Alan Stewart is a contributing author – 

It is normal for intelligent people to dismiss conspiracy theories. After three years of the Trump/Russia investigation, the word collusion has been seared into the lexicons of millions of people. While the Mueller report has almost erased ‘Russia’ from the daily news, it has been replaced with ‘China.’ 

The trade war between the United States and China is now center stage, but unspoken is how the ‘Climate Change Delusion’ has been a weapon used by China to undermine the U.S. position. Of course, they have plenty of help from the groups within our nation that appear to want to cripple us through the elimination of reliable, inexpensive fossil fuels. But we do now have another cold war with Communism. The Hudson Institute’s Michael Pillsbury, a well-regarded expert on China, reveals in his book, The Hundred-Year Marathon, China’s secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power, that they plan to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic.

Pillsbury’s reference to a ‘secret strategy’ puts in play a second Cold War. It has been said that war assumes many forms. Business has been referred to as ‘war.’ Ronald Reagan and his advisors created a business plan to end the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. It worked to perfection. He undermined their economy. Three decades later Donald Trump is attempting to do the same thing with the trade war. 

However, out of sight, China has been doing a brilliant job colluding with organizations in all Western Democracies that advocate climate change alarmism. Their goal is ending the use of fossil fuels except in their own country where they use wind and solar as a facade to distract the media’s attention away from the coal-fired power plants they build each week.

There is one thing that must be understood. Every societal advance, including cleaning up environmental messes, have been powered by inexpensive fossil fuels. They have dramatically improved the quality of life whenever they are used. In the developing world, poverty exists where energy is unavailable. Dr. John Christy, a well-respected climatologist, was a missionary in Africa and so he really knows what he is talking about when he said, “Life without energy is short and brutal.” They don’t have access to cheap fossil fuel energy, and the Chinese Communist autocrats understand precisely the importance of this energy within their grandiose plans of world economic hegemony.

The rich Western societies have adopted the ‘Climate Change Delusion’ and have their own grandiose plans to solve the non-existent problem to the end of increasing government power and reducing individual freedom. Even the thought of 7.5 billion people agreeing on a consensual plan of action such as the Paris Agreement on climate change is ludicrous. But the far-Left politicians, radical environmentalists, and wealth seeking Socialists continue to drag out one Green New Deal after another. The costs of all Green Power Plans are measured in trillions of dollars. It is a road to national disaster for the U.S., and the Chinese see this Achilles’ Heel as an important strategy in their plans.

The 2015 Paris Climate Treaty was another delusion. The West agreed to implement high cost, low carbon dioxide (CO₂)-emitting so called renewable energy systems. China is allowed in the treaty to continue expanding their use of fossil fuels for an indefinite time period as they are seen as an undeveloped nation which needs to catch up with the Western world. They were not required to reduce CO₂ emissions or reduce low cost, high CO₂ emitting fossil fuel energy systems between now and 2030, when they are expected to stop increasing their emissions. But even after that, they apparently may continue to increase emissions if needed to satisfy their “first and overriding priorities” of “economic and social development and poverty eradication,” to quote from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on which the Paris Agreement is based. Meanwhile, approximately 1600+ coal-fired electricity production plants are scheduled for construction in Asia. 

China’s leaders no doubt have had Cheshire Cat smiles for years watching the insanity of the Climate Change Delusion. All Marxist leaders are driven by their personal lust for wealth and power.

China’s drive towards ‘renewable’ energy is for the profit they derive from selling the West the materials to build a renewable energy production infrastructure that can only fail economically. There is a simple elegance to their plans. 

Fossil fuels are cheaper, so the Chinese guide us away from them. That is the key to their long-term strategy. Gross Domestic Products (GDP) will run in opposite directions between East and West, favoring the East. The higher the cost of energy, the higher the cost of goods and services until a failing economy upends a nation’s business.

Can we doubt that China funds Western climate change alarmist groups covertly? We need a Peter Schweizer-like investigation that led to the book ‘Clinton Cash,’ but that kind of detective work has yet to be carried out properly. It is likely that China is not the only player working against the U.S. in this way. It is probably not possible to create a hierarchical chart of colluding players with an Ian Fleming-villain at the head, but clearly, there are international forces using climate change as a weapon to bring down capitalism.

At a 2015 news conference in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, then executive secretary of the UNFCCC, essentially admitted that the goal of environmental activists is to destroy capitalism. In her own words she said:

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

That China is apparently using climate change as a core tactic within their economic strategy is of great relevance.

Presenting it here in print for a wide audience is important for the West’s war against the Chinese Communists and their desire to undermine all we stand for. It may not be true that “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” as President Trump Tweeted on November 6, 2012, but they are certainly using it that way now. The West beware!

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Jay Lehr, Ph.D. Is the Senior Policy Analyst for the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition. Alan Stewart is an independent journalist specializing in foreign affairs, based in St. Catharines, Ontario.