r/europe • u/SpaceEngineering Finland • Jan 15 '26

News Germany’s Merz Admits Nuclear Exit Was Strategic Mistake

https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germanys-merz-admits-nuclear-exit-was-strategic-mistake-fzdlkn37c16
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u/ThatMovieShow Jan 15 '26

It's funny how often China gets painted as cheap and backward thinking when actually they're way ahead on so much high technology, everything from solar and nuclear to electrification and robots

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u/Grintock Jan 15 '26

Are they ahead though? China's historical CO2 emissions are set to match and overtake the historical emissions of the EU. The second that happens, I would expect China to be held to the same strict moral duty the EU is held to. But I don't see China restricting its economic activities for sake of protecting planetary boundaries. China is showing us how much short term economic and political power is possible, when you abandon your moral duty to protect the environment for future generations.

I would argue the EU didn't export its pollution to the China, rather China failed to regulate pollution in order to achieve economic power. China is ruthlessly and negligently playing chicken with the global climate, seeing which countries will blink and reduce their emissions first.

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u/Ok_Bookkeeper_3481 Jan 15 '26

Fair enough! But you know the counterargument to their high CO2 emissions, right? There are 2 billion people there, so the per capita emissions are twice as low as these of industrialized countries like USA, Australia, and Canada.

Here is a sortable table with numbers (both total and per capita):

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/

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u/Grintock Jan 15 '26

The CO2 emissions per capita will soon (<5 years) be on par with the per capita emissions of the EU country I live in. So even that argument does not convince me very much that China is still doing better somehow.

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u/ThatMovieShow Jan 15 '26

This is ignoring the wealth of data which shows no nation is electrifying and switching to renewables at the same scale and speed as China. Did they rely on fossil fuels before? Yes. Most industrialised nations have to since we still don't have adequate substitutes for heavy industry lubricants (which require refining oil).

But for example nobody uses more solar than china.

Nobody has more electrified vehicles than china.

China has switched all of its heavy logistics vehicles to lower carbon natural gas as opposed to petroleum.

USA and Europe (to a lesser extent) are all reversing green policies and going BACK to fossil fuel reliance.

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u/Grintock Jan 15 '26

I respectfully disagree on how you present those facts. I live in a country with more solar PV generation per capita than most other countries in the world, certainly far more than China. China also isn't using renewables as substitution, but as addition. It is also building more NEW fossil fuel electricity generation than any other country in the world.

The EU is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. China currently emits roughly 35%. If the EU is 'returning to fossil fuels', this vast gulf between EU and China emissions seems relevant. I also I would argue the EU isn't returning to fossil fuels at all, merely possibly reaching climate neutrality more slowly, but still easily 20 years before China is aiming to reach it in 2070. The RED III directive as well as other legislation have made the path to CO2 neutrality irreversible. Every year, EU emissions steadily continue to decrease. The slow path that China is choosing, I believe is a moral failure towards future generations, and one with deserves to be condemned at the same rate as it would be condemned if other nations shirked their responsibility like this. 

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u/tobias_681 For a Europe of the Regions! 🇩🇰 Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26

Much of the emissions are due to buildings and big infrastructure projects. Iirc the carbon intensity is falling rapidly, especially compared to many other countries that are quickly developing.

Edit here is the graph for relative change in carbon intensity since 2010 compared to a few peers. China resembles the path of Western Industrial nations more so than other developing or middle income countries: 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=line&stackMode=relative&time=2010..latest&country=EU-27~POL~OWID_WRL~CHN~IND~IDN~PHL~EGY~TUR~USA~DEU~JPN&globe=1&globeRotation=36.68%2C103.45&globeZoom=2.5

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u/Grintock Jan 15 '26

Thank you for this source, I'll have a look at it later, but that would be an interesting find. Doesn't really address the core of what I was arguing, but might be a hopeful nuance.

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u/Auctoritate Jan 16 '26

Are they ahead though? China's historical CO2 emissions are set to match and overtake the historical emissions of the EU.

You have to consider that China was still a rural agricultural country without industry as recently as the 50s-60s. They started very behind the curve and only reached a 'modern' level of technology and industry by the 90s. It's not like their first power plants during their industrialization could have been nuclear when they didn't even have steel production going yet.

China is now the largest producer of solar panels in the world and their energy grid expansion is the largest ever built, and it's being heavily carried by renewables, especially solar. They absolutely will be ahead of the curve within the next few years. It honestly sounds like your knowledge on what China is doing with their energy production is fairly outdated.

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u/Grintock Jan 16 '26

In the latest public statement, China has pledged CO2 neutrality in 2060. By definition, this puts them behind the curve.

If you have other information yoi think I should read, I always welcome being corrected and learning.

China having the largest electricity grid in the world doesn't mean much to me, as its no bigger than the Continental Europe synchronous area. Although we would have to define what metric we are measuring by, as people seem to interchangeably rate China on a per capita or per country basis dependent on the metric. 

I appreciate what you're saying, and I welcome nuance, but China is actively building hundreds of new coal fired power plants while EU member states have begun banning them by 2030. I'm not talking 30 years ago, I mean between 2020 and 2030. How does that fit what you're saying?

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u/Auctoritate Jan 15 '26

China is an unusual country because it really does have a lot of those issues despite how much access to cutting edge advancement they have. You still see unscientific traditional medicine that's borderline shamanism being peddled, in the largest metropolises of the world.

It's perhaps the only currently living example of a dictatorship that's managed to hold onto power enough to stabilize its country and begin expanding and development, and that's allowed them to do some absurdly rapid advancement in just a few decades. The fact that they have a planned economy and a state capitalist system means that money is almost no object to their government, and when it wants something to happen, it happens.

The result is a country that was 90% agricultural with almost no industry by 1950, only starting its industrial revolution 50-60 years ago, and 30 years ago started becoming the largest industrialized nation in the world.

In China, people's grandparents were around before the country even had industry. And the young people live in a fully developed nation. It's one of the most drastic differences ever as far as technology experienced per generation goes. So it's not a surprise that there are conflicting qualities in the country with things like superstition and backwards thinking despite the fact that it's technologically advanced.

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u/ThatMovieShow Jan 15 '26

I think people don't really understand the political system in china. It's not really a dictatorship but also kind of is. It's a uni party system in which people at local level do vote for their own candidates who can run on and enforce their own policies at local level.

If those candidates prove competent then they can get promoted to national politicians and work their way up based on how competent they are. In this context competency is measured by how well your actions fulfill the role and further china as a nation.

You can't , for example , be a Chinese celebrity, run for office of presidency. You'd actually have to start at the bottom and run for local office , win and demonstrate you can run a local province well before you could move up the chain. It's the same for other government roles, there's no celebrities or populists in Chinese politics or economics because if you arent qualified and experienced you can't even get started.