All joking aside there's so much the US claims to want to do that would be easy to accomplish with some government investment. No EV adoption? Build a charging network. No offshore wind? Build offshore transmission hubs. No domestic solar industry? Build panel manufacturing capacity.

Of course it isn't viable under our version of capitalism unless there's a mechanism for some rich shitheads to engage in exploitation from day 1.

What's funny is they could easily sell these things off to private investors if they felt like it, like this isn't even incompatible with capitalism. It's just keynesianism.

Like their darling MIC got their start this way. State investment solves the chicken and egg problem. But of course that would require a modicum of planning, continuity in government, and God forbid waiting five years before getting a return on investment. Or just being willing to accept a 0% ROI with the payoff being social good.

China stays winning

[–] FloridaBoi@hexbear.net 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The rival bourgeois factions don’t align on this type of investment and prefer to subsidize owners directly and indirectly instead of customers and consumers. The productive capacity took monumental efforts by China to the point where they are almost fully self-sufficient in their supply chains. The US and Europe having offshored their supply chains can’t just make a new chip or battery factory because they still have to get components and raw materials from other countries. I think it’s so bad that even the MIC would be nonproductive if Russia and China completely cutoff exports of advanced materials like semiconductors and titanium

[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sure but I'm sure that any foreign suppliers would be happy to sell raw materials to a US based SEO. China loves to do that type of stuff bc they realize economics is not a competition or a zero sum game, when one place prospers we all prosper

You are totally right of course, like everything else here we are sabotaged by our overlords' greed

Take the transmission hub example, a private investor says why would I spend a billion dollars building a transmission hub for an offshore wind farm that doesn't exist? Meanwhile the wind farm developers say why would we build a wind farm where there's no transmission?

The government could do this no problem, it's not even particularly complicated, just laying undersea cables. But bc we are allergic to public investment we get spiderman pointing at spiderman

[–] FloridaBoi@hexbear.net 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I saw this CNBC video on the Chinese EV industry and it showed how BYD has a fully vertically integrated production model and that’s how it can undercut the competition on price and quality. The report also said that BYD got $3.7b in subsidies between 2018-2022 almost as if US automakers including Tesla don’t get any subsidies.

[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 11 points 11 months ago

US automakers get a ton of subsidies, they just do shit like raising dividends, or in the case of Musk 56 billion dollar pay packages

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 38 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I love to see it. I wonder who the US will what about next after China gets their pollution under control. I've looked it up and almost everywhere I've looked has been adding more renewable capacity more aggressively than the US. That includes Honduras, who we tried to destabilize not all that long ago. This place is embarrassing.

[–] vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

"China is building unused ~~cities~~ electric chargers for which there aren't enough ~~residents~~ electric cars. Here's how that means they're totally an inefficient dictatorship on the verge of crumbling for the past 20 years."

[–] miz@hexbear.net 37 points 11 months ago

China added more solar panels in 2023 than US did in its entire history

https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/china-added-more-solar-panels-in-2023-than-us-did-in-its-entire-history/

[–] Black_Mald_Futures@hexbear.net 35 points 11 months ago

some-controversy

[–] WhatDoYouMeanPodcast@hexbear.net 33 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely beautiful execution of the "just doing things" model of not being evil. With the knowledge that this is the only place on the Internet where I could imagine asking this question:

Where does China get the cobalt needed for EVs? Are they exploiting the fuck out of South America and doing overseas cringe?

[+] CarbonScored@hexbear.net 29 points 11 months ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] CascadeOfLight@hexbear.net 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm afraid I don't have links, but I remember reading that since China started making moves on cobalt, the rate of 'artisanal' cobalt mining (people with no protective gear scraping cobalt ore out with more or less their bare hands, not for an hourly wage but to 'sell' the ore back to the mine owners) has plummeted and been replaced by normal mechanized professional mining operations.

Because, while the former is superior if you're running the mine to extract the maximum profit by paying low wages and selling for a high price, the latter is better if you want to get a very large amount of cobalt very quickly and efficiently so you can build a lot of infrastructure.

[–] Wertheimer@hexbear.net 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Another win for Joe Biden. If he hadn't announced all of those tariffs on China's renewable energy 92 days ago, would China have been able to accomplish this? blob-no-thoughts

[–] UmbraVivi@hexbear.net 30 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Wish I lived in a country capable of thinking ahead further than the next fiscal quarter sadness

[–] BoxedFenders@hexbear.net 27 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Would love to see how Biden would react if a journalist brought this up next time he touts his electrification initiatives as some big climate policy win.

[–] Egon@hexbear.net 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

He would ramble about the Uyghurs and then accidentally drop that the CIA is still funding extremist groups in Xinjiang still or something like that

[–] egg1918@hexbear.net 23 points 11 months ago

But how many renewable energy tax credits did they sell to casinos?

