As you watch your energy bill rise and the cost of filling your tank double, know that China is laughing at your tithe to the Church of Climate Change. Climate Czar John Kerry was just sure his friends in the Chinese Communist Party were all on board to save the world. Kerry opined in July 2021, “President Biden and President Xi have both stated unequivocally that each will cooperate on climate despite other consequential differences. America needs China to succeed in slashing emissions. China needs America to do the same.”
However, as with almost every one of his foreign policy decisions over the last 50 years, Kerry was dead wrong. According to the Daily Mail:
China is making a mockery of climate targets as it announced plans to build more coal-fired power plants and increase oil and gas exploration, just weeks ahead of the COP26 summit where world leaders were expected to agree to ambitious emission cuts.
Beijing’s National Energy Commission said late Tuesday it is important ‘to build advanced coal-fired power plants’ and intensify domestic oil and gas exploration after the country was hit by blackouts last week.
Li Keqiang, China’s second-in-command, made the announcement after the meeting and hinted that a pledge to cap the country’s carbon emissions by 2030 – which already lags behind commitments made by other major economies – could be torn up.
The news should come as no surprise to Kerry. State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s perspective could not have been any more explicit than it was in the official statement after a meeting in September:
Wang Yi said, in recent years, China-U.S. relations have taken a sharp turn for the worse and are facing serious difficulties. The main reason is that the United States has made a major strategic miscalculation about China. As a Chinese saying goes, “He who tied the bell should untie it.”
Fossil fuel advocate Alex Epstein has warned about the strategy China has been pursuing for years. According to Epstein, in 2020 China had record oil imports and reached a five-year high in coal production.
The new statements make clear that the CCP has no intention of reversing that trend. It is likely they never did. The Malthusian climate activists in this country don’t understand that China’s moves are economic, not environmental. As Epstein explained in an interview:
“A lot of that electricity is used to build unreliable solar panels and wind turbines for us. Of course, we don’t mostly build them here because they have to be built with cheap energy which means they have to be built with fossil fuels. They are not built with solar panels and wind turbines, obviously. So, you have China making this very strong strategic move to get us to unilaterally disempower and for them to empower.”
It is critical to understand that China owns much of the accessible rare earth metals and has built the infrastructure to refine what they import for batteries and solar panels. The CCP has already threatened to reduce the amount of rare earth metals they ship to us. With the nation’s recent saber-rattling about Taiwan and increasingly belligerent demands of Western leaders, no one should be under any illusion we will be importing more. President Biden’s massive budget proposal requires more rare earth metals to manufacture electric vehicles and solar farms’ batteries and panels.
The U.S. will be buying those items from China, where large asset managers like BlackRock and even John Kerry’s wife have invested heavily. If the goal is to reduce climate emissions, we need to do it in ways that do not impair our national security or future prosperity. Becoming reliant on the Chinese Communist Party risks both, and Kerry knows this. Serious people would also not be advocating for old technologies like solar and wind. As Eric Weinstein said in an interview with Glenn Beck, America needs to get back to the business of innovation. Luckily, it is on our doorstep.
Related: Does China Really Believe in ‘Climate Change’?
Serious people, which Kerry is not, would be investing in the significant advances around fusion made at MIT. A major hurdle was eliminated in September of 2021, when a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet successfully ramped up to a field strength of 20 teslas for the first time. The most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth, it paves the way for the creation of practical, inexpensive, carbon-free power plants in a matter of years, not decades. Why would the budget put billions into solar and wind?
And charging stations could go the way of the dodo if intelligent, serious people were in charge. An Israeli start-up, Phinergy, has produced zero-emission cars and buses using batteries made of water, air, zinc, and aluminum. The cars have a similar range to gas-powered vehicles and take five minutes to power up. Because the company’s metal-air energy technologies freely breathe oxygen from ambient air, the systems are significantly lighter. The CEO explains that the difference is similar to a scuba diver and a fish. “While the diver carries oxygen tanks in order to breathe, the fish simply breathes through its gills.”
Leaders should make similar arguments for restoring the production of the cleanest fossil fuel, natural gas. Additionally, research should focus on methane and carbon capture, not taxes. The only explanation for the current direction of the Biden administration is that it wants to continue enriching the governing kleptocracy to the benefit of China. This strategy can only be described as managed decline. Or the fundamental change to our economy that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was yammering about on Tuesday.
