China recently released plans to get 500GW of renewable power tied into their grid by 2020 – just 9 short years away.
The United States, in comparison, decided to let the dirty energy industry control its government in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Even under the Obama administration’s Recovery Act plan, renewable energy in the U.S. will only provide 16GW by 2020, and that’s if Republican Teabaggers don’t block any funds once they take back the House next month.
China’s approach is clearly more serious than the U.S.’s when it comes to acting on global warming. Even if they don’t implement the 500th GW by or during the year 2020, does anyone seriously think they’ll get too far away from that goal? This is the same country that revolutionized its industry in dramatically less time than it took the U.S. or any other nation to do the same. China will soon have more modern renewable energy infrastructure than the U.S. will have. Once that happens, we will no longer be able to use China as an excuse to continue inaction. Of course, if we are inactive until that time, it will likely be too late to prevent catastrophic global warming anyway.
