The best way to understand what the hell just happened is through the lens of the utterly absurd BBC story, “As Trump Retreats From Climate Goals, China Is Becoming a Green Superpower.”
Thirty years ago, headlines described the story. That was their only purpose, because people didn’t purchase stories à la carte; we bought the entire newspaper or magazine. Not so today. Now, writers are paid per-click, which means the headline is also an advertisement.
As the economic model changes, so does the message.
And since most people don’t read beyond the headline, the takeaway for BBC headline-scanners is obvious: China must be the new green superpower. Aw gee, Trump blew it again!
But when you read the article, that’s not what’s happening at all: Yes, China certainly did invest heavily in green energy — but not to use it!
Instead, China intended to sell it to the West, taking advantage of “clean energy subsidies” and environmental regulations.
Now that President Trump has called their bluff and canceled the subsidies, China is LOSING money:
Bejing has focused on three key industries: electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels.
Already, China makes more solar panels than the rest of the world combined.
[…]
Oversupply has also become a domestic challenge.
Solar manufacturers have been cutting prices to stay competitive, while investing to keep up with the latest tech and rising raw material costs. The result: the country's top solar panel makers predicted they would lose up to 38.4 billion yuan ($5.5bn; £4bn) for 2025, Nikkei reported last month.
Six provinces reportedly cancelled 143 wind and solar projects with a combined capacity of 10.67 GW in the second half of last year. [emphasis added]
Because the dirty, filthy, inconvenient truth is, China is still completely dependent on fossil fuels. The BBC may laud it as a “Green Superpower,” but 58% of China’s power still comes from coal.
In fact, China has more coal power plants than the rest of the world combined!
China also imports more oil than any other country in the world: 11,308,860 barrels per day. (For comparison’s sake, the combined total of the #2 and #3 oil importing countries, the United States and India, is less than China’s.)
Despite all the environmental propaganda in the West, the world still runs on fossil fuels. No matter how much the Al Gores of the world do protest, it’s still the backbone of the global economy.
Additionally, oil is what’s funding the Russian war machine. It’s paying for the guns, ammo, drones, salaries, and conscriptions.
And because of European sanctions, most of Russia’s oil isn’t being transferred via pipeline anymore. Roughly 70% to 85% is now shipped by oil tankers. This new economic model requires open access to the sea — and the reliance on a “legal fiction” called the shadow fleet.
As geopolitical expert Peter Zeihan described it:
The shadow fleet is a group of roughly 1,000 oil tankers that carries crude for sanctioned countries, most notably Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.
[…]
Basically, what happens is, someone affiliated with Russia or Iran or Venezuela goes out and buys a decommissioned oil tanker that probably doesn’t match current safety norms, gives it a fake insurance policy, puts a fake flag on it, and sends it to pick up the crude from one of those three countries. That crude then comes somewhere in the high seas, where it comes up against another shadow vessel, and they pump the crude from one to another… that then happens once, twice, three times more.
…It’s just a convenient fiction [to evade sanctions].
Russia has invested lavishly on the shadow fleet strategy, spending at least $10 billion on it since 2022.
The “fake insurance policy con” seems like an odd Achilles’ heel for Russia, but it exposes an extraordinary vulnerability.
[T]he uninsured Russian shadow fleet could soon cause an environmental catastrophe in European waters. Much of the Russian oil is transported through busy international transport routes, including the Baltic Sea and the strait of Gibraltar.
“Large oil spills have so far been avoided but a major disaster is waiting to happen and cleanup costs would reach billions,” the KSE paper reads.
The Swedish foreign minister previously told the Guardian that Moscow appeared prepared to create “environmental havoc” by sailing unseaworthy oil tankers through the Baltic Sea in breach of maritime rules. [emphasis added]
So, we’ve got a thousand uninsured Russian/Iranian/Venezuelan ships with fake insurance policies, transporting billions of dollars of illegal oil all over international waterways, violating countless environmental safety requirements.
