by Charles Rotter at wattsupwiththat.com
Isn’t it fascinating when we’re given a peek behind the curtain to witness the world’s largest polluter abandoning the Paris Agreement? All the while, the United States and other western nations are crippling their economies and burdening their citizens with unnecessary costs in the pursuit of combating climate change.
As Diana Furchtgott-Roth reports, China’s President Xi Jinping has reiterated his stance that China will not be swayed by outside factors in determining its own approach to emissions. This announcement was made, rather ironically, while former secretary of state John Kerry was visiting Beijing in hopes of rekindling dialogue on climate change.
Xi’s message was, according to Furchtgott-Roth,
“a deliberate slap in the face to America”
and a clear indication that China has no intention of going along with the Western push to net-zero. As Furchtgott-Roth highlights, “In October 2022, he [Xi] said that China would not abandon coal-fired power plants before renewables could substitute for the lost fossil fuel. But this substitution will not occur because fossil fuels generate substantially more energy than renewables.”
So, while the US is busy imposing billions of dollars of costs on its citizens to reduce emissions and pushing stringent policies like the proposed tailpipe rule by the EPA, which would require 60 percent of new vehicle sales to be battery-powered electric by 2030, and the proposed power-plant rule, which would require most power plants to sequester, or bury, 90 percent of their carbon emissions or go out of business by 2040, China is effectively doubling down on its reliance on fossil fuels.
The inconvenient truth is that these EPA rules would impose tens of billions of dollars in annual costs to the U.S. economy, with no tangible reduction to global emissions. As Furchtgott-Roth aptly notes,
“Even if the United States were to get rid of all fossil fuels, this would only make a difference of two-tenths of one degree Celsius in the year 2100, according to Heritage Foundation chief statistician Kevin Dayaratna.”
The proposed tailpipe rule would unfairly burden lower-income Americans by significantly raising driving costs. The required shift to electric vehicles comes with a heavy price tag and several practical issues such as the time it takes to recharge, the lack of charging ports, and reduced range in cold climates.
The power-plant rule, on the other hand, would drastically increase the cost of electricity at a time when the EPA plans to have millions of new electric vehicles accessing the grid. The implementation of such a rule could lead to more blackouts, manufacturing moving offshore, job losses, and an overall reduction in Americans’ standard of living.
As Furchtgott-Roth concludes,
“Because Xi has explicitly and repeatedly said that his country will not reduce emissions until energy from renewables replaces that from coal-fired power plants, all these costs will result in no reduction in global emissions. The EPA has America on a path to all pain and no gain.”
So, as the U.S. and other western nations cripple their economies in the name of reducing emissions, China blithely continues on its own path, demonstrating to the world that the Paris Agreement and the entire global climate change initiative is an exercise in futility. There’s a lesson to be learned here, folks. The world doesn’t dance to the tune of climate alarmism, and it’s high time we stopped trying to lead the band.
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