, like all Communist governments are. The complexities of evil involved in Communism are about hijacking and perverting all the worst vices of human condition as the foundational justification for its existence, while maximally suppressing the best features of it. The opposite of Capitalist system, which seeks to empower the best and suppress the worst. Which is why the worst excesses of capitalism tend to be expressions of good things about human condition, but taken too far. I.e. pride, "I became the best version of myself, which makes me so good that I can look down on everyone else". As opposed to worst excesses of communism, where any person trying to better themselves is torn down for "capitalist tendencies" (this is the literal criteria in Stalinist doctrine for punishment).
Re:China takes care of China (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is why you are a genuinely rotten person to the very core of your being. You ask for examples, you are given two, and you manage to pervert those examples in your head to the point where "yes, but it doesn't match utopia I can imagine". And based on this sickness in your head, you manage to spin the clearly good examples of human progress into evil. Simply because it's just not good enough for your rich, sick and utterly perverse imagination.
Re:China takes care of China (Score:5, Insightful)
By your standards on the other hand, your beloved China is awful. It's five thousand year history is a history of colonisation, and people that are in the final stages of China style colonization project are on the edge of extinction.
Not complaining that they're not as wealthy as Brits. Not complaining that French have too much economic interests and extractive tendencies to this day. Not complaining that domineering, forcibly centralizing Spanish culture makes it almost impossible to govern by consensus resulting in race riots being the norm.
They are people who are pushed to the fringes of society to die out. Be they Mongols, Tibetans or East Turkestani. Or countless other, mostly forgotten peoples who have been ethnically cleansed to be replaced by Han Chinese. And this isn't an issue they realised and are going to correct. They're actively doubling down on it, on industrial scale.
But that doesn't concern your fundamentally rotten mind. To you, the lack of perfection in comparison to utopia that exists in your head for the Anglo world is damning, while the noble savages of the glorious Han race are obviously not to be held to any comparable standards. That would be racist!
And that is why your kind of fundamentally rotten people keep complaining about racism in everyone else. It's projection of your fundamental lack of understanding of the world, and the only way you can lie to yourself to keep yourself sane in face of this conflict. It's not that you are irredeemably racially supremacist. It's that everyone else is!
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I know China is awful, that's not the point though. There is plenty of awful to go around.
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And this is the last point of escape from reality of your types. "Everyone has some bad in them, therefore we don't need to differentiate about levels of bad".
Which is how your types arrive at the conclusion that modern conservative movements in the West are just awful, or that PRC is actually doing great. And then conclude that PRC is doing way better than Anglo world.
Because when you pointedly refuse to do basic qualitative analysis on comparable things, you can in fact call everyone you don't like in the
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"Your types"... Well it's clear you intend to twist everything I say so I'm out.
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The official name of Lend-Lease was "An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States". It was helpful, but not really selfless.
Re: China takes care of China (Score:2)
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Indeed - and on this point, they're way ahead of "the west".
They've figured out that there's really no choice - we all have to clean up. If they refuse, then eventually we'll all stop doing business with them. However, if they do clean up, they'll have to create thousands of jobs installing clean tech and removing the old dirty stuff, they'll have to develop new technologies and refinements of existing tech too. All of this is entirely saleable to the rest of the world. In 10 years, you'll have Chinese sola
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The entire GDP of UK is simple compounded return of the dividends paid by East India Company. The level of exploitation done to the colonies in the the 19th century is heart breakingly cruel.
If Chinese are shockingly selfish, it is simply them being better students than their British teachers.
Re:China takes care of China (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:China takes care of China (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not making it a goal. They making it a propaganda point. How stupid people have to be to not understand the differences between the two amazes me.
Plausible, yes. Likely? Unsure. (Score:4, Insightful)
China is investing vastly more money into science and engineering R&D than America or Europe. That much we know. Even their fusion research has been verified as streets ahead, although whether they'll succeed is another matter.
So far, so good. That's the attitude you need to take to conquer climate change. And, certainly, they know that they're damaging their workforce excessively, inhibiting productivity and breakthroughs, through pollution. (Hey, I may be ethical, but we need to look at whether the Chinese have a motive. I'd say they do.)
What we don't know is whether the Chinese are spending that time and money on projects that will clean the nation up. All we know is that they could be and that they have an interest in doing so.
It makes more sense, then, to diplomatically encourage things that would foster a greener China than to go hard cynic, and to promote trade with them that would assist in going greener, even if there are tactical disadvantages. The Chinese are many things but stupid isn't one of them and if sounder environmental practices yield more profit and more soft power in the markets, they're going to pay attention.
Every nation on Earth has suspect motives and has a history littered with unnecessary corpses due to stupid international conflicts that were all about internal politics and power-plays. We don't really have the time to psychoanalyze each one into sanity, we have to make do. Particularly with Britain's nationalism and America's theocratic States, along with an R&D budget you can barely make out with a microscope.
I'm going to cut mine 100% by 2060 (Score:3)
It's easy to make such long term promises. I'm promise to cut my personal CO2 emissions 100% by 2060
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Actually it maps out the path there, not just the eventual goal:
My path is much simpler and definite. I expect to be dead by 2060
Lol ok (Score:2)
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Wow. Look how far this crap and vacuous FP Subject propagated. Appears to span 90% of the discussion, judging by the scroll bar.
I made one denier listen! (Score:2)
I made this point seemed strike home.
"The sea level rise etc are insignificant compared to the dangers we are facing. The warming climate, no matter what the cause is, is reducing winter duration, hardness of frost. The weeds, insects etc that get killed by frost every winter are surv
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Much of the world doesn't have, and never has had, a "winter" as you're defining it. (Eg, a season where temperatures are below freezing) They have a rainy season and a dry season. For example, in India the average winter temperatures are 10–15 C (50–59 F).
So the argument that the lack of a frost during winter will increase the likelihood of killer organisms globally destroying food crops seems at best Eurocentric and at worst willfully ignorant. Last time I checked people have successfully grow
30 year increments (Score:2)
China says ... (Score:2)
this is worthless (Score:2)