Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Harrabin strikes again!
US climate change envoy John Kerry has urged the world’s top 20 polluters which create 81% of emissions between them to reduce CO2 immediately.
He was speaking after meeting Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other senior UK figures in London to plan two upcoming international climate summits.
He praised the UK for phasing out coal, and for its “ambitious” climate goals.
But he told BBC Newsnight that the UK – along with other major nations – must deliver their proposed emissions cuts.
“China, the US, Russia, India, the EU, Korea, Japan and others all have to be part of this effort,” he said. “Twenty countries. Eighty one percent of the emissions.”
Asked during the interview whether the UK should be planning a controversial new coal mine in Cumbria, he replied: “The marketplace has made a decision that coal is not the future.
“All over the world people have made a decision to move to cleaner fuel than coal, which is the dirtiest fuel in the world. In America and elsewhere …most banks will tell you we’re not going to fund a new coal plant.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56321456
Meanwhile back in the real world:
NEW DELHI: State-run Coal India Ltd (CIL) has approved 32 mining projects in the current financial year till January, which may see investment to the tune of around Rs 47,300 crore as the company seeks to replace imports and move towards its 1 billion tonne coal production target by 2023-34.
While 24 of the 32 are an expansion of the existing projects, the rest eight are new greenfield projects. “Scripting a record high…CIL approved 32 coal mining projects in the current fiscal till January 2021,” the PSU said. CIL board and boards of the respective subsidiary companies have given their nod for the move
The combined incremental peak capacity of these projects is projected at 193 million tonnes per annum (mtpa).
CIL’s three subsidiaries South Eastern Coalfields, Central Coalfields and Mahanadi Coalfields with 167 mtpa form the bulk at 86.5 per cent. This will be in addition to the already sanctioned capacity of 303.5 mtpa. India’s coal users imported a record 248.5 million tons of the fuel in FY20. The miner has lined up a total investment of about Rs 92,000 crore for its coal projects with an aim to achieve one billion production target which include likely investment in coal evacuation infrastructure, mining infrastructure, project development and social infrastructure. However, CIL is also coming up with an estimated likely investment of about Rs 1.26 lakh crore involving 506 projects which include likely investment in clean coal and diversification initiatives.
To put these numbers into perspective, the sanctioned projects totalling 167 and 303 Mtpa, making 470 Mt, compare to India’s current coal output of 756 Mtpa. As the article states, the plan is to reach 1 billion tonnes by 2024.
A crore is 10 million, so Rs 92000 crore equates to roughly £9bn.
Cumbria Mine
The interviewer, Emily Maitlis, plainly attempted to draw Kerry into influencing the Cumbrian mine decision, something that would be totally improper for a US politician:
Asked during the interview whether the UK should be planning a controversial new coal mine in Cumbria,
Maybe she should have explained to him that it is a metallurgical coal mine, for making coke and not burning in power stations. It is clear that Kerry knew nothing about it all, no doubt to the disgust of the BBC who have been treating it as if it were some global calamity, as he obviously did not know it was for coking. If he had, he would have had to admit that the US is still producing and exporting millions of tonnes of the stuff every year. Indeed, last year 800,000 tonnes of it came straight here!
https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/
Kerry knows full well that there is no practical alternative to the use of coke in iron and steelmaking.
Maybe he should tell Roger Harrabin!
>Kerry knows full well that there is no practical alternative to the use of coke in iron and steelmaking.
I think you’re giving him too much credit here…
He knows exactly what he’s doing … making governments bigger and individual freedoms smaller … typical Leftist. It has nothing to do with climate or energy — just power and money. If they really wanted energy — they’d go nuclear.
Damn you Lurch!
Exactly. He wants them to tell him to f-off so the useless idiot democrats can get paid for whining for another 4 years and beyond.
Jeeeeezus, they’ve been solving the plight of black people in this country for what – 200 years now. I doubt that solving the plight of children being fried by climate (or frozen, or drowned in sea level rise) is gonna have those kinds of legs.
Democrats have been “solving” the plight of black people in this country for just short of 60 years. Before that, they were causing their plight.
To be fair, many black people live in Democrat-run cities where the Democrats continue their long-standing policies of causing their plight.
They’ve always been causing their plight. They were open about it when they were the pro-slavery party. The only thing that has changed is that now they make things worse while pretending to be making them better.
Actually, the Democrats are still the primary cause for the plight of blacks. And poor people everywhere.
