Right... U.S. is totally irrelevant:
CO2/capita:
US: 16.5
China: 7.6
And yes, China obviously has larger population, but you still produce half of what they do and you have been producing such amounts for decades!
Im not saying China should ignore this, they should definitely take action to reduce it, just like you though
Jáchym and the other combatants,
I just ran across some numbers on what the Chinese are/have done on solar PV electricity production, both the major commercial, and individual, installations. Whatever their driving motivations are...they have ramped up coal power plants, but I'm thinking they're thinking it's just temporary until they have a majority of alt-energy sources.
In a recent year (I'll look it up if I can find it), 2014, 2015?, they doubled, in one year, their total PV capacity. The Indians, Euros, and many others too. Even Texas has gone to the top of wind and solar in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China (close enough)
Wikipedia has hundreds of pages of solid info on alt-energy, just use the 'index' linkage at the bottom of most pages..
As far as comments about affordable PV or alternative power, prices have come way down and continue to fall. No one needs to pay an inflated, gouge-level price for the panels, etc., shop around.
I myself cannot 'afford' the somewhat inflated $30-50K price of a 'retailed' home solar installation, no way. So I've done lots of research, designed an expandable system (ground-mounted) that starts small and is flexible. And will grow it every few months until I reach a point when I can be "off-grid" much of the time.
When LI-or-? battery power storage gets cost effective enough, it will be almost all of the time. And save some serious $$, the solar ROI continues to shorten and grow.
With no subsidies or whatever, all out of my pocket.
I'm buying most of it online, sure; and prices will likely continue to fall. And I do buy some stuff direct, or via Newegg, etc., from China. Don't like it, but no alternative, our 'leaders' have sold us out for decades (hell, I've caught crap for years for having only domestic motor vehicles, while family is mostly Toyota minded).
One 'interesting' observation, the last few months it seems some parcels are getting some Customs/PO lookovers (somewhere).
And the Chinese shippers, in the last month or so,
are stuffing some pro-Chinese propaganda leaflet-type literature in the envelopes/boxes
. Yikes!
Due to political machinations by certain 'pols/people', selling any excess power to the grid isn't even allowed(!, AFAIK) via a net-metering or FIT/PPA (and they're doing the same with "Net neutrality" internet, rigging the system).
Even my municipal (co-op) power company wants nothing to do with it
.
One other thing. The extremely backward, Luddite views of a certain political group and about 30% of the pop has, and will continue to, put the US at an insurmountable competitive disadvantage in these and many other technologies. We're giving up, we've given up, our former world dominance in many areas, and fall even further behind year after year. Head-in-sand doesn't get it today (never did).