“China is quietly saving the world from climate change,” declared liberal economics blogger Noah Smith.
“The United States — the country that defeated the Axis, fed the world with the Green Revolution, and did so much to promote global growth and technological progress over the last century — has utterly dropped the ball on the biggest environmental challenge of our age,” Smith lamented. “Instead, the threat will be met and defeated by China, and — more than any other single individual — by Xi Jinping himself. That’s no small accomplishment.”
AMERICA’S GREEN MOVEMENT HAS A CHINA PROBLEM
And yet, in the last three years, China has accounted for 70% of all new coal-fired power plants.
Also, while the United States has cut greenhouse gas emissions steadily for nearly two decades, China’s emissions have doubled in that same period, and the communist nation is now the world’s largest emitter by a massive margin.
But headlines such as Smith’s are the norm. It’s a veritable genre in American and British media: The U.S. is letting the world down while communist China is saving it. This isn’t a new thing either. This genre has existed since former Vice President Al Gore lost the 2000 election and became a documentary maker.
What explains these divergent tales? Why does the world’s largest producer of pollution and greenhouse gases — a planned economy that is single-handedly keeping the coal business afloat — get lauded as the savior of the Earth?
Some of it is simply a matter of differences in measurement: If you think producing solar panels is more important than burning less coal, you might view China as a brighter light than the U.S.
Some of it is rank partisan media bias: The American press hates President Donald Trump and hated former President George W. Bush, and so they want to make these leaders look bad.
But some of the problems are deeper. For some of those singing Xi’s praises, the real virtue of China is not how green its people are, but how red.
The green China story
Here are some headlines from two U.S. outlets, the Washington Post and NBC News, in the past two years.
“China asserts green energy leadership, as Trump dismisses climate ‘con job’“
“How China came to dominate the world in renewable energy“
“Trump has cut global climate finance. China is more than happy to step in.“
“China looks to step into global vacuum as Trump vows to pull U.S. back“
“China leads nations with new climate plans, defying U.S. climate denial“
“Trump may cede global climate leadership to China“
This is standard fare across all American media. Some of it is typical partisan media stuff, comparing Trump unfavorably to everyone, even communist autocrats. But there’s something deeper going on here.
China’s dirty truth
China doesn’t merely lead the world in greenhouse gas emissions. It emits more greenhouse gases than the entire developed world.
China emitted greenhouse gases equivalent to 16 billion tons of CO2 in 2023, according to the European Climate Service. That is more than the U.S., India, and the entire European Union combined.
China’s defenders will reply by pointing out that the U.S. emits more CO2 per capita than China.
The per capita number doesn’t change the fact that if CO2 emissions are the problem, then China is the main culprit, and that if reducing emissions is the goal, then the most pressure should be put on China.
Also, the per capita number mostly reflects the fact that China is much poorer than the U.S., which has a per capita GDP of $86,000, compared to $13,000 for China. If Americans became much, much poorer, we would be able to afford less, and so our emissions would fall as well.
Unless climate hawks want to admit that they want global impoverishment, then they should care about the carbon intensity of a nation’s productive activity. How much CO2 or methane does a country produce per unit of value? On the relevant measure here, emissions per GDP, the U.S. far outperforms China.
The U.S. produces 0.26 kg of CO2 per dollar of GDP, compared to 0.42 for China. What’s more, the U.S. has a better 20-year trend: it has gotten 42% more carbon-efficient over the last 20 years compared to a smaller 30% improvement by China.
Add in China’s massive increase in coal-fired power plants, and it’s impossible to think that it embodies the green future. Throw in the fact that China is an authoritarian communist regime, and you might scratch your head at the American media’s adulation of the People’s Republic.
Green on the outside, red on the inside
For many environmentalists, communism is not a bug, but a feature, as the old 2010s saying went. “Capitalism Can’t Solve Climate Change,” was the Time magazine headline.
The author, a Swedish professor, wrote that on emissions reductions, “almost all the incremental progress is currently being made in one country: China.” The article predicted that in fighting climate change, “China [will] continue to be the sole meaningful over-achiever.”
When the state owns the means of production, that’s good for the plant, the green-red commentators argue: “The companies are best seen as instruments wielded by the state in the service of achieving its industrial, geopolitical, and — increasingly — environmental objectives.”
But it’s not clear that we should view communism as a means to save the planet rather than the other way around. The environmentalist movement, and more recently the climate movement, is often seen as a means of accomplishing communism.
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate was the critically acclaimed 2014 book in which left-wing author Naomi Klein made this case, writing, “There is still time to avoid catastrophic warming, but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently constructed.”
Look at the Green New Deal pushed by the Sunrise Movement and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). It’s nothing less than a plan to remake society entirely, including the abolition of market capitalism or “neo-liberalism.”
NO MORE FREE CLIMATE RIDES FOR CHINA
It reveals the cheapness of the climate movement that the coal champion of the world could earn plaudits just for being Marxists who can be juxtaposed to Trump.
It’s almost as if this wasn’t about greenhouse gas concentrations in the first place.
