Report: Western Environmentalists Are the Chinese Communists’ Useful Idiots

Western environmentalists are the useful idiots of the Chinese Communist Party, says a report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

China’s green credentials are often praised by Western environmental groups who apparently believe that China is serious about cutting its carbon dioxide emissions.

But according to a report by long-time China watcher Patricia Adams these groups are merely the dupes of communist propaganda:

“Like all western NGOs, green groups are only allowed to operate in China so long as they bite their tongues and toe the party line. But Beijing is also able to influence their behaviour through funding bodies like Energy Foundation China, a US-based body that distributes money from American billionaire foundations.”

Western green groups have effectively become mouthpieces for President Xi, says Adams, an economist and the executive director of Probe International, a Toronto-based NGO that has been involved in the Chinese environmental movement since its beginnings in the mid-1980s:

“They praise the scale of Chinese ambition on climate change, while paying lipservice in criticizing China’s massive coal expansion. Meanwhile, the greens turn a blind eye to the obvious; China does not honour its international agreements and has no intention of reducing fossil fuel consumption, quite the opposite. While the world has awakened to China’s abuses, western environmentalists are silent,” says Adams. “China plays them as useful idiots.”

This page from the Environmental Defense Fund embodies this naivety. It’s titled ‘Why China is at the centre of our climate strategy’.

Fortunately, China is serious about climate action. The nation of 1.4 billion — the world’s most populous and number one greenhouse gas emitter — took a giant leap forward and launched its national carbon market in December 2017.

In reality, the Chinese communists are only interested in environmentalism insofar as it weakens idiot Western nations as they destroy their own economies with needlessly inflated energy prices.

Adams writes:

President Xi may claim to be going off fossil fuels, but China is pursuing coal at a breakneck pace, with hundreds more coal-fired plants in the planning phase…

And:

In oil, China has an ambitious program to build refineries…The increased capacity is needed to satisfy China’s ever-expanding oil consumption. Last year, ‘China consumed an estimated 14.5 million b/d of petroleum and other liquids, up 500,000b/d or nearly 4 percent from 2018’ according to the EIA. This growth in oil consumption growth accounted for an estimated two-thirds of incremental global oil consumption.

Because China monitors and controls all the foreign environmental groups currently operating within its borders, their reporting is partial and untrustworthy.

While critics of the CCP’s many malign activities give it a black eye, the environmentalists’ glowing reports of China’s environmental leadership paints the country in a favourable light and acts to put Beijing’s critics on the defensive. Environmentalists, in fact, have become the highest profile cheerleaders for the communist, helping to divert attention from the regime’s worrisome pursuits.

Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London