Chinese dictator Xi Jinping continues to play the world for a fool on carbon emissions.
The Chinese delegation to a U.N. climate meeting spent Wednesday defending China’s rising carbon emissions. China’s record stands in stark contrast to declining U.S. and EU emissions. China knows that it doesn’t have to cut carbon emissions to keep the world happy. It only needs to pretend to cut emissions and then lie about it.
The gullible dupes at the National Resources Defense Council recently suggested that China’s coal-related emissions will decline after 2020. This, even though the Financial Times noted this month that “China is set to add new coal-fired power plants equivalent to the EU’s entire capacity … across the country, 148GW of coal-fired plants are either being built or are about to begin construction.”
It’s the familiar Xi maneuver: say one thing and do the exact opposite.
Xi claims his Communist Party cares for China’s people, then throws millions of them into gulags and shoots others dead.
Xi claims he respects international law and national sovereignty, then steals vast areas of the Pacific Ocean.
Xi claims he cares about the planet then destroys the ocean’s wildlife.
Xi claims he wants fair economic dealings with the world then steals our property and blackmails our friends.
In 2014, Xi promised to attempt to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030. Then he lied about his carbon emissions. Now he builds a vast array of new coal plants.
But Xi gets away with it.
The supposed leader of the free world, Emmanuel Macron, defers to Xi’s imperialism, and the environmentalists pretend Xi’s carbon plans are serious. It’s not just the National Resources Defense Council. Take the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is claiming that China can, by 2050, reach “a fully developed rich zero-carbon economy.”
Why say something so ridiculous? Perhaps because the institute had, at least in 2017 and 2018, more than $2 million in assets related to China.
Environmentalists need to reconsider their analytical assessment of China and Xi. If not, the inevitable upset to come will be that much harder.
