What we need to do is find some way to make a giant fusion reactor and put it in the sky and get energy from it that way.

But that’s just a pipe dream…

What we need is robust decentralized multimodal energy production fit for the local area where it is installed and contributing to a well maintained distributed grid with multiple redundancies and sufficient storage so that incidental costs are minimized and uptime is effectively 100%. Energy is a tool and its generation is a category of tools, whining about people developing a better screwdriver rather than only using hammers is counterproductive when we’re trying to build a house for as many people as possible that doesn’t fucking kill everyone.

I’m whining about China spending very little on current green energy technology while building more and more coal plants and taking advantage of these sort of PR stories.

I can’t help it, I’m one of those people who whines about climate change.

‘spending very little’???

They produced more new green energy than the total capacity of green energy for the rest of the world combined in 2024.

And yet they keep building more coal plants.

In a generation they went from a famine every decade to the end of famines, in a second generation they went from a industrial age economy with most of its people living in extreme poverty to eliminating extreme poverty and some of its people living on par with those in the wealthiest nations. In this generation they have raised the standard of living of their poorest from a poverty the US hasn’t seen in a century to that of middle class Americans in the 1980s. In order to accomplish this, massive amounts of electricity is needed. That lifestyle is naturally wasteful as it takes electricity for granted, but it’s better by most accounts. This is on top of being the world’s factory and the electricity use that entails.

In short, yes, they need both, and nuclear which they’re also the leader in. Unlike the West they do have plans to get off coal as a power source, and the amount of work they’ve done eliminating coal usage near cities by itself is commendable, compared to its contemporaries like the US.

The poorest parts of China are still much poorer than any middle class. Most rural Chinese still do not complete high school.