100 solar panels per second in China.

[Ken]

China installed 93 GW of solar capacity in May. To illustrate how frenetic a pace that is, solar installations in China amounted to nearly 100 solar panels a second for the entire month! New wind installations were also impressive at 26 GW — equal to the output of about 5,300 turbines.

I am totally gob smacked. I have friends who keep telling me China is the polluting problem - its actually the USA.

[Mart]

Ken, try this one on your friends.

I was recently at a wedding anniversary party for my neighbours. They held it at their daughter's property as it's a small holding, so room for an outside gathering.

A guy I've never met before saw me appreciating the property, that had been fully restored and modernized, and led with how heat pumps can't work for such properties. For a moment I thought it was a set-up "go and wind up the green guy over there", but no, a total co-incidence. So I explained about HP's, underfloor heating helping to stabilise, high temp HP's etc etc, but he had lots of 'trick' answers ready.

But here's my favourite. He started on about China and India, and how they are the problem, not the UK with small emissions. I mentioned that India's was going green, but regardless their per capita emissions are tiny compared to the UK, and that China's per capita emissions are less than the US.

He told me that the environment doesn't care about per capita, so China is the biggest problem. I asked him would their emissions therefore become irrelevant then if the country was chopped into 10 parts, each now 'only' having 1/10th of the emissions of China.

[MikeNovack]

He told me that the environment doesn't care about per capita, so China is the biggest problem. I asked him would their emissions therefore become irrelevant then if the country was chopped into 10 parts, each now 'only' having 1/10th of the emissions of China.

THIS is a good example of why even though the primary focus of this forum is "practical application" could still use a forum section on "ethics"

It is of course true, the environment doesn't care about "per capita", But that's because it doesn't care about us humans at all. On the other hand, humans are both causing the problem AND possibly acting to alleviate the problem. Human actions matter, and for humans to act, fairness and per capita do matter.

[AGT]

They must be coming iff the production line, not boxing them and straight onto a solar farm, must be impressive to see

[AE-NMidlands]

I think most people (including me) can't really grasp just how big China is. Getting on for 20% of the world population, 6% of the land area. When you have an authoritarian state that size and they put their mind to something it's almost unstoppable. Which is a good thing in this case...

I agree that per capita is a simplistic measure, especially with such huge and growing extremes of wealth distribution, but I think China might be reducing theirs slightly - mainly by driving the rural poor into cities, which is ironic as the urban poor probably exacerbates carbon emissions given that people in shanty towns have to burn whatever they can find.
p.s. (the other massive extreme variation (compared to e.g. Europe) is the high density megacities as opposed to huge almost empty areas of high mountains.)

[Joeboy]

The few months I spent in China were amongst the best of my life. If I could do it all again I'd be focused on living there.