Western policies damage Africa and the planet, kill millions, and open doors to China
Duggan Flanakin
Joe Biden has pledged that one of his first acts as President will be rejoining the Paris Climate Treaty – which gives China a complete pass on reducing emissions until at least 2030. Even Biden’s designated “climate envoy,” former Secretary of State John Kerry, says the existing treaty “has to be stronger,” but then claims China will somehow become an active partner, instead of the competitor and adversary it clearly is. His rationale: “Climate is imperative, it’s as imperative for China as it is for us.”
As to China employing more Green technology and abiding by (much less strengthening) the Paris agreement, the evidence is at best spotty, at worst completely the opposite. President Trump pulled the United States out of Paris, but between January 2017 and May 2019 the US had shuttered 50 coal-fired power plants, with 51 more shutdowns announced, bringing the total shutdowns to 289 (330 once announced shutdowns also take place) since 2010, soon leaving under 200 still operating.
Meanwhile, as of 2019, China had 2,363 active coal-fired power plants and was building another 1,171 in the Middle Kingdom – plus hundreds more in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. A CO2 Coalition white paper by Kathleen Hartnett White and Caleb Rossiter reveals that China now has modern pollutant-scrubbing technology on over 80% of its coal-fired power plants, but no scrubbers at any Chinese-built coal-fired power plants in Africa (or likely anywhere else) – and none anywhere that remove carbon dioxide.
Harvard University China specialist Edward Cunningham says China is building, planning or financing more than 300 coal plants, in places as widespread as Turkey, Egypt, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines. India, South Korea, Japan, South Africa and even Germany are also building hundreds of coal-fired power plants. No matter how many the USA closes down, it won’t make any global difference.
Boston University data indicate that China has invested over $50 billion in building new coal plants overseas in recent years, and over a quarter of new coal plants outside the Middle Kingdom have some commitment or offer of funds from Chinese financial institutions.
“Why is China placing a global bet on coal?” NPR wonders. That’s a 40 or even 50-year commitment, the life span of coal-fired units. The NPR authors even quote the Stinson Center think tank’s Southeast Asia analyst, who says “it’s not clear when you look at the actual projects China is funding that they are truly Green.” They’re obviously not green, and more is obviously going on than their poor eyesight can perceive.
China knows it and the world will need oil, natural gas and coal for decades to come. It sees “green” as the color of money and is happy to extend credit under terms very favorable to China. Communist Party leaders seek global military and economic power – and global control of electricity generation, raw materials extraction, and manufacturing of wind turbines, solar panels and battery modules they will sell to address the West’s obsession with the “manmade climate crisis” and “renewable, sustainable” energy.
Party leaders also know its production of “green” technologies is a good smokescreen for all this coal power – and few Western governments will dare to criticize China sharply over this or Covid.
A recent Global Warming Policy Foundation report lambasts environmentalists (like John Kerry) as “useful idiots” who “praise the scale of Chinese ambition on climate change, while paying lip service in criticizing China’s massive coal expansion.” It notes that China rarely honors its international agreements and has no intention of reducing fossil fuel consumption.
But what are Africa and other developing nations to do? The West will not fund even clean coal projects that would eliminate pollution from dung and wood fires, while providing reliable, affordable electricity for lights, refrigerators, schools, shops, hospitals, factories and much more. China will – and despite the heavy price, their demand for energy requires that they get electricity by any means necessary.
With 1.1 billion people, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s poorest region, despite massive mineral resources and a young, energetic population with an affinity for entrepreneurship. Dutch economist Wim Naudé says Africa must industrialize, which means it must have affordable, reliable electricity, if it is to overcome poverty and disease, create jobs and discourage terrorism.
Unfortunately, outrageously, US, EU, UN and World Bank policies have stymied African energy resource development. As White and Rossiter note, US policies since the Obama era oppose Africans using the continent’s abundant coal and gas to fuel power plants, on the ground that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels might exacerbate climate change.
African Energy Chamber executive chairman NJ Ayuk recently reported that the United Kingdom has also decided it will stop funding new oil, gas and coal projects as of November 4, 2021, the fifth anniversary of the Paris treaty. The decision kowtows to Green opposition to UK Export Finance support for a Mozambique terminal to export low-CO2 emissions liquefied natural gas.
Ayuk had been touting natural gas as an increasing option for African power plants, boasting that Africa is home to four of the world’s top 20 crude oil producers (Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and Libya); Algeria and Nigeria are among the top 20 natural gas producers; and Mozambique also has huge gas reserves.
