March 11, 2024
China’s annual greenhouse gas emissions have soared over the past 20 years, dwarfing those of the U.S. But according to our progressive federal bureaucrats, America’s cumulative historical emissions are the problem and Beijing now deserves a free pass.
The federal government’s climate.gov site ostensibly provides “timely and authoritative scientific data and information about climate science, adaptation, and mitigation.” This mandate apparently includes trying to guilt Americans out of questioning progressive policies while the world’s second-largest economy emits greenhouse gases at an unparalleled level. In a blog post, federal climate comrades say that America’s historical emissions, coupled with higher emissions on a per-capita basis, mean that “the United States bears a greater share of the responsibility for current conditions—on both a national and per-person level.”
According to our taxpayer-funded emissions arbitrators, China emitted less in the past, so its gargantuan emissions today—2.61 times larger than the U.S.—shouldn’t really be the focus. America’s cumulative emissions dating back to 1750, they argue, are the original sin for which we must now atone. Unlike China, America has apparently emitted more than its fair share, so “any future U.S. emissions will undermine progress to stop global warming.” In case the message isn’t clear, the climate commissars add for good measure that China’s emissions are actually the American people’s fault because American consumers buy Chinese-made goods.
Unsurprisingly, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda mouthpieces agree. Xinhua, the CCP’s news agency, declared last year that the U.S. bears “major historical and global responsibility for climate change” and must, therefore, repay its “historical debts.” Not to be outdone, the state-run China Daily says that China’s per-capita emissions are lower than those of America, so the world’s largest emitter is actually doing the “hard yards on climate.”
This readiness of taxpayer-funded bureaucrats to cast off both the basic principles of justice and common sense should be a cause for concern. While socialist regimes have long embraced collective guilt and group punishment, individual responsibility is fundamental to the American tradition. This principle played a clear role in the fight for America’s freedom; colonial outrage ensued after Britain’s collective punishment of Massachusetts in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. With free will and personal accountability before the law, the American people today are not responsible for the actions of earlier generations. There is no criminal or climate “historical debt” to be socialized across generations.
Equally concerning is the willingness of our self-declared “authoritative” apparatchiks to distort emissions data to guilt Americans into conformity. China is far and away the single largest source of emissions today. While scientific knowledge should be perpetually debated and refined, portraying China’s emissions on a self-congratulatory per-capita basis is not an environmental breakthrough. The composition of the atmosphere is determined by absolute measurements, not on a per-capita basis, meaning that China’s actual emissions remain the same, regardless of how they are portrayed. In short, measuring per-capita emissions is as consequential as measuring the temperature in per-capita degrees Fahrenheit.
Rather than berating Americans for the actions of their ancestors, federal bureaucrats should turn their attention to America’s recent environmental track record as a potential model for reducing emissions. Recognizing America’s clean energy potential, the Trump Administration simultaneously prioritized domestic oil and gas production and the enforcement of well-calibrated environmental protection rules. The Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency “assessed more in civil penalties, criminal fines, and restitution… than the agency collected in the first four years of the prior [Obama] administration.” This strategy doesn’t need warped justice or contorted data to justify its effectiveness; the economy grew, Americans got wealthier, air quality improved, and emissions fell. For progressive bureaucrats, however, these observations are inconvenient truths.
Oliver McPherson-Smith, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for Energy & Environment at the America First Policy Institute and a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Here in the UK we emit under one percent. The dishonest BBC trumpets that we ’lead the world’ in decarbonisation. I’m so ashamed
Leading a race is great, but not when you are
going in thew wrong direction
If I had access to [Let’s Go] Brandon or Kammy Baby, I would ask him (or her) why we haven’t shut down all of our fossil fueled power plants and oil refineries by now. This has been going on now for 35 years, and that is long enough.
If we are in a climate crisis, the shutdown process should have started when he took office. It should be complete by now. /half sarc
Don’t give them any more ideas. They’ve done more than enough damage already.
I proposed on a different article that when the oil companies are sue for climate damage they should immediately stop all shipments to that local.
Just turn off gas and electricity for 24 hours and see how the public responds to the actual purpose of net zero.
Yes, this is something I have noticed and commented on before. The argument of the activists has moved in stages. It started out being that we had to stop emitting because our emissions were causing a climate crisis.
