sick of positive sounding headlines about renewable energy that bury the lede that carbon energy isn’t being replaced. It’s all just added capacity. We have to shut down plants.“Look! Market forces are solving the problem for us! The system works!”
Meanwhile those same market forces leading private owners of planet killing factories leaving them on because the money they print still spends.
The article says that renewable capacity in China grew faster than demand though:
In the race to net zero, there is one country with more influence than the rest.
Through the 2000s and 2010s, China’s fossil fuel emissions were rising at a rapid rate, largely due to increasing demand for coal as the country industrialised.
But this trend has been quietly reversing, starting about a decade ago as China invested heavily in renewable energy.
By 2017, solar farms were sprouting up all around the country, but it would only ramp up from there.
That same year, its renewable capacity grew faster than its overall demand for electricity — meaning its fossil fuel usage actually went backwards.
Since then, two major international climate agencies are predicting that global emissions could have reached their peak in 2023 and began declining in 2024.
Okay but using China as an example of good things happening is kinda cheating
In this case though it’s globally relevant because China is actively exporting their solar tech to the rest of the world. All the developing countries will be able to use solar as backbone of their energy grids instead of relying on fossil fuels the way “developed” western countries do.
Chinas over production of panels gives global south access to them cheaply
Cool graph. Thanks China.
China is singlehandedly solving the climate crisis
EDIT: From the article:
According to analysis by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, “the land required for solar panels alone to provide all global energy is … less than the current land footprint of fossil fuel infrastructure”.
I don’t love the effect of solar (panel) farms on local ecology, since they take up so much space. But anything is better than fossil fuels since they give off the gas that kills everything.
photovoltaics are nice but Solar thermal farms and solar updraft towers really tickle my brain.
Every human activity has an impact and solar has got to be among the best things we have in that regard
just replace pasture with solar ez win. far less destructive than cattle
Hell you don’t even have to pick and choose. You can do both in the same stretch of land. Solar is well positioned to make good use of land even before animal agriculture dies off.
I mean one big benefit of solar panels is you can put them on top of existing infrastructure.
That’s what kills me about these huge expanses of surface parking lots in FL. Some much solar potential
Sometimes I feel like solar panels aren’t real. Like you’re telling me that you just hold these up to the sky and then electricity just shows up? And we’re supposed to see this as a serious solution to the energy crisis.
This is why I’ve enjoyed getting into foraging this year. Is it economical? No. But you’re telling me that calories grow on trees, and Native American land management once made food grow literally everywhere? Feels like cheating but it’s actually just interacting with the planet in a less exploitative way
lmao the capitalists dont know this but you can go outside and just grow a plant. it just is free and grows on its own. we can do a revolution with this shit
Death to America, Death to “The West”, fuck this death cult I live in.
This post keeps getting struck by lightning.