“It is troubling,” Ayuk said, “that an aggressive foreign-funded anti-African energy campaign continues to undermine the potential of making Mozambique an oasis for gas monetization and meeting our increasing energy demands.” Despite this setback, he continued, “we must continue to be unwavering in our commitment to stand up for Africa’s energy sector, its workers, reducing energy poverty, and those free-market values that will make our continent attractive to committed energy investors.”
In much of Africa, electricity demand far outstrips supply. “In factories, businesses, government buildings and wealthy neighborhoods in every African country,” White and Rossiter observe, a cacophonous symphony of soot-spewing backup diesel engines erupts when the grid goes down, which is usually every day.” In fact, says the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, many African countries spend more on dirty backup power than on electricity for the grid itself; in West Africa, backup kilowatts equal 40% of total grid kilowatts.
In Sudan, which gets 30% of its energy from dams on the Nile River, diesel-based pumps run constantly to lift river water for irrigation, even at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. In Nigeria, hotels ban guests from jogging because of health dangers from breathing soot from their diesel backup generators, which kick in repeatedly as neighborhoods go dark. In Southern Africa, construction sites simply run generators all day, filling nearby streets with noxious clouds. Universities rely on diesels to run old, inefficient air conditioning units.
White and Rossiter note that American clean coal technology, exemplified by the Turk power plant in Arkansas, virtually eliminates health hazards from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates. They urge the U.S. to support proposals by African governments to import this technology, noting that electricity is “the central nervous system of a modern economy and modern life expectancy. Africa’s electricity deficit translates directly into its life-expectancy deficit of 15 years per person.”
Millions die needlessly every year, from countless diseases of energy and economic poverty.
But under a Biden-Harris Administration, with John Kerry at the forefront, there is little hope that these African and other pleas will be heard. With European allies in myopic puritanical lockstep, China will continue to get a total pass on complying with Green demands – and will have free rein to turn sub-Saharan Africa into a giant Chinese colony, despite the environmental damage, monstrous debt, slave and child labor under horrific workplace conditions, and likely modest benefits to Africans.
It is eco-imperialism and eco-manslaughter at its worst. Where are the vaunted guardians of climate and environmental justice?
Duggan Flanakin is Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
As Ron White put is “you can’t fix stupid” That sum up the Dimm party. The know how to steal but create is beyond their grasp.
The US Democratic Party are the IYI’s (intellectual yet idiot) who can’t even do basic math despite having gone to university and advanced degrees. “Stupid” doesn’t even begin to describe the US Democratic Party.
“Brian Williams, Mara Gay make absurd math flub about Mike Bloomberg’s wealth”https://nypost.com/2020/03/06/brian-williams-mara-gay-make-absurd-math-flub-about-mike-bloombergs-wealth/
OMG. Hilarious how stupid they could be. Worse yet, you know that was reviewed by at least one person off camera before that was aired.
Didn’t Biden claim that 100 million US citizens had already died from COVID19?
Dementia does that. Executive function decline is a hallmark sign of dementia, and Joe Biden shows it all, declining short term memory, mixing of facts and numbers, inability to recall long remembered names (like Romney). Joe is deeply into Dementia and the mainstream media refuses to dig into that now. But wait until after the January 20th inauguration. Then the knives will come out for Dementia Joe from his own circle. Like Julius Cesar and Brutus.
Well, yeah! Anyone that thinks Joe isn’t just a puppet to get folks comfortable with the Dem ticket, is at best naive. He’s a figurehead for Kamala and the radical left. Whatever he spouts is just parroting the script in front of him. Watch out America!
Well they don’t seem that dimm. They organised massive election fraud, illegally changed state voting practices, excluded Republican vote checkers in states run by Republicans and managed to dismiss all legal challenges including multiple applications to a conservative dominated Supreme Court which as totally failed to do its duty and did not even LOOK at any of the evidence. That is a deep, thorough and well orgainised coup d’etat .
You can call that lots of things but “dimm” it is not. Republicans have shown themselves totally ineffective and far too well-mannered in challenging this massive fraud.
“Republicans have shown themselves totally ineffective and far too well-mannered in challenging this massive fraud.”
Yes, they have.
Well, President Trump has not presented any evidence that would overturn the election. He and his lawyers claim they have this eivdence, but noone has seen it. It may not be for lack of trying since the judges hearing these cases so far, have refused to look at the evidence, kicking the can down the road so they do not get any personal criticism.
So, I assume there will be a big push to challenge the electoral college votes of these contested States, and I assume the president will present his evidence there.
If he doesn’t, then Joe “Traitor” Biden is president.
