Even though India now burns more coal than Europe and the US combined, there is really only one coal consumer. Just to update those figures…
Remember you are a planet-wrecker, but China just has growing pains
China burns four times as much coal as the second largest coal burner in the world. Everyone else is an also-ran in the coal stakes. For every ton the US consumes, China fries 12 times as much. And poor patsy Australia, for every ton we apologetically ignite, China burns 50. More coal was burned on Earth in 2023 than ever before in human history, and more than half of it was burned in China. Moreover, despite all the Sino nodding to sacred targets, China shows no intention of putting the brakes on the coal train. Around the world, 95% of all new coal power plants built in 2023 were built in China.
Where is the apoplexy?
The UN has met every year for twenty-eight years to badger everyone to stop using coal to appease the Goddess of Trace Gases and Weird Weather — all while China became the coal furnace of the world.
Or perhaps The UN met every year, so China could do exactly that? Lord above, imagine if the bureaucratic starlets of the West could be bought off so easily by trophies, trinkets and photo-opportunities — as a trade strategy, it would be a bargain. And it surely was.
Somehow life on Earth depends on Just-Stop-Oil protestors, but they can’t seem to find the Chinese Embassy. Banker cartels threaten higher interest rates for naughty nations, but no one suggests so much as a boycott of solar panels made with coal.
We’re all in this together, eh?
Supposedly, the developed world caused all the bad weather we have today — leaving the developing world to wallow in the suffering of the coal plants and cars the West invented. But, the developing world just landed a rocket on the moon and bought back some moon-rocks.
The last time NASA did that it was 1972.
A fork in the road for civilization
In a sense, the diverging lines of coal consumption mark the rise and fall of civilizations. They don’t have to — not if the West had upscaled to some better industrial power. But the West upscaled to witchcraft and corruption instead, arrogantly trying to control the weather itself with our power plants in a teenage fashion contest. China took our mistake and smiled and egged us on. They would be crazy if they didn’t support the Greens, and pay off our politicians to cripple our grid.
As CO2 Lover says in comments, it is the Sun Tzu Art of War. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
The post China is the coal furnace of the world, and everyone is fine with that was first published by the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and is republished here with permission. Please support their efforts.
