People worship China for being "green focused".

The reality is that they don't have a good source of fossil fuels, and energy independence is a core necessity.

The trend is clear that if we keep using fossil up, then soon nobody will have a good source for it. And it’s clear that for geopolitical reasons in addition to environmental reasons, energy independence will be a core necessity everywhere on earth. It’s handy that the sun is sending us enough energy, directly (solar) and indirectly (wind, hydro), that nobody has a good reason not to be “green focused” and phase out fossil fuels for energy. Any country that leads and shows the rest of the world that it can be done deserves applause.

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chaostheory 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Who is going to pay for it? Even when it was cheap, solar uptake was low except in Texas. EV adoption is still poor outside of California. Then there’s the issue of a K Shaped economy. Outside of our bubble in Silicon Valley, a lot of people can barely afford necessities let alone go green.

	▲	dahart an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You might be confusing consumer purchasing choices with the national energy policy and infrastructure we were talking about. Going green personally is only more expensive to consumers in places where our country isn’t building and offering green power by default. EVs are a bit of a different topic. But what difference does it make when fossil fuels run out? Left unchecked, sooner or later market forces will make oil much more expensive as it becomes scarce, and eventually there is no choice. Yes we might be decades or even hundreds of years away from that, but in the big picture that’s not far away, and it doesn’t matter because the eventuality is obvious. Eventually there will be no such thing as non-renewable energy. Might as well start now.
	▲	triceratops 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		China isn't "going green" to go green. They're doing it because it's cheaper. The elites are pinning us to fossil fuels and driving up the cost of necessities.

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dalyons 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And thank god they have this incentive alignment! Chinas greentech buildout and export is the only thing with a chance of getting us out of this climate mess. Imagine how fucked we’d be if they had their own oil.

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ahartmetz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They have a large coal mining industry.

	▲	Workaccount2 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And consume 50% of global coal production. But coal is the worst fossil fuel from a practical stance. It's really only good for energy generation. You can't really power tanks or warships with it.