You should have been more careful, Republicans. The Democrats hoodwinked you, and you allowed them to do it by not taking their criminality seriously.
Let’s hope it is not too late to rectify this situation because we are very close to having a one-party rule in the United States and it’s the wrong party ruling if the Democrats prevail. Personal freedoms will be out the window.
China is growing old before becoming wealthy. Investment in Africa provides a rich source of youth and other inputs to industry that China desperately needs to look after its economy in its old age.
Japan has 50% higher net investment across the globe than China but less than 1/10th the population.
That is why the belt and road initiative is so important to China. Industrious people aiming to set up their future income stream without relying on their own youth. Like all youth, they lose the desire/ambition to procreate once the women become educated.
Not educated, but rather liberated and divergent, as in the girl and boy who never grow up and just want to have fun. That said, we’re not kids anymore. Reconcile.
Not sure if the comment was intended as a joke. In case anyone has doubts about the connection between a woman’s education and fertility rate – it is clear in the data:
https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/228/pdfs/female-education-and-its-impact-on-fertility.pdf
The evidence is clear but the reasons not so clear. I think once women have similar earning power to men, the reasons for partnering differ than when they are dependent on men.
Yes, there is a correlation, but it is not with education. Affluence reduces fitness in favor of secular returns without reconciliation. Clearly, fitness is a greater “burden” for a woman than a man, especially if the latter is of the Peter Pan character.
It is worth noting that US owes the rest of the world $13tr. I expect that is denominated in USD so not really a problem unless it is being used to buy, heaven forbid, elections.
The big risk for the USA with this debt is allowing foreign ownership of US assets. It means the US is fundamentally controlled from elsewhere.
The US will simply create $13 trillion worth of ones-and-zeros to pay the debt. What could go wrong?
Would stripping our political and corporate elites of all their wealth cover most of the $13 trillion we owe? Since they sold us into debt while they, their friends and families received generous kickbacks, bribes and campaign donations it only seems fair for them to pay their share!
Maybe a smaller version of the guillotine; “That’s going to cost an arm and a leg, but you can afford it!” The rank corruption of the ruling class is infuriating for those of us who tried to play by the rules only to find that they don’t apply to all!
If Sharia law says that a thief should lose a hand, what is the appropriate punishment for stealing the wealth and freedom of the most free and prosperous nation in recorded history?
Japan has recognised it needs to boost immigration to arrest population decline. That is simply to provide the human resources needed to look after aged Japanese who can no longer work.
Many apparently wealthy countries rely on temporary immigration to bolster seasonal workforces. Australia altered temporary visa arrangements in 2020 with the intention of keeping seasonal workers in the country.
That’s not precisely true. Jordan Peterson gives the example of high performance female lawyers who begin to value family over profession some time in their early thirties.
link:
Society has become hostile to people who want to be parents.
Progressive women in particular are very hotile towards any woman who chooses family over career.
Yep. One of Peterson’s high performing clients was actually ashamed that she wanted a family.
Where is Greta when and where the world really could use her?
China isn’t recolonising Africa. It’s taking ownership of large parts of Africa
It’s important to read up on how the British empire “ruled” the Indian sub-continent, they did so by controlling all the external trade from the numerous countries/chiefdom’s of India, they never really attempted to have total control of the local citizens, they worked with the local chiefs thus ensuring that the Empire was in control of the external trade, while leaving the locals to govern their own states (within reason).
Otherwise it would have been impossible for a country with approximately 30 Million to have total control of a region of some 400 million.
China is following the same process, they have constructed the infrastructure to enable the Chinese favoured trade routes. The next step in the process is to send in small brigades of troops to “protect the trade routes”, they have already sent in the civilian administrators.
These practices need to stop now. We are creating the conditions of our demise. Smh
65 million years ago a giant meteor hit the earth, killing the dinosaurs plus a lot more. It also ignited and flattened forests worldwide, thereby creating the majority of the coal deposits now being mined. Now, think about it – would those dinosaurs be able tu survive in our world today with our meager plant growth? Paleontologists report that back in their age mere ferns grew up to 30 feet tall.
BY mining and burning coal, we have been starting to correct the carbon deficiency of our planet over the last 65 million years, thereby doing life on earth a great favor.
Over the last 65 million years, the angiosperms (flowering plants) expanded to dominate the vegetation including the forests, relegating the previously dominant conifers and ferns to colder or more limited habitats. Then the grasses expanded, leading to the evolution of large grassland mammals. The grasses provided us humans with our key domesticated plants and animals eg wheat, rice, corn, cattle, sheep).
