Worth noting that the limits being revoked have only been in place less than two years.

Why is that notable?

Full steam ahead towards greenhouse gases, climate change, and +5degree temperatures. Why not?

Because it'll create value.

Value which won't bring anything to anyone. I mean, a couple of people can be more richerer, but we and them won't have a planet to spend or enjoy these theoretical riches at the end.

So, no biggie.

define 'climate pollution', this is all fine and well until they apply it to nuclear shielding.

I'm not clear what you mean. While nuclear waste is certainly a thing that could hurt the environment if mismanaged, impacting the climate isn't really a way that it does so. The shielding also seems like an unusual thing to focus on as opposed to the waste itself.

'shielding', is applied to both the energy extraction process of fission activity AND the remnants.

you're definitely not clear on the meaning.

The USA is already holding the record for greenhouse gas pollution per capita and they elected the lunatic that raved about climate change being a hoax. I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier.

The fact these regulations didn't make it through the normal law making progress (senate/house) doomed it before it even took shape. With presidents like Trump undoing everything his predecessor(s) did just to feel powerful, legislation like this is doomed from that start.

There’s no denying Climate Change is a big industrial-complex.

And now that the Data Centre Industrial Complex has come along it’s somewhat sidelined the Climate Change Industrial Complex*.

Funny how that happens.

Sorry but you can't have EVs everywhere, WA and CA banning natural gas for heat and cooking, WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restoration, while shutting down your most reliable sources of power. The math does not add up.

Solar and wind output is not constant or reliable. NIMBYs sabotaged nuclear years ago. It takes how many years to bring a new plant online?

A lot of feel-good rules and regs were passed, pushing a massive shift to electric power, with no consideration as to where the additional power would come from.

You can't wave your arms like a Peanuts cartoon and have all that extra power appear, which is the logic that was used in passing many of these impractical regulations.

Solar and wind is extremely reliable. What isn’t reliable is deployment of it.

Energy storage is required along with solar farms.

Until the sun goes down at night or the wind stops blowing. You ignored the word "output".

Energy storage is required along with solar farms

How many batteries are we going to need for that? They literally just figured out how to get the child slaves in the Congo out of the supply chain with a shift to LFP.

Fear really IS the mindkiller! Stop being afraid and start educating yourself. You are on HN, you are supposed to be smart.

Smart people understand pragmatism, which means not throwing the baby out with the bath water in the name of ill thought-out feel-good measures.

There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example. It consists of heating something very big that holds a lot of heat and releases it slowly, then using that stored heat to generate electricity while it cools down. This isn't suitable for home use, but at the city scale, or larger, it's quite efficient:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage

There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example.

Yeah, there's also pumped water storage, and other forms of gravity/kinetic storage, various means of chemical energy storage, and all kinda other neat battery-like ideas folks have been trying/using.

What an opinion to have when thus far evidence has concluded the opposite. Just because funding for the infrastructure keeps getting derailed, delayed and lied about by bad actors doesn’t make the anti-renewable parrots correct. There are situations where —at minimum- hybrid solutions are far more viable options but for many locations just those two solutions work very well.

Just because funding for the infrastructure keeps getting derailed, delayed and lied about by bad actors

Speaking of infrastructure, how about pushing a mass rollout of EVs before giving a single consideration as to where the charging infra would come from?

Normally I would be concerned, but these days, we are well on our way to 3.5C. All this will do is cancel out progess China and Europe is making on renewals.

It is to bad these people do not care how much of a sucky life they are handing their grandchildren. Wait to see what happens when millions of desperate people living south of the 40th parallel start heading north in mass. No wall will stop that.

All this will do is cancel out progess China and Europe is making on renewals

China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that.

China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online in 2025, but also 315 gigawatts of solar capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind.

And coal is mostly flat, while electricity demand is going up.

https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/09/China-Energy-Tr...

(Page 14)

Which is easy to do when you live an authoritarian state with plenty of vast desert wastelands to erect solar/wind farms. Was there a village there last week? Not anymore, it was in the way. And best of all they can build it all with Uyghur forced labor. Accolades for China all around!