It then became clear China was emtting more. But the activists could not bring themselves to say that China had to either reduce or stop growing them. So they moved to per capita as the criterion. Chinese per capita emissions were low, so they had the right to catch up.
Then China caught up with the EU on per capita emissions, and the argument changed again. Now it was historical emissions which really counted.
A couple of other shifts happened along the way. One was to say that China was installing lots of wind and solar, so should not have to reduce. Another was to say they were only emitting to export, so it was all our fault, and by implication they should not have to reduce. No-one every argued for banning imports from China until they reduced.
Everyone in the activist camp has now seemed to have forgotten that they started out arguing that the total tonnage humanity was emitting was the threat to human civilization. On their own view past emissions are irrelevant, per capita emissions are irrelevant, how much wind you install is irrelevant. All that is supposed to matter is tons emitted per year.
One is reluctant to attribute to malign intention what can be explained by stupidity, but this is really over the limit. It is impossible to avoid concluding, when looking at the pattern of argument, that there is an initial position here that has been desperately looking for arguments in support. That position is simple: West must reduce and get to net zero. Everyone else, do what you want.
And so we get these intellectual contortions about per capita, history, wind installs, exports.
What they are in effect arguing is that its only fair that China should
destroy human civilization on the planet. Or maybe they are arguing
that Chinese emissions are different. Unlike ours, theirs will not
destroy civilization.
We should conclude that the real object of the activists has little or nothing to do with alarm about the effect of emissions on the global climate, or they would be advocating the most effective measures to reduce them. That would mean advocating that China, emitting one third and rising of global emissions, and doing double the level of the next biggest emitter, should reduce.
But they will not do that. Instead they advocate measures which would de-industrialize the West, while the rest of the world carries on growing and emitting.
The question for the rest of us is: is this an accidental side effect of their proposals which they are too stupid to see? Or is it the real aim?
The smart money is on the second at this point.
I’d bet my bottom dollar on #2.
Excellent summary.
If you look at it from the perspective that carbon dioxide emissions are heating the planet and they must be reduced to save mankind, it makes no sense.
If you look at it from the perspective of a fifth column meant to infiltrate and diminish the post-enlightenment western civilization, their position makes perfect sense.
That conclusion became apparent a couple of decades ago. Discussions about climate change quickly fall into ending capitalism and increasing so-called “equity.” Those are perhaps the key goals of the climate change agenda.
Calls to end society as we know it are getting more open all the time.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/maryland-city-equity-official-says-wants-us-burn-ground-ideology-rise-ashes
“Go back to selling drugs”??
They hired a former drug dealer as a city official? Well now we know what they are on and who probably sold it to them.
As co chair 0f Working Group 3 for IPCC’s AR5 Ottmar Edenhofer said
“Up to now it is the industrial countries that have seized the atmosphere from the global community. But it has to be clearly stated: Climate policy will de facto redistribute the world’s economic wealth” and
“We have to free ourselves from the illusion that climate politics is environmental politics. This has almost nothing to do with environmental issues”
Likewise Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years since the industrial revolution”
It has nothing to do with climate
The real aim is not so much to de-industrialize the West, but rather to create a parasitic green economy with associated money flows.
If Egyptians, Incas and Aztecs could afford to build pyramids in Stone Age, with today’s much higher productivity one could have people do a lot more useless work, particularly when they already start 4-day working weeks in some places. Wars of course help, but in between and along them, why not make people work in green economy? After all, they work in sports, vacation and entertainment industries, and green economy would be another one in this list.
So, why the West first and not the developing countries? Partly because they cannot control what happens in the developing world anyway. Partly because they want to control flow of the money they print themselves.
UN officials have on too many to count occasions stated that their goal was to transform the world economy. They have also push the One World Order (socialism). Further stated is the greatest threat to the climate (and humanity) is capitalism.
Does that answer your question?
Bureaucrats…
“”Failure to insulate UK homes costing thousands of lives a year, says report””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/13/failure-insulate-uk-homes-costing-thousands-of-lives-winter-cold-deaths
“”The report from Greenpeace
…
Paul Morozzo, Greenpeace UK’s fuel poverty campaigner, said: “Thousands of people are literally freezing to death in their own homes during winter. And not only have successive governments failed to prevent this needless and shocking loss of life but they have fuelled this silent public health crisis by slashing insulation funding and failing to deliver a proper scheme to upgrade our cold, damp, draughty homes.”””
