Speaking of advice, here’s the advice Josh Rogin provides for the Biden Administration in his Washington Post column:
Rather than focusing on persuading Beijing to sign vague, nonbinding pledges, the Biden administration should be focused on building out a domestic climate change industry whose supply lines don’t run through China.
Over the next decades, the United States and its partners will need secure supply chains for solar panels, semiconductors, electric vehicles, rare earth materials and much more. That will require more investment up front, but it will create more U.S. jobs and stronger national security in the long run. Also, it means saving the planet without becoming complicit in crimes against humanity.
We must always leave the door open to cooperation with China, but not at the cost of intentionally blinding ourselves to the reality of the situation. China will pursue its own development on its own terms. It’s hubristic to think we can change that in the near term.
Now it’s time to play “spot the trend”. Consider this graph illustrating carbon emissions by the four largest global economies (plus India):
What does that graph tell us? To me it looks as though even if the U. S. reduced its carbon emissions to zero without China and India reducing their own emissions, something for which I see no prospect of happening, it won’t actually accomplish much.
And regardless of what the wishful thinkers say, we can’t reduce our carbon emissions to zero. All baseline power is either produced using fossil fuels or nuclear. All of it.
Furthermore, increasing our production as Mr. Rogin proposes requires us to generate more power not less and, indeed, produce more pollution rather than less although I did read a very interesting study on using citric acid in refining rare earths the other day. What that tells me in turn is that if we’re really serious about reducing carbon emissions we need to build more nuclear power plants and look seriously into CCS. Solar and wind power have niche uses but insisting they can supply all our future needs is for poseurs and dilettantes.
Josh Rogin certainly presents more viable antidotes to our problems with China than most columnists at the Washington Post.
As for that graph, the idea of leaving China and India out of the equation dealing with carbon emissions reduction is ludicrous. They are the real offenders, producing the biggest share of carbon on the planet. What the US is being pulled into, by all these climate agreements, is nothing more than our country virtue signaling and eviscerating our economy more than we already have under other superfluous policies.
Quick summary: it’s easy for one country to cut its carbon emissions by offshoring its heavy industry to China. It also increases global net emissions.
“Quick summary: it’s easy for one country to cut its carbon emissions by offshoring its heavy industry to China. It also increases global net emissions.”
Well, of course. Further, China and India’s curves are increasing because they are industrializing, in addition to the industry transfer from US to China. At least in the US we can control production methods, and protect our strategic interests.
Professional environmentalists aren’t stupid. They know what they are doing. Its an anti-US driven anti-capitalism strategy, else they would realize they are just transferring the same energy usage to a more CO2 intensive country, and they would be full on for nuclear.
These are not good people.
In a global economy with interlocking manage trade agreements, how exactly do you manage that?
We have this covered at a local scale.
https://www.klkntv.com/omaha-to-develop-action-plan-to-combat-climate-change/
Things you can do:
https://www.kfornow.com/syndicated-article/?id=1364664