In the first half of this report, we covered how President Trump dominated the World Economic Forum (WEF). But amid all these policy actions and the personality puffery, what became of the WEF's pet topic, the environment? Well, the temperature is coming down, you can say. What discussion there was of saving the world that we saw, in a trademark indolent fashion, mostly the leaders were undercutting their own hand-wringing climate concern.
What is telling is these very people appear not to be buying into their own Chicken Little palaver. Each year, the WEF surveys “experts” (make of that what you will) about what they consider to be their greatest concerns. Around 1,300 eggheads were asked to list the topics they are most worried about, and the returns were revealing. Economic concerns topped the list, with “extreme weather events,” “pollution,” “critical change to Earth systems,” and “biodiversity loss” all dropping in year-over-year ranking.
A caveat they tossed out was that they were still most worried about the environmental categories on the long-range list of concerns. What this tells us is that they see the need to shore up the money flow now, and then, when they are flush, greenlight the global nightmare script once again.
One of the supposed environmental “winners” at the conference was China. If you twisted your head like a dog hearing a harmonica, that is for good reason. The Chi-Coms – who have spent years wagging their lips over green deals while behaving as if putting ink on paper would take a blowtorch to the ozone – were praised for promoting cooperation to save the planet. That these gathered leaders bought this sales pitch should tell us everything wrong with these soft-headed blowhards.
Attendees were swooning over how the Chinese were sounding like Gaia worshipers in the hemp Eco Tent at Burning Man, while Trump was making for the exit again on the Paris Accord. What the Davos dumba**es missed is what Beijing was actually pushing. Sure, Xi’s mouthpieces in Switzerland were saying all the right things, such as calling for a “global collaboration on climate.” Clearly, Beijing got hold of the Davos Glossary and was using their hippie lingo against them.
Even the Chinese press tried to get in on the game, but managed to perform about as well as our own media industry in the process. At China Daily, they proclaimed that their nation “can act as a vital stabilizer in this turbulent environment,” a first, to be sure. They also proposed a “unified global response” in order to battle unilateralism. Uh…huh… The best, the outlet praised Canada’s Mark Carney for recognizing a global challenge. Somehow, Carney pegged the problem “without mentioning the United States,” as he then pointed at “American hegemony” as the cause. These guys are prepping their resume for a Washington Post position.
Another voice from the Mainland was proving the maxim that the longer someone’s title is, the less they are worth listening to. Hai Zhao is the Director of International Political Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. (Guessing he needs to use both sides of the business card.) Zhao boldly proclaimed that this year’s meeting was a “watershed moment” and then promptly never explained his hyperbole.
Another person giving an address was Vice Premier He Lifeng. Don’t be too swayed by his import; he was but one of four vice-premiers the Chi-Coms shipped to Davos, a title they bestow like “Associate Producer” is thrown around in Hollywood. Lifeng, again, was using all of the right words to make the seal-clapping crowds enamored, but any actual study of his message was avoided.
“China has put in place the world’s largest renewable energy system and the most complete new-energy industrial chain,” said He – his actual name, not his announced pronoun. “We invite enterprises from all over the world to embrace the opportunities from the green and low-carbon transition, and work closely with China in such areas as green infrastructure, green energy, green minerals, and green finance, and jointly create a green and prosperous future.”
Plenty in that address had the crowd seeing butterflies in their eyes, but the overarching message was for China to be the source for all of their Utopian environmental solutions. What most of the Davos dingbats either fail to grasp or choose to ignore is that for China to deliver those “planet-saving” goods (becoming the “new-energy industrial chain”), that nation is ramping up the very planet-scarring practices they claim to abhor.
China has been tearing up the third-world countryside with its mining of lithium to make batteries. They are emitting the worst greenhouse gases when creating solar panels, while recycling those devices is a complete environmental nightmare. And the pie-eyed politicians gushing over China cranking out components for windfarms are missing out on what is needed for the creation of those bird-shredding blights on the landscape.
In order to mollify these enviro devotees and their renewables fantasies, China has been leaning heavily on that accursed commodity that ecologists view like a scourge – coal. While Democrats have been shutting down coal plants and telling miners to transition to become video game programmers, China has been spiking its collection. The nation consumes more than half of the world’s coal, an amount three times higher over the past quarter-century, and coal plant openings have been increasing for a decade.
This mentally-impacted contradiction was echoed in the U.S., where a battery production facility to service the needs of the electric vehicle market was being constructed. It was measured that the factory required so much energy to operate that a decommissioned coal plant was brought back online to deliver service for its planet-saving production. To summarize: after Joe Biden pushed for coal plant closures, this factory gobbled up $7 billion of Biden’s infrastructure money, requiring a dedicated coal plant to operate. The Chinese are effectively selling this same paradox today, yet here are the ecological bobble-heads in Davos cheering on the Chi-Coms like they are Earth Day evangelists, playing into their hands.
This is the level of wrong-headed righteousness we have come to expect from these elites who want to dictate how we live, to comport with their nonsensical dream-weaving. They want fealty to their fantasies and turn to accusations should anyone question their effectiveness or bring data that contradicts their “solutions.”
It is no surprise that the plans are failing once you grasp the underlying message from gatherings like Davos, which is basically, “We can control the weather.” If your uncle were to say something like this, you would take away the TV remote and consider placing him in a psych ward. Instead, we are supposed to turn over a planetary emperor’s ransom to these “thinkers” who have a decades-long track record of failed predictions.
No wonder the general thinking about climate change is eroding faster than the predicted rate of the Miami Beach shoreline.