James Delingpole sends along a few observations on China from his Telegraph blog today. China’s opportunism in goading the developed world to hamstring itself further with carbon-emissions restrictions, James argues, actually represents hope for hard-headed climate realism:

Here is what Li Gao, China’s chief climate change negotiator has to say on the subject:
“Developed countries have neither enough active responses to proposals from developing countries about emission-cut target by 2020, nor interests in providing funds and technologies to help developing countries adapt to climate change.”
This is diplomatic hardball speak for: “If you in the West wish us to play your silly carbon emissions cutting game, you must not only bribe us with large sums of money but you must also place your industries at an even greater competitive disadvantage by crippling them with CO2 legislation from which we, in developing countries like China, Brazil and India, shall remain happily exempt.” . . .
China currently appears to be operating under a triad of very basic principles:
1) No policies shall be enacted which would interfere with China’s economic growth
2) China shall increase its energy production and security by any and all means possible, as quickly as possible.
3) Int’l agreements shall transfer massive amounts of capital, industry, & technology from the West to fund China’s energy development.”
What beggars belief is that the whole of the current US administration thinks that China is in fact gullible and pliable. . . .
This week it has been the turn of Todd D Stern, Hillary Clinton’s envoy on climate change to have the Chinese flip him the bird in Beijing. Reports the Washington Post:
“On Monday, Vice Premier Li Keqiang told Stern that China would ‘actively’ participate in climate talks but only on the basis of a ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ to reduce emissions, according to a transcript of his comments published on the official Web site of China’s State Council.”
ie – “Sell us your souls and, er, hey, how does ‘zilch’ sound as a reasonable trade-off?”
All this is, of course, absolutely disastrous news for the environmentalist extremists who play such a large and terrifying role in the Obama administration. But for anyone in the West, in the US especially, who cares about liberty, the state of the economy, or the free citizen’s inalienable right not to have his every hard-earned cent sucked into the gaping maw of eco tax and eco regulation in order to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist, China’s hard-headed realism may well be our only hope of salvation.