Amazing what you can do when you don’t have elections.

Edit: I’m 100% for renewables. Unfortunately half my country is against them and they won last time.

Climate action and renewables has always been very popular with voters. Since political action has consistently lagged popular support I'd suggest that you'd need to look outside elections to see what is holding the west back on this.

Popular in the abstract, unpopular if you ask how much voters are willing to spend or sacrifice for it.

This is just a talking point put about by climate deniers since dealing with climate change is cheaper than the alternative.

It's no different from Fox News headlines saying Medicare for all would cost X billion and not mentioning that business as usual would cost twice that.

An attempt to turn a popular, cheaper option into a scary bogeyman with selective lies.

Popular but I guess not a top concern with voters for one thing. Also the influence of money on US politics is anti-progress.

if you're going to list the strengths of china, one of the biggest ones is unironically having leadership that doesnt get interrupted in massive ways every 4 years. i'm not going to debate the negative parts of that, clearly it is also problematic, but despite the negative aspects it has factually largely contributed to their strength and prosperity

Solar and Wind are some of the most popular forms of energy generation

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/06/05/americans-vie...

Representative democracy in name only, for it is neither.

the central committee is actually trying to slow it down

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/07/07/china-moves-to-curb-s...

i dont think that the US, without elections, would suddenly go on a renewables building spree.

the same interests that prevent it today would still exist

Amazing what you can do when the ruling class hasn’t spent the last 40 years undermining education and gutting services.

The Chinese coal usage in absolute terms has recently started to decrease due to the massive renewable build out.

In other words: China is building enough renewables to both cover the grid expansion and offset existing coal usage.

> Chinese coal usage in absolute terms has recently started to decrease

That's not what the data I had linked above seems to indicate (2023 to 2024 it went from 5.7 to 5.8 TWh)

And it keeps building coal power plants: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants, though the article is also optimistic that China is at/about to reach peak coal.

And it's also funding coal power plants abroad, thought the scale doesn't seem that big compared to their domestic production: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/China-Con...

The data is comparing 2024 to 2025.

> From December 2024, coal power generation declined for five straight months before ticking up slightly in May and June, mainly to offset weaker hydropower generation due to drought. Coal power generation was flat overall in the second quarter of 2025.

> The chart below shows growth in monthly power generation for coal and gas (grey), solar and wind (dark blue) and other low-carbon power sources (light blue).

> This illustrates how the rise in wind and solar growth is squeezing the residual demand left for coal power, resulting in declining coal-power output during much of 2025 to date.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-china-is-still-bu...

What they are doing is ensuring energy reliability and phasing out old nasty coal plants in favor of modern ones expected to have peaker like capacity factors.

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-new-coal-plants-2027

Well, they are making more stuff

The numbers I've seen aren't currently far worse, with the US producing slightly more CO2 per capita than China. But the trend is there to make it eventually far worse as we maneuver to be bass-ackwards.

I liked this comment looking at CO2/kWh instead of per capita

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44990464