78 GW of coal is pretty damn near 78 GW. 315 GW of solar / wind capacity is nowhere near that level of utilization.

China is trying to become oil-independent by all means necessary. All their means of accessing oil go through geographic bottlenecks that could be weaponized against them in the event of military conflict. Coal, fissile materials, and sunlight are the alternatives they have access to, so they're going for all of those.

With some luck, the net effect will be fewer greenhouse gases than keeping themselves oil-dependent, though that isn't necessarily the, or even a, goal. If it happens, it'll be as a side effect.

Are you saying China is doing whatever it needs to do to satisfy its power needs, hands forced by geopolitics, and not pure altruism? Say it isn't so.

In a saner world, they wouldn't need to be wary of a catastrophic oil shortage due to another power deciding to cut off their access to oil. A saner world is achieved when all countries agree to an international system of rules and conflict resolution and abide by agreements, so things are predictable in the long term.

The less predictable things become, the faster everyone ramps up potential solutions to bad potential scenarios.

Some are trying to bring that sanity back. Others are trying to increase the chaos as much as they possibly can, and preferably more.

You can't bring back something that was never there

is this supposed to refute the parent comment's point?

China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that.

Despite all of that, Electricitymaps predicts that they can generate 48% of their total energy from carbon-free sources at noon-hours.

Now, this is impressive, despite building 50 new coal plants in 2025 alone.

Last year France produced 94% of electricity from low-carbon sources, that is impressive.

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/france#how-much-of...

China produced 41% of electricity from low-carbon sources last year.

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#how-much-of-...

For me, both are equally impressive actually. Europe has some great clean-energy countries.

Interestingly Turkey passed 50% mark apparently. That's also an out of left field revelation for me.

This is not really very impressive in context, for two reasons. First, China generated 10,400 TWh in 2025 and France generated only 547 TWh. The 95% and 50% are being applied to different numbers, and the scales here just aren’t comparable. Second, nearly all of France’s power generation was built decades ago, and China’s was built very recently - and is still expanding rapidly in both nuclear and renewables. Comparing France to China is like comparing a 1970s solar powered bungalow to a gigafactory under construction.

Population of China is 1404 milions, population of France is 66 milion, so per capita France produces more electricity.

95% and 50% show that France has electric grid with much lower carbon emissions per unit of energy then China.

France build most of its nuclear reactors in 1980s (54 reactors within 15 years), as a reaction to oil schocks in 1970s. This transformation was faster then what is currently in China (again when compared per capita).

China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that.

If China (and India and …) sees the US and other industrialized doing nothing, why should they do anything?

The most straight-forward way of solving is either through cap-and-trade (like acid rain was dealt with) or 'carbon dividend' (which Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Volker, etc endorsed):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car...

Then you put a 'carbon tariff' on imports for any country that does not have a similar system (e.g., EU's CBAM).

The US could help itself by reducing per capita energy consumption.

Since they don't seem to consider this as an option, why indeed should China or India do anything?

Any nation is free to set a good example.

According to Al Gores movie (shown to US students) we were already supposed to be beyond 2C by now. When the ClimateGate "hide the decline" emails were released that also raised a few eyebrows. So saying the world is now going to 3.5C rings on deaf ears. That's not science that's just the fact of what actually happened so far.

Your narrative is repeated less and less because it isnt compelling.

My narrative is substantially different because the trend was correct and 1.4 vs 2.0 does not prove a negative.

The massive FUD and misinformation campaigns by industrialist operations, along with opportunist/capitalist denials and misdirection, has successfully confused enough of the US public to withold opinion on the matter. This has allowed politics to treat it as a marginal issue where there are 2 sides, rather than a morally catastrophic eventuality.

1.4 vs 2.0 is a massive miss because that diff isn't starting from 20 years ago, but rather a pre-industrial baseline. So the actual diffs are something more like +0.2 (actual) vs +0.8 (predicted) over that 20 ish year interval, and the prediction of the warming trajectory is off several times. (that is if the movie actually said that, which I didn't check).

US energy usage is flat in real terms since 2000 despite skyrocketing population growth. In per capita terms, it's plummeting.

China builds hundreds of coal plants a year while they are exempt from scrutiny.

Don't forget India as well

The 2024 standards required existing coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of carbon emissions or shut down by 2039.

- wow 2039. So this already had no teeth. We can just pass this law again in 2029.

