And to celebrate that fact, Europe is joining the US in imposing massive tariffs on China's electric vehicles and solar cells. Yay.
That’s a good thing imo. We do this so we can build up an industry for these things at home. That’s an important long term goal, too. If the last years have shown us anything it’s that being solely dependent on another state for certain critical stuff is a bad idea. And I’d say this is especially true for China.
Edit: btw German talking here, not American.
Do you want to know how many cars in China are from European car manufacturers?
Rebalancing trade is not some big bogeyman.
I don’t understand what argument you are trying to make. Can you elaborate? You mean we shouldn’t do it because there might be a counterreaction?
One of the main reasons we as a society care about renewables is that we need to reduce CO2 emissions (and I'd like to think we care about others too). This article doesn't mention anything about how much less CO2 is now being released. If we take EPA numbers from 2022, assume that they represent 100% non-renewable energy, take the 25% of those numbers that represent electricity generation and reduce the total.of that proportion we have a reduction of approximately 8% CO2 emissions. Great!
So why do our emissions keep increasing year over year?
A political economic system which requires infinite growth to sustain itself, requires growth in consumption, and production. If emissions go down, some industry will suffer (namely oil and gas), so their products must be used elsewhere. A collapse of the oil and gas industry would be an economic nightmare the way we currently organize our economy.
And that is why we need to move beyond capitalism.
Pretty ironic that it took Putin invading Ukraine to make Europe invest into renewables.
And not to save the planet but to be less dependent on energy from fossil fuels...
