How China outguns the US on clean energy

What we once were, and I grew up in in my earlier years, long ago now, others have already past that and are quickly moving forward from there!

Military v climate spending: How China outguns the US on clean energy

SolveClimate: China is spending 1/6th as much as the US on its military and investing twice as much on clean energy technology

Employees inspect solar panels at a workshop in Chint Solar Co factory in Hangzhou. While US military spending dwarfs China's, China spends more than twice the amount on clean energy as the US. Photograph: Lang Lang/Reuters

12 January 2011 - While China is already boasting "All aboard!" on a network of sleek passenger trains that zip 200 mph and beyond between major urban centres, the United States is still fussing about where to install a single high-speed rail line for a proposed California project.

That's just a snapshot of how this country continues to lag behind its Asian competitor on the clean technology front.

Can America ever catch up? Yes, says Washington research fellow Miriam Pemberton. But it means taking a $100 billion-dollar bite out of the defense budget annually.

But prospects for that look dim. Many key leaders in a Republican-majority House have declared the Department of Defense off limits—even as they claim to be wielding hatchets for slicing away "waste" to lift the country out of economic doldrums.

An inside-the-Beltway defense contractor who asked to speak off the record told SolveClimate News in an interview that Congress won't be lopping significant amounts from the defense budget any time soon. And even if it did, that money would not be redirected toward a clean technology deficit. {continued}