Beijing’s Useful Idiots: Germany, California and the Green Road to Chinese Supremacy

Satire has become redundant. The Nation, an old abolitionist publication founded in 1865 and now proudly the flagship of the Left, has just anointed Germany and California an “environmental superpower”. The author, Mark Hertsgaard, is the magazine’s Environment Correspondent and also Executive Director of Covering Climate Now, a foundation-funded media campaign that the Nation itself co-founded. His two showpiece claims are an interview that Gavin Newsom gave to Covering Climate Now and a poll-based crusade, the 89% Project, run by, naturally, Covering Climate Now and endorsed, in the AP story the piece cites, by an oat-milk company. A perfectly closed loop, which is more than can be said for the energy systems it celebrates.

Strip away the self-congratulation and the case is this. The world’s third- and fourth-largest economies have become a climate vanguard. Berlin has pledged, for the first time, to end fossil fuel use by 2045. It is not clear whether this is on a ‘Net Zero’ basis or if it actually means no fossil fuel use at all. Mr Newsom says California has run on 100% clean electricity on nine days out of 10 this year. What the Nation never asks is whom this performance serves.

Germany and California, it seems, are perfect complements to China. Beijing’s road to global supremacy in manufacturing and technology, artificial intelligence included, runs through cheap, dependable power and control of the supply chains. The two self-appointed climate leaders have made power dear, hobbled their