The black family was as stable and maybe even a little more stable than were white families prior to the 1960’s. All that was needed was to get rid of the Democrat passed laws that were isolating blacks economically. Instead the Democrats decided to lock blacks into a new plantation, welfare.
How much wood would Shewchuk chuck if Shewchuk could chuck wood?
He wouldn’t, he’s not an idiot, he’d go nuclear 😉
If two can do what one can do, what can one toucan do?
…
Fly.
China and India rejecting renewables for coal-fired futures.
https://www.cfact.org/2020/02/20/china-and-india-rejecting-renewables-for-coal-fired-futures/
Summary: Take notice that China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, are rejecting renewables for coal fired power plants. The countries of the United States, Germany, and Australia are attempting to take on the leadership to convert the world from fossil fuels and all the derivatives that emanate from petroleum to makes things and move products around the world, for intermittent electricity from renewable wind and solar. How China and India use energy is obviously of great importance to world emissions levels, since coal is the dirtiest form of scalable, reliable, affordable, and abundant energy currently available to the billions in the developing world.
With modern emissions equipment, coal is not all that dirty anyway. Of course, they keep conflating CO2 with “pollution,” which it is NOT.
THIS!
IndiaEverybody Ignores John KerryKerry can’t be taken serious.
Well, not enough do. At least in the US. I think Kerry pretty much will be ignored by every world leader as he has no cabinet position in the US and they understand there is a “man behind the curtain” cabal of liberal billionaires who are actually running the Biden Administration with Barack Obama as their hidden point man talking to his moles in the White House and to VP Harris.
Kerry and Susan Rice were placed in the White House by Obama telling Biden this was “The Plan.” This all was essentially hatched a year ago when the Democrats and their billionaire backers were in a panic over the circular firing squad that was happening in the Democrat’s primaries in the battle for the nomination. The COVID pandemic was god-send to them as an excuse to keep Joe hidden in the basement. It was a sacrifice of a cognitively functioning candidate made in order to stop that intra-party bloodbath and prevent Bernie Sanders from taking the DNC nomination on a 2nd vote in their convention. Deals were made with Buttigieg, Warren, and Klobuchar to bow out. Rough outlines made how Harris once the Biden Cabinet position nominees were confirmed, would take out Old Joe via the 25th Amendment, Section 4.
The sweeteners were tossed to those who had to bow out. Buttigieg is now Secretary of Transportation. Klobuchar or Warren were probably promised to be the appointed VP, the other getting some other plum down the road, when Kamala Harris and Biden’s own senior cabinet secretaries toss Dementia Joe out to pasture.
It’s all slowing playing out now like a good Shakespearean play. And Kerry is as always… just a useful idiot.
At this point, there is no difference between Dementia Zhou and Crazed Bernie.
That’s because Dementia Joe is in charge of nothing in his White House. That was made vividly clear during his video-teleconference session last week with Congressional Democrats. If you didn’t see it, the Big Clue came at the end. Dementia Joe asked his fellow Democrats if they had any question they’d like him to address. The video conference call was then abruptly ended by the White House staff.
The White House staff has clearly been instructed by someone (and not the President himself) not to allow Dementia Joe to take any unscripted questions… in any setting. Tomorrow’s planned first live reporter with live TV coverage briefing from Joe himself will be interesting. There’s no telling what will come out of Joe’s mouth once he starts stumbling, and the live TV will be there to capture it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if when Joe starts his inevitable stumbling that the White Staff will be poised with a k1ll switch on the live TV feeds to keep the public from seeing how badly deteriorated is Joe’s cognition and memory.
Everyone should demand a State of the Union speech from Joey….that will be very interesting.
There is almost tragedy in a man who has spent his entire career seeking to become POTUS, only to be mentally AWOL once he finally achieves his ambition.
Satan has a dark sense of humor. Biden sold his soul for power and all he got was a fake Presidency when he was too senile to notice.
In fairness, he was an idiot all along
It’s interesting that whenever someone from this administration talks with a foreign leader, it’s usually Harris, and she usually does it with no input from Joe.
I think you have dementia Joe mixed up with dementia Ronnie . but Ron made it thru eight years in the WH with documented dementia .
Did Reagan show any signs of dementia during his 1st term? Did he show signs at the start of his 2nd term?
Biden was showing signs at the beginning of the campaign season.
There is no valid comparison of the two.
At least demented Reagan did everything possible to prevent WWIII and brought down the Soviet Union. Demented Biden wants to start WWIII and bring down the United States.
