China actually has the lead in a lot of green tech-related sectors. It produces most of the world's solar cells, because cheap coal power for high-temperature polysilicon fabs plus cheap slave labour mean Chinese producers benefit a lot from economies of scale. It's also rapidly gaining an edge in the electric vehicle field: BYD and CATL produce most of the world's EV batteries (including Tesla's entire supply), and domestic auto makers like Wuling are rapidly expanding their share of the global EV market.
On the material side, China holds an effective monopoly on the production of rare-earth elements like cerium and neodymium, which are used in permanent magnets in wind turbines and the likes. CATL and its ilk also own direct shares in the overseas extraction of key resources, like cobalt mines in Congo and nickel mines in Indonesia. China is also one of the four main producers of lithium alongside Australia, Argentina and Chile, though BYD has invested a lot into sodium-ion battery technology as a cheaper future alternative.
China doesn't actually control as much of the global share of these key resources as its production numbers imply; but cheap power, cheap labour, a large logistics infrastructure and a willingness to tolerate environmentally polluting refinement processes all help scale up the Chinese renewables industry in a way that few countries could compete with.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.Oh, absolutely, and I agree it is stupid, but that's how it is now: the US is in a trade war with China, and China is to be kept technologically inferior to the US at all costs, so we get things like the ban on ASML technology exports to China, just because the US says so.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesWe can, it’s just a difficult needle to thread. Even if we say that advanced renewable technology isn’t safe to export to China (which would be when it has uses outside the renewable sector) we can still export or subsidise non-advanced renewable technology. Yes more modern green energy tech is better, but the older stuff still works, it just isn’t as cost effective and will thus need subsidising.
Technology export limiters to China aren’t being done because the USA says so. There’s the issue a lack of PRC respect for international law around intellectual property, the desires of the EU and USA to keep their economies strong, the fact that technology provide to the PRC can move from there to the hands of dangerous international actors like Russia, Iran and North Korea, and the issue of how a technologically leading PRC may decide to act in relation to the human rights and lives of the 25million people in Taiwan.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI think foreign policy is more complicated than that, lol. It's entirely possible to provide money for one purpose, while placing restrictions on them in some other area. Also, there are ways to ensure accountability regarding how it is spent. For example, I imagine that most green aid is actually subsidies for buying the technology from the West. That provides aid to a developing country and protects jobs in the US simultaneously.
At the same time, there are things we can learn from China. For example, they set up a carbon market years ago. Maybe we should join it.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.A study published in Nature yesterday
estimates that 61,000 people died from last summer's heat waves in Europe, with the highest excess mortality rates in Spain, Italy and Greece.
Bloomberg: African Nations Take Big Swing to Rule Global Offset Market.
The continent has hosted numerous carbon offset projects, mainly in the form of reforestation and mainly through deals between private developers and local authorities, bypassing the national governments. Now, the governments of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi are expressing plans for a common platform to monetise the resulting carbon credit, turning the carbon offset into hard currency that African nations could use to fund their own development.
Formerly Hail Muffins (He/Him)
In Europe, we are now beginning to name heatwaves: The heatwave in southern Italy currently ongoing is named Cerberus
.
The above scenario will not happen anytime soon — at most it will be a gradual process if nothing about the situation changes, as there are still other insurers who will offer coverage (albeit at higher and higher rates both because your risk of loss is high due to being in a danger zone and because you have fewer players in the market). Florida does not require homeowners to have insurance coverage on their houses, so those that don't have any will just go on existing until the next catastrophe wipes out their home.
Note that flood insurance is a separate thing that most standard private homeowners insurance does not cover in the US — that generally falls under the National Flood Insurance Program run by FEMA, which purchasing can be required as part of mortgage terms set by the lender. The program has been having financial problems of late due to massive losses incurred from Katrina and Sandy, but as it's a federal government program its actions will be more tied to politics than private companies.
The damned queen and the relentless knight.Edited by tclittle on Jul 19th 2023 at 6:55:09 AM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

I'm gonna note that the CCP has already had to deal with some of the really nasty effects of industrialization and they're a lot more willing to directly acknowledge the long-term impacts of climate change than a lot of Western governments are.
CCP control is only threatened by climate change if they refuse to acknowledge it, so they've been putting a lot of work into trying to lessen their environmental impact, the problem is that they've been scaling up everything else too quickly for their green endeavours to catch up.
But the idea that we should prevent China from getting green tech is straight up idiotic. Actually, it's not just dumb, it's actually insane. Because that involves sitting there and going "China is one of the biggest polluters in the world and they have to scale back pollution as much as possible...but we don't like China so we're going to sabotage them and make our collective future significantly worse just to feed into the paranoia of people who would rather destroy their children and grandchildren's lives rather than let China fix anything."
This is one of the paradoxes of an authoritarian government. If it's gonna be the same people in charge for decades, and you convince them of a huge looming problem, they're fully incentivized to deal with it a lot more than, say, American politicians are, because the American politicians assume they'll be out of office by the time the bill comes due. The CCP is pretty bad news, yeah, but they're also significantly less braindead about big scale infrastructure than the modern US is.
Here's the ultimate dilemma for the CCP concerning climate change: "If we go through with making everything green and climate change turns out to not be a big deal...we will have successfully cleaned up the air around our biggest cities, created a world class public transport infrastructure system spanning the whole country, made strong inroads with all the countries that produce the raw materials needed for green tech and we will have solidified our control over the country even more." The best thing for the CCP is to do the best thing for the global environment from basically any angle you can look at, especially if the CCP gets their act together faster than the US does, which is pretty much guaranteed because China isn't being dominated by a borderline suicide cult.
Edited by Zendervai on Jul 7th 2023 at 5:16:55 AM