Their own homes? We know what goes on with social housing. The UK has a system of leasehold and freehold. Leaseholders typically have a flat in a building…
“”In June 2017, a fire broke out in the Grenfell Tower block in west London, killing 72 people. The first phase of an inquiry said cladding….
…
The cost of making a block of flats safe is supposed to be absorbed by the owners of the whole building and the land (also known as the freeholder). But in practice the cost has often been passed on to the owners of individual flats (leaseholders).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-56015129
“”Georgie Hulme inherited her third floor flat in Manchester from her mother, who thought she was providing her daughter with home security for life. Since then, inspections of the building in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire have exposed major fire safety problems, including dangerous cladding. Ms Hulme, 42, who has disabilities and can’t work, now fears bankruptcy due to spiralling repair bills.””
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56426927
“”Which? sets out the scale of the financial toll leaseholders face, from EWS1 forms to rocketing insurance premiums
…
Talking to leaseholders across the country, we’ve identified five ways the scandal is wrecking their finances””
https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/revealed-the-five-major-costs-the-cladding-crisis-is-piling-on-homeowners-aBByv6u4GxsD
These people have been entirely forgotten, now. Greenpeace has nothing to say on what is a major scandal. Having thrown billions at cladding, we now have to throw billions at removing it.
Bureacracy – don’t ya jus’ lurv it.
“Greenpeace UK’s fuel poverty campaigner…”
Now there’s a job title that insults the intelligence.
If China’s emissions are Ok, it proves it’s not a “crisis”!!
Which means it’s not about CO2, never was, so what is it all about? Money? Wrecking the economy says it isn’t. So that leaves power and politics.
And delegates flying to COPs proves it’s not a crisis. All the hypocrisy proves it isn’t a crisis.
That is the likely explanation, but there is an alternative:
If US / EU / UK leftists demand that China reduce CO2 emissions quickly, as we are pretending to do, they will say “no”.
Having China (and roughly 175 nations who ignore Nut Zero) join the Nut Zero party would be a huge win for the Climate Howlers.
The Climate Howlers in the stupid nations know that Nut Zero is not going to happen in the smart nations, so they avoid the humiliation of hearing “NO” from China, India, etc. … by not demanding anything of them.
Writing this comment, I’ve convinced myself this is the main reason China gets a pass. Maybe someone else agrees?
Convincing China to get serious about Nut Zero is important to leftists but they know China will always do what is best for China. Give China a hard time about Nut Zero and they will change their fake 2060 target to the year 2100, or 2160 !
Paul Homewood has the best UK climate and energy website. UK has become, unfortunately for them, a canary in the coalmine for Nut Zero in the US. Germany and Australia too.
I read every UK climate and energy article I find, that is avalable for free, to get an idea where the US is heading. There are a large number of good UK conservative articles, on many subjects, that I recommended on my blog every day … relative to the small number of actual conservatives (real conservatives) living in the UK:
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT | “We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer. (wordpress.com)
It’s probably true that acknowledging the limits to one’s own power hastens its decline. Denying the obvious is seen everyday in politics, but politics can be a cruel mistress. People often arrive in power by happy chance and those with it often hope for it to rescue them.
Thus by1945 the guy with the Wehrmacht was increasing sold on superweapons that would avert the obvious future. Similarly in Japan “the decisive battle” was always the next one, right up until the last.
Dropping the bomb on Japan was what finally convinced the emperor that his choices were surrender, or watch the complete annihilation of his people. Even then, many of his military leaders were still willing to fight to the last man, woman and child.
While socialist regimes have long embraced collective guilt and group punishment, individual responsibility is fundamental to the American tradition.
Those Japanese teen-age girls walking to school on the morning of 6 August, 1945 had the capability of giving birth to another generation of kamikaze pilots. They had to go. The US couldn’t reach its manifest destiny without killing the men, women. children and ponies of the Cheyenne at the Washita River on November 27, 1868. The failure of the Lakota to accept being conquered by the Anglos inevitably led to their deaths at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Near Waco, Texas on April 19, 1993 US FBI agents killed 79 Branch Davidians, 21 of whom were under the age of 16 for some crime or other.