I think this is good idea. I am not against combating climate change, but it can't come at the expanse of our economy. If you disagree stop using whatever device you are reading this on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge

A thought is that from 'their' perspective the potential loss of power and status on the tip top of things is to them existential. Consider a certain Senator being wheeled into the Senate to vote. Why even subject ones self to that. Because to step down is annihilation. There was another Senator in 2023 being wheeled around the same way.

So all of this is performative asserting power in order to punish anyone seen as a threat to the current system.

This is deeply outrageous and criminal. Every American should be ashamed.

Good to see some action away from "climate" regulations ruining the energy sector and making everything downstream more expensive. You can't have a booming industrial economy without cheap energy. And no, having strict regulations that just end up moving production offshore doesn't solve anything. It just moves to pollution to China or India or whatever.

We're already paying for and will continue to pay more for the downstream effects of climate change some way or the other, you just refuse to or are unable to look at the bigger picture.

Tell China and India to stop building coal plants first, and also ban private jets, and then we can talk.

I don't see the point of trying to redefine "pollution" to include CO2. We have been discussing climate change for decades, but it was only recently that people tried to shoehorn CO2 into category of "pollution." It just takes a category where society has some consensus and then shoehorns some new disputed idea into existing category. It's an end-run around the process of building consensus around the new thing.

The first ever version of the "Greenhouse gas" wikipedia page lists CO₂ as the first such gas (besides water vapor, obviously disregarded).

That page is from 2002.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas&ol...

I'm talking about redefining the term "pollution," not the term "greenhouse gas."

Carbon dioxide atmospheric pollution has been acknowledged since literally the 1800s. What era are you from? Are you 200 years old?

Did we call it “pollution” back then or something else? That is, did we lump CO2 conceptually into the same category as soot from coal plants and things like that?

Society uses labels to group things together so that we can treat similar things similarly for various purposes. For example, when we talk about “education” we usually mean teaching kids in schools or colleges. Of course, there’s lots of other things you can call “education.” But if the Department of Education comes in and says it’s going to regulate technical presentations at software conferences because that’s also “education,” then you’d say: “that’s not what people mean by the word education in this context.” That is, we have a consensus about what “education” encompasses and what it doesn’t for purposes of government regulation, and seminars at conferences falls outside that understanding.

Yes, labels matter; so let's take a step back and ask why you're fighting this argument? Why does it matter which of the harmful emissions from a smokestack count as "pollution"?

IPCC first report was 1990, and the basic arithmetic of the atmosphere goes even further back.

This is ridiculous. There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Seriously. The only end run around consensus are lies like "CO2 as polution is a novel thing".

There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition.

Source?

You need a source showing you that greenhouses gasses aren't pollution?

The thing that is also known as "air pollution"?

I want to tell you to stop being a moron, but its against this site's TOS.

In the 1990 IPCC report it talks about “greenhouse gasses” and also about “air pollution” but treats those as two distinct things: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_a.... For example, on page 97, it says “CO2 enrichment” may “enhance plant growth,” but that “enhanced levels of air pollution could also reduce this positive effect.” There’s it’s clearly talking about CO2 and air pollution as two different things that have opposite effects on plant growth.

Is the IPCC also “morons?”

Do you have zero critical thinking skills?

CO2 can be pollution while still allowing plants to grow, plants use CO2 in their growth cycle, if you didn't know, they don't use other greenhouse gases to grow.

Page 9 lists CO2 as the first item in a list of greenhouse gases. I don't want to spend all day read this 37 year old report.

In what world are greenhouse gases not air pollutants?

In a world as of a couple years ago, when nobody called CO2 “air pollutant”.

But that is a lie. CO2 was air polutant 30 years ago 20 years ago and basically forever.

It is only in the post-truth society of right wing anti-climate influencers that apparently someone tries to redefine the terms to exclude it.

You don't have to read the whole report, just search for how it uses the words "greenhouse gases" and "air pollution." The IPCC treats those as being two distinct things.

For example, on p. 55.

"Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g. by air pollution)"

That clearly refers to "air pollution" as an example of "other environmental factors"--something different from "CO2 enrichment" (rising CO2 levels). The report uses the same terminology on pp. 88 and 97. Throughout the report, it treats "greenhouse gasses" as it's own category that can interact with "air pollution"--but is different from air pollution.

It is not weird at all.

