Xi, world’s top polluter, skipping climate summit

FPI / October 31, 2021

Accountability is not high on the priority list in the era of globalist rules for thee and not for me and incompetent governments and world organizations.

Take, for example, the United Nations-led COP26 Climate Summit that begins Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland.

As they party in Scotland, Joe Biden and 12 members of his team will leave a larger carbon footprint in one weekend than 13 non-elites would leave in a lifetime. Why couldn't Biden's team save the damage they're doing to the climate by video conferencing? Surely there are at least some competent people who could set up such a thing, aren't there?

That's the rules for thee, not for me part.

You would also think that a UN-led effort of such stated importance (remember, the world will end in 9 years if global warming isn't addressed) would have the planet's greatest polluters on hand to explain why they shouldn't dismantle their own economies for a narrative embraced by the elite globalists jetting to Glasgow.

That's the accountability part.

Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping will not attend the summit. China is by far the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin won't be there either. Russia's economy would collapse if the world decided to stop buying its fossil fuels.

The communist government in Beijing has invested billions of dollars in recent years into "coal power plant construction projects in developing nations, from African countries to the Philippines and Vietnam," The Washington Time's Guy Taylor noted in an Oct. 27 report on the Glasgow summit.

The British-based monitor Carbon Brief reported that China opened three-quarters of the world’s newly funded coal plants and accounted for more than 80 percent of newly announced coal power projects last year, according to Agence France-Presse.

According to the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, China produces about 28 percent of the world’s total carbon emissions, compared with 15 percent produced by the U.S., 7 percent by India and roughly 5 percent by Russia.

As for Russia, analysts say Putin is less focused on cutting emissions than he is on trying to shore up his nation’s struggling economy by increasing fossil fuel exports over the coming years.

A report published this week by Time cited Candace Rondeaux, director of the Future Frontlines program at the New America Foundation think tank in Washington, as saying that a global transition away from fossil fuels would be “an existential threat” for Russia.

“The entire evolution of Russia’s foreign policy over the last 20 years has been predicated on leveraging Russia’s pole position as the leading fossil fuel producer in the world, right up there with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia,” Rondeaux told the magazine.

Team Biden, meanwhile, has pledged to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030 and reach “net zero emissions” no later than 2050. China has indicated it will continue increasing emissions for the immediate future.

But, many economists say the so-called Green New Deal pushed by Biden's handlers and congressional progressives would not only destroy the American middle class but usher in a new depression.

Biden had hoped to arrive in Scotland on a high note to tout the Green New Deal policies included in infrastructure legislation. But the bill has yet to go to a vote amid Democrat infighting. That leaves Biden with 9 months in the White House and nothing but misery to show for it, analysts say.

Biden is “off to Europe, to Glasgow, Scotland, to, I believe, wave the white flag of surrender of American energy dominance and wealth, to now an energy-dependent nation we’ve become and an energy-weak nation,” Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso told Fox News. “It’s because of the policies of this administration.”

Nile Gardiner, the director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, told The Washington Times: “I think clearly this is a massive PR exercise for the United States because the Biden presidency has gone down in flames on the world stage in the last few months. It’s been an absolutely catastrophic time in terms of the image on the United States on the world stage following the fall of Kabul and the fall of Afghanistan.”

“Biden may be promising the Earth at COP26, but he’s not necessarily going to be able to deliver anything at all,” Gardiner said.

Steven Groves, a fellow of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, predicted that Team Biden would “go through Glasgow in a defensive crouch.”

“He’s going to go there and do some photo-ops, maybe dance with Greta Thunberg and get the hell out of Dodge, because what else is he bringing to the table there?” said Groves, who was chief of staff for Nikki Haley when she was U.S. ambassador to the UN.

Connecting with Thunberg may be tricky. She mocked world leaders, including Biden, at a pre-summit event last month in Milan by saying they offered nothing other than “blah, blah, blah.”

“Net zero, blah, blah, blah. Climate neutral, blah, blah, blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words, words that sound great, but so far has led to no action or hopes and dreams. Empty words and promises,” said Thunberg.

Thunberg does plan to travel to Glasgow, not to attend the climate summit but to lead a protest march.

Free Press International