[–] RaisedFistJoker@hexbear.net 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

extremely funny graph

[–] CoolerOpposide@hexbear.net 6 points 11 months ago

Average China vs America graph

[–] gueybana@hexbear.net 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

not a big fan of evs to be honest

[–] grendahlgrendahlgen@hexbear.net 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Would you like to elaborate?

[–] gueybana@hexbear.net 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

I dunno, just think it’s a form of green washing. It’s not like there has been a tremendous shift in how we’re producing electricity, we’re still using coal and fossil fuels.

The only positive is that carbon emmissions from cars are lowered but those are somewhat offset by the increase in electricity production.

Edit: And if the environmental benefits aren’t there, there is zero reason to pick evs over traditional vehicles. Awful to drive, at least in my experience.

[–] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

It’s green washing if it’s touted as the best strategy to combat climate change, which china doesn’t do rhetorically or with policy. China has over a billion people, and while they have advanced greatly with public transportation, people are still gonna keep driving. They can either keep burning gas or switch to EVs while China continues to make progress with other forms of renewable/sustainable energy. Not to mention other developing countries currently drive diesel vehicles which China seeks to replace.

Meanwhile, the US has resisted highly rated Chinese EVs and every form of renewable energy and not interested in public transportation, and instead they give Elon billions of dollars to jack off and make memes. They are not serious in anything except greenwashing.

[–] gueybana@hexbear.net 4 points 11 months ago (6 children)

burning gas or switch to EVs

Youre still burning gas with evs, someway or another

[–] CantaloupeAss@hexbear.net 18 points 11 months ago

This is true today, but EVs can be recharged by solar and wind power just as much as by coal power, no? Doesn't an EV unshackle the concept of a car from the concept of burning fossil fuels, even if they are not practically separated today?

Don't get me wrong, I fucking hate cars. But there's no putting the toothpaste back into the tube, and I don't think we can complain that China is underinvesting in alternate forms of transportation.

Just one cantaloupe's thoughts

[–] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Yes I am aware of how electricity is made

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] Crikeste@lemm.ee 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

No need to be snarky. You read their comment and then replied not addressing any of their points, as if you hadn’t registered them.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Evilphd666@hexbear.net 6 points 11 months ago

As tech improves it will get better. Itxs easier to build small scale individual uses right now. That is helping to develop batteries at scale which will eventually greatly improve efficiency of plants and will eventually have full scale solar arrays smart grids and battery plants. Peaking power and crap-it-all-ist generating on demand for maxinum short term profts is something that needs to change as a mindset.

China is going to do it first. Once they put us to shame because we're 20-50 years behind and then maybe we'll get to what we should have done. But we need to be spanked and humiliated first.

[–] Esoteir@hexbear.net 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

even if the only benefit from EVs is future proofing and transferring carbon debt from the car to the power grid, that's still a huge boon since you can reduce a power grid's CO2 production

the moment cold fusion is solved every single EV becomes near-zero emission, the same cannot be said for carbon emitting cars, and for that reason alone every country with the means to do it should be trying to make sure the future average citizen's cars can run on electricity

[–] DefinitelyNotAPhone@hexbear.net 14 points 11 months ago

Forget fusion, China already has a significant portion of its national electrical grid on solar or nuclear. And while those aren't zero emission energy sources, they're pretty damn close to it.

There are significant forms of pollution and carbon emissions associated with manufacturing EVs, especially their batteries, but between all of this China is both increasing their infrastructure and meaningful tackling emissions all at once.

[–] hexthismess@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Like Ryan said, it is green washing if it's viewed as the end to climate change. The best solution is mass public transit and ending fossil fuel use.

The efficiency of fossil fuel power plant production is greater than the efficiency of a single ICE car, so the overall emissions are lower, but emissions will grow the more people drive.

Now if the power source changes from fossil fuels, then the emissions go down a lot, except for what is needed to exploit resources to make the cars and the power production.

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] dolores_clitoris@hexbear.net 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Which EV(s) have you driven?

[–] gueybana@hexbear.net 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A chevy RUV i think, forget the name. Yeah, before you say, i know chevy sucks lol

[–] porcupine@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 11 months ago

big correct on the last bit

[–] Aquilae@hexbear.net 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

xi-cooking

[–] Beetle_O_Rourke@hexbear.net 6 points 11 months ago

Jiayou!

[–] Thordros@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago

But at what cost?

[–] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 14 points 11 months ago

billionaire-tears xi-gun

[–] Evilphd666@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago

Hey we gave tons of subsidies for EVs but to be pragmatic we left the charging network up to private crap-it-all which did crap.