Bit of a tangent, but I find it a bit funny when people say what China's doing in Africa isn't colonialism, because they're investing billions in infrastructure.
Imagine if the British government defended the brutal colonisation of India, by going on about how much they'd invested in the railways they used to ship out all the resources they plundered.
Electricity sector in India shows growth of fossil fuel plants has been shrinking: 2017 had 22.94% YoY increase in fossil fuel electricity generation while 2018 was 2.05% increase and 2023 was 0.49% increase.
Imagine if the British government defended the brutal colonisation of India, by going on about how much they'd invested in the railways they used to ship out all the resources they plundered.
There's no need to imagine. This argument gets made the time . The British unified India, gave it a railway, a public service , etc. They did actually build infrastructure. People have been using this to justify British colonialism in India for over a century. Before that few in the west thought colonialism required justification. The British built these things in order to make wealthy extraction from their colonies as efficient as possible.
They also conveniently forgot to mention that almost 80% of their electricity generation comes from fossil fuels, increasingly from coal. But hey, no problem. Net zero by 2030. Coughcoughcoughcoughcoughcough.
They didn’t forget to mention that, it’s clearly admitted in the article. But now they can take much more advantage of cleaner electricity as it’s introduced: every country does need to do both
hard to believe it's a good choice but it's still the better choice - electricity generated by dozens of coal plants are going to hurt MUCH, MUCH LESS - than millions of two stroke engines puttering fuel and oil out for individual transit needs.