Time Magazine isn’t what it used to be, but they still think they are, so when this aging arm of the Government’s Public Relations Department publishes things, it is meant to mean something. Not New York Times, something, but something. Like how capitalism can’t solve the climate problem, China is where we should be looking.
That’s the opinion of some Swedish Professor of “something.” Brett Christopher could teach left-handed albino lesbian studies (or economics or climatology), and he can’t be right from the start. “Renewables” are not the answer to any problem unless it is how do we waste money and cripple nations. They are not clean or green front end or back. But Brett Christopher is enamored of how quickly China built a bunch of infrastructure he labels as renewable, and why can we do that in the West?
Dumb and Dumber
Suggesting China as a role model for anything should be taken with a bit of Sino-cysm. The totalitarian regime need only point, and the entire system, from proletariat to politburo, under punishment of death, does what it is told. “No sire” or “But what about sire” are not options, which is what Christopher – like any proper white tower idiot – finds so appealing. Whatever pops into Xi’s head can be turned into action with a word as if that is better than capitalism or the free market system that is meant to undergird it. It’s not.
The reality is Chinese central planners have made a colossal mess of their economy, because of their incompetence, economic mismanagement and Covid lockdowns. For at least 30 years the Chinese Government has been keeping interest rates too low to encourage development, but the result has been enormous resource misallocation and huge asset bubbles. The Chinese realestate bubble has popped, creating a catastrophic mess of bad loans in their realestate sector. Even worse, Chinese regional governments have for years been creating fake economic growth to meet central targets by issuing government bonds, and many are now likely bankrupt.
The other more obvious issue, and I’m sure you were yelling it at your phone laptop after the opening paragraph, is that China has been opening coal plants faster than Joe Biden can fall down the stairs. As many as two new plants a week. China emits more CO2 than the rest of the world combined because it built coal plants as a backup for all that unreliable renewable capacity Xi demanded (to make China’s capacity portfolio look good in the run-up to a global climate conference – or so the reporting goes). That thing Brett Christopher wishes we could do without the details so maybe he just hates free markets and capitalism, which makes more sense.
China, that great example of how to add wind and solar, couldn’t make them work either. What they can do, and are doing, is add generating capacity that does work and will carry most of the load until the wind turbines fail—and long after.
In that, I agree. We should follow Xi’s example. We need more coal (gas and nuclear) while skipping the part where the state rams wind farms up our asses. After all, the Green Dream is about using energy to achieve socialism and that’s the part about Xi we could truly do without.