A completely useful (and consistent with the modern usage of the word) definition of "pollution" can be worded as:

"anthropogenic alteration of the open environment with negative consequences on ecosystems or society".

Have you heard about noise pollution? Match it with the definition above.

CO2 emitted by combustion from human activities is orders of magnitude more than what any natural biological process emits.

Now you can see why CO2 emitted by fossil fuels combustion is, by any logic, pollution.

So should the EPA be able to regulate noise pollution?

The problem with your definition is that it encompasses basically all of society. Everything humans do alters the environment, mostly for the worse. By embracing such an expansive definition of “pollution,” you’d turn the EPA into a super-regulator of vast swaths of the economy.

Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules. You don’t put logic for process scheduling inside a file system module. It’s the same problem with treating CO2 as an air pollutant. Power generation is 1/6 of the economy. The mix of power generation sources the country should have isn’t just an environmental question. It cuts across society—it implicates the economy, national security, industrial policy, etc. Consider, for example, how Germany’s over-reliance on Russian gas turned into a national security problem for them after Russia invaded Ukraine. An environmental regulator isn’t at the right level to be making that decision.

The good news is the war with Iran has done more to curtail greenhouse gas emissions than basically anything domestically Trump can do.

Violently demonstrating the geopolitical liability of relying on Greenhouse Gasses is more compelling than more climate conferences apparently.

Fossil fuels are like NFTs. Hear me out.

NFTs never made sense. You're buying a short URL on a blockchain in the hopes that it'll somehow retain value. The URL could go bad, it could be pointed at something else, etc. But what NFTs did was induce demand for crypto, particularly Ethereum. That was the point.

For a long time I thought we went to war for oil. No, that's backwards. Our oil dependence exists to induce demand for weapons. I will once again refer to the article No one goes to war over a solar panel [1].

So when you see things like pollution limits being lifted on power plants because of data centers, know that the ultimate driving force is the sale of weapons.

Let me give a concrete example. If I drill a well in West Texas that produces, say, 1000 barrels per day ("bpd"). It doesn't produce that forever. As the pressure goes down, the daily production goes down. In the industry this is called the decline rate. For the Permian Basin, the decline rate of any oil well is typically 15-20% per year. So in year 2, that well will produce 800-850bpd. In year 3, it'll be ~650-700. In year 4 it'll be 500-550.

So if you rely on oil you constantly need to be building new wells to maintain your same production level. For the US, which produces 13-15Mbpd of oil, that means you need to add 2Mbpd of new wells every year just to maintain that level of production.

Oil wells, like any form of resource extraction, are excellent wealth concentrators. They make people rich. If I put up 1GW of solar panels then, apart from some cleaning and general maintenance, they're going to produce 1GW of electricity every year (with some variance for sunshine). Nobody gets rich from that. And nobody needs to go to war for that. Which means nobody gets rich from selling weapons to secure that oil.

[1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...

Im really not seeing the comparison.

nfts were about trying to make inherently not scare things scarce, and to try to get people involved in a ponzi scheme

the oil being drilled and mined is exceptionally useful, and people buy it even when you dont need to go to war or get weapons. War would still be happening in the middle east without oil, its a key trade route between Europe and Asia.

the oil dependence exists because it lets people get work and labour done without hiring labourers.

if you put up 1GW of solar panels, you will definitely get rich off of that, and whenever people start building giant solar farms in borth africa, we will see armed militas conquering each other for control over the profits

There are a multitude of arguments against this:

- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon.

- There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA?

- Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger.

- Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.

- Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real.

This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.

The current wars in Europe and the Middle East paradoxically push the world towards non-fossil enery like few things did before. Both oil and natural gas prices have skyrocketed on global markets, and will likely rise more, as Ukraine continues to target Russian oil infrastructure, and Houtis continue to stymie Saudi oil exports.

Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.

The current wars in Europe and the Middle East could paradoxically push the world towards more domestic energy production, be it fossil or non-fossil energy.

For example in reaction to 1973 Arab oil embargo Carter boosted energy efficiency and solar and promoted coal.

" "America indeed is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and my goal as President of the United States is to see on the world energy markets Arab oil replaced with Illinois coal," Carter told miners and employees of the Old Ben Coal Mine No. 25. He also boasted that the country would, "produce more coal in 1980 than has ever before been produced in the United States of America." "

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/29/1158426645/jimmy-carters-envi...

