Friends, my latest article focuses on Chinese and liberal hypocrisy. Red China likes to claim that it is at the forefront of both technological innovation and every progressive cause. The truth is very different. In terms of protecting the environment, which is both a technological challenge AND a moral/political quandary, China is all bark and no bite. China pollutes on a gargantuan scale -- and Western environmentalists barely notice. Meanwhile, "woke" American and European liberals can't say enough complimentary things about China and its wonders. They give the Chinese, and the whole developing world, a pass when it comes to labor protections, human rights, AND the environment. I say: no more! The article you're about to read focuses on Elon Musk as a prominent example of this eco-hypocrisy, but there are countless members of our political, economic, and cultural elite who are guilty of the same sins. But we at WaddyIsRight are keeping score!
By the way, this article will soon be appearing at WND: WorldNetDaily. That's an exciting new venue for the propagation of Waddyism!
When Will Liberals Wake Up to
China's Environmental Hypocrisy?
Recently, in the context of a
conversation about green energy, Silicon Valley icon and noted
environmental nag Elon Musk observed
that China “is the future.”
Either Musk is spectacularly naive, or he is purposely misleading his
investors and the public (and not
for the first time?). If anything, China is the
future of pollution and poor global citizenship, not green energy.
True, the Chinese government is
positioning itself, and scores of Chinese companies, to profit
handsomely from rising global investments in green energy, including
solar and wind power. It is also prioritizing
the electric car market. Musk himself is
planning to build
more and more of his electric cars in China —
no doubt tempted by China's low
wages, lack of unions and labor protections,
and loosey-goosey
environmental standards. China, in other words,
is brimming with profit potential, even if a serious commitment to
conservation is lacking.
And that, as it turns out, is an
understatement! As corporate America and the mainstream media fawn
over China's green energy virtuosity, the truth
about China and the environment is enough to turn anyone's
stomach...literally, if you take a deep breath of Beijing's
smog, or drink some of its toxic
water.
But it’s more than that. For the PRC
(People's Republic of China), environmentalism is merely a front.
Political and economic power is China’s endgame, not green energy.
That’s what makes Musk’s latest declaration all the more
dangerous. In his quest for Chinese profits, Musk is legitimizing a
regime that wants nothing more than to expand its influence across
the globe. Musk’s decision to embrace the PRC is even more
troubling in the light of his environmentalist rhetoric, coupled with
China's record of complete indifference to environmental protection.
Consider the facts. China is the
leading emitter of carbon in the world, and it
isn't even close! China overtook the United
States way
back in 2006. Since then, U.S. emissions have
declined, thanks in part to the rise of natural gas, while Chinese
emissions have risen
steadily. Why? China's economy is growing fast.
That's one explanation. The other is that the Chinese are building
dirty
coal-fired electrical plants, and putting
highly-polluting cars on the road, at a record pace. Although the
Chinese brag about building solar panels, they actually use
remarkably few of them. Those panels
are for export to affluent tree-huggers in the
developed world. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is flying
high on its carbon “fix.”
Everyone has now heard of the veritable
archipelagos
of plastic forming in the Pacific. One “garbage
patch” is reportedly twice
the size of Texas. Eco-fascists wag their
fingers at Americans for daring to use plastic straws, but the
reality of marine pollution is that China is responsible for a much
greater percentage of it than the United
States. China is leading the charge when it comes to despoiling our
seas, while the rest of the world buys its shoddy products and pumps
billions of dollars into its relentless expansion. Do environmental
activists care? Seemingly not, to their everlasting shame.
The hypocrisy of the U.S. political,
economic, and cultural establishment — in blaming President Trump
for a “climate crisis,” while at the same time holding China
blameless for its rampant defilement of Mother Earth — is
breathtaking. Musk, who goes hat in hand to beg
for the PRC's tax credits even as he boycotts
President Trump's advisory councils, is a
prominent example of this hypocrisy. Just recently, in fact, Musk had
the audacity to announce the launch
of a new Tesla construction division in China. There, he will supply
jobs and investment to the nation with the single worst environmental
record on Earth, all while railing against President Trump’s
climate policies in the United States.
Keep in mind, Musk and his companies
receive millions of dollars each year in the form of federal grants,
contracts, and subsidies. Even as he courts America’s foremost
political and economic adversary with promises of factories in China,
Musk works as one of the principal contractors for the U.S.
government. In effect, American taxpayers are funding Musk’s
escapades — and, when he gallivants off to China, handing out new
factories like they were candy, the taxpayers are funding that as
well. The question is: why?
