Climate Hope From China at Davos? And From Trump’s Lies Too? You Bet.
First Take: Trump Lies, China Leads on Clean Energy and Climate Action
China Provides Leadership; the Trump Show Sows Both Chaos and Boredom
In sharp contrast to Mr. Trump’s embarrassing remarks last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, full of arrogance, ignorance, insults, lies, petty grievances and threats, China’s representative at Davos, Vice-Premier He Lifeng, the country’s top representative in economic relations, gave a substantive speech that would have made Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Ronald Reagan proud, extolling the virtues of free trade, multilateralism, and open markets. For example:
“We should firmly support free trade and jointly promote a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. Economic globalization – driven by international specialization, collaboration, complementary strength and the pursuit of win-win – is a prevailing trend of history.”
He added that:
“While economic globalization is not perfect and may cause some problems, we cannot completely reject it and retreat to self-imposed isolation. The right approach should be, and can only be, to find solutions together through dialogue and steer economic globalization in the correct direction.”
When China is asking other nations not to retreat into self-imposed isolation, you know things have changed.
And it’s not a “You open your markets to our manufactured goods, we keep our 1.4 billion consumers to ourselves” kinda deal. Frankly, as the saying goes, they want to keep their population “fat and happy” to maintain domestic political stability. As such, those in power want their people to have the best of what the world has to offer.
“As China’s middle-income group continues to grow, there will be more diverse needs for higher quality of life, which means immense potential for consumption. China has put domestic demand on top of its economic agenda this year, and is working faster on a income-growth goal for both urban and rural residents, to vigorously boost consumption and make itself a consumption powerhouse on top of a manufacturing powerhouse.”
Trump’s Stale Tabloidesque Tantrum Goes Nowhere
Mr. Trump’s performance was the exact opposite of Vice-Premier He Lifeng: erecting walls, threats instead of dialogue, blowing up beneficial alliances patiently and soberly maintained for decades — all for nothing as TACO lived up to its name.
As for climate action, Mr. Trump repeated lies about clean energy, calling it “the green new scam, perhaps the greatest hoax in history … that the radical left tried to impose on America.” As the New York Times politely said in its reporting: “Many of Mr. Trump’s comments about energy were not grounded in reality.”
Frankly, the rest of the world doesn’t care what Mr. Trump says about clean energy and climate action because they know it is lies backed up with stupidity, and that anyone who goes down the old dying fossil road with Trump is a fool.
China Backs Up Their Words With Action
In stark contrast, the world is paying attention to what China has to say because it is backed up by action grounded in national interest. Vice-Premier He’s speech had very strong words about climate action. I quote him at length, with some emphasis added:
“At a UN climate summit last September, President Xi Jinping solemnly announced China’s nationally determined contributions for 2035. This is the first time that China has put forward an absolute emissions reduction, which is a testament to China’s firm resolve and maximum effort. China has put in place the world’s largest renewable energy system and the most complete new-energy industrial chain. We will control both the total amount and intensity of carbon emissions across the board and strive to achieve carbon peaking before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060.
China will work with all other parties to fully and effectively implement the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, uphold the multilateral process on climate change, and actively promote global green and low-carbon development. China will work with all parties to foster closer partnerships for green development, address the shortfall in green production capacity, and ensure the free flow of quality green products globally. We invite entreprises from all over the world to embrace the opportunities from the green and low-carbon transition, and work closely with China in such areas as green infrastructure, green energy, green minerals and green finance, and jointly create a green and prosperous future.”
So:
China will live up to their climate commitments; they have already shown they are doing so; frankly, they wouldn’t be making these climate goals if they didn’t have strong confidence in meeting them; they aren’t enough, but when Mr. Trump sets the bar in negative territory they look like bold statesmen in comparison;
these commitments rest on their clean energy accomplishments to date, which are substantive, and which, through their manufacturing powerhouse, are helping the rest of the world with their climate goals;
China is extending an open hand to collaboration on climate/sustainability tech and finance;
we mustn’t lose sight of who made this speech and where; it wasn’t China’s climate guy, it’s their money guy, and he’s doing so at Davos, where the rich and powerful gather to discuss how to make the world better, seemingly, through business.
As I’ve said before, no one should be under any illusions that China is doing all of this out of the goodness of their hearts. Clean energy (with climate action as an added bonus) is in their national interest, and, more importantly, in the political interest of the senior members of the Communist Party where all political power resides.
Is there hope to be found in these contrasting presentations at Davos? You bet. No one should be worried that the world will follow Mr. Trump and his “green scam blah, blah, blah, hoax blah, blah, blah, radical left blah blah blah” babbling nonsense. In fact, the opposite is the case. Comparing Trump and China the choice is clear. The clean energy transition will continue along thanks in good part to China’s national interest.
So while it’s not time to despair, it is time to rise up and say NO to Mr. Trump’s destructive vendetta against clean energy and climate action. It is time to say YES to boosting the transition into a transformation at the speed and scale needed to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. That’s our job.
And together as we live out this NO/YES combo we show once again that we are the hope we’ve been waiting for.
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