So plant growth today is not meagre, it is much more diverse than in the time of the dinosaurs.
Coal seems were laid down 10’s to 100’s of millions of years before dinosaurs walked the earth.
The Great Courses has a very good lecture series titled “The Physics of History.” Lecture 13 (appropriately numbered) sets forth what I say in my post about the extinction meteor’s effects. See also my post below.
Your statement is incorrect. The impact event did not create coal now being mined. Nonsense.
The scientific paper on the age of coal clearly showed that the major part of the current coal deposits were set down at the time of the meteor impact. You are the one who is spouting off nonsense.
Coal beds were laid down during the Carboniferous period, which was from the end of the Devonian 358.9 million years ago to the beginning of the Permian Period, 298.9 Mya.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
A recent study was done on the age of coal deposits, which clearly showed what I said in my post. It was published on one of the other websites listed in the bottom of the center column of Climate Depot. Sorry, I should have copied the full reference, but did not.
The end of Cretaceous impact event wherein a bolide struck the earth on the margin of the Yucatan peninsula (about 65.5 million years ago) did not create “coal deposits now being mined” nor any coal deposits worth mining. That statement is nonsense, not true.
Your claim is nonsense, not true.
What coal beds and what mines? Do you know how coal is formed? What is your evidence for this assertion? There is none.
Why is America closing coal plants while China is opening them? America has cheap abundant natural gas thanks to fracking. Fracking is the best thing since sliced bread.
CommieBob,
It is only sorta-kinda approximately true that gas is cheaper than coal. The federal government forced coal plants into a posture of unprofitability long before fracking came along. Remember Obama saying he would do that? Well, he did it.
While I certainly don’t want to see America blanketed in coal soot, the amount of money spent on backfitted environmental controls can exceed the entire capital investment of the coal plant itself. So, yeah, fracked gas is cheaper, but only because environmental controls jacked the price of coal-fired electricity out of sight. In a less stringent regulatory environment, that would definitely not be true. Whether the rules ought to be more or less stringent is a discussion for another day.
And swapping fuels around like this is nuts. What we’re doing with energy based on “climate change” looks an awful lot like the scam they ran on us with refrigerants to save the ozone layer. I’ve lost track of all the refrigerant changes (Freon, R-134a, R-22, R-410a, and I forget what else).
As far as I can tell, regulations and insurance are holding back nuclear power. I’m very excited that the Canadian federal government is pushing Small Modular Reactors (SMR).
link: https://london.ctvnews.ca/small-modular-reactors-coming-to-ontario-but-some-say-not-soon-enough-1.5241780
Mass production should solve some of nuclear power’s problems. Currently, every nuclear power plant is a custom job. That means it bears all the cost of regulatory compliance. For SMRs, the cost of regulatory compliance is spread out over many reactors. I’m guessing that insuring an SMR that is the same as every other SMR would also be cheaper.
Is red tape our worst enemy? It’s a self inflicted injury for sure.
I’m not as hopeful about SMRs as some of my fellow nuclear brethren. The NuScale design has already run into the NRC buzzsaw. It’s not as passive as advertised, and the ad hoc fixes intended to overcome NRC objections are adding cost and complexity. It’s like deja vu all over again. As design costs rise, the only way to overcome them is by making more megawatts. First thing you know, you’re making 1400 MWe plants again.
Here’s a link to an article about it. https://nuclear-news.net/2020/10/29/big-questions-on-the-costs-and-safety-of-nuscales-little-nuclear-reactors/
Short version: Recirculating borated water for post-shutdown cooling will tend to make the boric acid plate out in hot spots. As the boric acid concentration in the coolant goes down, the core reaches a point where it can go critical again. NuScale is wrestling their way through that, but I don’t see a way to address it without some means of adding borated water after an accident. Once you start adding post-accident safety systems, then you need hardware, emergency power, redundancy, seismic hardening, surveillance programs… all those things that drive costs out of sight.
Thanks for that sobering information.
Canada’s action plan lists eleven vendors each one of which may have some kind of nasty problem we haven’t been told about.
link: https://smractionplan.ca/
So, that half-century of foreign aid from the Western countries to Africa didn’t help? Imagine my shock. smh
Maybe, the Dems want China to power Africa. China has to do something with the MMT dollars used to pay for Chinese exports, otherwise, they will get domestic inflation ala, Japan. So, they will spend it on coal.plants in Africa. It’s a win win for China. The Donks wont talk about carbon emissions from Africa.
We are now a Chinese vassal with no free market, no republic, no independent media, and no small business. The American people have spoken. We need to learn Mandarin to survive. The Mandarin word for vassal is Fuyong yinyi (附庸音译).