Americans should hold Musk and his
companies accountable. They should insist that Musk, and his fellow
liberals, stop
taking the side of the PRC's communist overlords,
and stop doing business with the country most responsible for
damaging the environment.
Unfortunately, at the moment, carbon
emissions, marine pollution, and many other environmental problems
are only getting worse, because the people who claim to be battling
them are, in fact, in bed with the worst polluters of all.
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an
Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at:
www.waddyisright.com.
He appears weekly on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480.
And here it is on WND: https://www.wnd.com/2019/10/chinas-musks-environmental-hypocrisy/
And here it is on WND: https://www.wnd.com/2019/10/chinas-musks-environmental-hypocrisy/
And, in other news, our illustrious Vice-President is touring the nation, visiting swing districts to drum up support for a Republican House takeover in 2020. This is music to my ears. We need a Trump win in 2020, sure, but it is very achievable to retake the House as well -- and this would drive the Left bonkers!!! Isn't that our number one goal? I'd say so!
Perhaps all the funny weed that Musk smokes is affecting his brain cells? In all seriousness, China's main goal is for world domination; one of everything (currency, government and so on).
ReplyDeleteHurray for Pence. He is from my birth place. Ha, Dr. Waddy, I would say that the left is truly already bonkers. That Gavin Newsome for one is something else, as is Shifty Schiff, Nervous Nancy and lets not forget the so called "squad".
Apologies, I forgot about the Newsmaker.
Linda, you may be right that Musk isn't quite right upstairs... Good point about weed. One has to wonder whether mass consumption of this "wonder drug" could be stunting liberals' mental faculties!
ReplyDeleteBonkers. What a great word. I suppose who is "bonkers" is to some extent a matter of perspective...but we may reach a point where liberals are detached enough from reality that they could promulgate policies that would do serious harm to civilization itself. They're already in the ballpark!
Dr. Waddy: Here are what I believe (only) to be salient facts about China: China is a prolix and understandably proud civilization emerging now into one of its periodic great eras after about 160 years of agony and degradation, largely at the hands of the West and at the hands of murderous idealists misled by Western thought. China has accomplished a level of material prosperity, and all of the social well being that prosperity generates, largely by intensive industrialization, both heavy and light and consequent foreign trade, which when compared to the destitution China experienced within still
ReplyDeleteliving, still extensive memory, is to be valued beyond measure. If it is to accomplished by pollution comparable to that which the West generated in the '60's (I saw it first hand in Buffalo, N.Y.), can we reasonably expect them to relent?. Morally and objectively, they probably "feel" no obligation to us and to our foo-foo environmental radicals. They may harbor only withering contempt for Western leftists who laud their communist history. I saw that first hand in a college course I took on Chinese economic development after 1945, where an experienced Chinese prof who was very open minded about the Communists (he said, "We Nationalists did not know how very much change was needed") disabused a frantic young American leftist who thought that Utopia could be achieved overnight and who, being so disappointed, fled the room.
China and probably India too, are going to continue those activities and policies which enable their miraculous and blessed economic resurgences and if we in the West don't like it? SO WHAT! And if the environmental movement which has so much of the West in its thrall, objects?"" We'll see you in 40 years. You see, we may not buy into your 'conviction' that global warming is generated by human action. And in our world, believe us, you would not have as much sway as you do in the spineless West"
Dr.Waddy: Yes I do think it quite possible to regain the House since Madame Pelosi had demonstrated what we fully expected of her: limousine liberal disdain and presumption. I still say, were illegals to camp on her San Francisco lawn, she would bleat!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I think what I consider the certainty that China and probably India (not to mention much also of the third world)will continue to develop, pollution or no, presents a given which our "human generated global warning"folks cannot, without completely discrediting themselves, deny. Its GLOBAL warming; do they propose to build a bubble over the West to deny access to the politically incorrect winds coming from the recalcitrant lands?
ReplyDeleteJack, I agree with your basic point: carbon emissions and other forms of pollution are the largely unavoidable price of global development, and it's hard to deny the billions of people in the Third World a fair chance to share at least a few of the comforts we in the West take for granted. So, in that sense, the Chinese are only doing what we would do in their place: prioritizing civilization over environmental purity. My gripe, then, is not really with the Chinese (although we too have to put up with some of the environmental problems they cause), but with the eco-leftists, who apply one standard to the West, and another to the developing world. That hypocrisy lays bare their real agenda: the radical transformation of Western politics, economics, and culture -- NOT the "saving" of the Earth.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Completely agree with what you said above.
ReplyDelete