alt Hacker NewsThings can always change, but today China is significantly more dependent on petrochemicals than the US. I'm not sure what you're referring to with regards to agriculture, both the US and China have strong food industries that produce plenty of foods containing protein.
Things are changing.
In 2023 China had more net new solar capacity than the US has in total, and it will only climb from there. In order to do this, they're flexing muscles in R&D and mass production that the US has actually started to flex, and now will face extreme headwinds and decreased capital investment.
Regarding agriculture: America's agricultural powerhouse, California's Central Valley, is rapidly depleting its water supplies. The midwest is depleting its topsoil at double the rate that USDA considers sustainable.
None of this is irreversible or irrecoverable, but it very clearly requires some countervailing push on market forces. Market forces do not naturally operate on these types of time scales and repeatedly externalize costs to neighbors or future generations.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35582-x
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/57-billion-tons-of...