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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • I come to these discussions in good faith, because I want to believe that some people are not here to spew propaganda and maybe are just bad with statistics.. But somehow it always ends with "America bad" (which I don't necessarily dispute, but I think is just lazy).

    Lets break some things down:

    • I think that per person data is important, otherwise it's just obfuscation.
    • These forest growth numbers are great, but they don't tell the whole picture that even with this rate of growth, China will still have less forest than the US in 30 years time.
    • 'Nuclear plants most in production' don't mean much as it can take forever to finish and even then China will have less than France or US.
    • 'Most high speed railroad' it's impressive, but isn't it wasteful to build something just for boasting? The railway is highly underutilised - only 60% use (and that's with the big skew for the major urban centres, some lines barely meet 10%).
    • To build the three gorges dam 1.3 million people were displaced, and between 70k to 230k died. China has one of the worst health and safety standards in the world. The death toll in manufacturing and construction is FOUR times higher than the global average.

    What is an acceptable death toll for you? Because China seems to have a very high tolerance. Does the end goal justify the means? You can't get away with this high percentage of death in democratic countries from your examples, where the electorate has more power to say "no thanks".

    Anyways, I think China is doing a lot of good steps for the environment, and it pushes other countries to compete. But saying that China is the only one that can save us, while burning 53% of the world's coal is ridiculous.