G20 Climate Posturing Reveals the Weakness of the West

The annual G20 summit is meant to gather the world’s largest economies to discuss solutions to global economic and political issues—but has it simply become a stage for Western leaders to broadcast their weakness?

Does President Biden show carbon-curbing American resolve when he travels to Indonesia, a country that is effectively subsidizing coal plants, in order to “resume cooperation on climate change” with China, the world’s leader in greenhouse gas emissions? 

It’s ironic, but the most honest move at this year’s Summit was probably made by China’s president Xi Jinping: he was mysteriously absent from the mangrove tree-planting photo op. It makes sense that he couldn’t make the time to “signal the battle against the climate crisis”—his regime has pumped out more CO2 emissions in less than a decade than the United Kingdom has in more than two centuries!

Did we come out of this week’s summit looking stronger? America and its allies needed to present a strong front against Xi Jinping, but instead the summit served as a platform for the West to imagine it has “areas of cooperation” with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In fact, China routinely cheats on climate agreements. They’ve also opened a staggering number of new coal plants in 2020–three times more than the rest of the world combined. 

But they’ve been given a seat at the table because the West holds onto the hope that China may prove instrumental in speeding up “efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power.”

Are we blind? Are we hopelessly optimistic? Is it about feeling good? Because “yes” to any of those questions makes Western leaders seem naive. 

The Summit’s motto—“Recover Together, Recover Stronger”—should have been “Collapse Together, Collapse Quickly.” Because that’s what will happen if Western governments continue warring against their own economies to meet arbitrary and ideological climate goals while overlooking China’s ever-increasing energy advantage.

America and its allies need strong economies to meet the challenge of a rising China and that requires a strong energy industry, especially as we recover from the pandemic and lockdowns. 

There is room for reasonable policies that include multiple energy sources, but eliminating fossil fuels isn’t a realistic, strategic, or sustainable solution. No alternative renewable energy source that is genuinely cleaner from start to finish exists. Lofty dreams of meeting ideological climate goals set by international “experts” are not worth hamstringing our nation’s power production when China is building one coal factory after another. Is this strategy naive showmanship, or just really careless?

Besides, signing empty climate agreements with China gives the CCP much-needed diplomatic cover. It boosts their legitimacy, allows them to portray themselves as a responsible international actor, and facilitates their sweeping under the rug horrendous human rights abuses, like crushing freedom in Hong Kong, their ongoing destruction of Tibetan culture, and their genocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. 

It’s time for Western leaders to drop the tree-planting photo shoots, separate from bad actors, and quit tearing down their own economies with top-down ideological regulations. We need to operate within the rule of law and build partnerships with farmers, energy corporations, business owners, and local community leaders to develop common sense plans to steward the environment. Citizens of the free world might just have better ideas than Xi Jinping—and we certainly don’t want to play right into his paws.