Further to Communist China’s alleged turn to green energy, and the left’s long and dangerous infatuation with that murderous and mendacious regime, Robert Bryce rubbishes Bill McKibben’s new book Here Comes The Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization as “a 220-page love letter to America’s most formidable geopolitical rival: the People’s Republic of China.” And he complains of the weird mix of red and green in which “McKibben is effusive in his praise of China’s pursuit of EVs, batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. But he blithely ignores China’s record as one of the world’s most notorious abusers of human rights. In particular, he makes only a passing mention of how dependent China’s solar sector is on the use of slavery in Xinjiang province” and “his book ignores the land-use conflicts over alt-energy that are raging all around the world. Finally, McKibben ignores the pesky problem of scale.” OK, he also rubbishes the author as “equal parts P.T. Barnum, Amory Lovins, and The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” But why doesn’t it bother those on his side?
For instance Heatmap AM, which emails “China’s clean energy boom is tilting the world toward a fossil phaseout” that actually claims hydrocarbon energy use there has plateaued. It doesn’t mention the word “coal”. And Matthew Wielicki, under the heading “Apocalypse, Inc.” (and under a roof with solar panels, he mentions) writes “The MSM keeps turning climate risk into collapse porn. That’s not journalism; it’s an anxiety machine. Today’s case study: Bill McKibben’s new Guardian article telling readers that ‘extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and violent,’ that we should sprint ‘at the pace China is currently going,’ and that solar+batteries are the bunker-ready cure-all.” Alas, he adds, “The claims don’t match observations, emissions math, or grid reality.” But they seem not to care in their obsessive drive for… what’s this? To sell product? Especially as “And then there’s the “pace China is currently going” line. The arithmetic is simple but missing from the copy: China led the world in new solar and wind capacity – and also hit record CO₂ emissions in 2023, with global fossil CO₂ setting a record the same year.”
Now here’s Javier Blas in Bloomberg. No, not Bloomberg Green. And we do commend rather than condemn that outlet for having a variety of opinion on its digital pages. Especially when Blas writes:
“For the last few years, climate and energy policymakers have convinced themselves the world was inexorably moving away from fossil fuels. Breaking news: It is not. The consensus was that consumption of oil, natural gas and coal would peak before the end of this decade. There was debate about the speed of the subsequent decline, but the conclusion was the same: The end of the fossil-fuel era was within reach. But that tenet, key to achieving the ambition of net zero by 2050, wasn’t as cast in stone as its backers thought.”
If they really thought it was cast in stone they are wishful thinkers with minds, in the classic jibe, like cement: all mixed up and permanently set. Because as Blas continues:
“The annual report being prepared by International Energy Agency, which represents the views of the world’s richest nations, shows the alternative – decades more of robust fossil-fuel use, with oil and gas demand growing over the next 25 years – isn’t just possible but probable. That means more carbon-dioxide emissions that exacerbate the climate crisis.”
OK, so there’s less diversity of view here than there seemed to be. He’s all in on this carbon pollution man-made crisis stuff. But he can see what’s in front of his eyes, and it isn’t China leading the world away from the tar sands back to Eden.
