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Comment by YeBanKo | Hacker News Reader

China produces 80% of lithium batteries and uses a lot of coal while doing it. Are they going to levy a proportional tax on import? Or they going to facilitate changes to encourage more domestically produced batteries?

As recent as a year ago German politicians were trying to convince that natural gas(from Russia) is a relatively clean energy. Germany was invested in Nord Stream 2 and looks like wanted to be a gatekeeper of Russian gas to Europe. Now Europe is facing a painful reconciliation with reality, that they will have to either hurt their economy, freeze a little their population in the upcoming winter, which is gonna cost them politically or sleep with the devil.

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> Are they going to levy a proportional tax on import?

Yes. Most nations are moving towards carbon tariffs to punish the nations that don't do their share. Though China already has a carbon tax, so their batteries might become even cheaper relative to American ones as a result. Russia will be hit hard by it if they don't change course soon too.

See: How the US is preparing for the EU carbon tariffs:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-u-s-is-pr...

>China produces 80% of lithium batteries and uses a lot of coal while doing it. Are they going to levy a proportional tax on import? Or they going to facilitate changes to encourage more domestically produced batteries?

Most of that production is to US and Europe consumers. If you want to punish China for this, simply not buy any lithium-based products such as laptops, cell phones, electric cars.

They’ll find another way to burn the coal.

> Most of that production is to US and Europe consumers.

This is such a tiresome argument. The West has mandated that we all buy EVs in the near future, while labour and environmental laws mean that it is basically impossible to manufacture them here. It's also relatively essential to buy laptops, computers, monitors, etc - all of which are not possible to make in the West.

It is 100% hypocritical to say that we are too conscientious to manufacture electronic goods in our own countries, while importing huge numbers of them from countries that we know are doing horrible things to their people and environment.

The only way to level the playing field is to impose an "environmental duty" on imported goods from places with lower environmental standards. Otherwise, all we are doing is transferring manufacture to countries with lower standards while pretending that we're doing something great for the world.

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