I edited the headline. Thanks.

At the same time, China is betting on the Arctic shipping route despite warnings by environmental groups that growing traffic along the route will accelerate Arctic sea ice loss that is already driven by global warming, with devastating effects on nature and indigenous people.

Well, the subhead refers explicitly to her push to "externalise" EU borders ... together with the headline, this makes no sense.

I get what you mean, but the people in Iran (or in Lebanon and Jordan) wouldn't see any of that money.

I provided several examples why @[email protected]'s post is disinformation. Feel free to do the same in my posts if you think the information is wrong or misleading.

Another piece of disinformation and half-truth from OP from a questionable source.

Canada suspended the consumer carbon tax, but it increases the Industrial Carbon Tax to $170 per tonne by 2030.

The EU has done a lot of things, one is the bloc's goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 (for comparison: China has set this goal for 2060, don't know whether the U.S. has any such goal at the moment). Another point is the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAM) which essentially makes companies pay if they produce in countries with lower environmental standards (China, Russia, and India have criticized the law an 'discriminatory).

Regarding climate action, you may see how Europe, Canada, and others compare to the U.S. and China, the two largest economies, in the Climate Action Tracker.

[Edit typo.]

The CBAM is based on data, but it is clear that China has no interest in transparency. It is one of the major countries that oppose heavily transparent supply chains. That aside, the claim that 'the data is not known' or 'can't be collected' is hilarious when it comes from governments like China that is fixated to collect its every citizen's move 24/7.

This is just an excuse to use climate change to make money without really doing anything to combat climate change.

China burns more fossil fuels than anyone else. If they want to avoid the carbon tariffs, they can just improve their environmental laws to the high EU standards and all is fine.

It might apply also to India, but particularly China can't afford to stop exporting given Beijing's mercantist policy and weak domestic markets. China's economy depends on foreign markets, and the EU is a big one.

This isn't true. The data is known. Countries like China can simply avoid the carbon tariffs by improving their environmental laws to the high EU standards, but Beijing has no interest. They just want to produce cheap and continue burning fossil fuels.

The major cost burden in the car industry isn't attributed to labour but to suppliers.

European brands treat their suppliers much better than their rivals from other continents do, particularly those from China.

Chinese EVs aren't only so cheap because of forced labour, a 996 working culture, weak labour rights, acess to cheap land and loans, and subsidies. There are more reasons, one of them being its practice to squeeze its suppliers.

As one investigation reveals about Chinese supplier payment float,

... Another way Chinese OEMs lower costs is by minimizing financing needs through very long supplier payment terms. In 2023–24, BYD took an average of about 155 days to pay suppliers, Geely 149 days, and Leapmotor a staggering 225 days. This stands in sharp contrast to Western peers, whose payment terms are far shorter—roughly 60 days for Tesla, 43 for Volkswagen, and 41 for Toyota—indicating that they have not followed their Chinese rivals’ practices.

While this practice benefits OEM cash flow, it has severe consequences for suppliers, limiting their ability to reinvest in capex and R&D and potentially undermining quality—posing longer-term risks for China’s auto industry. Beijing has begun to rein in excessive payment delays, but enforcement has been slow. In 2025, Chinese OEMs’ payment terms remained far longer than those of Western counterparts ...

China's leading carmaker BYD even controls suppliers with D-chain, a 'inhouse' payment system,

BYD typically follows a net 30 to 60 payment cycle, with the D-chain system adding an additional six to eight months to that period. In practice, that stretches the total payment period to between eight and 10 months.

That approach greatly reduces BYD’s financial pressure, but is to the considerable disadvantage of its suppliers.

By tying its suppliers to the D-chain platform, BYD can integrate them into its own financial ecosystem, tightening control over its supply chain.

The model also allows BYD to circumvent traditional financial oversight, as it avoids issuing regular commercial paper and standard banking transactions.

Feel free to use your own translation. You'll see there's nothing made up.

Just last week, Nature published a study that found the world’s population susceptible to water risks is concentrated in two of the 58 IPCC reference regions

In assessing future climate change risks the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] makes use of 58 standardized geographical reference regions. Based on six water-related stressors and the affected population living a each of the 58 IPCC regions, the investigation finds that

East Asia and ... South Asia [fare facing a] disproportionate share of risk ... Together, these two regions account for 67% of populations globally susceptible to groundwater depletion, 60% for floods, 48% for eutrophication and overuse. ... South Asia’s share of global population-adjusted water risk is especially pronounced, accounting for 50% of the global population susceptible to groundwater stress, 38% to floods, and 35% to overuse ...

Eutrophication scores are particularly high in Western/Central Europe as well as in East Asia, because these regionst feature a combination of intensive agriculture and relatively high populations, according to the study.

The majority of costs - including for labour - is spent by suppliers. Your calculation and the possible inference that people earn only a small share of tve entire revenue is too simplistic as it paints a misleading picture.

(I made a longer comment in this thread regarding this issue and how international carmakers compare to each other.)

This is too simplistic. The majority of costs at VW and other carmakers are spent for their suppliers, not for labour. This means carmakers pay a lot more of their suppliers' workforce than they pay for their own people.

Nah, as the article says:

Europe has cut gas consumption by roughly 15%–20% compared with 2021. Industry has [also] reduced gas use ...

Contrary to that, gas production in the U.S. has increased, despite domestic demand for gas has declined in 2026.

In China, however, the government plans to increase both oil and gas supply according to the country's 15th Five-Year Plan for Oil and Natural Gas Development, setting new 2030 targets:

• China's domestic oil and gas supply is expected to reach 440 Mtoe by 2030, up from 420 Mtoe in 2025 (+5%).
• China plans to add 20,000 km of long-distance oil and gas pipelines, increasing the national trunk pipeline network to 220,000 km by the end of the decade.
• Onshore natural gas import capacity is set to increase to 114 bcm/year, alongside the construction of strategic projects, including the Hainan-Guangdong gas pipeline and the Lianyungang-Yizheng crude oil pipeline.
• LNG import capacity is targeted to reach 200 Mt/year by 2030, while natural gas storage capacity should exceed 13% of annual domestic gas consumption.

it is noteworthy that China - already the largest producer and consumer of coal - is planning to further increase its coal burning, expecting to reach the peak in 2030.

So, Europe seems on a relatively good path among the larger economies, although we are not set to reach the Paris goal that way.

Current German government sometimes feels a bit like the cheap copy of the US…

Maybe, but it's more a cheap copy of China, as fossil fuel (and particularly coal) plays a much larger role than in Germany or the rest of the EU. China is the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world, and the country plans to increase its coal energy in the next 5 years.

@[email protected]

Fixed. Thanks.

The democratic world has been slow in its reaction to a new world reality so far, and we have seen where this can lead in Ukraine. There are increasingly signs of improvements imho. Still not enough, but at least we are awakening aware to the threats posed by authoritarian regimes around the globe, particularly China and Russia.

Ms. Reiche is clearly on the wrong track if she gets what she aims at. What I don't understand is that while many are criticizing Germany for these plans, while a country like China - which is using much more and an increasing volume of such fossil fuels - is literally hailed for its energy policy, even though what happens in the country is much worse than in Europe.