Do you have any evidence, or is hatred still enough for you?
PM Turdeau of Canada does not ignore Kerry but your claim is still correct.
Even Teresa ignores John Kerry.
On the other hand most love Indian curry…
Ignoring is the name of the PR game. Kerry will ignore India when declaring mission accomplishments or praising carbon taxes and regulations or wealth transfers in the West.
He is not an India
naJo(h)nes 😀When referring to him, PLEASE use his proper title: The Traitor John F. Kerry.
Thank you.
He’s not even an Indian-American!
If Kerry wants to be taken seriously in India, he should identify as an Indian.
If you can self-identify as a woman regardless of the plumbing you were born with, why can’t you self-identify as an Indian-American?
Kerry dressing in Nehi jackets and dancing in India streets with trudeau?
Nausea and horror, all in one show.
Civis Indicus Sum!
That would be sweet.
Didn’t work out well for Trudeau.
No (real) news is good news in the glorious mission of Kerry in global affairs. The free world desperately needs web cams, satellite photos, and onsite interviews to counter the Kerry Carbon-free Potemkin Villages.
Look up pseudo-intellectual in the dictionary: To think like John Kerry and make asinine statements. Also see Joe Biden.
Look up any prominent leftist.
AGW is in the rear view mirror. Defeating Capitalism is on the radar. China, India, Russia, and more countries understand what prosperity brings and won’t be denied.
Coal, and then petroleum, now natural gas continue to fuel economic growth. Going back to 14th Century windmill wind-harvesting technology for power will in fact return Western societies to the 14th Century and the feudalism that existing then between Lords of the land and the peasants.
It’s what CCP want. Their game-plan, with the help of their paid-for Quislings. But Biden is not the one to fight back.
Well done, India. There is no climate emergency, and we need MORE CO2, not less.
The cricket is way more important, given that India is the best team in the world, having beaten Australia and, just recently, hammered England.
Climate change contributes to dodgy cricket wickets, anyone?
(Sorry Americans. That’s probably a bit inscrutable).
I’d say that “drop-in” pitches have had a far greater effect on cricket than climate change and “day-night” tests are ruining five day matches faster than a a changing climate ever could.
(Too bad if that’s inscrutable for Americans. At least we don’t call a competition a World Series when it’s only played in one country (two now, I guess) and call the winners “World Champions”.That’s something inscrutable to the rest of the world.)
It is a hallmark of the idealized left that they can ignore being slapped upside the head with reality. Their feelings are important, and they feel empowered by the woke nonsense going around. Sign me “waiting for 2022”.
Here are the number of Coal fired power stations in various countries with the numbers in bold signifying planned and population size in brackets:
…….4 / …..0….UK……………….(66,600,000)
…..19 / …60….Philippines …(108,100,000)
…..56 / …93….Turkey ………..(82,000,000)
…..58 / …26….South Korea ..(51,710,000)
…..79 / …24….South Africa …(58,560,000)
…..90 / …45….Japan ……….(126,300,000)
…241 / …..4….US ……………(328,200,000)
…468 / …27….EU ……………(446,000,000)
…589 / .446….India ………(1,366,000,000)
2,363 / 1171…China ……..(1,398,000,000)
The two countries that get special attention for ‘destroying the planet’ and demands for reparations for ‘climate crimes’ (always said with a straight face) are the UK and US. It wasn’t the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, the Chinese Cultural Revolution or any of the various Marxist revolutions around the globe that have lifted the masses out of poverty but the Industrial Revolution that was also driven by coal, and it still does.
A while back a colleague that worked at Heathrow told me that about a third of retail revenue came from a demographic that accounted for only 1% of the passengers – wealthy Chinese tourists. Here is another important comparison of how many middle class there are in 4 key countries:
China..700,000,000+
India….350,000,000.
USA…..170,000,000
UK……….40,000,000
There are 100,000,000 wealthy Chinese.
And from the Guardian 13/12/2018:
China called on rich countries to “pay their debts” on climate change at global talks on Thursday, criticising developed countries for not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide finance to help poor countries do the same…
The human contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere from 1980 through 2019 was 9/100ths of one ppm of CO2 per year. Nature probably thinks we humans are not carrying our share of the load.
The industrial revolution was driven by private capital re-investment for a profit… capitalism. The US government of the 19th Century, just like Britain and Europe didn’t have to fund investments. It came from private capital looking for profit.
