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The climate war is over: China won

Michael Mann, creator of the debunked hockey stick graph, in 2021 published a book entitled The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. His thesis was that climate-altering fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petrostates are the enemies of humanity and (by omission) that nature has no significant role in climate change.

Mann’s thesis seems to be that an army of activists who condemn the Industrial Revolution can defeat the desires of Chinese, Russian, Indian, and pan-African people who want the benefits from using fossil fuels and create a utopian world powered solely by renewable energy.

This thesis does not hold up.

But let’s start with the first premise – that the desires of billions of people for cheap energy can be fully supplied by 2050 using only wind, solar, and geothermal (but not nuclear or hydro). It implies that all nations are ready, willing, and able to stop jockeying for power and influence and gather around the Maypole to sing Kum-Ba-Yah.

Mann must otherwise want us to believe a majority of Earth’s people are so concerned about the long-term future of the planet that they will willingly forego cheap energy, affordable housing, and the freedom to travel and even depopulate an overcrowded–by green standards–world.

For decades, European and American (and dependent) governments have paid lip service and even enacted economy-crippling laws and mandates to placate the Michael Manns of the world. The rich can always afford, it seems, to dabble in fads or impose mandates on others that do not really affect their lives at all. We saw plenty of that during the COVID pandemic.

But the worldwide revolt against this foolishness will very likely only grow larger as people awaken to the fact that real wars continue, with devastating consequences. People may realize that not every hurricane, rainstorm, or lightning strike is their fault. They may believe food, clothing, and shelter are much more important than bowing to the whims of naysayers – and to the Chinese.

The European revolt may have started in Italy with the election of Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister. Her Brothers of Italy party still agrees to “combat the threat of climate change,” but adds the heretical comment that, “We will not achieve these aims by harming the economy or through an exclusively state-led approach. We need to harness the expertise and creativity of businesses and entrepreneurs,” the very people Mann blames.

For the first time in recent memory, there are political debates in Germany, the United Kingdom, and even France, and politicians are toning down their frenetic drive toward energy poverty and political irrelevance.

While Chancellor Olaf Scholz in May announced Germany would contribute 2 billion euros of taxpayer money to the Green Climate Fund, by July, the headlines were that he was “squeezing environmentalists out of his government.”

Meanwhile, the Christian Social Union/Christian Democratic Union alliance led by Friedrich Merz has made “fighting the environmental agenda” its top priority. Recent elections in Hesse and Bavaria saw populist parties take seats away from Scholz’s Social Democrats and his Green and Free Democrat coalition partners. Ordinary Germans are voting against the climate war.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak just “tore up” the Tory strategy for meeting UN- and EU-mandated climate targets by rolling back several pro-green measures, including bans on petrol and diesel vehicles and new gas boilers. Many believe Rishi acted to counter the Labour Party, which remains committed to green radicalism, and win votes from economy-minded Britons.

Sunak, whose move was criticized by fellow Tories, says his nation is “stuck between two extremes” on the climate issue. “If we continue down this path,” he said, “we risk losing the consent of the British people.”

French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this year called for a moratorium on new environmental regulations and just last month argued that the “green transition” should focus on providing incentives rather than imposing outright obligations. “We want an ecology that is accessible and fair, an ecology that leaves no one without a solution,” and not punitive, he added.

Still, France, like most other European nations, is committing billions of euros to various climate initiatives and still exerting pressure on companies and individuals to purchase unwanted heat pumps to replace oil- and gas-fired boilers.

In the U.S., President Joe Biden early on proclaimed climate change as the nation’s greatest threat, and even after Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden declared that global warming is “the single most existential threat to humanity we have ever faced, including nuclear weapons.” That his policies still reflect that strange position is evidenced by his cancellation in September of oil and gas leases in Alaska and offshore.

While his European counterparts stray from dogma, Biden — like a Moses held up on each side by John Kerry and Al Gore — is standing firm. But despite the posturing, even a diminished Biden ought to know the climate war is over.

China won.

Yet China’s massive victory, punctuated by its commitment to coal for its own economy and to controlling the market for almost all the components for renewable energy deployment, may well be pyrrhic, as its economy teeters on collapse.

The Diplomat reports that exports from China fell by an unprecedented 14.5 percent year-on-year in July 2023, while imports also fell by 12.4 percent – the worst performance since the onset of the COVID pandemic in February 2020.

Chinese industrial production rose by only 3.7 percent in July (from July 2022), and China’s retail sector growth was just 2.5 percent. Youth unemployment in China was estimated at 21.3 percent, and the Hong Kong stock market index had fallen by 20 percent since January. Even China’s housing market was stagnant.

China’s economic woes, however, have not slowed its massive military buildup to an official defense budget in 2022 of $230 billion but unofficially $60 billion higher. China’s military budget grew about 10 percent a year from 2000 through 2016 and has remained at about 7 percent annual growth since then.

The Chinese have long claimed hegemony over the entire South China Sea and lands bordering the sea, a position disputed by almost all its neighbors. Artificial islands and military installations in the South China Sea threaten trade routes used by Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, and Australia.

Treating China as an ally (and savior) in the climate war has left U.S. politicians blind to any Chinese threat, and, according to experts, has left the U.S. and its allies increasingly powerless to deny and suppress future Chinese aggression in East Asia.

A recent article in Foreign Policy states that “technology diffusion, growing global challenges, and antiquated force design have eroded the United States’ military edge against China.” China today has the world’s largest navy, army, rocket force, civilian fleet, and industrial base – that builds new ships and missiles at more than twice the U.S. pace.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is bogged down in Ukraine, and Iran-supported Hamas just started a war with Israel. With climate, not defense or containment, as the U.S. focus, China is free to roam.

Only the foolish would ignore the urgency to focus on the mirage of importance now placed on punishing both the West and 600 million Africans without electricity by dancing to Mann’s tune.

A version of this article originally appeared at Town Hall