[rapsey]

Everything is made out of or requires fossil fuels. From concrete, your clothes, to your food. Phasing out fossil fuels is complete insanity.

edit: I cant reply so I will edit.

The policies are clearly insanity because EU industrial self immolation does nothing for the rest of the world. Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment? They sure as hell do not. Most of them throw their trash directly into the ocean. All we do in europe is self harm while the broad problem goes entirely unsolved. How the hell are you going to develop and sell new technology, while destroying our economies at the same time. Complete pipe dream insanity.

[saubeidl]

> Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment?

That's precisely what the border carbon tax is about. They have to now, or their products will be noncompetitive in the worlds largest market.

[PurpleRamen]

> Everything is made out of or requires fossil fuels. From concrete, your clothes, to your food. Phasing out fossil fuels is complete insanity.

That's not true, but ok...

> Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment?

Actually, they do. China is the biggest spender on investing in renewable energy-sources and moving away from fossil fuels. Africa and South America are continents, not Countries. And not sure why India or Indonesia are related here?

Other than that, I'm not sure if you are a troll, victim of poor sources or paid actor, but your quality of data really sucks.

[rapsey]

Because the source of plastics in the ocean is traced back to those places. What exactly am I wrong on? China is mostly powered by coal and they are still building new coal plants.

[PurpleRamen]

> Because the source of plastics in the ocean is traced back to those places.

That's actually a bit disputed. But ok, it wasn't just really obvious from your writing what you meant here.

> China is mostly powered by coal and they are still building new coal plants.

Yes, and no. China is moving away from coal, they reduced their share by 20% in the last decades. It's now around 57% of their total usage. The number of new coal plants is also a bit disputed. First, they modernize many coal plants by building new, more efficient ones, and shutting down the old plants. Second, they are building many backup-plants, which are not really used outside of emergencies, which does happen from time to time it seems. And third, they are master of overplanning. Around 80% of their planned coal-plants were actually cancelled in the last years before the building started for real. This seems related to how their local and federal levels are handling budgets.

The only real problem is that their absolute coal consumption is still growing, because their consumption as a whole is growing. But long-term, there is likely a point where it's reaching its peak, and start shrinking. And speculation is here, that we are talking about ~10 years, not 50. So at that point, China, which is already producing for the whole world, will have acquired another good selling point which European countries have to beat.

[triceratops]

> The only real problem is that their absolute coal consumption is still growing

As of last year I don't even think this is true. Do you have sources?

[PurpleRamen]

No, my source only included data until 2024; the recent numbers weren't added yet. Good to hear they reached a first bump.

[triceratops]

What does plastic pollution have to do with carbon emissions?

China's coal usage is dropping every year. They build new coal plants to replace older ones, or leave them idle. Almost 90% of their new energy comes from solar power.

Please stop spreading fossil fuel industry lies here.

[direwolf20]

What do plastics in the ocean have to do with fossil fuels?

[disgruntledphd2]

Insanity or opportunity? Like, the climate is already messed up, if we want to maintain our species standard of living then we need to move towards a society that emits much much less carbon.

If we don't then we'll either go extinct or regress to a level where we use less. Sure, it's gonna really really suck for the next while but there isn't really any other options.

As a benefit, if we do this then we can sell the technology to the rest of the world.

[direwolf20]

Why doesn't this same argument apply to slave labor?