A Sliding Scale
Making things worse
Posted on 02 Aug 24
by Mark Hodgson
Earlier this week the news broke that the United Kingdom has dropped out of the top ten manufacturing nations in the world, for the first time since records began. Indeed, given that the UK is the birthplace of the industrial revolution, it’s possibly the first time that it hasn’t been in the top ten for a quarter of a millennium. The decline has been rapid and dramatic – from 8th in 2021, to 12th place in 2022 (presumably we will have to wait another year for the 2023 figures). The top ten manufacturing countries are listed here. The list isn’t very surprising. In order, the countries are:
China
The World Population Review (WPR) website has to be treated with some caution, though the rankings seem straightforward. The caveat I apply is that it lists China in first place with a 31.63% share of global manufacturing, but then goes on to cite the US Statistics Division, which puts it at 28.4%.
Those statistics (whichever are correct) relate to 2022. Meanwhile, so far as concerns the sources of China’s electricity in 2023, we learn that “[c]oal still accounted for nearly 60% of China’s electricity supply in 2023, indicating that record-high solar and wind capacity growths were yet to lead to a ramp up in power production, government-backed industrial association China Electricity Council (CEC) said in a report published Jan. 31.[2024].”
United States
https://cliscep.com/2024/08/02/a-sliding-scale/
