Essay by Eric Worrall
Building communist coal power stations is apparently OK and necessary, but it is very wrong when President Trump does it.
As Trump turns his back on renewables, China is building the future
By Alan Kohler
…
The data centres that operate both AI and cryptocurrency are already massively increasing electricity demand and investors are obviously expecting them to keep doing so — exponentially.
Meanwhile, the BRICS summit in Brazil last week — it stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa — went in the opposite direction to the United States on climate change, committing to “intensify global efforts to contain global warming”.
…
Let’s join the dots: America is pivoting back to fossil fuels and pulling out of renewable energy while the rest of the world continues to do the opposite, China is grappling with too much renewable energy while investors are bidding expectations to record highs for the new industries whose data centres are eating the world’s electricity.
…
In his Independence Day speech, Trump declared: “Coal is back. You can’t use the word ‘coal’ unless you precede it by saying ‘clean beautiful coal.'”
China is also building coal-fired power stations, but only because it has to; the idea of saying “coal is back” and calling it clean and beautiful at the same time as more than one hundred people were dying in a Texas flood is insane.
…
Xi now more important than Trump
The result of all this is that China — a ruthless autocracy — appears destined to take global leadership from the US, in trade, the means of producing energy and, possibly, in “soft power”, or moral leadership, as the US withdraws from foreign aid and multilateralism.
…
So, it’s entirely appropriate that Anthony Albanese is meeting Xi again before he meets Trump for the first time. …
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-14/trump-us-xi-china-trade-renewables-tariffs/105526196
If China is “grappling with too much renewable energy”, why do they “have to” build any coal plants? Is it because the renewables China built are useless for meeting China’s energy needs? Sadly Kohler didn’t expand on this point, let us know why he thinks new coal plants are necessary in an environment of excess renewable capacity.
Of course we already know renewables are not fit for purpose. Researchers commissioned by Google admitted no known renewable technology could solve the world’s energy needs, way back in 2014. They even considered hypothetical radical improvements to current technology such as self erecting wind turbines, and still came up short.
Journalist Alan Kohler got one thing right – Australia’s current leadership possibly does think President Xi Jinping is more important than President Trump. Aussie Prime Minister Albanese is on his second trip to China right now, but has yet to meet with President Trump even once. China even has a nickname for Aussie Prime Minister Albanese, they call him “Handsome Boy“.
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Believing anything the CCP says is folly. My considered advice to Australia vis a vis the Chinese would be to do a 180 on their firearms bans, and require all heads of households to be armed with what was previously banned.
I don’t believe what people SAY, I believe what they DO.
Alarmists tells us that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuel electricity generation.
Yet the country with the cheapest, most locally sourced wind turbines and solar panels is building coal-fired generation?
Somebody’s math is definitely wrong!
Personally, I would trust the Chinese economic calculations on this one … they are investing hundreds of billions of dollars. The alarmists get paid to spout alarmism, and their paychecks clear regardless of the accuracy of their forecasts.
(Otherwise, I do not trust any self-serving Chinese economic data.)
P.S. My comment is not at all a rebuttal to Mr. Halla’s comment.
I am merely looking at a DIFFERENT set of observations of how the Chinese do things.
I agree 100%, but unfortunately people who think otherwise outnumber people in Australia who wish we had US style gun laws.
And China is not just a military threat, they’re busy seducing the Aussie establishment with visions of an expertocracy, of what life would be like if Australia was more like China. What life would be like if the experts – the university leaders, the establishment journalists, the deep state – were in charge, and the uneducated masses no longer have the freedom to impede the vision of those who know what society needs. Because this is how China sees itself, and is the image it portrays to people they want to influence.
You just have to look at how incompetently run Western universities are, imagine the chancellor had the power of life and death over all the staff and students, and imagine that leadership style applied to the whole of society, to understand how horrible that would be.
Of course they are also building lots of nuclear. I think they look at their internal building of solar and wind as an expensive add campaign for selling to the gullible west.
This from the article ” in “soft power”, or moral leadership, as the US withdraws from foreign aid and multilateralism.”
… perhaps better to say US aid and multiculturalism..
Please allow me to repeat myself: What makes you think the Chinese are actually installing working wind mills? Have you ever heard of Potemkin Villages?.
The Chinese are trying to sell the monstrosities. Of course, they say” we eat our own dog food. But it is a lot cheaper to lie, to erect turbines without generators, to erect turbines and not connect them to the power grid, and to rely on coal, that is cheap, locally available, and works 24/7/365.
