Yes, China\u2019s leaders have decided to go green \u2014 out of necessity because too many of their people can\u2019t breathe, can\u2019t swim, can\u2019t fish, can\u2019t farm and can\u2019t drink thanks to pollution from its coal- and oil-based manufacturing growth engine. And, therefore, unless China powers its development with cleaner energy systems, and more knowledge-intensive businesses without smokestacks, China will die of its own development. <\/font><\/p>\n What do we know about necessity? It is the mother of invention. And when China decides it has to go green out of necessity, watch out. You will not just be buying your toys from China. You will buy your next electric car, solar panels, batteries and energy-efficiency software from China. <\/font><\/p>\n I believe this Chinese decision to go green is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union\u2019s 1957 launch of Sputnik \u2014 the world\u2019s first Earth-orbiting satellite. That launch stunned us, convinced President Eisenhower that the U.S. was falling behind in missile technology and spurred America to make massive investments in science, education, infrastructure and networking \u2014 one eventual byproduct of which was the Internet.<\/font><\/p>\n Well, folks. Sputnik just went up again: China\u2019s going clean-tech. The view of China in the U.S. Congress \u2014 that China is going to try to leapfrog us by out-polluting us \u2014 is out of date. It\u2019s going to try to out-green us. Right now, China is focused on low-cost manufacturing of solar, wind and batteries and building the world\u2019s biggest market for these products. It still badly lags U.S. innovation. But research will follow the market. America\u2019s premier solar equipment maker, Applied Materials, is about to open the world\u2019s largest privately funded solar research facility \u2014 in Xian, China. <\/font><\/p>\n \u201cIf they invest in 21st-century technologies and we invest in 20th-century technologies, they\u2019ll win,\u201d says David Sandalow, the assistant secretary of energy for policy. \u201cIf we both invest in 21st-century technologies, challenging each other, we all win.\u201d <\/font><\/p>\n Unfortunately, we\u2019re still not racing<\/strong>. It\u2019s like Sputnik went up and we think it\u2019s just a shooting star. Instead of a strategic response, too many of our politicians are still trapped in their own dumb-as-we-wanna-be bubble, where we\u2019re always No. 1, and where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, having sold its soul to the old coal and oil industries, uses its influence to prevent Congress from passing legislation to really spur renewables<\/strong>\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n In today\u2019s open thread, I noted how sorry the employment market is. A lot of this results from Daddy Bush, Clinton (to a lesser extent) and Crawford\u2019s favorite idiot screwed US workers by using taxpayer dollars to finance giant corporations\u2019 relocation of their manufacturing divisions overseas. You can\u2019t unring a bell. Those jobs are gone and we can\u2019t get them back. The GOP decided that making money is more important than making products, especially when their corporate masters don\u2019t have to share the profit with all those greasy workers. We are now paying the consequences for their greed and incompetence. The best way to restore our manufacturing base, so we can profit from value, not just paper, is to take the lead in emerging technologies, such as green energy. If we fail to do so, our great-grandchildren will live in a third world economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In their normal sophisms, the GOP tells us that it is pointless for the US to combat global climate change, because countries like China will just keep polluting anyway. Although it sounds right, this GOP rational is, as usual, flawed. Most people would assume that 20 years from now when historians look back at 2008-09, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"sputnik\"](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202009\/FreidmanTheNewSputnik_3C28\/sputnik.jpg\" "\\"sputnik\\"")
<\/a> Most people would assume that 20 years from now when historians look back at 2008-09, they will conclude that the most important thing to happen in this period was the Great Recession. I\u2019d hold off on that. If we can continue stumbling out of this economic crisis, I believe future historians may well conclude that the most important thing to happen in the last 18 months was that Red China decided to become <\/font>Green<\/font> China<\/strong>.<\/font><\/p>\n