The Folly of Climate Leadership: Britain’s Net Zero Masochism and the China Mirage - Highlighted Article

From: Watts Up With That

By: Tilak’s Substack

Date: August 16, 2025

The Folly of Climate Leadership: Britain’s Net Zero Masochism and the China Mirage

It is one of the enduring marvels of political hubris that a small, deindustrialising island nation contributing less than 0.8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions believes it can “lead the world” into abandoning fossil fuels. This belief – sincerely held by Westminster’s political elites on both the Conservative and Labour benches – has birthed an energy policy that combines moral grandstanding with economic self-harm. The outcome is a textbook case study in how virtue-signalling masquerading as “climate leadership” can hobble an economy while empowering the very geopolitical rivals it purports to outpace.

The latest manifestation of this delusion comes courtesy of Ed Miliband’s “Head of Mission Control for Clean Power by 2030”, Chris Stark. Writing in the Telegraph, Stark urged Britain to emulate China in becoming an “electrostate” – a nation powered entirely by abundant low-carbon electricity – claiming that “we ignore these changes at our peril”. Stark’s premise is as breathtaking in its naivety as it is in its selectivity. China, he tells us, is “laying vast networks of transmission lines, rolling out the world’s biggest fleet of electric vehicles and deploying solar and wind at a scale that dwarfs the rest of the world.”

China’s Net Zero Pledge: Smoke, Mirrors and 2060
It is an attractive picture – if one edits out the inconvenient facts that China remains 60% powered by coal, is permitting two new coal plants a week and is adding annual coal capacity equivalent to the entire UK electricity grid. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal consumption hit another new record last year – 8.77 billion metric tons – due to soaring coal use by China and India. In fact, the International Energy Agency reports that China’s coal consumption has ballooned from 1.3 million tonnes in 2000 to an estimated 4.5 billion tonnes today. That is not a typographical error. It is the energy reality.

To the climate faithful, China’s promise of carbon neutrality by 2060 is an audacious “bid to lead the world”. To seasoned China observers, it is an exercise in diplomatic theatre. Veteran China watcher Patricia Adams writing for the Global Warming Policy Foundation reminds us that the Chinese Communist Party’s highest priority is not the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change agenda but its own political survival. That survival depends on sustained economic growth – which in turn requires ever-increasing fossil fuel use. Critical pollution issues such as urban smog and ambient air quality also need to be handled to head off domestic disaffection among China’s vast cities. Global climate change “leadership” does not make the list in China’s political priorities though this is not apparent for naïve Sinophiles like Ed Miliband and Chris Stark.

UNFCCC, Article 3 paragraph 1 [1992] states that “The Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Accordingly, the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.” From the earliest climate negotiations, Beijing has positioned itself as champion of the “developing country” bloc, thereby exempting itself from binding emission cuts while demanding vast flows of “climate finance” from the West. (continue reading)

The Folly of Climate Leadership: Britain’s Net Zero Masochism and the China Mirage