Submitted by lughnasadh t3_zp5tn5 in Futurology
Reply to comment by BucksFan654 in The IEA says humanity used the greatest amount of coal in 2022 in all of human history, and that this level of consumption will continue until at least 2025. One-third of all global coal goes to generate electricity in China, and India's coal use is growing at 6% per annum. by lughnasadh
It's not so much that China doesn't care as that China doesn't have a ton of options. They have no real oil or natural gas reserves worth speaking of as far as I know, and while they are investing in renewables at an impressive rate, their population is just so damn big, and rising in power consumption so damn fast, that they need to use whatever power they can find, or they risk rolling blackouts, so they use coal, because it's what they have.
Additionally, while China has excellent locations to build solar and hydro-electric power, those spots are generally in the north and west of the country, while the population that requires most of that power is on the southeastern coast, so transmission poses a major challenge, which they're attempting to solve by more or less just building enormous high-voltage lines all the way across the country, which leads to a lot of power loss on the way and is enormously expensive to do, given just how much China there is to cross.
That said, China isn't purely a victim of circumstance here, the bureaucratic and legal structure of the province-level electrical grids does lead to some wildly inefficient incentives when it comes to buying energy from another province, iirc.
So, yeah, it's not that China just doesn't give a shit about green energy, it's more that they are in the middle of a genuine energy crisis and desperately need fuel to keep the lights on. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of things you can criticize the PRC for, they get up to all kind of deeply nasty shit, but this issue in particular seems like they really are stuck between a rock and a hard place rather than just apathetic.
> which leads to a lot of power loss on the way
HVDC is expensive, but not that lossy. Crossing China the losses are still dominated by the interconnect.
If there wasn't 1 billion people there they wouldn't be burning all that coal. Seems to me they could have done something.
This comment is so out of touch with reality it hurts...
Is there not over 1 billion people in both China and India? If there weren't that any people in those places, would they still need to burn all that coal? Please tell me how any of that isn't realistic?
If you propose depopulation there is a start for that...
If you cannot even be bothered to read up on one child policy and while it failed miserably we are back at insanely stupid comment part.
Where have I made a proposal? I don't recall making any proposals. I don't care how the Chinese and India have gotten to the point they are at with their population but that is a them problem. Why should the world enable them to have way too many people? Is it "insanely stupid" to conclude that 1 billion people are going to consume more coal than 100 million people? I don't think so.
They have too many people? By metric of the amount of whine on Reddit maybe? Or what actual metric you use here, really interested in that.
The world is dying because there are too many people on it. Both China and India have over a billion people. The next most populous nation has 330 million. That is almost 3 times as many people. That is my metric. The world needs less people. Logic says you start with the 2 countries with over a billion people.
Why not start with the country that pollutes the most per capita? Killing an American does far more to "save the planet" than killing an Indian or Chinese person does.
I would invite you to come and try.
Bro you okay? Do you normally take statements of fact as personal threats?
Yeah I'm fine. While you did make a statement of fact you also included a threat of killing Americans. Hope you aren't here in the States. The FBI takes a dim view of foreign people making terrorist threats. I can see you have a problem with the US. Can you tell us where the bad American touched you? Do you need a stuffed animal to hug your pain away?
Imagine implying that Chinese & Indian people should be killed then getting butthurt when someone points out it would be more productive to kill Americans if you wanted to reduce waste. Good thing it's winter, snowflakes like you melt outside in the summer.
Where did I imply about killing anyone? Please show me where I advocated for the death of anyone?
>The world is dying because there are too many people on it. Both China and India have over a billion people. The next most populous nation has 330 million. That is almost 3 times as many people. That is my metric. The world needs less people. Logic says you start with the 2 countries with over a billion people.
You can copy and paste. Good for you. Where in that paragraph did I say anything about killing anyone?
>The world is dying because there are too many people on it. Both China and India have over a billion people. The next most populous nation has 330 million. That is almost 3 times as many people. That is my metric. The world needs less people. Logic says you start with the 2 countries with over a billion people.
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>Where did I imply about killing anyone?
Your attempt at being a Captain Save-a-hoe is commendable but flawed. I never mentioned violence as a solution to our overpopulation problem. Those are your words, not mine. Your whole premise is based off your flawed assumptions and assumptions do not make good debate. Maybe you should have joined the debate team in high school. It would have served you well.
>The world is dying because there are too many people on it. Both China and India have over a billion people. The next most populous nation has 330 million. That is almost 3 times as many people. That is my metric. The world needs less people. Logic says you start with the 2 countries with over a billion people.
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>Where did I imply about killing anyone?
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Hey man, just an outside observer. I think I speak for about 90% of the population when I say this, you made an absolute fool of yourself in these comments and any intelligent person who read this can feel the stupidity oozing out of your comments. You probably know you’re not the smartest guy, but DAMN you really went off.
To be clear, are you proposing the slaughter of millions of civilians? How would you plan on carrying this out?
No. I wouldn't carry any plan like that out.
So you're saying that "we need fewer humans", but apparently China, who put legal limits on the number of children you were able to have, weren't doing enough. Aside from mass murder or sterilization, how could it be possible to produce a world with substantially fewer humans?
They did! China famously had a one child policy to reduce population growth, which led to a demographic crisis
The ideal locations for green energy being “too far away” is a terrible excuse considering places like Quebec get over 90% of their energy needs through renoua les and all the big dams are out in the middle of nowhere in the subarctic. You pay a bunch of guys to build the dam things, route the pylons and cables back to the population centres and build a town there for the workers who do shifts of 2 weeks on - 2 weeks off. If a place with only 8 million people can do it, it should be a piece of cake for China considering they seem to have a enough workers to build entire empty cities and skyscrapers for fun just to tear it down again
I'm not sure you understand the sheer scale of China.
Having more people doesn't mean your energy needs are easier to fulfill, it means you need more energy, and you can't just build more dams, because you're limited by your rivers. Quebec has 8 million people, Guangdong Province has 126 million. The biggest dam in China, The Three Gorges dam, is literally an order of magnitude larger than the largest dam in Quebec, the Daniel-Johnson Dam (at 27.2 million cubic meters to the DJD's 2.2 million). On top of that, the distances they need to build and maintain transmission cables across are more like if you had to use transport that power from Quebec to Vancouver, not from an isolated part of Quebec to the rest of Quebec.
Also, if we're comparing the provinces most reliant on renewables, Tibet derives 97% of its energy from renewables, more than Quebec.
China isn't magic, and it isn't evil for evil's sake, and it isn't deeply mysterious in its motivations, it's a major nation-state pursuing all the things major nation-states do, it's just very very big.
I understand the scale difference, I was being pedantic about the point raised that “while China has excellent locations to build solar and hydro-power, those spots are generally in the north and west” and therefore far from the population centres.
Of course China’s energy needs are massive and it will take time to meet them, but presenting long distance between power sources and population centres as a hurdle is ridiculous considering my example with Quebec (which gets 95% of its energy through hydro alone and the rest through wind). Obviously the real hurdle is the sheer scale of what needs to be built since it will take long no matter how many workers you send to those far flung regions, but if it’s still a viable option.
I also never said anything about China being evil. I complimented their capacity to build things considering they have a knack to build skyscrapers and cities figuratively overnight to the point where their speed outruns demand leading to empty skyscrapers.
If anything, I believe in China’s capabilities to completely switch to green more than you
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