That’s illegal.
An oil tanker is a sitting duck: It can’t defend itself from attacks. Any country with a competent military could pluck ‘em out of the water with impunity.
Which is exactly what the U.S. has been doing to the Venezuelan shadow fleet: We’re grabbing their boats and confiscating their oil.
But it’s more than that. Oil is expensive. Ships cost lots of money. Insurance companies aren’t in the business of insuring losing ventures. Once the first few boats are seized, all the other insurance policies will be canceled.
And if no one will insure the shadow fleet — and fake insurance policies are no longer accepted — the entire export system collapses.
This week, for the very first time, another country targeted the shadow fleets. It was India, the second-biggest beneficiary of cheap Russian oil.
It didn’t get much publicity, but on Groundhog Day, President Donald Trump brokered a trade deal with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In exchange for slashing tariffs on Indian products, India agreed to stop buying Russian oil.
"It was an Honor to speak with Prime Minister Modi, of India, this morning... He agreed to stop buying Russian Oil, and to buy much more from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela. This will help END THE WAR in Ukraine" - President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/RD7PZ8S16z
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 2, 2026
Shortly thereafter, India seized three shadow fleet oil tankers from Iran.
Here’s Peter Zeihan to explain the significance:
Once another country joins the United States and targeting the shadow fleet, it’s probably only a matter of days to weeks before many, many other countries do it. There are a lot of countries that don’t like Venezuela or Iran or Russia — especially the Europeans. And now that India, of all countries, is joining in, we should expect a couple dozen of other countries to do so as well, which would completely remove the shadow fleet from functioning in less than a few months.
[…]
The Russians have been exporting somewhere between 3 and 4 million barrels a day [via the shadow fleet] for four years. And it is their primary source of income now. And if this is about to go away, then we’re going to see some very dramatic changes in a number of things in the Eastern hemisphere.
Number one, the Ukraine War: If the Russians have lost their single largest source of income, that will manifest on the battlefield. The Chinese may be supplying the Russians with all the gear that they can pay for, but the key thing there is: pay for.
And if the Russians can’t [pay], then a drone war where the Russians can’t get enough drones is one where the Russians start losing territory.
And in a stunning coincidence, Fox News just reported, “Ukraine makes fastest gains in years as Russia talks stall, exploiting cracks in Kremlin command.”
Ukrainian forces retook about 78 square miles over five days, according to a report by Agence France-Presse based on an analysis of the Institute for the Study of War battlefield mapping. The gains represent Kyiv’s most rapid territorial advances since its 2023 counteroffensive in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Not only Russia is reeling. Peter Zeihan predicts China will feel the squeeze, too:
If the Indians are stopping crude from Russia getting to India, you can bet your pretty [censored] that they’re going to stop it from getting to China, because now China is the only country that is still taking Russian crude in volume. And now, all of a sudden, we’re talking about the entirety of the 3 to 4 million barrels of the shadow fleet being gouged out of the Chinese economy.
All in all, it represents one of the most remarkable under-the-radar diplomatic achievements in recent history. When President Trump’s Russia-Ukraine peace plan reached a dead end, he turned around, cut a deal with India, and strangled the Russian economy overnight.
Along with the economy of Russia’s petro-partner, Iran, which is trapped in gunboat diplomacy. (Venezuela, of course, was already dealt with.) And now China — ludicrously heralded by the BBC as a “Green Superpower”(!) despite Chinese greenhouse emissions exceeding all developed nations combined — will now eat the higher cost, too. All of America’s strategic rivals were caught flatfooted.
It didn’t receive the recognition it deserved, but that’s the epitome of 4-D chess.
Potentially, this was the week when Russia finally lost the Ukraine war. Putin can’t win a war of attrition if he runs out of money before Ukraine does. And now, for the very first time, Russia is truly, completely isolated.
We still need to see how it all plays out, but President Trump just might’ve engineered the diplomatic coup of the century.
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One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First: It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.
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