In part. But it was principally driven by people such as Trevithick, Newton, Newcomen, Boyle, Maxwell and Faraday, and they followed people such as Galileo, Copernicus and Martin Luther. The thought processes of all these individuals and more provided the riches for the capitalists to invest in and not the other way round. Capitalism was definately the Oxygen but the key element was free association and the freedom to speak ones mind and question orthodoxy. That began with the Protestant Reformation. And, nearly all the early engineers were uneducated, in the modern sense, and unqualified to make the things that they did. How can you be pre-qualified in a subject you are inventing?
@ Stephen Skinner.
Nice post. Do you have source links for those coal figures please?
Yes indeed:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/03/forget-paris-1600-new-coal-power-plants-built-around-the-world/
and
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/uncategorized/coal-will-remain-a-major-global-generating-fuel-particularly-in-china/
Facebook have said I broke the ‘community’ rules when posting the above and I will need a 30 day mandatory post approval. Followed by:
“We are unable to show content that goes against our Community Standards on misinformation about COVID-19.”
You might check with your State legislator. Several States have, or are passing, laws which would allow a person from that State to sue Facebook or other social media platforms if they are censored. I believe Florida has already inacted such a law, with other Red States to follow.
Thank you, but I live in that tiny state of UK where the population is torn between being independent or part of the UN where all the offices are: the EU
It crossed my mind that you might not live in the U.S.
Unfortunately, Europe is much more tolerant of censorship than is the U.S., but if the Democrats have their way, they will be bringing European censorship to the U.S. That’s what they are trying to do now. And that’s why Red States in the U.S. are passing laws against censorship. They are fighting back against the authoritarian Democrats.
It’s interesting that both the Democrats and the Republicans agree that China’s recent behavior is problematic.
I wonder if China is trying to do to us what we did to the USSR.
link
Star Wars probably hastened the collapse of the USSR.
Similarly, renewable energy is a technological challenge we can not meet.
When Ronald Reagan announced it, Star Wars was pretty bogus. It was a bluff that worked.
Similarly, China probably knows it’s bluffing when it demands any kind of climate action.
By realizing that China is a problem child, the Democrats are half way there. Another small step would be for them to realize that China knows it can’t do anything to significantly reduce its dependence on coal, and doesn’t intend to.
Could the Democrats be brought around to realize that China’s posturing on climate issues is only self serving, in the most cynical way possible? Maybe.
The EU is proposing tariffs based on carbon footprint. If America were to do the same that would really hurt China. If China is demanding that we shoot ourselves in the foot, it’s only fair that we should demand that they shoot themselves in the foot first.
If climate change is a Chinese hoax, and we make them regret their hoax, that could solve the climate change problem.
China is not a problem child, China is the responsible adult in the room. The problem children are the liberals in the West that shame China and India for producing the energy intensive products every modern society requires.
Eventually the adults will get bored with the petulant spoiled brat children in the West (I’m being polite I should call them irresponsible idiots) and assign an emissions charge to the products they produce for the West. In the meantime they will enjoy the jobs, tax base and profits for their efforts while we slowing decay waving our meaningless virtue signaling flags.
China isn’t playing well with others lately. It isn’t the only adult in the room unless your vision of a responsible adult is someone like Genghis Khan.
The Chinese government care about having a thriving economy. Western governments care about childish nonsense.
It’s not the only adult in the room, but it’s one of them. There’s Russia too, and probably India (I keep hearing about ‘woke’ nonsense there so they may be heading down the same crazy path we are).
That list is seriously out of date… a number of planned plants in S Korea, Bangladesh, SA, Japan, Vietnam and EU have all been cancelled in the last 6 months.
And China?
How many?
I still remember how you crowed for months when China cut down their 5 year plan from 640 to 600, due to reduced demand.
I suspect Kerry has a case of Agent Orange on the Brain.
I just wish we could.
The man named in the Panama papers.
How can people not ask him about that little issue and ask if he intends to make reparations?
Because the same people who own Kerry own the mainstream media.
CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant. We need MORE CO2 emissions.
Reducing carbon soot and carbon monoxide are good ideas, but this fetish with CO2 is worse than stupid.
“…coal, which is the dirtiest fuel in the world.”
What a retard. CO2 is not “dirty”. It is colorless, odorless, and plants love it. It is no “dirtier” than H2O is.
Natural gas is no cleaner than coal?
