Hacker News Reader

Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

You are thinking around it the wrong way round

If you lead on climate change, you export solutions to other countries - for example how china is exporting Solar panels. We could have been exporting power grid planning expertise, wind turbine tech, etc. unfortunately now that ship has sailed as China has invested billions and were chose to dither and delay. That’s the price of fucking about

View on HN

Again, I think it would be great if we were doing more in terms of innovation and expertise too! But in other human rights law issues, this line of argument wouldn't fly either, I don't think you could e.g. sue Switzerland for not making a stronger diplomatic effort to prevent some human rights abuse committed by another government, or anything like that.

China leads in solar panel production, not neccessarily in "climate change". Production of their panels emits vastly larger amounts of CO2 (because so many things are coal-powered in China) than panels produced in say Europe.

They are doing exactly the right thing. A solar panel is still carbon negative no matter how it’s produced.

A typical solar panel will save over 900kg of CO2 per year that results in a carbon payback period of ~ 1.6 years and expected life of 25 years

It is more important to produce huge quantity of panels for the future and than it is to ensure impossible standard of perfection today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com