This just in: China doesn't have the United States' best interests at heart. So, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which, from a government standpoint, is China, funds and supports American climate-change screechers, you know they aren't doing it in the name of climate change.
Now, I don't blame the Chinese government for acting in China's best interests. That's what any government should do: act in the best interest of its citizens, or in the case of China, its subjects. But we should be aware of the motivations behind anything they do.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) last June chaired a Senate subcommittee hearing on Chinese donations to American climate-scold organizations:
The Energy Foundation China is a nonprofit organization that awards climate research grants to American universities and is also involved in climate strategy events with American lawmakers. According to its website, the foundation “operated jointly with the United States Energy Foundation as a single institution” until 2019, when the institution split into two to “increase operational effectiveness.” Some of its leadership formerly held senior positions in the Chinese government, including its CEO.
“There is a coordinated assault by the radical left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party, to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against our energy producers, all in order to undermine American energy dominance,” Cruz said.
The foundation also has contributed more than $12 million to American environmental advocacy groups, according to Cruz, that lobby for and against legislation and “routinely file lawsuits trying to block pipelines, trying to ban gas-powered vehicles and trying to bankrupt oil and gas companies.”
At the heart of this is a San Francisco (of course) based non-profit group, Energy Foundation China (EFC), that is pouring CCP money into American climate scold advocacy.
For evidence, Cruz pointed to cash outlays at a nonprofit called Energy Foundation China (EFC), based in San Francisco. According to its website, EFC has disbursed over $500 million to more than 4,000 climate-related projects. Its CEO and president, Ji Zou, is based in Beijing and has a background consistent with strong CCP affiliation. For example, he was a “key member of the Chinese climate negotiation team leading up to the Paris Agreement,” according to his online bio.
They're pouring a lot of money into hamstringing American energy production while ramping up their own. China is building coal-fired power plants, and they are making steel, steel with a number of quality issues, but steel all the same. Steel is one of the primary commodities for heavy industry; without it, almost nothing else can be made, and China is now the world's top steel-maker.
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The United States is now ramping our energy production back up, but we're going to have to step smartly to erase the lead China already has.
China's involvement with this points out very clearly how the various "green energy" schemes should not be looked at not only as an energy policy issue, not also as an environmental issue, but as a national security issue. China is, to put it bluntly, eating our lunch on energy production, and they are helping along American groups who would hamstring our own efforts. While China is funding American climate scolds, they are mining coal and building coal-fired power plants. China uses more coal than all the other nations of the world combined. They're using it to make steel, and a lot of that steel is going into tanks and navy combatant ships. Meanwhile, here in the United States, the climate scolds, bankrolled by China, are still advocating for solar panels and windmills, many of the components of which are made in - you guessed it - China. Meanwhile, agents of the CCP are buying up American farmlands, often in places near key U.S. military installations. This is an intolerable situation.
Of course, China faces serious internal problems as well. Their real estate market, in particular, is a huge house of cards. The Chinese people aren't breeding; the Middle Kingdom is poised on a demographic cliff. The industrialization of their cities has resulted in some of the dirtiest, most unhealthy places to live in the world today. But that may well make them more of a concern, rather than less, for the United States. There are few things more dangerous than a man with nothing left to lose, except, perhaps, a nation with nothing left to lose. China, in another 20-30 years, may be in that position.
China is not a friendly nation. Every action they take, every cause they bankroll, is in their interests, in the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. They aren't worried about the environment - just look at China's cities. They aren't worried about climate change - just look at all their new coal-fired power plants. They are worried about supplanting the United States as the primary global power, and if our home-grown climate scolds have anything to say about it, they will - and China is pouring money into America's climate-change panic-mongers, for precisely that reason.
