Curious as to the $1.1 trillion green investments from this year, I googled it, with an inkling that the headline hides a lot. The link to Bloomberg is pay-walled, but I found a working link to another BB article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-26/global-clean-energy-investments-match-fossil-fuel-for-first-time?leadSource=uverify wall.
Redtea, you might interject, that link may open but the lede remains buried. Fear not, curious minds, for I have done the digging (emphasis added):
BNEF’s data show that China was by far the leading country for attracting energy transition investment, accounting for $546 billion or nearly half of the global total. The US was a distant second at $141 billion, while the EU would have been second if treated as a single bloc, at $180 billion. Germany retained its third place, while the UK dropped one place to fifth as France climbed to fourth.
[Edit: How much do you want to bet that when British media picks this up, they indeed treat the EU as a single bloc and sneak themselves back into fourth place?]
As we might expect in a world divided between capitalists and communists, it’s the communists who show the most concern for saving the planet. Luckily for the only life in the universe known to humankind, the US and Europe will be subject to China’s new rules based order before the end of the century, so the next generation might actually be able to crawl out of this mess.
Better. It predicts a max 2.6°C warming by 2100 (down from 4–6°C).
But it’s not ‘good’ news. It right m won’t be good news until we get below net zero by taking more carbon out the air then we pump into it, because even ‘no growth’ in emissions still means an above zero output. And those emissions keep adding to what’s in the atmosphere already. The only question until we get below zero is, how quickly will be be fucked?
Meanwhile, the US occupies half the world and in the half it doesn’t control, starts colour revolutions, invokes false flags, coups, carpet bombs, displaces, destroys, and emiserates. All so that arms dealers, fossil corporations, privatisers, and construction firms can funnel into their offshore bank accounts the $trillions stolen through the above acts. There’s no comparison.
I agree on one point. I wish Russia would stop invading it’s neighbours. It is a problem.
Unfortunately it’s not going to happen while the greatest menace in human history rattles sabres on its borders or funds terror squads to cause strife and carnage for said ethnic Russians.
Incredible finding. Would this make mercury a more suitable station for interplanetary travel than other planets? Or, rather, as Mercury might be a little hot, a Mercury-like planet in another solar system? Travel to mercury, wait till it gets close to the destination planet, and ‘jump off’ at the right stop, kind of thing.
To be fair to the liberals, this plan would be more successful than almost any other Anglo-European high speed rail network.
You could offer a shoebox tied to a long plank of wood as a high speed rail solution and the Anglo-Europeans would pay billions for it, believing every word in the marketing brochure. The only requirement is that the contract provides a never ending source of profit for the bourgeoisie.
The United States is considered one of the safest countries in the world, according to France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They do point out certain urban cities that pose potential threats, such as carjacking, theft and walking alone at night.
No wonder the French are known for their tongues.
The US is safe! Just try to not drive, exist, or walk around if you visit.
This is interesting, but it’s strange that you would challenge the quality of information due to a missing SSL certificate and then cite Wikipedia, a site renowned for being unreliable and not authoritative.
Wikipedia claims to be up to date, but it relies on World Bank data from 2021. The article (now articles) being contested purport to rely on more recent data, claiming that Russia moved up for the first time since 2014 in 2022 – a year and dataset that is not (yet) captured by Wikipedia.
In good faith, this could be because the 2021 numbers are for the per capita figures, and the 2022 numbers for the PPP figures. But that’s rather favourable and would also suggest that per capita and PPP are incomparable. The one cannot be used to dispute analysis based on the other, especially if the person collecting the data treats them as different.
Regardless, if you read the link you posted and arrange the table by GDP (nominal) per capita using data from the IMF, World Bank, or UN, most of the top countries are tax havens! At least 3/10 (IMF), 9/10 (World Bank), and 6/10 (UN). (To be fair, the UN discounts some of those from it’s numerical ranking even if they are still in the top ten.)
There’s even a warning:
Many of the leading GDP-per-capita (nominal) jurisdictions are tax havens whose economic data is artificially inflated by tax-driven corporate accounting entries.
This data does show something important, albeit unrelated to the original post: the Anglo-European empire, claiming to have no money to improve living standards while it’s people freeze, overheat, starve, and suffer from preventable or treatable illnesses, is already at war with it’s domestic citizens. Otherwise those tax havens wouldn’t exist. The problem for the ‘cost of living crisis’ for ordinary westerners is nothing to do with Russia (or China) but is due to the fact that it’s wealthiest have absconded with all the ‘disposable income’.
Here are two examples, Yogthos. And rigour of the highest order is guaranteed because the site owners filled in their SSL certificates.
https://www.worldeconomics.com/Indicator-Data/Economic-Size/Revaluation-of-GDP.aspx
Welcome to 2023, where journalistic integrity is secured by the IT department.
But refusing to meet in Singapore would risk irking other countries in a region that are pressing both sides to ease tensions.
Fairly sure nobody in SEA seriously believes that China, as opposed to the US, is causing those tensions. I would accept that lots of people in SEA are hoping that China can make the US stop threatening proxy wars. I’m failing to see why people in SEA would find China irksome for not meeting in Singapore but not irksome that the US won’t allow Li to meet in Washington.
The US and it’s mouthpieces in the press are deeply unserious actors who will soon be ignored by increasing numbers of other states if it doesn’t change. For now, the US remains relevant. But it’s not clear to me that the US realises just how irrelevant it is going to become in the next few decades. The Trump administration seemed to understand this a lot better than Biden’s.
The ‘rest of the world’ (everyone not in the Anglo-European empire) is not daft; reports like this one are written solely to persuade the residents of that empire that everything is under control because they seem to be the only people gullible enough to accept this kind of framing.
(Updates …. An earlier version corrected the misspelling of Li’s name in the first deck headline.)
“We’re taking China seriously. Honest. Please believe us, Leigh Xiangfu.”
Do you know how many countries are applying to join BRICS this year?
The idea that it would fall apart over a disagreement like this one (even if it were portrayed correctly) relies on a misconception.
BRICS works with a different logic to NATO/EU, etc. Where Anglo-Europeans seek domination and subsidiaries, BRICS is about partnership. And before anyone says that China has a different policy, China regularly insists on and upholds the principal of partnership. As can be seen in ASEAN, as well.
The US toddler cannot stand to be criticised, challenged, or ignored. The adults of the rest of the world, however, understand the meaning of diplomacy. Even if the reporting here were accurate (which doesn’t seem to be the case), BRICS members could either work towards a solution or park the disagreement. If this were not the case, BRICS could never have worked to begin with, considering some fundamental, ideological differences between it’s members.
Have you not seen the reports of all the foreign (NATO) soldiers fighting in and for Ukraine? Nor those about NATO being unable to send enough ammunition?
There is no scenario where the US pursues a fight with North Korea.
It was you who hypothesised that the US could beat the DPRK in a conventional war. You then had several replies explaining why that was unlikely. It’s a little disingenuous to now suggest that it was you, all along, who thinks the US would not want a war with the DPRK.
It also ignores the fact that the DPRK is already in a conflict with the US. The US started a war decades ago, lost, and never left the peninsula.
😮