China ostensibly cares, their five year plans drawn up by committees of Engineers (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical) and Scientists are on an arc to minimise reliance on fossil fuels and transition to renewables (wind, solar), and nuclear.
There are strategic reasons for this, of course.
> Isnt China far worse thsn the US?
"It's complicated"
* Historically the US is responsible for a greater mass of the CO2 humans have added to the atmosphere.
* Currently, China is adding more per annum (and India is in the bleeding edge mix also, as is Australia) in absolute terms, but still less(?) in per capita terms (having a much much larger population).
* China is still using coal (although they are on the cusp of peaking their use) - that gets thrown at them a lot, the caveats are
-- China shut down a lot of badly polluting inefficient coal power plants.
-- China opened up a lot of more up to date less polluting but still coal power plants.
-- China is using these to power all manner of stuff including the build out of the largest renewable power components production line in the world.
-- Coal is set to be phased out "soon" (and it seems to be slowly going that way, see peaked comment above).
* A lot of China's CO2 emissions are a direct result of their mineral processing, production, and assembly of the rest of the world's consumption.
( eg: The case can be argued that the fall in US per capita CO2 emissions is a result of US consumption now being met by manufacturing that has moved from the US to China)
There are literal books and stacks of research papers arguing about each point mentioned above - and that's just skimming the surface.
Read your own source, it directly refutes what you are saying:
"In 2025, China's coal-fired power generation dropped by 1.9%, the first decrease since 2015, despite its energy demands has increased by 5% during that same year. According to Wood Mackenzie, the drop was attributed to a rapid increase in new non-fossil generation that has "finally outpaced demand growth", while coal plants had been operating at lower utilisation rates and being used more for grid flexibility and peak demand rather than baseload generation."
The graph you linked to conveniently ends right at peak coal consumption. If you go find the data for the last two years that are missing from that graph, coal consumption has been reduced.
You are all over this thread shitting on China unconditionally. We get it, you don't like China. But when your own sources disprove the point you are trying to make, it might be time to re-evaluate your position and probably the news sources that dictated that position to you. What was correct a decade ago, is very much false today, and the trend line is accelerating away from your feelings.
I’m not shitting on China and that’s a red herring. I’m shitting on people who are praising China for being the #1 emitter who rapidly grew emissions long after the west realized how bad climate change was and was trying to correct them.
China actively built coal and continues to build coal fired generation far beyond the rest of the world.
The fact that the public charts are missing the recent decline is my mistake.
I don’t hate China, I hate people that pretend to care about the environment that glaze China when it’s very clear China optimized for its own citizens in the face of the west trying to grapple with climate change and is only now showing some signs of pivot with solar being cheap enough.
>What was correct a decade ago, is very much false today, and the trend line is accelerating away from your feelings.
I’m the one that gave a trend line. Your response was that it has slightly declined at the very end and the chart isn’t up to date. I don’t think you know what a trend line is.
Put your additional year or two on the end and it will just look like every other slight reprieve. Draw an actual, you know, moving average or anything else that establishes a “trend” and you’ll see China is not reacting to climate change very quickly.
China has a far lower per capita carbon emissions rate than the US. Has a growing share of energy produced by green technology. Is the world leader in manufacturing electric cars and using electric cars. Is the global leader in low cost solar panels and batteries among other green technology. Oh yeah, and a huge portion of their emissions go to making things that Americans consume. On top of all that, they have managed to stop growth in their carbon emissions and are on the cusp of reducing them.
I don’t know how China could possibly be considered worse except that they historically used coal, and are rapidly transitioning away.
When the per capita number applies to a billion people it sure makes a huge difference, or would it not matter to the earth if china doubled their per capita carbon numbers to be more like America? I'm not a climate scientist but I would bet my entire net worth it matters quite a bit if China doubles their carbon output per capita.
I don’t think you understand. It doesn’t matter if there exists a per capita that is higher. What warms the earth is total CO2. US emitting more per capita than China is not an excuse for China to emit more total and it’s definitely not an excuse to catch up on per capita.
The only framework that makes sense in is one that allows global warming as long as we all do it equally.
Right, so if someone was in the US and didn't think they should take action (because of China), then the obvious reply is that they should take action on the basis of being part of US+China, whose population is far greater than either US or China.
Then it doesn't matter if the US reduces emissions or China does. They all count. The US has more money to spend on reducing emissions. Ergo it makes sense for the US to go first.
There is no “go first”. You either care and aggressively cut and pressure the worst emitting countries in whatever way possible or you’re just accepting severe warming with one country taking a penalty.
Considering that it's thanks to China that even a 1% chance of avoiding this remains, I'd say so. Without their enormous investments in solar and batteries, it would be 0% rather than 1%.
China ostensibly cares, their five year plans drawn up by committees of Engineers (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical) and Scientists are on an arc to minimise reliance on fossil fuels and transition to renewables (wind, solar), and nuclear.
There are strategic reasons for this, of course.
> Isnt China far worse thsn the US?
"It's complicated"
* Historically the US is responsible for a greater mass of the CO2 humans have added to the atmosphere.
* Currently, China is adding more per annum (and India is in the bleeding edge mix also, as is Australia) in absolute terms, but still less(?) in per capita terms (having a much much larger population).
* China is still using coal (although they are on the cusp of peaking their use) - that gets thrown at them a lot, the caveats are
-- China shut down a lot of badly polluting inefficient coal power plants.
-- China opened up a lot of more up to date less polluting but still coal power plants.
-- China is using these to power all manner of stuff including the build out of the largest renewable power components production line in the world.
-- Coal is set to be phased out "soon" (and it seems to be slowly going that way, see peaked comment above).
* A lot of China's CO2 emissions are a direct result of their mineral processing, production, and assembly of the rest of the world's consumption.
( eg: The case can be argued that the fall in US per capita CO2 emissions is a result of US consumption now being met by manufacturing that has moved from the US to China)
There are literal books and stacks of research papers arguing about each point mentioned above - and that's just skimming the surface.