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Extreme Temperature Diary- Saturday November 15th, 2025/Main Topic: China’s Green Triumph – Guy On Climate
Dear Diary. As an American I hate to see this since I thought at one time that we as a country have the greatest political and economic system on Earth. I naively believed in American exceptionalism twenty years ago, but not so much since Al Gore lost to George Bush in the year 2000. More socially democratic countries like those located in Scandinavia and Canada have much better health care systems. Due to what President Biden did with the Inflation Reduction Act, I thought that we were finally making great strides mitigating climate change. Now Trump has reversed most of that legislation. The universe abhors a vacuum, so who is taking up the slack? Authoritarian communist China has.
So far so good in the 21st century that is supposed to be China’s. They have now taken the lead on renewable energy infrastructure manufacturing, helping developing nations quickly make a transition towards a green future. It’s still not good that they persecute minorities and there isn’t freedom of speech within China, though. And yes, those problems persist in the United States, also.
Here is more from the New York Times:
In the global electrification race China is marching ahead.
The US and Europe risk falling behind clinging on to yesterday's technologies. — Jan Rosenow (@janrosenow.bsky.social) 2025-11-14T13:51:42.881Z
China’s Green Triumph – The New York Times
China’s Green TriumphChina is equipping other countries to fight climate change. It’s a role reversal. A solar panel factory in Suqian, China.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
 By Sam Sifton I’m the host of The Morning.
Nov. 12, 2025
In the United States, the Trump administration is reversing efforts to protect the climate. In Europe, nations grapple with how, and how quickly, to embrace a green future.
At the same time, something remarkable is happening in other parts of the world. Countries with big and quickly growing economies are taking advantage of China’s emergence as a renewable-energy superpower. They are going green in a hurry.
My colleagues Somini Sengupta and Brad Plumer covered this change in their latest story. They wrote a striking paragraph about it:
Countries like Brazil, India and Vietnam are rapidly expanding solar and wind power. Poorer countries like Ethiopia and Nepal are leapfrogging over gasoline-burning cars to battery-powered ones. Nigeria, a petrostate, plans to build its first solar-panel manufacturing plant. Morocco is creating a battery hub to supply European automakers. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has electrified more than half of its bus fleet in recent years.China makes that possible, exporting solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles all over the developing world while investing billions in factories that make those things in the nations where they are sold.
‘A safer place’ A wind turbine factory in Nantong, China. Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
It won’t solve the problem of climate change, the reporters say. Most countries continue to get most of their energy from fossil fuels. They mine coal, build coal plants and produce oil. China alone emits more greenhouse gases than the United States and the European Union combined. There’s still plenty of smoke in the air.
But the falling price of China’s renewable tech has allowed developing countries to satisfy a larger percentage of their energy needs internally. It reduces their reliance on imported fuel and develops their economies.
“Emerging economies are a very important part of the story,” an environmental advocacy researcher told The Times. “The reason we should be paying attention is that they have the most people in the world, they have the largest number of poor people in the world, and their energy demands are growing. If these economies don’t change, there’s no chance for the world to get to a safer place.”
A role reversalSomini and Brad tell us what that looks like in practice. Ethiopia has banned the importing of new gasoline-powered cars, they write. Nepal has lowered import taxes for electric vehicles so they’re cheaper than gas ones. Brazil raised tariffs on imported cars to help persuade Chinese automakers to build plants there.
And China is investing heavily — nearly a quarter trillion dollars since 2011, they report, with most of that money going to what’s known as the global south. Adjusted for inflation, that is more money than the U.S. put into the Marshall Plan after World War II.
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A decade ago, the U.S. and Europe were pressuring developing nations to take faster action on climate change. Now the economics have changed, and developing nations are delivering what appears to be good news for the planet.
India, for example, recently announced that half of its demand for electricity can now be satisfied by renewable energy from wind, sun and water, five years earlier than the 2030 target it had set in the Paris Agreement.
It’s a vibe shift, Somini wrote in the article’s comments section. Read more (and comment yourself) here.
More on China’s influenceHere are some “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports |
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