Many US solar factories are lagging. Except those China owns

Climate change is real. China feels like the only country treating it like its real. I see stories about a country investing heavily in renewable energy, in EVs, in energy storage, and i dont understand why theyre not getting unanimous applause.

I think you may be misattributing China's motives. Yes, China is heavily investing in EVs, batteries, and non-carbon energy generation (solar, wind, hydro). However they're not doing it because of their deep desire to be green or concern over climate change. They're doing it because China's geography is energy poor in a very energy hungry nation. China has just a tiny fraction of fossil fuel sources located in their national borders. That's a really bad position when your nation is dependent on other nations for the energy you need to grow your food and run your economy. This is why they're maxed out on:

• oil and gas imports from russia: In 2023, Russia became China's top source of crude oil imports, supplying 19% of China's crude oil imports (2.1 million b/d)
• coal imports from Australia China's first quarter coal imports surge, defying gloomy forecasts

In fact while the rest of the world is retiring coal for power generation, China is responsible for building 95% of the world's new coal power plants.

Other countries are mad because they’re doing better than them and want to drag them down to our gas SUV dependent level.

Except they're not doing better in reducing carbon emissions. Not only are they the largest global producer of CO2, they keep dramatically increasing carbon emissions year over year while the rest of the industrialized nations are plateauing or reducing (beside India).

Other countries should feel nothing but shame for not treating climate change like its real.

If we're looking at just the numbers (which, I admit, is an incomplete conversation), China is the one that is not treating climate change as real.

Because the heavy positives come with some heavy negatives. China is an authoritarian nation that is making huge leaps and bounds here by using unilateral and undemocratic command to shift their nation state. They have near zero labor safety practices and are 100% happy to strip mine theirs or a foreign nation to get the resources to produce these important and valuable goods.

The heavy, direct influence of a billion+ person goverment dumping untold resources into producing EVs/Solar/etc at dirt cheap rates, then selling them, means that no other country can create it's own independent industry in these very important products. That leaves climate change, and the worlds fate, in the hands of said authoritarian government, a, goverment that is still glad to spin up untold coal plants/oil plants/etc. That's partly why tariffs have been springing up, although that's also just flat out economic protectionism too.

Basically, China is brutally efficient here because they are brutal. Countires that are not cant compete or applaud this because its based on destruction of people, and democracies aren't nominally a fan of that.

The other point here, past the brutality aspect, is that even if China was a shining example of democracy, you still don't want one nation to be the only one that can produce these key climate change goods. Their oncoming recession is likely going to cause lots of issues with their progress here, so other countries spinning up these industries, even with teething pains, is a positive.