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Nobody wins or looses the energy transition, either we do it and have a planet that isn’t completely fucked or we don’t.
But if we do it and survive some nations will come out on top. So there can be a winning.
That’s an insane way of looking at things and will lead to a big war because no nation will be willing to be the loser and they will fight before they’re forced to be the loser.
Instead of looking at things in terms of winning and losing, you should try think about how do we all not loose.
I would see it like everyone is winning because we managed to deal with it but some will be the new superpowers because they have the technological know how. Similar to how the Allied Forces won WWII but USA still came out on top of all the winners (because they developed nukes and didn’t had the war on their soil).
It’s not how I look at things. It’s how it will be. It’s a positive thing for me. Because it can be a strong motivator.
First we have to understand and agree that we have to work together. Otherwise we don’t have any chance anyways.
But even then it still is a huge effort, so the motivation to “win” the energy transition race (meaning being the best and first to reach certain milestones) might be needed to make it happen in time.
It has to go further than simply replacing one energy source out with another though, for example we are running out of sand for concrete, there are now sand mafias all over the world. Our current leaders in Europe and the US seem hellbent on destroying everything.
And the fact that the west doesn’t see this as a collective endeavour that all humanity has to come together to accomplish shows that western civilization is a blight upon the world.
Idk what you mean by civilization. I live in the west I’ve been pushing for stuff like this for as long as I can remember, the Chinese government just takes this kind of stuff more seriously because they have experience with severe environmental degradation. I wouldn’t say you can pin this on one culture, people in the west have just had such good lives that they can’t imagine things going bad again, unlike in China where there is very recent memory of poverty. Things are changing and the place I’m in is actually doing very well at decarbonization.
I mean the whole world order the west built upon subjugation and extraction. Everything is seen as a zero sum game here, and there’s no concept of doing things collectively or finding positive sum solutions where everyone can benefit. That’s the fundamental difference from Chinese mindset, China doesn’t think that somebody has to lose for them to win. They don’t try to subjugate the rest of the world and remake it in their image. They just find ways to cooperate with other nations that are mutually beneficial. That’s how a rational society works.
I know. Still blanket statements like western civilization are exactly the kind of thing you are criticizing, there are plenty of people in the west who want to cooperate with other nations more. Politics isn’t run for the people in most places, but China has plenty of problems.
When I say western civilization, I’m referring to the social structures and the system as a whole rather than individuals. Of course there are plenty of people in the west who are starting to reject the system, but the west as a whole remains the same as it was institutionally. It’s extractive economic policy remains the same, and hence, as a whole it acts as a regressive force upon humanity.
And sure, China, like any human society has plenty of problems, but the difference is the overall trajectory and the social structure in China which makes it a progressive force.
We all have extractive economic policies just because of the way our societies and geography work. There are limits to growth which no civilised society has truly embraced yet. People are slowly starting to accept this argument, and I see China going in a more positive direction, but it’s still not enough, there is a lot of work to be done everywhere.
That’s not the main reason western economies are extractive. It’s the very nature of how financial capitalism works that makes them so. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/
