_(cropped).jpg){kind=link}
Essay by Eric Worrall
“… Donald Trump is an absolute master at getting people to believe extraordinary things. … President Xi Jinping has claimed the Chinese system is superior …”
Is climate change too hard for democracy?
We have all heard that 2023 was the warmest year ever for the world, by some margin.
…
Yet all indications are that Donald Trump will be elected once more as US President. He has announced that from Day 1 it will be “Drill, drill, drill!”. He will sweep away all sorts of regulation that protects the environment or aims to limit climate change. It would be no surprise if he withdraws the United States from the Paris Agreement once again.
…
Donald Trump is an absolute master at getting people to believe extraordinary things. Tens of millions think he will Make America Great Again. Millions apparently think he was sent by God.
…
In a world like this, I fear democratic government is not up to the challenge of climate change.
The country that emits by far the most greenhouse gases is China, which of course is not a democracy. It is building wind and solar farms at a very rapid pace, accounting for more than half of such construction in the world. … President Xi Jinping has claimed the Chinese system is superior to that of the West. It would be ironic if, after all the scientific and technical work, all the conferences and all the political argy-bargy in the West it was China and not the democracies that did the most to put a brake on climate change.
…
Read more: https://johnmenadue.com/is-climate-change-too-hard-for-democracy/
The author, Ralph Evans, is a retired high flying Aussie government worker, he was head of Austrade, the Aussie government’s international trade promotion body, and co-founded the Boston Consulting Group. He is also the author of Toast: Climate change is doing enormous harm. Why do many Australians deny it? Can we avoid the worst effects?
Ralph Evans published on a blog named after (and presumably created by) John Menadue, another and even more senior retired Aussie government worker.
I guess we should thank Ralph for his honesty. No doubt Xi Jinping will send Ralph a nice appreciation card for this effort.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
As if building bird choppers will affect climate change?
A solo cellist and a couple of dancers all performing something called ‘hope’ for the glaciers might do it.
Fighting the boogie man Climate Change is like Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Fighting imaginary problems vs fighting imaginary dragons.
But the cost of fighting those imaginary problems would destroy both capitalism and democracy.
It won’t hurt communism though, China’s method of fighting Climate Change is to do nothing but increase emissions, lure industry away from Western Society and wait for their governments to implode trying to fight imaginary problems and destroying their economies in the process
“fighting those imaginary problems would destroy both capitalism and democracy” This has been the intent from the very beginning of climate alarmism.
The sad thing is that the practitioners of climate witchcraft have been quite open regarding their desire to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism/communism.
Absolutely. +1 million
Germany … and now France ?
NEWS TIP
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/french-farmers-also-revolt-against-taxes-price-pressure/
and “Micron” folds ?
You have to something to ward off the bad spirits.
Democracy seems to be a problem when free thinking individuals have trouble believing someone that is patently telling fibs. Where have we heard similar dislike of Democracy before?
“I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”
James Lovelock
“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.”
Club of Rome
“This moment requires we the people to rethink democracy as a global mechanism for enacting policy for and by the planet.”
Daphne Muller Green-progressive-liberal writer for Salon
“The objective, clearly enunciated by the leaders of UNCED, is to bring about a change in the present system of independent nations. The future is to be World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises – whether real or not – is expected to lead to – compliance”
Dixy Lee Ray Former liberal Democrat governor of State of Washington
To be fair Lovelock backpedaled a little, though he also appeared to go alarmist again later.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/27/rip-james-lovelock-the-former-climate-activist-who-admitted-he-was-wrong/
never “be fair” to those that want you dead … you give them that inch and they are one inch closer to their solution …
Exactly what you said. ! There is no room for appeasement of any kind..
you can ‘be fair’. But it appears, though, that you are giving him the benefit of any doubt. Don’t do that.
Bunch of idiot fascists.
Dixie Lee Ray was not a liberal. She was a proponent of nuclear energy, served as chairman of the AEC (atomic energy commission), didn’t accept man made global warming as true.
It was her conservative stances that lost her a second term and got her appointed by Nixon to the AEC.
“China and not the democracies that did the most to put a brake on climate change.”
