...and decreasing the utilisation of their coal fleet to the point where their coal consumption for electricity is flat and set to start decreasing next year.
China's also building a lot of nuclear plants and what they claim will be the biggest nuclear plant in the world.
Not that it negates building coal plants, but it's not a simple issue. They're growing faster than the energy industry can keep up with.
And like others have said, the rest of the world is at fault too. Germany shut down all of its nuclear plants, which forced them to go heavy into coal. And not just any coal, but lignite which is considered the dirtiest of all types of coal.
Germany in particular pisses me off so much. No country bought into the fear mongering about nuclear energy after Fukushima as much as Germany did. Shutting down nuclear power plants in the face of climate change is so incredibly irresponsible. For all of their faults, I give a lot of credit to the US and France for not shying away from using nuclear energy.
Ugh, I knew a lot of other European countries overreacted to Fukushima, but I hadn't heard much about Italy specifically. Sounds like they didn't have as much nuclear energy to start with (unlike Germany), but they had big plans to increase their usage of nuclear energy to around a quarter of their energy grid until they halted it all in response to Fukushima. The Wikipedia page about it is tragic.
And like others have said, the rest of the world is at fault too. Germany shut down all of its nuclear plants, which forced them to go heavy into coal. And not just any coal, but lignite which is considered the dirtiest of all types of coal.
Unless you're Chinese, there's very little you can do to stop that, as opposed to encouraging your country's politicians who have proven commitment to curb climate change.
So "China builds 5 coal plants every day before breakfast" is the whataboutism here.
The point is that this poster is a WuMao and will say anything to try and support the Chinese government. Sad that they have wormed their way in here already.
I am not WuMao. I simply don’t appreciate useless finger pointing and implied righteousness to justify doing nothing just because some other country isn’t doing what they can either.
We’re all watching the world burn and this finger pointing is doing little else but assure a very painful future.
But this user isn't diverting attention from an American policy or whatever. The original post was on how we have the hottest days so far and they rightly pointed out that a government was building lots of coal plants in that context. Others have chimed in and said that the government also is investigating in renewable, though I question if that makes building coal plants okay.
None of this is whataboutism. No one is above criticism or scrutiny.