Where are the vaunted guardians of climate and environmental justice?
Social progress. Africa has the resources a la South Africa. China has a few extra men after their poorly conceived planned parenthood experiment. China is acting in collusion with social justice interests and globalists.
Wind, solar, and burning wood, don’t reduce CO2 emissions.
Though burning coal emits less CO2 than burning wood, though low grade coal can emit as much CO2 as burning wood.
Natural gas emits less CO2 then best grade of Coal. And natural gas makes no harmful air pollution.
It seems the most significant thing China going to do for Africa is to built nuclear plant plants.
And in accordance with the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty, “Nuclear Nations” are required to help other nations develop nuclear energy- and as one could easily expect, it seems quite obvious that they failed to do this for decades.
Wiki:
NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.”
One can whine about governments not doing much about nuclear disarmament, but it seems to me what is worse is not promoting cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
But hardly surprising that governments would fail to do this, as governments don’t tend to anything other than oppress people {an abundance of restrictive laws are are what they excel at} and would requires their public push them to do anything- which usually fails as governments have serious delusions that they can do things.
An example is NASA’s history building rockets- a bloody train wreck.
It’s a good thing that the private sector builds nuclear reactors, because if govt did this, we have nuclear disasters all the time.
One thing I find interesting is idea that US State department had any clue about Biden’s son’s involvement in corruption. It seems to me the State Department would have to be engulfed flames before they could realize their house was on fire.
Of course, it is an imperitive tool in China’s domination of the West … and they are fully onboard with our effects at self-flaggelation and economic self-destruction so long as they do not have to do anything but pay lip service and increase their own energy efficiency which only helps their economy.
And Africa will have to PAY with the large natural resources on the continent.
Ms Drummond appears to be a little bit gullible.
China is spoiling the party by leaving aside moral posturing and organising actual development and economic growth in Africa. It’s obvious why the west hates this. A modernised Africa would take away from the Europeans the most comfortable and reassuring prop of their moral – and racial – supremacy.
Like ‘Hanoi John’ Kerry?
China seems to be cutting it’s nose off to spite it’s face with regard to Australian coal imports. Banning Aus coal imports has lead to central legal decrees of maximum home heating set to 16 degrees C (where some provinces are currently experiencing -40 degree temps) country wide blackouts, and the inevitable protests.
China’s ownership of our national debt is their ace in the hole or should it read whole. The faceless cultural elite and the bureaucrats who serve them communicating for them through the ventriloquist dummies we call politicians (Demoplicans and Republicrats), understand that we must bow to the CCP behind the curtain or they will destroy our economy by dumping treasury securities on the open market.
We have sold our soul to the Chinese. They own us and with a 24 Trillion dollar debt and rising at a cool trillion a year with another 70 Trillion in unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities. There is no way out of our slavery for generations to come.
“Why is China placing a global bet on coal?” NPR wonders.“
I’ll tell you why. They aren’t stupid, they want a power source that can run virtually non-stop 24/7/365 days/year. In addition, if intermittent wind and solar was really better and cheaper, China would have focused on building up those power sources instead of coal.
The left in this country has been on a mission to get us onto intermittent renewable shit energy. Why? Not to save the earth from bad weather or to get us onto cheaper energy so we can be more prosperous (LO-effing-L). One of their reasons is to reduce our consumption of coal (and fossil fuels in general) so that there is less demand for it. This in turn brings down the price of coal and other fossil fuels. The cheaper price of coal and other fossil fuels will benefit developing countries by speeding up their economic growth.
Think “contraction and convergence”.
The left knows exactly what they are doing in pushing us towards expensive and crappy renewable power: “The prospect of cheap, inexhaustible” [renewable] power is just a scary to them as the prospect of giving us cheap inexhaustible fusion power. To them, both fusion and renewable power would be “like giving a machine gun to an idiot child” if the cheap power was also true for renewables. But we all know (as do the Chinese) that wind and solar suck as power sources for a modern economy so only the thought of cheap inexhaustible fusion power scares them.
They WANT to lower our standard of living and pushing us onto wind and solar is part of what they’ve been doing.
it’s not clear when you look at the actual projects China is funding that they are truly Green.”
And this from the Stinson ‘Think (sic) Tank’, OMG! Well on further thought, what should one expect? You can’t dumb down K-Grad School and create other than Dumb Tanks full of woke asterisked PhDs.
And child slavery increased 25% under Obama/Biden. Black Lives Matter. Except to Obama and Biden.