Friedman’s not the only ChiCom-ophile on the left. CIS hosted a panel discussion on immigration and the environment last month and one of the participants was George Mason University professor Andrew Light, a Senior Fellow at the left-wing Center for American Progress, who had this to say:

But there’s one shining example out there which a lot of people don’t acknowledge – and it’s China. China is far ahead of the U.S. right now in terms of adapting more ambitious renewable electricity standards, in terms of adapting better fuel efficiency standards; they will announce – probably by November when Obama goes to China – a new 10-year stimulus plan devoted exclusively to energy. They’re spending a bigger percentage of their last stimulus package on moving to alternative energy, and there are lots of reasons for it. But there, we effectively see that a country which is trying to balance the question of how you manage increased population growth – can it in fact move onto a track of greater sustainability? And I think that we should follow their example.

I don’t want to pick on Light specifically, because he was a gentleman and it was very a civilized discussion. But there’s no way to avoid the logic: If global warming is going to kill us all, then we can’t let secondary things like democracy and free speech stand in the way of stopping it.