ALL COUNTRIES NEED to follow China’s transition to clean energy - John Kerry

 Nury Vittachi

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Interesting points raised at the world's biggest environment conference yesterday

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ALL COUNTRIES NEED to follow China’s transition to clean energy, John Kerry said yesterday.

And that includes the US, the former presidential candidate said.

His assertion was a challenge to the US President. On soaring pump prices and fossil fuel company profits, Trump said recently: “I don’t give a damn. I’m going to say it. We’re making a freaking fortune.”

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'WORLD'S BIGGEST EMITTER'

Kerry is representing the US in Turkey at COP31, the annual meeting to review progress to fight the harm being done to the Earth’s environment.

He spoke about the need for the world to follow China to reporters from the UK Guardian—which is ironic, since the “Fiona Harvey Fallacy” is named after that newspaper’s environment editor.

The FHF says that China must always be described as “the world’s biggest emitter” while hiding the per capita figures, which show western consumers are a much bigger problem than the Chinese.

While China tends to focus on its own people’s needs, it has several times said it is happy with its role as climate leader. The latest five-year plan says China would “actively participate in and lead global climate governance”.

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ASTONISHING FIGURES

China's energy products are already the main tool being used to enable other nations achieve their transition targets, with astonishing data points from the International Energy Agency.

- The Chinese now make 95 per cent of the global supply of photovoltaic wafers, the super-thin ultra-flat slices of crystalline silicon that enable solar cells to function.

- As a result, high-efficiency solar panels are almost as cheap as roofing tiles. These have proved popular globally, with 85 per cent of solar cells around the world originating in China.

- The Chinese make 97 per cent of the world’s supply of anode materials, the electrochemically active substances that form the negative electrode in batteries. China is thus leading the world in battery technology.

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SPOILER ATTEMPTS

It is worth noting that it would have been much easier for the world’s rich countries to research, develop and produce these products—but they simply had no interest in doing so, leaving the job to a developing country fighting poverty in Asia.

It is also worth noting that the US tried to spoil the distribution of affordable solar cells by arguing that people in the Xinjiang area were in the supply chain.

However, the US’s “Uyghur genocide” narrative has been widely debunked. The number of Chinese Uyghurs in Xinjiang has grown faster in real terms and in proportional terms than the number of Chinese Han in the area. The same is true of Chinese Tibetans.)

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CAR WARS

- On the same lines, the Chinese developed a way to make electric cars as cheap and convenient (meaning fast-charging/ high range) as petrol ones.

These are also proving popular globally, with the latest figures indicating that 75 per cent of the world’s electric cars now having Chinese origins.

The US has banned Chinese electric cars and put pressure on Mexico to also take a hostile attitude to them.

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MID-TERMS CHANGE OF POLICY?

Of course, the beating that Trump’s administration took at the mid-terms has been interpreted by some people that this hostility could change in two years.

Unlikely. People have forgotten that it was actually Joe Biden who put up tariff barriers to keep Chinese cars out of the US.

It was the US Democratic Party which violated World Trade Organization rules to order the world to stop selling technology to China, in a bid to slow the country's development.

It was Barack Obama who sent the US military to infest East Asia and push a war-mongering narrative.

Whatever weasel words are used – “contain”, “deter”, “constrain”, "defend" – it is a bipartisan policy to use dirty tricks to slow the peaceful rise of China.

But younger people in the US have proved less susceptible to the brainwashing of the older generation -- and thus provide a glimmer of hope.