“The Chinese government can put in these fabulous looking solar panels on the sides of mountains that are in the shape of pandas and it’s all very very attractive, but the reality is, they need fossil fuels.” ~ Patricia Adams

A radio interview broadcast by Between the Lines, ABC Radio, Australia, on November 18, 2021, with host Tom Switzer

Two of the world’s leading observers of China’s carbon policies, Probe International’s Patricia Adams and Judith Shapiro, of the American University in Washington, join Australia’s Between the Lines, ABC Radio broadcast to discuss the COP26 China-US agreement to work together to accelerate the emissions reductions required to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Now, that’s a mouthful. Who believes it?

China climate expert, and author of China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet, Judith Shapiro believes the Chinese Communist Party is serious about climate change and views it as a national security risk and a possible new threat to its hold on power.

Shapiro points out the CCP is “well aware” that sea levels are rising on its coastlines, glaciers are melting on the Tibetan Plateau and extreme weather events across the country have become increasingly common. Why wouldn’t they be serious about curbing C02 emissions?

The future of the CCP is tied to C02 emissions says Patricia Adams, China monitor for five decades and author of The Red and the Green: China’s Useful Idiots. Emissions, says Adams, are indicators that factories are running, car purchases are high and standards of living are improving.

Get off coal? Coal is needed for conversion to gas or liquid form as a means to reduce China’s urban smog, says Adams. That conversion produces twice as much C02 but citizens, she says, don’t care about that. They care about “the real killer pollutants” and it’s those killers the CCP has to curb to ensure its legitimacy.

Other countries can pursue net-zero targets and undermine their economies, says Adams. The CCP won’t be doing that.

Further Reading

The Red and the Green: China’s useful idiots

Western environmentalists are the Chinese Communists’ useful idiots

Western greens are China’s useful idiots