China is doing absolutely nothing to put the brake in their CO2 emissions
(not that they affect “climate” in any way)
Who or whatever this Evans person is… he is totally delusional..
… and almost certainly well paid to be that way.
Factual proof of his delusion provided in comment just posted below.
To the socialists, saying you are doing something is so much more important than actually doing something. Especially when judging a fellow traveller.
Did fascism start this way in the last century? Bunch of talking heads or writers all sounding reasonable in their twisted logic, that elected people trusted by the populace aren’t good enough for them and need to be replaced by a dictator with suitable green credentials.
How do modern, supposed educated people get so brainwashed??
A lot of it is due to flattery.
The so called intellectuals get a lot of mileage out of telling each other how much better the world would be if only they were in charge.
Citizens will hardly ever vote themselves a lower standard of living. Dictators, on the other hand, will impose a lower standard of living and usually do. In any case, the elites will never have to suffer any draconian restriction on energy
In many cases the elites will find themselves better off as the stuff that used to belong to the masses is funneled to them.
A correction. Mr. Evans may have originally been hired into BCG’s office in Sidney when it opened, but he most definitely was not a BCG cofounder.
BCG was founded by Bruce Henderson in 1968 in Boston. I interned there summer after my first year at HBS in 1973. At that time all the original brilliant consultants assembled by Bruce were still active, having invented the experience curve and the portfolio matrix that were the original intellectual foundations of what has become a multibillion dollar revenues per year global firm.
I joined full time after graduating the HBS/HLS joint program in 1976. At that time BCG had three world wide offices—Boston, London, and Milan. The Sidney office wasn’t opened until almost a decade later, after San Fransisco, Chicago, Munich, Paris, and Hamburg. I left Boston in 1978 to help staff the then newish and struggling Munich office, then repatriated about 5.5 years later to help a then newish and struggling Chicago. By ‘help’ is meant that by the time I left BCG for client Motorola, I was (and had been for several years) the highest revenue generating partner (and then senior partner after we invented it) globally. My best year (the year before I quit) I personally brought in $22 million, ‘feeding’ 7 more junior partners on two continents. Killer international travel precipitated quit.
EW correctly reflected Evans false cofounder claim in the bio blurb for his new book, TOAST (meaning we all are if we don’t go Xi), which does not speak well of him. Explains why he thinks Xi has the right political model for climate change action.
Ignoring the detail that Xi’s China is ignoring climate change alarm.
If you mean…do nothing and allow western governments to implode…then China is following the correct CC action model.
What a shocker – thanks Rud.
Fun relsted killer international flight story. True.
so I was on a red eye from Chicago to Germany in Business class. The stewardess recognized me. So, the next Day on the way back
home she recognizes me in the same business class seat. Shocked, she said, what have you been doing? I said working. She said sleeping.
Isn’t international travel fun?
If Communist China doesn’t want Trump (or some one like him), then the US does.
The MSM be dammed!
The fascist left driving climate hysteria for their own evil ends is well documented. Thankfully, the world is moving to the right but has a long way to go. It needs to move beyond political parties, which are all collectivist constructs. Collectivism cannot be defeated by collectivism. Individualism is the antithesis of collectivism and this is where politics needs to be. This in order to deliver democracy that will never look inferior to fascism.
Huh? Political parties are collectivist constructs? So, the libertarian party is collectivist in intent, just masquerading as a bunch of folks who want to be left alone, but have pooled their resources to effect change?
Don’t get me wrong, the US and UK are uniparty sinking ships, with that uniparty a collectivist organization, but to argue that political parties by design are collectivist is mighty peculiar, as well as ahistorical.
What a muppet..
The ever-so-slight difference is that the solar panels that China are fixing up are solar panels that were Made in China….
….while the solar panels that Australia are fixing up were NOT Made in Australia
China is not entering into a virtue signalling contest with you, nor into a race with you to save the world even though you think they are.
China is entering you in a race with yourself to buy more Solar Panels.
(Chinese ones as none else makes any)
And off you go, wound up like a Brainless Duracell Bunny…..
…..rushing to buy Chinese solar panels ‘while you still can’ because once China ‘realises how good they are‘ and tells the world, well, I’m sorry but, they’ll go into short supply and price will just have to go up.