Gaius Iullius Caesar hand his legions put over 1 million Gauls (men, women, and children) to the sword during his Bellum Gallico.
Soviet Union starved 9 million Ukrainians (men, women, and children) in the Homodomor.
Hitler’s gas chambers killed 6 million Jews, Gypsies, and other “undesireables” (men, women, and children) in the Holicaust.
Add those to your list, which is much longer than you or I can compile.
It has been happening for over 200,000 years. It is happening today. It is horrific. It needs to stop.
I remain unconvinced that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intended to keep teen-age girls from birthing kamikaze pilots. Maybe, but Occam’s Razor applied leads to the conclusion that ending the war sooner rather than later would save 10+ times the casualties of those nukes.
Well, killing teen-age girls walking to school would have the ancillary effect of preventing their future pregnancy regardless of the intention, don’t you think? What’s the meaning of all the down votes on that statement? Do they mean that the voter doesn’t believe that those events actually occurred, that no collective guilt or punishment took place, or that the 12 year-olds at Waco deserved a death penalty without the benefit of trial? This website appears to be infested with the most vile form of jingoistic thinking.
Your desperate need to believe that the US Army is always wrong just goes to show the shallowness of your understanding of the real world.
The US Army isn’t right or wrong. It simply follows orders, just as General John Sullivan did.
Your eagerness to believe the worst of others says more about your true nature, than anything I could add.
So the only reason why we dropped the bomb was to kill teenage girls. It had nothing to do with ending the war and saving lives.
You really should learn to face reality.
more commonly know as ethnic cleansing
No it isn’t. Ethnic cleansing would have been nuclear carpet bombing the whole of the Japanese islands not two towns. Stop using terms you simply don’t understand.
Genghis Khan did lots of ethnic cleansing without the use of nuclear weapons. Your incorrect commenting on the terminology of others is indicative of someone lacking even a rudimentary education. Or are you presently in the fourth grade?
As a result of dropping the bomb, millions of Japanese lives were saved. Hardly “ethnic cleansing”.
Wow, you are so consumed with hatred that all rationality has fled your consciousness.
It was the Japanese government that was teaching children how to attack soldiers using just sharpened sticks.
In war, people die. The people who are to blame are those who started the war, not those who finished it.
BTW, I just love how you completely skip over the atrocities committed by the Japanese.
The Treaty of San Francisco, signed in 1952, didn’t require the Japanese to pay reparations to any of the countries it had colonized.. Occupied by the US, as it is today, Japan became the grounded aircraft carrier and Yankee Pacific headquarters it remains.
The Treaty of San Francisco, signed in 1952, didn’t require the Japanese to pay reparations to any of the countries it had colonized..
There was a clear historical reason why Japan did not have to pay reparations. Consider at the end of WWI, the economic subjugation of Germany via reparations and what it led to. Had those reparations not been inflicted the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) might well not have happened and WWII may have been averted.
Japan is occupied by the US? Really? What color is the sky in your world, because it has no connection with this one.
The Japanese people didn’t start the war, their insane shogunate did. Regardless, the statement from above, While socialist regimes have long embraced collective guilt and group punishment, individual responsibility is fundamental to the American tradition, is a complete fiction.
The Japanese people didn’t start the war, their insane shogunate did.
While technically correct, it lacks a lot of historical context. The US stopped shipping scrap iron to Japan and limited their access to oil. Those economic factors created fertile grounds for Japan to rescue its economy by expansion and ultimate war.
Speaking of lacking historical context, you completely ignore the atrocities that the Japanese government was engaging in, in the territories it had already conquered that led to the US embargoes.
The people of Japan may not have started the war, however they were engaged in fighting it. Just like the people of Germany didn’t start the war, but were engaged in fighting it.
Nothing to do with collective guilt, you really should stop letting your hatred of the US government dictate your opinions.
Quite a lot if information weighs against that conclusion but I won’t claim I have an excellent insight in historical events. From what I’ve read, firebombing (remember Dresden?) in Japan was already well underway and causing far more damage (although with many more bombs) than the two atomic bombs. The Japanese authorities had already decided that surrender was a necessity, the only real question was how to protect the social concepts and personal dignity of the emperor. These people hardly noticed the atomic bombings until well after the actual surrender.
