[xiphias2]

I would strongly support focusing on getting rid of wood / coal burning first instead of going for much more efficient gas.

An import tax on coal burning countries (especially China) would push the incentives in the right direction instead of outsourcing the climate externalities to them.

[reducesuffering]

You're in a thread about climate change. How is burning wood contributing to climate change? It's a renewable energy source on the scale of ~20 years, in contrast to digging up million year old fossil fuels. Many people around the world use local fallen trees on their property as their energy source, rather than decompose into the same carbon cycle. Would you rather them import fossil fuel natural gas right now? Areas have to do controlled burns of wood anyway to manage forest fires. You only want to prevent the cases where masses of forest is razed with no plan to regrow.

I feel like this is a case where urbanites with no idea how rural life works attempt to legislate their naivety onto others for the worse, like the rural firefighter responsibly managing their property and the forests of their state.

[hutzlibu]

"China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. China's renewable energy sector is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China

There are many things you can say about china, but they do take climate change serious (maybe because they have already problems with desertification).

[hcurtiss]

How can you say that when they are simultaneously radically increasing coal power generation, as highlighted in the article? It appears to me they have an "all of the above" strategy driven by their desire for prosperity.

[hutzlibu]

Because their renewable sector is growing faster than everything else? And has 3x the size of the vastly more rich USA?

I did not say they are 100% green. They have real constraints, mainly yes, they need economic growth first - so they also build coal (only some countries do not build coal plants anymore).

[fellin]

The data shows that one sector grows faster than the other. To conclude from this that they care about the climate is wishful thinking.

Also even you yourself claim

> they need economic growth first

Which weakens your point even further.

Moreover your claim of

> only some countries do not build coal plants anymore

is completely unsubstantiated.

[hutzlibu]

"> only some countries do not build coal plants anymore

is completely unsubstantiated. "

Germany opened its last new coal plant 3 years ago. In theory the last one, but soon the government will change and this likeley as well. And our eastern neighbors poland and co. certainly won't give up on coal anytime soon. So much for rich countries.

And china which is on average still poor, indeed invested more in coal than I was aware. But a coal tax specially for china seems rather geopolitical motivated to me.

[fellin]

You claimed "only some countries" which seems to claim that most of the 200-something countries in the world are building coal plants.

Now you say that you only think of Germany, Poland and China.

[jahnu]

Indeed!

“ The International Energy Agency estimates that China more than doubled its solar generation capacity and added two-thirds to its wind generation capacity in 2023.”

https://archive.is/b0qif

[burkaman]

The tax you're describing sounds like it would be illegal under international law and tied up in courts for years if not decades. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea in principle, but I don't understand why you would have to do that first before taking much more achievable action. There are a lot of people working on this problem, we can focus on quite a bit at the same time.

[iknowstuff]

Norway has the most heat pumps per capita and coal is 3% of their energy supply, so what prompted this comment?

[ImJamal]

What does that have to do with outsourcing to China and others?

[bllguo]

there are millions and millions of people still living in rural villages. how dare they want electricity? they should be sacrificing their already meager quality of life to fix problems that Westerners are disproportionately responsible for, and subsidize profligate Western consumption.