this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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The planet's average temperature hit 17.23 degrees Celsius on Thursday, surpassing the 17.18C record set on Tuesday and equalled on Wednesday.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago (6 children)
[–] schroedingershat 70 points 1 year ago (1 children)

...and decreasing the utilisation of their coal fleet to the point where their coal consumption for electricity is flat and set to start decreasing next year.

https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electricity-review-2023/#chapter-6-country-and-region-deep-dives-china

And their renewable energy share is higher than the US (and most of the world) and increasing faster.

Stop whatabouting and fix your own shit.

[–] WoahWoah 2 points 1 year ago

Stop whatabouting and fix your own shit.

Seems hard, no thanks.

[–] CeeBee 46 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

China's also building a lot of nuclear plants and what they claim will be the biggest nuclear plant in the world.

Not that it negates building coal plants, but it's not a simple issue. They're growing faster than the energy industry can keep up with.

And like others have said, the rest of the world is at fault too. Germany shut down all of its nuclear plants, which forced them to go heavy into coal. And not just any coal, but lignite which is considered the dirtiest of all types of coal.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Germany in particular pisses me off so much. No country bought into the fear mongering about nuclear energy after Fukushima as much as Germany did. Shutting down nuclear power plants in the face of climate change is so incredibly irresponsible. For all of their faults, I give a lot of credit to the US and France for not shying away from using nuclear energy.

[–] nitefox 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ugh, I knew a lot of other European countries overreacted to Fukushima, but I hadn't heard much about Italy specifically. Sounds like they didn't have as much nuclear energy to start with (unlike Germany), but they had big plans to increase their usage of nuclear energy to around a quarter of their energy grid until they halted it all in response to Fukushima. The Wikipedia page about it is tragic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

No country bought into the fear mongering about nuclear energy after Fukushima as much as Germany did.

Germany bought the fear mongering BEFORE Chernobyl (which of course accelerated it). Also their "green" party was founded on the goal of getting rid of nuclear in the 90s. Real Engineering on Youtube has a great video on this whole thing

[–] schroedingershat 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And like others have said, the rest of the world is at fault too. Germany shut down all of its nuclear plants, which forced them to go heavy into coal. And not just any coal, but lignite which is considered the dirtiest of all types of coal.

That's a weird way of spelling wind and solar

https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=quarter&year=-1

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looks like coal has increased from 2021 to 2022 as nuclear decreased.

[–] NewNewAccount 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Does Chinese inaction absolve all responsibility of the West?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] NewNewAccount 2 points 1 year ago

Who’s engaging in whataboutism?

[–] Cris_Color 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

...of course it doesn't? Like what kinda point is that?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unless you're Chinese, there's very little you can do to stop that, as opposed to encouraging your country's politicians who have proven commitment to curb climate change.

So "China builds 5 coal plants every day before breakfast" is the whataboutism here.

[–] okamiueru 9 points 1 year ago

China produces a lot of stuff. The whole capitalist consumer drive force is world wide. Not sure what you expect to be able to do though.

[–] reversebananimals -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The point is that this poster is a WuMao and will say anything to try and support the Chinese government. Sad that they have wormed their way in here already.

[–] NewNewAccount 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am not WuMao. I simply don’t appreciate useless finger pointing and implied righteousness to justify doing nothing just because some other country isn’t doing what they can either.

We’re all watching the world burn and this finger pointing is doing little else but assure a very painful future.

[–] Reliant1087 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But this user isn't diverting attention from an American policy or whatever. The original post was on how we have the hottest days so far and they rightly pointed out that a government was building lots of coal plants in that context. Others have chimed in and said that the government also is investigating in renewable, though I question if that makes building coal plants okay.

None of this is whataboutism. No one is above criticism or scrutiny.

[–] NewNewAccount 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What I see is directing attention at China as a polluter and placing effectively sole blame on them.

I feel like my point stands and it’s a perfect example of strongly implied whataboutism.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

What I see is directing attention at China as a polluter and placing effectively sole blame on them.

Sounds like a "you" problem then. No nation should be expanding coal burning.

[–] saltesc 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, Australia is selling them all the coal.

[–] Knoll0114 4 points 1 year ago

National pride ✨

[–] Arbiter 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] NewNewAccount 5 points 1 year ago

Same same same. It’s all their fault for manufacturing all of our shit and still having half of the CO2 emissions per capita compared to the US.

[–] Knoll0114 10 points 1 year ago

We're paying them to produce this pollution.

[–] BallsInTheShredder 2 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

A total of 106 GW of new coal power projects were permitted, the equivalent of two large coal power plants per week .

The size of coal-fired power generating units varies widely; the actual number of permitted units was 168 at 82 different plant sites.