written 29 June, 2025
published 6 July, 2025
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2024 was the warmest year since record keeping began in 1880. The rate of warming has increased nine-fold to 0.27°C per decade today. This drives an increase in extreme weather events, such as torrential downpours, stronger wind and fire storms, and deadly heatwaves. The ocean is warming and acidifying, disrupting sea life, and sea level is rising.
Globally, the economic costs are already apparent and more than 80 percent of the world’s people want their governments to do more about climate change. Combined, the US and China produce almost half of the global GDP, but their responses to the climate crisis are very different, especially under our present administration.
Since 2020, the U.S. has added 84,200 megawatts (MW) of solar and 7,000 MW of wind (about 30 percent of the global total) and a 15-fold increase of utility battery capacity to 30,000 megawatt hours (MWh). Battery chemistries are now more varied, and costs are dropping as the scale of manufacturing increases. Consequently, new renewable energy power plants, with storage, are the most economically competitive form of power generation. Solar arrays with batteries are the quickest to deploy, with shorter deployment times than constructing new natural gas power plants.
But the current administration is determined to destroy the whole renewable industry, proclaiming the entire climate crisis a "hoax". Federal subsidies have been repealed and new taxes are being proposed to stall further renewable development. EV charging systems are being dismantled, and US governmental assets are being forced to sell EV investments. The domestic financial industry is being told to defund further renewable projects, and pressure is being applied to force other countries to follow suit.
Oil, natural gas, and nuclear are the preferred Republican energy sources, although those are all expensive, and consume diminishing finite resources, mostly imported from other countries. The recent attacks in the middle east are about access to nuclear power and have threatened economic disruption of shipping of gas and oil. This show of power requires a huge Pentagon budget, further adding to energy costs. Republican policy ensures continued profits for the billionaire status quo, but impoverishes the general public. Even if massive increases in these energy sources could happen in time, or be affordable, they ignore the growing climate crisis. That is what passes for wisdom in the US today.
In contrast, China, with few domestic oil and gas resources, embraced renewable power as a national economic policy, and now leads the world in electrification of their economy, 30 percent compared to 22 percent in the US and the EU. China, now the primary manufacturer of affordable alternative energy hardware, with over half of the world's solar installations, increasing 50 percent faster than the global average, is positioned to be an economic superpower in clean energy technologies going forward.
China produces electric vehicles of all kinds. In 2024, EV's were almost half of all passenger cars sold in China, up from just 6 percent in 2020. BYD, China's primary auto company, sells more EV's annually than Tesla, and markets some EV's in the EU for less than $8,000. Yadea, another Chinese company, sells electric scooters for $700 with 150 mile range.
China is leading in new battery designs, including very fast charging, and complete battery swaps in just a few minutes, and is already manufacturing new chemistries, like sodium ion batteries which are cheaper and safer.
Globally, EVs sales are increasing, while combustion vehicle sales continue to fall, reducing oil demand. The reality of this "peak demand" for oil has kept wholesale oil prices low, despite the recent conflict in Iran. While that might seem good for consumers, the price is too low for most oil companies to make a profit, so further exploration efforts have diminished.
The two largest economies on the planet have staked out divergent paths. China is investing in a sustainable energy future and the US is doubling down on an expensive, obsolete energy past. It is still unclear if there really is a sustainable solution to the climate crisis, because environmental events are unfolding more rapidly each year, and we have squandered decades in denial. But it is very clear that the past is no longer here. However, politicians and the very wealthy seem to be quite divorced for reality, and the rest of us are along for the ride.
