I am very weary of the Green Crowd extolling China as a model or global responsibility. The NYT’s official “Davos columnist,” Thomas Friedman, is at it again. Today, he warns how China is leaping ahead in green technologies, which Friedman argues, we could top if only we would artificially raise our energy costs. Never mind that we would destroy our economy: Once prices went through the roof, we would have the incentive to become as virtuous as the ecologically correct Chinese. From his column:
I’ve been stunned to learn about the sheer volume of wind, solar, mass transit, nuclear and more efficient coal-burning projects that have sprouted in China in just the last year. Here’s e-mail from Bill Gross, who runs eSolar, a promising California solar-thermal start-up: On Saturday, in Beijing, said Gross, he announced “the biggest solar-thermal deal ever…China is being even more aggressive than the U.S. We applied for a [U.S. Department of Energy] loan for a 92 megawatt project in New Mexico, and in less time than it took them to do stage 1 of the application review, China signs, approves, and is ready to begin construction this year on a 20 times bigger project!”
Yes, climate change is a concern for Beijing, but more immediately China’s leaders know that their country is in the midst of the biggest migration of people from the countryside to urban centers in the history of mankind. This is creating a surge in energy demand, which China is determined to meet with cleaner, homegrown sources so that its future economy will be less vulnerable to supply shocks and so it doesn’t pollute itself to death…
Meanwhile, China last week tested the fastest bullet train in the world — 217 miles per hour — from Wuhan to Guangzhou [and] has nearly finished the construction of a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai at a cost of $23.5 billion. Trains will cover the 700-mile route in just five hours, compared with 12 hours today…China is also engaged in the world’s most rapid expansion of nuclear power. It is expected to build some 50 new nuclear reactors by 2020; the rest of the world combined might build 15.
Gee, I wonder why the Chinese can move so fast? Central planners don’t have to worry about what the locals think. They don’t have to worry about years and years and years of never ending environmental lawsuits and repeated impact reports. They don’t have to worry about pesky protesters, and police don’t have to worry about brutality charges and angry media exposes if protests do occur. They also don’t have to worry about the Chinese equivalents of snail darters or spotted owls. They don’t have judges issuing restraining orders against new building projects. They don’t have to worry about–well, you get the picture: It’s good to be king.
It really is nauseating that in their zeal and utopianism, effete Greens like Friedman overlook that China is a tyranny. And note, he no longer even cares that China destroyed Copenhagen. But when you are in love, you don’t see your paramour’s many failings amidst your besotted sighs. Friedman believes that Red China is now Green China, and nothing else much matters.
January 10th, 2010 | 10:35 pm
Definitely a dysfunctional love affair.
January 11th, 2010 | 12:07 am
I must say though…having just spent 15 hours getting from Pittsburgh to Hartford, can we have a high-speed rail, ooh pretty please?
I know, I know, we are in debt (to China, no less). But that kind of project could actually be worth something.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 12:15 am
College Goyl: The point isn’t to oppose high speed trains. Having been on one in France, I quite like them. The point is that people like Friedman extol the efficiencies of tyranny.
January 11th, 2010 | 12:30 am
[...] posted here: Radical Environmentalism: Love Affair With China Continues … By admin | category: Uncategorized | tags: and-nothing, biggest, china, else-much, green, [...]
January 11th, 2010 | 1:01 am
When I was in high school in the 90s, I read Friedman’s book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, and enjoyed it (I’m a quarter Lebanese).
Since then, though, I haven’t liked a lot of things I’ve heard him say. And this business about China … I don’t know what he’s thinking. China may be doing some good things, but they aren’t exactly known for being worried about “green” issues.
January 11th, 2010 | 6:10 am
What we might learn in the 21st is that govt that survive are better than those that are principled and that humans aren’t the joyous Twitter users we have in States.
Red China will set the prices on many things to facilitate green tech while the US will deny and start wars in Mid East to maintain support from the barbaric American poor who have proven for the last decades that they will never vote for their own interests.
January 11th, 2010 | 2:56 pm
Wow, even Wesley’s site draws the traditional mangled-English PRC apologists these days! They must have a lot of time on their hands.
Government-wise, the USA has been around since 1789, the PRC since 1949. I think the USA will be around for a few hundred more years, “barbaric poor” and all.
January 12th, 2010 | 6:20 pm
What about the air in Beijing, not to mention the rest of China?
Great art on this blog section, as usual!
These is the same China that forces women to have abortions, can’t control rabies and forces people to club their own pets to death or else see them clubbed to death before their eyes, cuts off bears’ hands for entertainment and otherwise does barbaric things to animals from which it wants to get various potions, eats cats and dogs that have been kept in tiny crates with their arms and legs viciously tied behind them…
Well, they’re human, aren’t they. By the way, congratulations to Michael Savage for announcing his opposition to r5esearch on chimpanzees. Wesley said something in a similar vein here not too long ago, but continues to go off on the wrong path re animal rights. DON’T CONFUSE ANIMAL RIGHTS WITH LIBERAL WRONGS!!
January 12th, 2010 | 6:21 pm
p.s. A high-speed train. Very nice. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
January 29th, 2010 | 8:38 am
Tom Friedman’s education is in the Russian language. It’s amazing how he ends up on panels as an expert in “global warming.”
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