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The Past and the Future (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/politicalhumor@lemmy.world
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Artist: stevesack.substack.com

A political cartoon that shows the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz with the US flag on his chest, dripping with oil and holding a bucket of coal and an oily barrel, taking a path that diverges from the yellow brick road. A sign in front of the Tin Man says 'The Past'. Following the yellow brick road is a futuristic robot holding a wind energy turbine and a solar panel, with the flag of China on his chest. A sign in front of the robot says 'the future'.
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[–] 23 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Despite China's rapid adoption of renewables, their fossil fuel usage is also still climbing, while it is declining in the US.

Both total and per capita

Fossil fuels also still account for a larger share of electricity generation in China compared to US.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    China is the world's factory. They produce the goods consumed by every other country on these charts.

    The question becomes: given a country's usage of fossil fuels, what do they have to show for it? Western nations burn coal to run LLMs; China is burning coal to build eliminate poverty and produce 30% of the entire world's goods.

    Also keep in mind, energy usage has a history. Its not fair to take a snapshot of 2026's energy splits and condemn China, given how western nations just spent the last 200 years destroying the planet.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago*

    Why are we pretending China doesn’t also run LLMs and datacentres?

    The only reason they don’t have as much growth is import restrictions on Western GPUs.

    With Alibabas new inhouse Zhenwu AI processors they are starting to be able to avoid that issue and production of new data centres will increase faster than the many they have already built or are underway.

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