I agree with everything written by everyone in this thread. But there’s a simple possible explanation. The Chinese autarchs are not stupid. Rather than go to the expense of actually building a renewable energy system, it’s far easier, simpler and less costly to simply buy gullible or stupid or corrupt western journalists to provide propaganda. Joseph Goebbels perfected this technique nine decades ago.Totalitarians have been following his advice ever since.
The CCP has to keep its renewable industry employees working even if it means building unnecessary wind & solar farms. Doing so 1] limits any social unrest, 2] adds to their virtue signalling on climate change, and 3] prompts the West to continue buying wind/solar/battery/electronic equipment.
The net effect is to enrich the CCP, make China’s major competitor’s economies more fragile, and weaken their major geo-political rival [USA]. A triple win!
All the while building more coal power plants — the CCP knows what actually powers a modern society.
But what they don’t and can’t know is the real price of capital in a centralised command economy and it would appear they’ve got that wrong big time at the moment. Unlike market economies where a few get that wrong and do their shirt you don’t want that with a national economy. They were already in trouble before Trump called time on their long range dumping strategy and it has all the hallmarks of Reagan causing the collapse of the Wall for the USSR. Will the CCP do a hatchet job on Xi and change course is the question now.
As reported by Bloomberg, Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase at a foreign ministers meeting in Ireland, said “I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they are idiots.” He also said “I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy rolled out failed.”
Here, he’s referred to as Bootlicker Boy”.
These people are insane. Unreliable’s are just virtue signaling.
Did Alan Kohler (the name is that of a producer of bathroom fixtures in the USA) really connect the rainfall in Texas (note there has been rain elsewhere) to coal, global warming, and Trump? Unbelievable. Debunked repeatedly by respected meteorologists, and some less respected of us.
I suggest Kohler get acquainted with the natural rain generator of the region.
North American monsoon – Wikipedia
Kohler has long been a barker for every far-left ideological dogma that’s been brewed in the past 100 years.
His “sermons” cover every aspect of life that one-world government might “make whole”.
Of course, this guarantees him a ready platform at the far-end-of-the-far-leftist-spectrum ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission).
(all on the taxpayers’ teat of course)
…..the idea of saying “coal is back” and calling it clean and beautiful at the same time as more than one hundred people were dying in a Texas flood is insane.
No, Mr. Kohler (which comes from the German word “Kohl”….meaning “Coal” in English)……it is you that are quite insanely stupid and crass: To even distantly suggest a monsoon event in Texas was directly related to the burning of Kohl / Coal and intimate that Mr. Trump’s policies were involved in creating this massively tragic occurrence of weather is not only ridiculous, but also disgusting, inappropriate, irresponsible, and the words of a clown.
Name calling isn’t good form on my part, but it has become quite impossible to tolerate such unhinged, unfounded, source-free drivel as you offered in this piece.
Your credibility is now less than zero. Nice work.
Did the monsoon (heavy rain rate) move down the Guadalupe river at the same speed as the water flowed building to an unbelievable crest? No doubt.
You need to remember Alan Kohler is actually a comedian. His economic spots on TV are really very clever satire, as are his comments on the topic under discussion. Nobody could be that clueless in real life.
I put no stock in what China or Russia say, I don’t know much about Brazil, I’m thinking less and less of what South Africa says I think India is probably the most reliable of these five countries. India is going to do what is right for India and that’s fine so long as they build clean and proper fossil fuel and nuclear plants. I don’t know what has happened to Australia but what I have seen so far is very disappointing.
ABC News actually put Kohler’s nonsense to air in primetime on Sunday night.
I can’t imagine whose side the cowardly and treacherous ABC would be on if we ever found ourselves in conflict with China.
Maybe their vigorous and ultimately humiliating defence of China during the pandemic might provide some clues.
In his Sunday night ABC News report, Kohler neglected to mention any of the following:
China’s record-level greenhouse gas emissions.
China’s extraordinary growth in coal-fired power generation.
The incredible environmental cost of China’s highly toxic rare earth production.
The reliance of China’s solar industry on a network of concentration camps and slave-labor.
And the only example of a coal-fired power station Kohler relied on was dirty brown coal, Soviet-era monstrosity in Poland!
Kohler then ended his segment with this nonsense: “it could be China to the rescue” when it comes to saving the world from climate change.
See it for yourself here: https://youtu.be/psmIqXrjADQ
What exactly doe burring coal have to do with the Texas floods. This is a weather event
trump hasn’t built any coal pollution factories. You are confused blogger
OMG, He’s only been there 6 months or so.
He has signed several executive orders aimed at supporting coal mining and coal-fired power plants.
And has announced plans to open many new coal fired power stations
btw… Coal and CO2 are not pollution.