Except that China get theirs for free, you don’t.
Not at all dissimilar to how used-car salesmen operate.
The Chinese have a real big problem with overproduction of everything green. Businesses can’t make money piling them high and selling them cheap, and if they reduce production they run into big problems with cashflow, debt repayment etc.
China may or may not be building wind and solar farms, however it is also true that China is also building coal plants as fast as it can. Indeed it is building more coal plants than the rest of the world combined.
Evans sounds like your typical liberal, he believes whatever the party tells him to believe, even if it makes no sense. Even if it is contradicted by the data right in front of him.
China is also building more nuclear power stations than the rest of the world combined. But no one talks about it, lest the west is encouraged to build some.
It appears the idea is that, unlike much of the west which saw gas as a transition fuel between coal and nuclear, the Chinese didn’t bother with the complexity of gas and just opted for coal to nuclear.
They will probably begin shutting down old coal fired power stations as the new nuclear plants come on line over the next few decades.
And we’ll all still be screwing around with windmills.
The China skipping Natgas reason is simple. China has a lot of shale gas, but the geology is very complicated in every basin, so their fracking attempts have by and large failed to be productive. Rather than import LNG from Aus, Qatar, and US, they opted to go big coal then future nuclear.
Assuming reliable statistics supplied by the government of China: as of 2022 the CO2 emission per cap per year for China was estimated on a par with Japan and Germany (~8 tonnes) and more than UK (~5 tonnes) and about half US (~15 tonnes) (Our World in Data).
However unlike the other countries mentioned the emissions per cap in China were increasing while all the others were declining — for what that’s worth.
China is currently building 123% of all new coal-fired power stations worldwide – IOW China is building new ones at a terrific rate while the west is still net scrapping theirs. Ralph Evans must be very selective in what he reads. Or does Xi Jinping select his reading for him?
MJ, 123%? Very difficult. You must be using some other baseline than implied. Perhaps 123% of those in China?
OK, my wording was inaccurate. What I meant was that If China is adding more coal fired power stations than the global increase in coal fired power stations, then they can be seen to be above 100%. They are, because the west has been net closing theirs. The actual % depends heavily on time scale.
Well of course the warmunists think Chinese dictatorship is superior to liberal democracy. Their purpose in life is to use climate hysteria to stampede hoi polloi into a dictatorship run by them.
“It would be ironic if, after all the scientific and technical work, all the conferences and all the political argy-bargy in the West it was China and not the democracies that did the most to put a brake on climate change.”
Well, that isn’t going to happen, so don’t hold your breath.
He literally said “The country that emits by far the most greenhouse gases is China,” and then ignores that and waxes foundly on the rotors and panels and ignores the huge amount of coal fired plants being built.
“Useful idiot” is to generous a term to apply to him.
They are not going to reluctantly implement a global authoritarian regime in order to address the “climate emergency”. Instead, they concocted the “climate emergency” as a justification for the implementation of their desired global authoritarian regime.
This has been in the works for many decades. However, nearing the completion of their plans, two things happened. They were delayed (due to the inevitable incompetence of the bureaucrats tasked with implementing their plans), leading to them not being in place before the downturn of the AMO which will cause a cooling trend over the next couple of decades. Then they panicked and unleashed the COVID “emergency” on the Western world, using that as a surrogate emergency to justify their draconian measures. The latter has opened the eyes of many people around the world to the reality of the widespread propaganda campaigns waged against the people of the countries waging them. So, now they are panicking more and trying to implement draconian speech control laws (almost the same laws in many countries at the same time, this is no coincidence). This seems to be a “Hail Mary” tactic, it will either work of they will fail utterly. If they try to silence the people and succeed, we are doomed to an indeterminate period of tyranny. If they fail, that genie cannot be put back into the bottle.
Mr. Evans is right, no democracy has ever built pyramids. Or stopped the climate change.
Resource misallocation is a feature of tyranny.
I suggest you pay a visit to Bucharest and ‘admire’ the monstrosity people palace created by the dictator Ceausescu, which now functions as parliament buildings. It is about the heaviest building in the world and has a total weight of some 80% of Cheops’ pyramid.