Despite what you want to believe, the Japanese government had not already decided to surrender. A branch of the military government was even planning on kidnapping the Emperor precisely to stop him from surrendering.
The fire bombings were not having any impact on the will of the military to keep fighting.
Why would they have needed to surrender? They were incapable of continuing the fight. The battleship Missouri could have sailed into Tokyo Bay and MacArthur could have used a loudspeaker to tell the Japanese that the war was over and they would be restricted to their island for eternity. Their was no reason to invade the islands. They could have stewed in their own juice.
Inaccurate. While the capacity to win the war was basically decided, the Japanese were planning on having every man, woman, and child trained and armed to resist an invasion.
The nukes likely saved 1 million American military personnel.
Before you debate, consider the kamikaze (divine wind) tactics.
For a country that no longer had any ability to continue the fight, they were doing a real good job of continuing the war.
As to your solution of a perpetual embargo and having the US Navy kill any Japanese who tried to leave their island for eternity, I can just imagine how you would be spinning such a policy.
Your inability to deal with reality is growing even more bizarre levels.
Accurate. The political power struggles in Japan are a fascinating study.
Follow the money.
Is there really a climate emergency ahead?
We’ve been hearing such predictions since the early 1970s, starting with global cooling crisis predictions that peaked in 1974. A warming trend began in 1975, which is still in progress, so the predictions changed to a coming global warming crisis.
Is the insane fear of CO2 really about the climate or mainly a political strategy — CO2 as a boogeyman to implement fascism?
The useful idiots think this is a climate issue.
What the climate leaders think is easy to figure out:
There are fewer than 20 nations claiming to be working toward Nut Zero goals. All are behind target and have no hope of reaching their goal.
But that’s another issue.
The Nut Zero nation’s combined populations add up to a little over 1 billion people (I added up all the nations a few months ago but can’t find the list). That means almost seven billion people live in nations that could not care less about CO2 emissions.
If “climate change” and Nut Zero were really about the climate, the smart nations ignoring Nut Zero would be persuaded or bribed to join the Nut Zero losers every week of the year. What could be more important if you really thought CO2 was a satanic gas?
In reality, China, India, and over 175 other nation (of 195) get a free pass, as this article explains.
Demonizing CO2 really has nothing to do with the climate or with science.
CO2 is a leftist boogeyman used to create fear and implement Rule by Leftist “Experts”, which is best described as fascism. Only fascism can save the planet … is the leftist dream.
“Is there really a climate emergency ahead?”
No, there’s no rain forecast, today.
Here in NE Wales we have been promised copious rain for the last two days and it hasn’t happened. I want some rain! 🙂
Obviously due to climate change. Just ask BBC or Guardian or….
George Monbiot must be hogging it all, the greedy sod.
China will be making money using cheap coal power, and sometimes slave labor, to manufacture solar panels, EVs, lithium batteries and wind turbines for the stupid nations.
There is another product they could start dominating that has not received much attention:
Hospitals are among the businesses and buildings that have emergency back-up generators.
Many states have laws with those generators requiring a hook up to a natural gas pipeline or an on-site source of fuel, likely to be diesel fuel.
With more wind and solar power in electric grids, backup generators should become more important, and more popular, than ever.
Back up lithium batteries would be extremely expensive for a safe margin of KW hours.
Here in SE Michigan, we had three blackouts in the past year (2 days, 2 days and 1 day).
We don’t have a generator because they are too loud — more annoying than the blackout itself.
For two-day blackouts, just from falling tree braches, we’d need battery backup for at least two days. Four days would be even better, because we have had two four-day blackouts since 1980. It would be cheaper to stay at a motel with electric power in a nearby town rather than buying enough batteries for up to four days of home electric power.
Who uses backup generators?
— Businesses with perishable food
— Hospitals
— Nursing homes
— About 20% of US businesses use back up generators.
Emergency generators do not run on wind, sun, hydro power or nuclear power. And batteries would be very expensive.
I read an interesting, short article on the subject this morning
Net Zero versus state laws that require standby generators for hospitals fueled by pipeline natural gas or on-site fuel storage (I revised the title for my blog)
Net Zero Emergency Power – ORIGINAL CONTENT (therightinsight.org)
Propane is better – doesn’t go bad like gas or diesel stored for long periods.
