C limate catastrophism and its vendetta against fossil fuels represent nothing short of civilizational suicide — and China knows it.
Europe and Asia followed similar trajectories until the industrial revolution. The shift from organic sources of energy (i.e., wind, water, animal, and human power) to inorganic fossil fuels in the 1700s released Britain — and later, continental Europe — from the Malthusian pressures of famine and disease. The steam engine and other hydrocarbon-fueled inventions turned the West into a resource-intensive and labor-saving civilization, thus enabling it to surpass the rest of the world. Lacking in mechanized production, Asian industries remained labor-intensive and could not compete with Western economies of scale.
Fossil fuels provide reliable, affordable, machine-versatile, and scalable energy, owing to which man has tamed the planet’s punishing climate. Technological advances in heating, cooling, irrigation, and infrastructure have led to a 98 percent decrease in climate-disaster deaths. However, the speculative nature of global warming allows activists to disregard these vast and irreplaceable advantages while vilifying all anthropogenic impact on the climate.
Climate catastrophists call for net-zero global emissions of heat-trapping or greenhouse-gas emissions (notably carbon dioxide) by 2050 to prevent the earth’s temperature from soaring and causing “severe, pervasive, and irreversible” damage to populations and ecosystems. Consequently, the European Union (EU) adopted a legally binding “net zero” agenda to become “the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050,” which includes a ban on the sale of new vehicles that emit any CO₂ after 2035.
Even if we were to disregard all the scientific data disputing a simple cause-and-effect relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the earth’s temperature — put forth by various dissidents such as astrophysicist Willie Soon, ecologist and Greenpeace former president Patrick Moore, and researchers at Stanford’s Hoover Institution — electric vehicles will not achieve a carbon-neutral economy. Why? Because every phase of an electric vehicle’s life cycle requires fossil fuels.
Manufacturing lithium-ion-battery-operated electric vehicles produces more carbon emissions than internal-combustion-engine vehicles do. Moreover, electric vehicles run on electricity that is predominantly produced and distributed using fossil fuels. A 2019 MIT Energy Initiative study acknowledged that an electric vehicle “operating on carbon-intensive electricity . . . will have higher emissions than a gasoline-powered vehicle.” Nonetheless, the European Union leadership and eco-warrior electorate accept net zero as gospel.
Unsurprisingly, Chinese president Xi Jinping has been aiding the West in its pursuit of energy poverty. He made the “new three” (solar cells, lithium-ion batteries, and electric vehicles) central to Chinese economic strategy vis-à-vis Europe. China now dominates every stage in electric-vehicle production, enabling it to exploit the net-zero agenda and reap economic and geopolitical gains.
Consider the fate of the European solar-panel manufacturers. China’s solar-panel sector grew tenfold between 2008 and 2013 as a result of government subsidies, which included (1) free or low-cost loans, (2) artificially cheap raw materials, land, and energy resources, and (3) research, development, and technology support. The resulting surge in Chinese exports lowered solar-panel prices globally by 75 percent and decimated the EU’s solar-panel industry.
The EU’s forced transition to electric vehicles offers another golden opportunity for Beijing. Not only does it impose on Europeans an inferior automobile technology, the phaseout also makes the European market vulnerable to China’s market distortion. China is expected to increase its European electric-vehicle market share from 5 percent in 2022 to 9–18 percent by 2025. It was 0.5 percent in 2019.
Realizing that the EU’s electric-vehicle industry risks going the way of its solar-panel sector, European Commission (EC) president Ursula von der Leyen and French president Emmanuel Macron have begun advocating for stronger trade defenses. Last year, the EC launched an investigation into the illegal subsidization of Chinese electric-vehicle producers. The “EV Probe” determined that China’s artificial lowering of prices had distorted the market and harmed European electric-vehicle makers. It recommended that the EU impose new tariffs, ranging from 17 to 38 percent, over the existing 10 percent import duty.
This push could have turned the tide on China’s trade exploitation. But Germany fears that additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles will incite Xi and his Chinese Communist Party to retaliate against its automobile sector, which heavily depends on China for sales and production. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen, along with chemical producer BASF, accounted for 34 percent of all European FDI in China from 2018 to 2021. These overexposed megacorporations are wary of Chinese reprisals but reluctant to disengage from the world’s largest market, thereby giving Beijing the upper hand.
Furthermore, President Xi is capitalizing on his close relationship with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to shield Chinese electric-vehicle makers. BYD Auto plans to build its first European electric-vehicle-production facility in Hungary, and thus the auto giant will circumvent the new tariffs by manufacturing its products within the EU.
Blinded by the hysteria of climate catastrophism and undermined by a lack of internal consensus, the European Union will only have itself to blame when Xi Jinping’s China devours the green technologies and industries upon which European civilization has staked its future.