(Bloomberg) -- China is on track to almost double its wind and solar capacity by 2025 and blow past the country’s clean power target five years early, according to Global Energy Monitor.Most Read from BloombergSwitzerland Blocks Sale of Leopard 1 Tanks Bound for UkrainePutin Claims He’s Back in Control. Russia’s Elite Isn’t SureQatar Group Now Confident of Winning Manchester United RaceRolex and Patek Prices Fall as Subdial Index Nears Two-Year LowSweden Police Give Permit to Koran Burning Near
China made a smart decision decades ago to massively ramp up investment in technologies related to sustainable energy. For example they are now by far the largest producer of refined rare earth metals and other green minerals. That decision today seems prescient.
The problem is that their environmental record is spotty at best. The metals they produce are extracted and processed as cheaply as possible, mainly to undercut competition. There is a considerable negative environmental impact to doing so with which they will one day have to reckon.
China has just now started to step away from being an underdeveloped nation, and most of the Co2 emissions under their name are outsourced manufacturing from first world countries. China having been a colonised and oppressed nation, you can’t expect them to advance economically without them either having to pollute, or with the nations that first achieved “first world” status contributing economically to help in a green transition. This is something that’s always being talked about in diplomatic spheres, the need of certain Western countries to contribute to the imperialised ones in order to be able to transition in a better way. The issue is that these countries are not interested in doing so, and still behave like in colonial times. In this way, it’s hard to expect another outcome and it changes the focus from the real guilty here.