They are using issue conflation as a means of confusing people. The issue is “climate change”, not whether coal emits some actual air pollutants, which it does, but modern-day plants are not a big problem. But that has nothing to do with CO2.
The BBCs Maitlis has plenty of form for bias and Harrabin is on a one man crusade. But I think George Orwell sums it up best:
In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box.
Plus ca change
Let’s see how the new TV channel GB News turns out in providing a foil to bias in other quarters.
That is as true today as it was when Orwell wrote it, and describes every Lefty I’ve known.
I’m trying my best to follow India’s lead, but for me personally it’s kinda like having a thorn in my foot.
I just had to convert the Rs to USD, and the result is a little more than $6,000,000,000. Best of all, the money will buy a lot of dependable power.
That was the first-mentioned amount. It increases farther down.
Coal is the dirtiest possible fuel for power plants, but not because of CO2, but due to high emissions of ash and sulfur dioxide. The EPA has had strict limits on emissions of particulates and SO2 for decades, which have resulted in lower emissions using scrubbers and baghouses, but it is not clear whether China and India have such regulations, or enforce them if they do.
As for John Kerry, why doesn’t he lead by example in lowering his carbon footprint? He should sell his private jet and travel to Europe on his zero-emissions Windsurfer, which would be a win-win for the country. Lower emissions, and it will take Kerry longer to get to where he’s going, and he will have less time to damage our country with his stupidity. And if a North Atlantic storm capsizes his Windsurfer (to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut), so it goes.
Ash and SO2 can be filterd out without problems, and in most cases is filterd out.
Actually coal produces more radioactive isotopes than the entire nuclear industry.
The concentrated amounts of mostly thorium and uranium in the fly ash then get used to make concrete which of course gets turned into all kinds of things.
Try testing the runway at Warsaw airport some day.
It’s more radioactive in an aircraft sitting on the ground than at FL10..
Kerry buys carbon offsets, or should i say somone buys them for him, but he’s co2 neutral at least on paper. The goal is to force us all to buy carbon offsets, and the government will gradually reduce the annual carbon allowance to the point where we can’t go anywhere and can’t do anything.
Its allmost as if Covid restrictions are some kind of dress rehearsal or something…
If one were to make the assumption that carbon offsets actually worked, then one should be even more upset with Kerry.
There are only so many carbon offsets available to be purchased. When Kerry buys some to offset one of his junkets, that leaves fewer offsets to be purchased by those who be doing something legitimate.
Don’t be hard on him. His motives are pure He just wants to get it resolved so he can put his airplanes and boats away, dump the 12,000 sq ft cottages, and live in a 2000 sq ft bungalow some where near a wind farm.
“India Ignores John Kerry”
Good advice for anyone, anytime, anywhere…
Kerry hasn’t woken up to the fact that US UK EU are no longer geopolitically as influential as they once were and becoming even less so.
Very good point
China is running circles around the U.S. in tech and most every other industry and emerging tech and education and both political parties are sleeping way past time to do anything about it. The U.S. policy of “see no industrial policy-hear no industrial policy” is a disaster and we are compounding it with cancel culture, carbon fixation, and virtue signaling. Hopeless. We will become the next Argentina while China decides our next bailout deal.
Who do you think is funding the ‘woke’ in the West?
The Chinese believe in unrestricted warfare, and paying idiots to do idiotic things is much cheaper than fighting a war with tanks, bombers and nukes.
The West’s problem is that thanks to a couple of hundred years of ‘Enlightenment’ we have no immune system capable of protecting us against the Chinese Woke Virus.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong. The UK doesn’t want to burn coal for energy as it is counted against their emissions quota, but they do want to burn wood pellets for energy because burning wood pellets doesn’t count against their emissions quota, even though it does emit CO2?
And they don’t mind importing the wood pellets to burn from several thousand miles away and the export region is even giving tax incentives to cut and ship the wood! The madness goes far beyond the fuel mix at the boiler.
Fortunately, three billion people in China and India are ignoring John Kerry and carrying on with their lives and sensible power policies. Eventually people in lesser countries may understand and imitate.
China will engineer and build it for them also. The lack of reporting on this will successfully keep it out of the political field of play in the U.S. for the benefit of the climate handlers.
Why is the world stuck with these rejects and their destructive ideas? The essential ingredient for the modern world is oil and coal and natural gas.
Speaking in the same vein as the global warming crowd, if we install enough wind turbines the earth’s rotation, orbit and inclination will be changed causing big trouble. And massive solar panels will burn up the atmosphere.