The really nasty pollution comes from the highly toxic chemicals needed to make solar panels and wind turbines.
Among the most filthy manufacturing industries there is, leaving toxic sludge lakes that totally destroy any possible future use for farming.
trump hasn’t built any new coal plants
Yet. However the tricky climate sees what he is up to and sends extreme weather in advance.
David, yes, it’s amazing the number of dimwits who believe that climate controls weather, isn’t it?
Climate is the statistics of weather observations – nothing more, nothing less. Nutters who run around waving placards saying “Stop climate change!” provide a bit of comic relief, especially if they wear white coats, pretending to be “scientists”!
And meanwhile Germany is also turning back to COAL because of gas supply problems.
Germany’s energy U-turn: Coal instead of gas – DW – 08/04/2022
I look around my house, and see very little made in Australia or the USA. Even a KitchenAid product labeled “Proudly American since 1927” is actually made in China!
Am I supposed to buy products produced only in countries whose governments are decreed acceptable by my politicians?
Not hardly.
Whom is telling you that?
Who is telling me what? What are you talking about?
No one – including China – gives a rat’s what Alan Kohler says or thinks.
Inconsequential navel gazing.
I disagree, China will be counting on people in the media to help keep the sheeple docile and obedient, if they decide to move forward with their South Pacific real estate acquisition.
You just need to look at how quickly the relatively benign British police force and free media in Hong Kong were converted into brutal instruments of Chinese state suppression.
There are people in every organisation who are willing to sell their soul for money and power, and China has demonstrated their expertise at identifying such people and using networks of such people to control everyone else.
Its easy to imagine rebelling against a brutal dictatorship, but much harder when your kids and the kids of everyone you care about are hostages to tyranny, and they know everything about you and how to hurt you – and obedience seems a safe and stable alternative to rebellion.
Eric, no offense intended, and what the Chinese government does to its citizens concerns me about as much as the average Chinese citizen is concerned about what my government does to me.
In Australia for example, in certain circumstances, it is a crime for a detained person to notify anyone that they have been detained – which makes it difficult to get legal assistance. The UK has superinjunctions, and the US just summarily executes US citizens, domestically or overseas, without the benefit of anything as awkward as an open trial.
Freedon of speech? As Churchill said “Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”
On this blog. Willis Eschenbach makes no bones about the fact that he will censor my comments (without any recourse), if he doesn’t like what I say, or the way I say it. Presumably, that is why all my comments are now subject to approval before appearing.
So all Governments try their very best to control their citizens, and ensure that political correctness is maintained. Dissent must be strictly in line with the policy of the Government of the day, and deviations are strictly punished. In the UK, people have been prosecuted for “silently praying”, and in Australia, performing a “Nazi salute” will incur a mandatory one year prison sentence. Bad luck for comedians standing silently with outstretched arm on stage while tension builds – finally announcing with straight face – “The snow was this high in Moscow last year.”
I suppose I face a jail sentence, for thinking it was funny when I saw it.
Oh dear. It’s probably just as bad in China, but I don’t live there – nor do I want to.
Another “conspiracy theory”, that AGW is all about defeating Capitalism, is proven correct.
There is something very revealing about Renewables and China’s role, becoming the poster child for it.
If Renewable energy options are so compelling desirable and necessary, why does China need to burn coal? Why does it build the worlds largest coal industry, in order to champion renewables i.e. solar panels and wind turbines, for the rest of the world to buy?
Isn’t the unfortunate truth clearly being demonstrated for all alarmists and renewable advocates to see right there?
Renewables are too expensive. They do not work often enough to be relied upon..
Some good news with the jackbooters in Oz as the lawyering class closes the back door on them-
Court finds no duty of care owed to Torres Strait Islanders over climate change
“Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa — went in the opposite direction to the United States on climate change, committing to “intensify global efforts to contain global warming”.”
Are there really people who seriously believe that China and Russia actually mean what that statement says or have any intention of doing anything differently? And are there really people who get paid to write this stuff? As far as Russia is concerned they are in danger of being labelled Putin’s allies.
The Chinese has a MAGLEV train at 374 mph, running on a coal, gas, hydro, nuclear-dominated grid, and a little wind and solar
A 500 MW (2 units at 250 MW each) CCGT power plant can be built in two years, at a turnkey cost of $2000/kW.
.
AI systems require lots of steady electricity
Each major AI system should be required to have its own power plant
.
By definition, weather-dependent, variable/intermittent, grid-disturbing, heavily subsidized, expensive wind and solar systems do not qualify.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-cost-kwh-of-w-s-systems-foisted-onto-a-brainwashed-public-1