New coal gasification projects in India

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-clears-4-billi...

The current wars in Europe and the Middle East could paradoxically push the world towards more domestic energy production, be it fossil or non-fossil energy.

Fossil fuel is still going strong and will probably stay so for the next 50 years. Like I just learned Taiwan makes most of its energy from coal and LNG and is set to denuclearize, which blew my mind given their cutting edge manufacturing economy, but kinda makes sense when you factor in their geography and geopolitics.

Global fossil fuel usage fell last year. We are on a trajectory to massively cut out fossil fuels and replace them with renewables. This was before global petroleum movement was blocked through the Strait. Check out the juicy details in the Ember 2026 report[0].

Some highlights:

  Driven by record solar growth, low-carbon power generation increased by 887 TWh in 2025, outpacing electricity demand growth of 849 TWh. Solar power alone met 75% of the net increase in electricity demand. Together with wind, the two sources met almost all (99%) demand growth. For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and only the fifth time this century, fossil generation did not rise, recording a small fall of 38 TWh (-0.2%).

  The global fall in fossil generation was driven by a historic reversal in fossil trends in China and India, the largest and third-largest fossil power countries globally. 2025 was the first year this century when fossil generation fell in both countries. In China, it fell by 56 TWh (-0.9%), marking the first decline since 2015.

  For the first time in 100 years, renewables (33.8%, 10,730 TWh) overtook coal power (33.0%, 10,476 TWh) in the global electricity mix as continued rapid growth in solar and wind pushed the share of renewables above a third of global generation. Coal power dropped 63 TWh (-0.6%) in 2025, marking the first fall since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Combined with continued electricity demand growth, this meant coal fell below a third of global generation for the first time in history.

[0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...

Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.

Except you know, all the actual mining and manufacturing of those things, which isn't in the west but mostly in China.

so what if theyre made in china?

  So what if all our oil comes from the middle east?

  So what if all our gas comes from Russia?

  So what if all chips are made in Taiwan?

  So what if all mobile platforms are from the US?

Hopefully the penny will start to drop. Any minute now.

Except you burn the oil once and keep the solar panel and batteries for one or two decades

You burn a barrel of oil once. A solar panel lasts for 20+ years. After you have installed it, if China announces they will no longer sell new ones - you have two decades of lead time to start building your own domestically.

No you don’t.

You have 20 years minus one day, as every day elapses.

Existing installed solar capacity is degrading at one day per day.

Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though;

For now.

The majority of solar panels are made in China (85%), and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years, possibly as soon as 2027, at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production or defend Taiwan and cut ourselves off from the source of almost all manufactured products, and especially solar panels.

Taiwan cannot make chips without western inputs and spare parts, so China taking over Taiwan or Korea or Japan doesn’t really give them access to making those chips.

and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years

Can you share your sources for that valuable intelligence? Military analysts would really be interested to learn that. Or is that form the same manufactured scaremongering genre as "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons" and "Iraq has WMDs" to justify endless defense spending, military interventions and warmongering.

at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production

You can't just commandeer semi fabs like you're carjacking a Hyundai for a joyride. Semi fabs need constant parts and on-prem staff and always-on telemetry from ASML & friends to run. If that's gone, you're left with a very expensive warehouse that can't do shit.

You don't build out a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft, mobile piers, and other similar Navy ships that can only be used for invading another country via the sea... for self-defense. These have one purpose, and China is mass-producing them.

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-CHINA/TAIWAN-INVASION/z...

https://www.ft.com/content/36a00ba4-6178-4267-9786-3e0b59abe...

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-taiwan-military-naval-...

"Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons"

It is the breakout time, not the schedule.

It is incredible to me how pervasive the misunderstanding of this statement is!

I've had real-life conversations with project managers just like this:

PM: "How long would this project take?"

Me: "One month."

... two weeks later ...

PM: "How long would the project take to finish?"

Me: "One month."

PM: "You said that two weeks ago! It should only take two weeks to finish!"

Me: "Why would you think that? We never started the project! It wasn't approved. You didn't approve it, personally. The effort is four weeks. If you approve and we start today, it will still take that long to complete."

... two more weeks later ...

PM: "Why isn't the project finished!? You said one month a month ago!"