From the article: “The composition of the atmosphere is determined by absolute measurements, not on a per-capita basis”
That’s the bottom line. If climate alarmists are worried about the amount of CO2 going into the air, then they should be worried about what China is doing.
From the article: “Rather than berating Americans for the actions of their ancestors, federal bureaucrats should turn their attention to America’s recent environmental track record as a potential model for reducing emissions.”
What “actions of their ancestors” should American ancestors be berated for? What problem with regard to CO2, did they cause that was a problem then, and is still a problem today?
China is the global manufacturer. It requires a lot of coal to make things. China keeps the illusion of NetZero alive. Without their low cost manufacture it would be much clearer that NetZero spirals up the collective clacker. Inefficient energy supply fuels rampant inflation. Cost would be going up much faster if China curtailed coal production.
Be thankful that China has not bought into the climate cult.
Government corruption. Guv idiocy. What else is new?
Well, actually Humanity is waking up. We will see.
The climate hysteria is much more serious than its financial effects, even the disproportionate harm to blacks and poor. It is an attack on ALL life on Earth, because every living thing depends on carbon dioxide. Food for almost everything comes ultimately from photosynthesis, CO2 + H2O + sunshine (in a green plant) —> sugar and O2. But it is more even than that. We evolved in (or were Created for) a world with CO2 permeating everything. Even animals MUST have carbon dioxide in our tissues or we would very swiftly die. WUWT and others have published many articles showing that carbon dioxide levels used to be much higher and are now low enough to cause plant stress. I believe that they are suboptimal for animals and people as well, that the popularity of soda pop is due more to the carbonation than the sugar, and that the increased longevity through the 20th century was due mostly to the Keeling curve.
That would make an interesting research project. CO2 addiction from Soda.
I did postulate quite awhile ago that that part of Net Zero was the elimination of all carbonated drinks. I sincerely doubt those Green Elites would be willing to give up their champaign.
Since the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is only 10 to 12 years, any CO2 emitted prior to then is no longer in the atmosphere and no longer matters.
Well, that is an unconfirmed estimate. It could well be true.
One paper I read determined based on isotope testing the residency of new CO2 due to combustion was 5 years.
Others declare 60 years or 1000 years (B.S. alarm is sounding on that one)).
Regardless, your point is valid. Any contributions in the past have been naturally recycled. So what reparations are urgently needed now?
I’m not American but I suppose it must be somewhat baffling for an American taxpayer to see their hard earned money being taxed and then spent on propaganda on behalf of America’s most dangerous enemy state. What they accuse Trump of doing when he only questioned the legitimacy of voting methods and is what the current administration does daily through the most devious means possible. Who is actually paying them to destroy the most successful democratic nation on the planet?
You understand our angst.
Add to it, a report on UN finances (USA gives the lion’s share of cash to the UN) is paying for migrants to cross the border.
Both a problem and a great opportunity. Put someone in the Oval Office who thinks the UN hasn’t earned its keep and needs a major leash pulling and the UN useless hordes could all be looking for jobs in fast food.
We should kick the UN out of NYC and donate the building as an illegal migrant shelter just to soften the economic collapse of the city.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that for the Left, because China is still communist, China is still part of the movement, and so must not be criticized.
The dominant theory of the Left is that environmental destruction is a consequence of “capitalism”.
Add in that colonialism is a prime evil, but only when practiced by Europeans/Americans. As China is a former victim of colonialism, it is doubly immune from criticism.
We can all see that the Left is not primarily concerned with Saving the Earth from CO2. If it were, the Left would be embracing nuclear energy. After all, what’s a Fukushima or two, mere local problems, compared with destruction of our whole planet. QED.
Don’t forget that Maurice Strong, the man who set up the IPCC to use climate change as a means to a world government (a communist government), was very pro-China (his aunt dated Mao). Given that a strong pro-China stance appears baked-in to the whole climate change cult, are you really all that surprised, given how it started?
Actually Fukushima was never the problem that the left pretended it was.
THe only known deaths were caused by the evacuation, not radiation.
I’ve seen the pictures in my studies. It was both.
There was no massive release of radiation from Fukushima. The evacuation was never needed.
It has always been about wealth redistribution. The ‘West’ was responsible for the industrial revolution and must be punished for their success by moving industry …. and CO2 production …. to China. Notice how other non Western aligned countries are never mentioned?
