Vespa wrote:Roy Twing wrote:Roy Twing wrote:Vespa wrote:Roy Twing wrote: Yes, of course, but not exclusively.
I haven't read enough of this thread (nor do I wish to) to know which side of the divide you fall, but I do believe that as long as the human race and associated farmed mammals continues to grow at over 1% each year (80+ million extra CO2 production units), the green crowd are urinating in the wind.
For some odd reason, the green bunch don't seem quite so vociferous about population growth as one would expect.
A lot of it can be offset by shifting the energy base, which China is doing at the moment.
The issue the west exported their carbon problem to the places that produce the stuff they consume. Those countries are shifting their manufacturing and energy base faster than the West now. China has 30% of the World's renewable energy plants, close to 200,000.
The mind boggling thing is we'll probably end up buying renewable technologies form India and China when we could have developed them locally and sold them globally if people hadn't fallen for the 'meh ... what about China'
China is also going to do the same with GMO, something Britain was far and away the global leader on less than 15 years ago.
I don't think we have/had a choice regarding China etc., developing renewables, - our masters have as you say, used China & co as our factory bases, - they were always going to be producing much of the materials required to generate 'green stuff'.
My bottom line on this is very much the 'meh, what about China' - you imply in your opening sentence that it is 'doing something' to reduce emissions, - but all I've really seen are stats which show no meaningful reductions.
I may be wrong, but it looks to my cynical mind that they are saying what the green lot over here want to to hear, but are actually doing very little in fact.
I really do not know conclusively the answer to this, but if global CO2 levels are actually reducing as a result of China & Co's supposed efforts, - I'd fully accept that the protesters have a point.
I guess I'll assume then, that China & all the other nice fossil fuel guzzlers haven't actually reduced anything, - just jam tomorrow.
And those that wish to believe it, will believe it.
Over a third of China's output is renewables, where Europe have transitioned from coal to gas, China is going coal to renewables. Europes goal for renewables is a fifth.
So China's emissions have reduced then?