As Trump Abandons the Climate, China Steps Into the Void - Horowitz

As Trump Abandons the Climate, China Steps Into the Void - Horowitz

 

The Trump administration’s glaring absence from the UN annual international climate summit, currently underway in Brazil, puts an exclamation point on its abandonment of any global leadership on climate change. In fact, abandonment is too benign a word to describe the administration’s hostility and open opposition to polices and initiatives designed to limit the rise in global temperatures that scientists say are essential to avoid the worst impacts of a heating-up planet.  To paraphrase William F. Buckley, President Trump sees his role as standing athwart the transition to clean energy, yelling stop.

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While 193 countries and the European Union are officially represented at the summit, the United States has joined Afghanistan, Myanmar and San Marino in choosing not to participate.  In doing so, President Trump is spotlighting his decision to withdraw from the landmark Paris global climate agreement as he did in his first term.  In his first term, however, he still sent high-level officials to the annual climate summits, where they occasionally at least offered some US cooperation.

 

Mr. Trump appears determined to export his back-to-the-1950s -- heat-up-the-planet anyway possible-- approach to domestic energy to nations around the world.  In a nation and a world that is inexorably moving towards non-carbon-producing renewable energy, which is rapidly becoming the most cost-effective energy option, the president is doubling and tripling down on greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels.  Recently, for instance, the United States threatened and bullied small nations in a successful effort to kill a global agreement to limit carbon emissions in international shipping.

 

On the diplomatic and economic fronts, China is taking full advantage of the vacuum left by the Trump administration, assuming global leadership of an international climate effort that is backed by nearly all the nations of the world and cementing its domination of the global energy market of a future that is just about upon us: clean energy production and distribution. 

 

China sent a 789-person-strong delegation to the summit.  Our main rival for global leadership is using the summit to highlight the major gains it is making in transitioning to solar energy and electric cars, enabling the world’s second-largest economy to speed its transition away from fossil fuels. “China’s solar, batteries, and EV industries expanded three times faster than the country’s overall economy in 2024,” reported The Observer.  As it once did for the United States, China’s domestic progress on the climate enhances its international credibility.

 

China is coupling its effective international climate diplomacy with its emergence as the dominant supplier of renewable, non-carbon-producing energy, which accounts for nearly all the recent growth in global energy use.  China makes “most of the world’s solar panels and wind turbines, half the world’s heat pumps,” and “more than two-thirds of the world’s EVs,” reported The Observer.

 

The Trump administration’s head-in-the-sand approach to energy and climate is not only costing us time we don’t have to curb the increase in global temperatures and limit the negative impacts of climate change; it is leaving our nation more isolated diplomatically and weaker economically.  China has responsibly and smartly positioned itself to take full advantage of our foolishness.