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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To paraphrase Churchill, (while he is still regarded as someone worthy of respect)
“Democracy is awful, but it is better than everything else”.
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.
Yeah, it would be, but the coal plants being built in China will far outpace the power from renewables.
According to the IEA China already consumes more than half of the world’s coal and produces half of it. It expects China and India to account for more than 70% of global coal consumption by 2026.
The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics recently said that China produced 4.66 bn tonnes in 2023.
“Too hard for Democracy?” Tell you one thing, it’s too hard for Climate Scientists.
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.
Ralph Evans conveniently ignores the fact that China is building coal-fired power plants at an even faster pace, whose CO2 emissions will overwhelm any reductions due to solar and wind power, either in China or elsewhere.
Yes, democracy can be messy, but it’s a feature, not a bug. Dissenters from the party line *should* have the right to speak, particularly the truth. After over 40 years of predictions of doom, the Greenland ice cap hasn’t melted yet, it still snows in Iowa, the Florida beaches are heavily populated and above water, and polar bears are thriving.
So we don’t need to spend trillions of dollars on electric cars that die in the snow, windmills that freeze or break in high winds, solar panels that shut down at night, so we can shiver in our houses. Let’s do like the Chinese and use our fuel resources, and the extra CO2 in the air can make our crops more productive.
China built more coal fired power plants in ONE year than the US has left. Three times in the last five years. The only thing that slowed them down was COVID 19.
How many worse-than-useless windmills and solar panels they have built is meaningless. Just like for everyone else.
Considering that wind and solar power is seldom produced when needed, and that it needs 100% backup from dispatcheable sources (mainly coal, oil and gas), they are nothing more than a waste of resources, a blight on the landscape, and are environmentally destructive.
This idiot is delusional.
Trudeau, the cockwomble, is on the same page re the Chinese government.