…but still emits more and more greenhouse gas year over year thanks to increased reliance on coal energy.
For being the world’s factory they sure do a great job, plus what this implies is that by 2030 (the previous estimate, now 2025), they could power themselves using green energy. The coal extraction is probably to sell to countries like Germany, who closed nuclear plants and stop buying Russian gas and are now back using coal. Good job, Ewwrope.
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.