Me: "... wat?"

You don't build out a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft, mobile piers, and other similar Navy ships that can only be used for invading another country via the sea... for self-defense.

Firstly, this take is poorly thought out from a facts perspective, needlessly alarmist and mostly just FUD.

The fact is that China has thousands of islands in its territory already. So how else would their military be able to DEFEND those islands WITHOUT "a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft" capable of landing troops and material on islands that they own? It doesn't mean they 100% WILL invade Taiwan just because they have them, like you claim.

Secondly, the three news sources you then quoted are just your typical clickbaity mainstream media with nothing to lose if they are wrong in their alarmist predictions or just blatantly lie like they often do to manipulate people and financial markets, especially given their incentives and ties to politics and the wealthy elite.

So telling people on HN with 100% certainty China will invade Taiwan in the near future just because you read something about China's drills of Taiwan invasion in the MSM, just gets you more egg on your face that nobody can take your takes on this seriously. I'm 100% sure that the US Navy also regularly has drills on nuking China and Russia from their submarines, that doesn't mean they're actually planning to do it anytime soon with no provocation. So please, stop turning what is bland vanilla news into alarmist FUD.

thousands of islands in its territory already

Chinas has hundreds (not thousands) of islands in its territory, which has increased from 287 in 2019 to 431 in 2026. This is not "defense".

nobody can take your takes on this seriously.

Russia moved mobile crematoriums up to the Ukraine border in February 2022, and people still dismissed the chances of their invasion as vanishingly unlikely.

Dismissing an obvious military buildup from a country that has plainly stated their intentions is an error.

But the solar panels we already have don't suddenly stop working, which is an important difference between sourcing solar panels from a potential enemy and sourcing raw fossil fuels from one. There's also nothing stopping the US or other trading partners from making solar panels, China is just the most convenient and cheapest source as it is for many other things. And to that point, the end of trade between the US and China would be incredibly damaging to both countries whether or not we buy solar panels from them now.

I asked Claude, and now I know that there are nice, basically undetectable, plausibly deniable ways to render solar panels useless within months, or, with some preparation, days. It seems that open-source, carefully scrutinized panel controller firmware may be critically important.

Your Claude may have been hallucinating - solar panels have no microcontrollers or microprocessors, and hence have no need for firmware. Battery Charge controllers -- that are downstream of panels do have firmware, but even if a booby-trapped firmware were to short-circuit the panels, they'd be undamaged.

Solar panels are usually connected to inverters or other power circuits that make the variable voltage they provide usable as a stable source downstream.

During operation a string of solar cells is under a pretty high voltage. It makes sodium ions from the covering glass infiltrate slowly into the silicon, potentially ruining the p-n junction ("potential-induced degradation", PID). Usually an industry-grade panel controller applies a reverse voltage during night time, to drive the sodium ions back from the silicon. A rogue controller might instead apply the same voltage, accelerating PID instead of reverting it (and kill it in several months). A really insidious producer might add a strip of extra sodium-rich material near the normal electric conductors, which would be triggered by voltage higher than normal operation to flood the silicon with sodium (and kill it in several days).

It's fun watching the right wing try to square this circle. Especially in the UK where we import most of our fossil fuels.

We could have sovereign control over our energy supply with renewables and electrification. Yay, we become a great sovereign nation free to do whatever we want with our great British energy supply!

But no, the right wing answer is to develop a couple of gas fields in the north sea that would supply a tiny amount of actual energy requirements, and do nothing for prices as it all goes into a global trading platform.

I know the reason, it's hard to say no to all that money from the fossil industry, and walk back decades of indoctrinating your base at their behest. Even if it means making your country energy independent...

It's really sad comparing the UK with Norway. The latter did "drill baby drill" before it was cool, but almost exclusively for exports. Some of that money has been invested in rapid electrification - so that Norway can export even more!

Meanwhile, the left in the UK doesn't want to drill (so less money for electrification) while the right in the UK doesn't want to electrify (so less money due to more imports). Why doesn't anyone want to copy the Norwegian model?

The Norwegian model works because:

- Norway had and still has a lot more oil in their part of the North Sea than the UK does

- Norway has a vastly smaller population than the UK; more than ten times smaller (5.6m versus 69m). Each Norwegian gets 10x more money coming in than they would as UK citizens, just from demographics.

