編按：作者回顧近20年來，美國和其西方盟友致力敦促發展中國家採取積極的緩解氣候變化政策。中國積極響應發展綠色能源產業，卻在近日遭受美國等國批評，補貼產業的行為導致產能過剩，國產電動車等綠色產品以十分便宜的價格傾銷至美國以及歐洲，令當地綠色產業蒙受損失。作者批評這種說法是十分諷刺，因為美國也正在補貼當地的產業。更甚者是將環境問題政治化，無異於剝奪貧窮人口使用廉價能源的機會，亦無助減緩氣候變化的影響，以下為全文內容。
For nearly two decades the US and its Western allies have been touting climate change as the single biggest threat to humanity, urging developing countries, top among them China, to hop on the climate bandwagon and adopt aggressive climate policies, even at the risk of compromising their growth. It had been a 21st century environmental crusade spearheaded by US democrat Al Gore after he lost the US presidential election in 2000. Since then, climate change issues have been propelled into the top positions of the international political and developmental agenda of the USA and of the United Nations. Although adopting the standards and schedules to combat climate change as set forth by the developed countries could certainly snub domestic growth and development, developing countries were repeatedly told that doing so would not harm their economic development. To the contrary, it would contribute to their growth, create jobs and new industries and foster innovation!
An Old Pillar In US-China Relations
Ten years ago, President Barack Obama said in the UN Climate Summit: “For all the immediate challenges that we gather to address – terrorism, instability, inequality, disease – there’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.” He called out China, saying that as the most populous country on earth, with the fastest increase in carbon emission, it must join the US in leading the rest of the world in greenhouse gas reduction. “We have a responsibility to lead. That’s what big nations have to do.”
China accepted the challenge and took it very seriously. It embarked on massive expansion of its use of nuclear power and renewable energy. It reduced the use of coal, increased the use of natural gas, and it curbed its thirst for oil by becoming the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles. In less than five years, despite the two-year pandemic, the share of electric vehicles in new vehicle registration in China shot up from 5% in 2020 to nearly 30% today. It also became a world leader in the manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and batteries of all sorts.
During the Obama years, climate change was a pillar in US-China relations. Whenever the relations went sideways climate cooperation came to the rescue. But with Donald Trump’s entry into the White House in 2017 everything changed. Trump cared little for climate change and one of his first actions in office was pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement. With the unraveling of US-China relations, there was no more a bonding issue on which the two countries could cooperate.
Joe Biden’s election shifted the pendulum again. Biden returned to US into the Paris Agreement, and in April 2021 he hosted a Climate Leaders’ Summit, reaffirming US commitment to global decarbonization and calling on major economies to go even further than their commitments under the Paris Agreement. As in 2014, China took the call with earnest intent. President Xi Jinping reiterated China’s commitment to strive to bring carbon dioxide emissions to a peak before 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.
Combating With Chinese EV As Jihad
The same Democrats who pushed China in this direction are now complaining about its overcapacity in the very same green industries that promise to save the world from a so-called “climate catastrophe.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen who visited China last month blamed China for decimating US industries and threatened to take measures against China for doing exactly what the US had urged it to do ten years earlier – go green. She would not entertain the idea that the prices of solar panels and EV’s may have fallen due to China’s higher productivity. Nor would she self-reflect about the possibility that the root cause of this “overcapacity” may be the West’s underinvestment, rather than China’s overinvestment.
She could not see the irony of criticizing China for subsidizing its green energy industries while her own government is pumping billions of dollars in Inflation Reduction Act grants and subsidies to America’s green energy industries and additional billions to build a national network of electric vehicle chargers as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The Biden administration has already signaled China’s electric vehicles as its next jihad. Earlier this year, Biden issued executive order to investigate the national security risk associated with China’s electric vehicles and administration officials have already indicated that cars made in Mexico by Chinese companies will be heavily tariffed.
Indeed, the same Democrats who for years have been ringing the alarm bells over a looming climate catastrophe are now blaming China for flooding global markets with inexpensive new green products and are calling for bans, tariffs and other mechanisms that would prevent them from being affordable to the US consumers and consumers internationally.
Consider Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio, who in 2021 said “we have to act now to grow the renewable energy economy, and to make our communities more resilient to climate disasters.” But in 2024, facing a tough reelection campaign he must curry favor with Ohio’s manufacturing groups and he is now urging the Biden administration to ban inexpensive Chinese electric vehicles from the US market. Equally hypocritical are those American politicians who sing the praise of solar energy as planet saving technology while supporting bans on Chinese solar panels on a false premise that their manufacturing involves forced labor.
China Should Be Applauded, Not Condemned
If climate change is indeed an existential threat to humanity, China should be applauded, not condemned, for pouring resources into the space, providing subsidies and research money to find ways to make renewable energy affordable. Furthermore, lowering the costs of green energy make it more affordable in the developing world where three quarters of humanity happen to live.
The same climate duplicity has also afflicted Europe. In his recent visit to Paris and Europe, the Chinese leader must have received an earful from his hosts about China’s overcapacity, as the same sentiment was aired by German Chancellor Olaf Schulz in his visit to Beijing earlier. Europe, which has been in the forefront of the electrification of transportation for years, is deeply troubled by the popularity of Chinese EV in Europe, and the European Commission is investigating ways to build barriers to the European market.
The Economist Magazine which over the years dedicated many cover stories to the climate crisis titled one of its recent covers “China’s EV onslaught,” blaming Xi Jinping for setting off another trade war and calling Western politicians to prepare for a second “China shock.” Alas! When America cannot beat its competitor at its own game, it changes the goal posts. Such is the true colour of the so-called “rule-based order”!
All of this exposes the truth about what the climate religion has been all along – an environmental issue politicized to become a powerful weapon to deny the poorest people in the world the cheapest forms of energy and by this slow down their rise. Now that suddenly green energy is becoming affordable to all, Washington and Brussels’ ambition to protect the planet is eroded by their real agenda: to protect their own part of the planet. Moral high ground can easily give way to political expediency, convenience, and selfishness. All that they are saying is: “curse you if you do, and curse you if you don’t, all in the good and righteous name of ‘climate change’”.