They always dream of being given a lofty position in the new world order (post democracy) but then they are consigned to the fields to dig up potatoes with no FF to help. Hey that is what you wanted.
Indeed – an even if they are lucky enough to get a comfy position, they are one convenient denunciation away from the lead mines.
You’re assuming that there will be potatoes. Optimistic.
Ralph Evans is author of “Toast: Climate change is doing enormous harm. Why do many Australians deny it? Can we avoid the worst effects?”.
This is from the blurb:
“Every day, we hear about dramatic weather events: another severe drought in Inland Australia; worst-ever forest fires in California, or here in Australia; Arctic sea ice shrinking, letting ships sail north of Russia and Canada for the first time; the big-gest-ever snowfall in New York; a scorching heatwave in Rus-sia; devastating cyclones or hurricanes in Asia, the Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico.
There are so many of these events today, something big must be happening”.
Get the drift, as others have noted the man is deluded.
“Every day, we hear about dramatic weather events:”
Recalls the old joke:
“I just read in the Readers Digest that smoking causes cancer, so I gave it up!”
“You no longer smoke?”
“No, I no longer subscribe to the Readers Digest!”
I don’t like this guy.
but..but.. everybody loves a clown !! 😉
Pennywise?
China has problems…BIG problems….Xi spends most of his time with CCP internal politics and watching his back. He is not a very knowledgeable or high IQ person. China has no “system”. It is a form of dictatorship referred to as communist. The China “miracle” was simply a feint towards free enterprise which resulted in the West spending trillions on cheap Chinese goods produced by cheap labor and coal fired energy – it is now “ovah”.
Well it is clear Ralph Evans drank the kool aide, probably had a big glass of it. No there is no climate crisis, the small warming we’ve had comes at the end of the little ice age and has not even reached the levels experienced in the Middle Ages warm period, Roman warm period and Minoan warm period. This entire sham comes from corrupt politicians and pseudo scientists whose climate models have never been correct and are not fit for purpose. President Xi is laughing himself silly over the UN, WEF and certain western “leaders” trying to destroy the western world in favor of a global communist-fascist state, just waiting to pick up the pieces.
Well Ralph let me explain how free speech feedback works when you can’t run over the speakers with tanks and you have to put up with the unpleasant steenking facts-
The deplorables vote and have reasonable demands for dispatchable power despite what you’re smoking and blowing out your ass as Climate Change Minister-
Full steam ahead as government secures gas deal (msn.com)
If you stupidly command certain unreliable componentry then those tasked with maintaining some semblance of a reliable system have to try and level the playing field somewhat-
Solar farms face “large, unpredictable” revenue swings as marginal loss factors strike again | RenewEconomy
Commanding more untried unreliable componentry in a rush will beget muchos teething problems-
Turbines at newly installed Victoria wind farm pulled down to fix faulty parts | RenewEconomy
especially when the suppliers try to be all things to all folks with fancy windmills re output noise and 74 metre blades to try and attain economies of scale-
N149/4.X – Nordex SE (nordex-online.com)
The rain that falls is free so how dare you charge me the water rates you do! OK Greta but the grown up world works like this-
Energy bills must rise to pay for net zero, says Siemens Energy boss (yahoo.com)
and last night when the sun went down the Oz NEM grid was running 74% on fossil fuels (typically 65-85%) while islanded WEM (WA) was running on 75.7%. No matter that all has to go so we can largely charge our net zero EVs at night ready for work the next day. Yep I can see the attraction of a Fearless Leader Ralph.
You can always tell somebody doesn’t know what they are talking about if they call the United States a democracy. We are a Republic and while the people vote for their local representatives, they don’t vote for court members or the president (remember the electoral college).
The Senators and Representatives don’t always faithfully represent us, either. They campaign on doing something (or stopping it), but when they get to DC, they bail on us. But what are you going to do? Direct democracy in a country of 336 million people would be impossible.
Blame the progressives for the senate and it could be fixed by repealing the 17th amendment. They don’t understand the problems the 17th caused and now they want to eliminate the electoral college. If not directly, indirectly by having their state vote with the popular vote muting the state election results.
The United STATES of America.
