Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

mjfi4cp2 t1_j6t9w4z wrote

Are you referring to the manufacturing of hardware like solar panels and wind turbines?

3

pdonchev t1_j6tcuov wrote

Not only. "Transitioning" countries in Europe don't have sufficient sources of electrical energy in the winter (also in summer, but winter is the bulk of the deficit) and happily import cheap dirty energy from other countries, while bragging about being a clean economy. And then you have the biggest bulshit of the 21th century so far, the gas-backed solar and wind. Where the gas sometimes is the bigger source. And then you have the wind turbines that not only have embedded a lot of dirty (and cheap) energy, but when installed they would not recuperate even this energy during their operating lifetime, but the economies work because you sell the smaller quantity of clean energy at a much bigger price.

To measure impact on the earth, the emissions for all exports should be subtracted from a country's pollution footprint, and added, together with the transportation emissions, to the footprint of the importing country. Then the charade will be clear - for now powerful (rich) governments mostly externalize emissions (in the process increasing them), while their countries continue to be the largest emitters by a large margin.

−6