Put A Bow On It

2025 and The Future It Made

Photo by Martha Ture, https://www.smugmug.com/app/organize/Mountains-and-other-delights/i-Nq6tWT3

It’s very disconcerting that one of the most authoritarian nations on earth is the world leader in renewable energy, and likely to remain so.

China is the world leader in global installations of solar and wind, controlling key supply chains (solar cells, batteries, turbines), and driving the energy transition with massive capacity additions that exceed the rest of the world combined, aiming for carbon neutrality by 2060. This year China built more solar capacity than the rest of the world combined. China has also been the world’s largest emitter of fossil fuel emissions for the past 20 years.

And China is the most powerful authoritarian one-party state on earth that actively opposes Western-style liberal democracy. The CCP views Western constitutional democracy as a threat to its legitimacy and authority, and China has set about weakening, spying on, stealing from, hacking into, subverting and undermining democratic institutions and nations; it is simultaneously investing in developing nations in the global south, and partnering with Putin against the “West” in both hemispheres, as well as clearly intending to take Taiwan.

The evidence is that China is challenging the existing international order militarily and economically. Militarily, China has aligned with Russia in backing Maduro against the Trump administration. China has asserted claims over nearly the entire South China Sea, ignoring international rulings, and threatens to take Taiwan by force. Chinese ships have used water cannons and made deliberate collisions with Philippine vessels in the South China Sea. There has been what analysts call substantial growth of the PLA Navy, viewed as preparations for conflict in the Taiwan Strait. By the way, China now has the world’s largest navy.

Beijing spends billions of dollars annually on an “antidemocratic toolkit” of nongovernmental organizations, media outlets, diplomats, advisors, hackers, and bribes all designed to prop up autocrats and sow discord in democracies. The CCP provides fellow autocracies with guns, money, and protection from UN censure while slapping foreign human-rights advocates with sanctions. Chinese officials offer their authoritarian brethren riot-control gear and advice on building a surveillance state; PRC trade, investment, and loans allow those dictators to avoid Western conditionality regarding anticorruption or good governance. See this report for the details.

Xi claims that China’s aggressions are in defense of national security and economic security. We hear the same line from Putin and Trump.

And speaking of Trump and Putin, their military aggression and fossil fuel capitalism represent concentrated control over energy and enforced dependency.

Raising awareness is necessary, even crucial, if insufficient. The tool we are using is the internet. From the first commercially available personal computer, in 1982, to now, the expectations and awareness of millions of humans has changed to one of connection.

As a practical matter, how to get to political, financial, insurance, and industry leaders has no glib or summary answer. I think it’s necessary to talk with some of the world’s leaders, those who are “on our side” and available, and ask their thoughts.

I don’t know what the UK people and what Europe’s people are thinking, but the view from California is that the people are in conflict between chaos and decency, between far right and not very left analyses. The common enemy is what I call the marketocracy, and it is the goal of transnational capital and crime to rule the planet.

So what can we offer instead? Here’s China, leading the world in renewable energy while fostering authoritarianism around the world, and blocking the COP 30 goal of transitioning away from fossil fuels. . .

I think we need to seek discussion with amenable world leaders.