New York Times declares ‘the fight against climate change’ is ‘now mostly led by China’ – Lomborg ridicules: China is the world’s leading CO2 emitter, getting 97% of its primary energy from fossil fuels

By Anton Jäger – Mr. Jäger is a contributing Opinion writer

Excerpt: Economic growth across the continent, long anemic, has dwindled toward nought, with even Germany’s industrial behemoth slumping. Dynamism has disappeared, replaced by painful dependencies: Europe’s technology comes from America, its critical minerals from China. The continent’s transformation into an arid playpen for tourists, with its economies geared to serve the visitors, is no longer the stuff of dyspeptic speculation. …

The negotiations to end the war in Ukraine show that the bloc has been steadily reduced to a second-rate participant in world affairs. In President Trump’s eyes, it is “decaying” and at risk of “civilizational erasure.” …

At least Brussels no longer suffers from denial; across the spectrum, there’s an awareness that the continent is falling behind. …

If Europe is to reinvent itself, it must think in more heterodox ways. Mostly, it will have to contemplate something considered beyond the pale in Brussels: critical integration with China. “Critical” is meant in both senses of the term. On the one hand, such engagement is vitally necessary for the fight against climate change, an effort now mostly led by China. Yet it should also be conditional, involving neither submission to Beijing nor blindness toward its grim record on trade or labor rights. …

No longer in the driver’s seat of history, it can shed its damaging delusions of grandeur. On geopolitics and climate mitigation, it can meet its targets even if it no longer gets to be the star player. That will require downsizing some expectations: The aim should be what British soccer fans call midtable stability, rather than league leadership.