The Senate was to give each state’s Government an equal say in Congress and each state’s Government decided how their Senators were selected.
The citizens have their equal say in The House of Representatives.
The 17th was a big step in the wrong direction.
The party elites direct the representatives to support whatever fantasy they can sell. The core objective is to retain or gain power at whatever cost. This is the system the voters squander their democracy on. More fool them.
Not to mention disastrous. Once folks are completely reduced to “voting for the ones that promise them the most ‘free’ shit,” civilization tends to crumble.
In a pure democracy …..50% plus one can vote for anything….a Republic slows things down. The best form of government is a benevolent wise King but these are very rare and always die….so a Republic is best considering the weaknesses and shortcomings of man.
The goal was to prevent any single branch of government from having an excessive amount of power. It’s not uncommon to see the president or the supreme court overstep their authority but your correct in stating the republic is the best we can currently do.
“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That is why benevolent dictators are don’t last. A pure democracy wouldn’t have political parties in it. It is true though, that the voters choose, democratically, to have an impure system. And they are paying for it.
Many of our democratic republic’s elected officials envy Chinese Communism for its authority, power and absolute control over its people. Senators and representatives deeply despise the constitution because it limits their authority and power. They are tired of campaigning and the entire election process–they simply want raw power without restriction–a totalitarian state. Sadly we’re well on the way having flipped into a post-America, socialist police state.
Prior to WWII many US and British officials (e.g. Joseph Kennedy) envied Facism for the very same reasons.
Private citizens included Henty Ford and Charles Lindberg.
“The country that emits by far the most greenhouse gases is China,” and he still goes on to laud the Chinese! The US, in it’s expansion of the use of natural gas actually reduced emissions and, AND increased prosperity… until the Chinese sneezed COVID all over that success.
Biden should be sending them a nice thank you card, if he hasn’t already. Some might say he should also include his resume but that would be redundant since he is already an employee.
Letter to Pearls and Irritations
https://johnmenadue.com/
Ralph Evans: “China leads on renewable energy”
Evans must live in a fantasy world. China is expanding its coal based energy grid, while the West is effectively exporting it’s emissions to less efficient Chinese operations, and adding to the mix with the cost and emissions of extra transportation.
China Pledged to ‘Strictly Control’ Coal. The Opposite Happened.
In April 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects” in China. Since then, government permits for new coal power plants have soared. According to analysis of Global Energy Monitor data, in the two years before Xi’s pledge, the government approved 127 plants, collectively capable of producing 54 gigawatts of coal power. In the two years after, that number rose to 182 plants, with 131 gigawatts of coal power. In short, China’s new coal power capacity has more than doubled.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/12/china-coal-climate-change-carbon-emissions-pledge-plants-apec/
China permits two new coal power plants per week in 2022
Coal power plant permitting, construction starts and new project announcements accelerated dramatically in China in 2022, with new permits reaching the highest level since 2015. The coal power capacity starting construction in China was six times as large as that in all of the rest of the world combined.
https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-new-coal-power-plants-per-week-in-2022/
China opened the 1,800 kilometer Haoji Railway in 2019 — specifically to carry coal
The Haoji Railway has 21 terminals and has a design capacity of more than 200 million tonnes a year.
Construction started in 2015.
The project, which was formerly known as the Menghua Railway, faced some major challenges as the line crosses the both the Yangtze and Yellow rivers twice.
It also passes through the Mu Us desert, the Loess Plateau, and three mountain ranges.
There are 770 bridges with a total length of 381km and 229 tunnels totalling 468.5km.
https://www.railjournal.com/freight/china-opens-1813km-heavy-haul-railway/
The UK’s top four trade partners are Germany, the US, China and the Netherlands. All four of these countries have a significantly larger share of coal-fired electricity in their energy supply than the UK does. This means that goods produced in factories in those countries will typically have a higher emissions footprint than those produced in UK factories.
https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2023/12/net-zeros-dirty-secret
Except that China is not leading the world in decarbonising!!
Of course the wind and solar capacity they are adding looks huge, but this is because their grid is so big.
In proportional terms, wind and solar still accounted for 13% of electricity in 2022, less than half us footdraggers in the UK!