There are scores of statements made by UN officials that align with that. Unclear if the intent was China, although China does have a covert and large influence within the UN.
They (the faceless mob that controls the agendas of public discourse in western liberal democracies) seized on climate and the evils of CO2 as a weapon in the 1980s, and gave it instantiation in the IPCC. It’s been hugely effective in eroding the industrial base of those western liberal democracies. It works by constant repetition of the “message” or “narrative” of future doom by co-opting the mass media, university science departments and government institutions. It doesn’t depend on science as we used to know it; it doesn’t depend on observations of natural phenomena; it doesn’t depend on logic; it doesn’t depend on reason, so it’s essentially immune to counter-arguments from those of us who still like to think.
But there are signs that the “transition to net zero” is starting to get some pushback from the general public, and may be losing traction on the path to the green utopia we’ve been promised. But never fear, because “they” are making huge progress on parallel paths that undermine social cohesion, sense of collective identity, sense of national and supranational (the EU) purpose, and even the basic premise that western liberal democracy has made the world a better place..
Progress on the social front has been much easier and faster because it doesn’t depend on doing costly and time-consuming physical things like building wind farms, demolishing power stations, banning the future use of internal combustion engines etc. Instead, we are being endlessly propagandized by a cluster of ideas – you know what they are:
If net zero came to a grinding halt tomorrow, we would still be on the path to the death of the west unless we can regain our sense of destiny and overcome these insidious mind games.
Minor correction: Israel is a colonial, racist, genocidal state. Just ask the NYT or WaPo.
Unless saying that countries shouldn’t go around invading their neighbors counts as “poking”, I don’t see anyone poking that Russian bear.
Very nice.
How do we know what China’s CO2 emissions were in the past much less today. I don’t believe a thing the Chinese communists say.
As an employee of an environmental permitting company in 2006, I was sent to attend a conference on climate change for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for several northeastern states.
The subject of China’s increasing emissions came up, and the presenter said that “if we [the United States] lead, the rest of the world will follow”.
Even back then, that seemed like a very naive expectation. China has four times our population, and nuclear weapons, and the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may be evil, but are not stupid. We cannot coerce them into doing anything that is not in their interest, and they know it.
China does not have much oil or natural gas, but it has huge resources of coal. So, from the point of view of the CCP, when the United States and Western Europe voluntarily cut ourselves off from our most abundant energy resources to solve a non-problem, that’s their opportunity to take the lead. They can have the cheapest electric power in the world to develop their industries, while American and European industries wait for wind and sunshine, and lose their jobs.
Then John Kerry and his ilk will tell them they’re bad boys, and they laugh all the way to the bank.
The only way to keep them in line is “Drill, baby, drill” and “Frack, baby, frack”, and maybe things get a little warmer.
Consider the following quote from the article.
“Equally concerning is the willingness of our self-declared “authoritative” apparatchiks to distort emissions data to guilt Americans into conformity. China is far and away the single largest source of emissions today. While scientific knowledge should be perpetually debated and refined, portraying China’s emissions on a self-congratulatory per-capita basis is not an environmental breakthrough. The composition of the atmosphere is determined by absolute measurements, not on a per-capita basis, meaning that China’s actual emissions remain the same, regardless of how they are portrayed. In short, measuring per-capita emissions is as consequential as measuring the temperature in per-capita degrees Fahrenheit.”
How often on this site are individual, wealthy people, criticised for their large emissions as a result of flying long distances on private jets? Surely if we are to address CO2 emissions as a real and serious problem (which it is not, of course) then it’s the per-capita emissions that should be considered.
It is obviously not fair to expect relatively poor individuals with a low carbon foot print to reduce their carbon foot print, whilst individuals in developed nations have a 10x higher carbon foot print.
I don’t see anyone saying that the rich have no right to emit however much CO2 as they want.
What I do see is many people pointing out the hypocrisy of rich people funding groups that are demanding that everyone else cut their CO2 emissions, while they continue to emit as much as they want.
The rational people here not only recognize CO2 emissions as not being a problem, but believe that more CO2 is a benefit to the planet.
Well it’s like this-
Where does the 2050 net zero obsession come from? Bestselling author explains (msn.com)
Only capitalist CO2 is bad for the environment.