“Why is the world stuck with these rejects and their destructive ideas?”
Because of fraud.
Election fraud to be precise.
And when they can’t sell their learned , erudite ideas to what they perceive as the cluelessness masses, they then resort to: siccing the intelligence community on their political opponents, bogus impeachments, fortified (rigged) elections, censorship of speech, the corruption of science, etc… which instead of helping them, makes them more loathsome and repellant.
My guess is that because of the hermetically sealed, bubbled environment they have lived in their entire lives they had never been challenged… and thus what we are witnessing is what caused Hans Christian Anderson to write the folktale: “The Emperors’ New Clothes“.
The fraud of 1998 is still corrosive as well.
Because democracy.
In the US, sure, there’s massive fraud to ensure Democrats win, but that’s not true in the many other countries where people vote for politicians who vow to destroy them.
Xi doesn’t want to see China go the same way, which is why he comes down so hard on protests pushing for democracy in China.
The thought of Kerry being out of the country for an extended period is comforting.
Kerry colludes with U.S. enemies when he is out of the country. He’s probably the reason the Mad Mullahs of Iran are still on course to get a nuclear weapon.
israel is going to have some bombing to do before long. Someone will have to knock out those Iranian nukes before they can be used. Biden won’t do it. He’s taking the Mad Mullah’s side, like Obama did.
“The marketplace has made a decision that …”
or “All over the world people have made a decision…”
What he really means is:
Politicians who don’t know what they’re talking about, have made a decision…
Kerry, and just about every other leftists, presumes to speak for everyone. It is hard for them to believe that anyone looks at things differently from the way they do. Any people who do look at things differently must be aberrant, and can be dismissed.
It’s a combination of arrogance and ignorance.
John Kerry became a joke of a man long ago. And will be in history, if remembered at all.
It really makes you wonder what the conversations are like behind the scenes.
Like maybe…”Here is what we are offering in cash and trade deals if you will stand with us on these dates and nod your head when the cameras turn to you. Think Jimmy Carter deals for Egypt and Israel guys–you cant pass up that kind of money. We can even help you win your next election with more dark money. Think about it. We have access to all the money Americans will make over the next 10 years and then some–they won’t mind.”
“The marketplace has made a decision that coal is not the future?”
More about the marketplace
https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/02/17/the-market-for-energy/
Was the Vietnamese soldier that missed John Kerry court-martialed?
The Swiftboat crews, of which Kerry was a member, didn’t have much good to say about Kerry and the time he spent in Vietnam.
At least he got a magic hat out of it.
“The marketplace has made a decision that coal is not the future.”
Apparently, Gigolo John cannot tell the difference between a free market and one coerced by feckless government regulation.
What Kerry does not seem to comprehend is that India, Russia & China subscribe to the old fashioned idea that the government’s job is to improve the lives of its people and the nation in general and that their continuance depends on that. Only in America and a few other countries do leaders believe the opposite.
Here is an interview with Vladimir Putin by a few progressive journalists:
Putin in rare western media interview Dec 2019
https://youtu.be/OrkoiAukiQc
What is so surprising about the interview is that the journalists simply can’t seem to comprehend what Putin is saying. It is like they have drunk so much of the globalization / Obama koolaid they can’t comprehend common sense. It is like they think globalized progressive government is inevitable, as Obama does:
Obama’s Hazy Sense of History
He also believes history follows some predetermined course, as if things always get better on their own. Obama often praises those he pronounces to be on the “right side of history.” He also chastises others for being on the “wrong side of history” — as if evil is vanished and the good thrives on autopilot.
Another of Obama’s historical refrains is his frequent sermon about behavior that doesn’t belong in the 21st century. At various times he has lectured that the barbarous aggression of Vladimir Putin or the Islamic State has no place in our century and will “ultimately fail” — as if we are all now sophisticates of an age that has at last transcended retrograde brutality and savagery.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/08/obamas-hazy-sense-history-victor-davis-hanson/
And this all leads to the bizarre utter clueless policies that we are now seeing: defunding police, open borders, massively expensive energy, sacrificing industries, jobs and the working class, etc…
And John Kerry, like Mr Magoo, bumbles blindly along.
Government’s role is to change the weather using your life and money.
heard him bleating on abc radio in Aus..went out n fed the chooks;-)
Kerry is like a alcoholic, one coal mine closure was too many and a thousand is now not enough.
Kerry only know how to do one thing, and that is spend somebody elses money.