- Norway gambled by having the state directly invest in drilling (Statoil), while UK governments (both Labour in the 1960s and Conservative in the 1970s) refused to invest public money in drilling. Instead they let commercial companies find the money, the government merely licensed and taxed. The reason they did this was that Britain didn't have enough capital available to fund drilling at the time oil was discovered; it was the "sick man of Europe"

- Norway put its oil money into a state pension fund which continues to pay dividends today. Margaret Thatcher spent the oil money on rejuvenating the London Docklands, which admittedly did improve London's standing as the centre of global finance, which is what currently brings in most money for the UK. Perhaps if she didn't do that then financial companies might have moved elsewhere, we don't know that for sure. What we do know is she didn't spend it rejuvenating anywhere else in the country, like Scotland, Wales and Northern England after she shut the coal mines and steel mills and bought in foreign coal and steel.

At least they haven't relaxed restrictions on sulfur dioxide emissions, etc.. yet. Making rain acidic again would be completely on brand for this administration.

Fossil fuel power plants are unfortunately still profitable for their owners (billionaires...). The cost of building them has mostly been written off a long time ago. None of this is about what is good for America in the long run...

- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it

That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.

Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind

That's false. Coal power is cheaper than all of those. Solar and wind include costs for expensive battery backups since they are highly volatile.

And to make it clear: Climate change is very bad so coal plants are very bad. But that doesn't mean you can go around and claim that coal isn't cheap compared to things like solar+batteries. The fact that something is good doesn't imply that it is cheap.

This price of electricity is high because gas, which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1]. The levelized cost of electricity for solar (including batteries) and wind is cheaper than coal [2].

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of... [2] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...

I will believe it when I see it. The only countries with both cheap and clean electricity are those that built out extensive nuclear or got lucky enough to have access to other forms of cheap base load like hydro / geothermal.

Australia would disagree: https://www.energy.gov.au/news/new-energy-plan-daily-window-...

Becaude, as we all know, taxpayer-funded == free.

And we banned nuclear, since it's scary.

It's not taxpayer funded, the grid has an overabundance of daytime solar that exceeds their capacity to store it.

Here in Queensland the state owns the regional electricity company, Ergon. ∴ most of what they do that doesn't generate money (such as doing free electricity rather than charging for it) is taxpayer-funded.

Germany's decommissioned nuclear, and subsequent concentration of base load in Russian gas-fired plants, is certainly a lede your post is doing its best to bury.

Coal isn't cheap. Specifically coal powerplants are not and it's got nothing to do with emissions. One of the pinch points in the Australian power grid has actually been that a bunch of coal plants are aging out and no private enterprise wants to even bother financing their replacement because it's a money loser compared to renewables build out.

Fortunately this is well on it's way to being solved by the massive battery build out which has happened which means evening peak electricity usage has declined enormously[1] - i.e the primary "sun not shining" point of the day is rapidly turning into an energy use low point for the grid (which makes sense: business powers down, people go home and their batteries which have been charging cover cooking - I have an induction cook top and a 10kw inverter covers everything).

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/15/austr...

There could be other regulatory and tax hurdles to an Australian coal build-out. We know that coal is at least as cheap as nuclear, and that the electricity prices went up sharply when Germany replaced much of its nuclear energy with solar energy. Therefore coal is cheaper than solar. The mistake that most people make is that they don't include the highly expensive battery or gas backups during the night in the cost of solar.

I have to wonder if this is a play towards coal miners, who are part of the conservative base - and they need every vote they can get. Coal is an awful source of power, and a really big source of pollution.

I doubt they really care about coal miners’ actual votes. The US coal mining industry employs fewer than 50,000 people. I live in a major coal producing state and while it was an important industry in my grandparents’ time, these days it isn’t a particularly noteworthy share of our economy.

I would say if it’s specifically about coal at all, it’s more because of the GOP’s tendency toward weird nostalgic obsessions.

This headline is rather sweeping considering the modest nature of the change, which is merely rolling back regulations to 2024 levels.

you're comparing years, not standards. i hope you're just foolish and not intentionally disingenuous.

"The 2024 standards required existing coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of carbon emissions or shut down by 2039, which would have reduced carbon pollution by an estimated 1.38 billion metric tons through 2047"

Before the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal limits were much weaker—and for existing power plants, there was effectively no operative federal CO₂ limit at all.

My point is that after a large change, reversion to the mean should not be treated breathlessly, but viewed in a measured manner.

Before the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal limits were much weaker—and for existing power plants, there was effectively no operative federal CO₂ limit at all.

This is an exaggeration that stretches credulity, since there have been strict limits for decades around secondary outputs that are required by power plant energy production effectively limiting production and emissions (which is the entire point).

The real irony is that, despite all this, Trump may accidentally become the greenest US president by driving up the price of oil for the whole world. For years to come.

I mean, anyone can say they're for the environment, but are you willing to start a war, lose a midterm, and murder a school full of kids to reduce your carbon footprint? /s

This is cope. Oil, gas, and coal are dead, and with them, America’s control over the global financial system, and its political hegemony.

America is actively ceding the future to China, and our ruling class have no ideas left other than looting the place as it’s burning to the ground.

China invested heavily into oil, gas, and coal for energy. Their coal use is still expanding, just like their big investments in solar, wind, and nuclear. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-coal-power-ri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China

By 2025, coal accounted for approximately 54.6% of China's electricity generation

The linked article doesn’t say what you think it does.

It says that China’s use of coal this year is increasing after a multi-year trend of leveling off or decreasing, mainly because China is using coal in place of LNG imports made more expensive due to the U.S. attacks against Iran.

The overall trend is very clear — China is expanding both its supply of electricity, and generation from renewable sources, at the same time. Which we should also be doing in the United States.

Leveling off means it's declining as a percentage share of all energy usage... but China's total energy usage has grown massively during that time, and so has investment in coal business which has kept up with demand. See in chart form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_China#/media/...

2025 also saw China commission 78 GW of new coal power capacity, which is more than India’s net coal power additions over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2024, even though India operates the world’s second-largest coal power fleet. https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/built-peak-coal-pow...

The last time the US built a large new coal operation was 13yrs ago. China has done great things with renewables and nuclear, but that's because they build absolutely everything available, which is why their energy is so much cheaper in China than North America and Europe. Which translates into manufacturing plants being much cheaper to run.

I'm so tired of this.

Please someone bring back people with critical thinking abilities.

Like the greens in Germany who decided it's best to shut down nuclear power plants?

It's eerie how often this lie gets repeated here.

It wasn't the Greens that decided this for Germany. It was our conservatives, the CDU/CSU. The latter had high-ranking officials literally threaten to step down, unless Germany exits nuclear energy production.

The greens could have stopped it, especially after the invasion started, but they did it anyway.

Ideology > common sense.

Crazy idea: Power Plants could still do the right thing.

I know HN has lots of American readers, so maybe they can explain.

Why aren't the vast majority of America's suburban single family dwellings using rooftop solar? Huge numbers of Americans live in these homes - they're not so much a thing, especially to this degree, in other countries and they seem basically ideal for rooftop solar.

Am I missing something here?

The data that I've seen shows that the barriers to solar adoption for the average American home are high installation cost, low grid power cost, unfavorable net metering agreements for grid interconnect, and even some pushback from neighborhood committees (homeowners association aka HOA).

There are exceptions such as Hawaii where grid power is expensive and sunshine abundant, but the US is big, geographically diverse, and because of that adoption varies greatly on regional dynamics.

1) The Roof Explanation

US homes are stick built. The roofs are not concrete, they are shingles. This is the single biggest bottleneck. On concrete, its super easy to add a simple steel frame, add panels and done.

Shingles have a shelf life of ~25 years. Most people buy old homes. And the roof is somewhere in the middle of its life. Its usually better to replace the roof and add solar at the same time.

The people who buy new homes have already maxed out their budget (people buy the biggest home they can afford, maxing out the downpayment) and they aren't thinking of adding solar rightaway.

2) Americans are pro fossil fuel (thanks to fossil fuel shills). Installers spend a third to half the money on door to door salesmen. This cost is absent in other countries.

3) US govts make solar unbelievably costly, by regulatory capture, tarriffs, banning panels from China. And they create perverse incentives of subsidies which make the installation costlier because it has to go through licensed installer to avail of the subsidy. The licensed installers always charge top dollar because its a captured market.