clive hamilton

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WOG? gone off the rez?

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wiki denial 3 26

Being "lukewarm" or "skeptical"

In 2012, Clive Hamilton published the essay "Climate change and the soothing message of luke-warmism".^[86] He defined luke-warmists as "those who appear to accept the body of climate science but interpret it in a way that is least threatening: emphasising uncertainties, playing down dangers, and advocating a slow and cautious response. They are politically conservative and anxious about the threat to the social structure posed by the implications of climate science. Their 'pragmatic' approach is therefore alluring to political leaders looking for a justification for policy minimalism." He cited Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, and also Roger A. Pielke Jr., Daniel Sarewitz, Steve Rayner, Mike Hulme and "the pre-eminent luke-warmist" Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg.^[86]

Climate change skepticism, while in some cases professing to do research on climate change, has focused instead on influencing the opinion of the public, legislators and the media, in contrast to legitimate science.^[30]: 28

Pope Francis groups together four types of respondents rejecting climate change: those who "deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue".^[87]

...

Delaying climate change mitigation measures

Further information: Economics of climate change mitigation and Economic analysis of climate change

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20220629_Public_estimates_of_scientific_consensus_on_climate_change_-_horizontal_bar_chart.svg)

A 2022 study found that the public in many countries substantially underestimates the degree of scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change.^[97] Studies from 2019–2021^[98][53][54] found scientific consensus to range from 98.7–100%.

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20220823_Public_underestimation_of_public_support_for_climate_action_-poll_-false_social_reality.svg)

Research found that 80–90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66–80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to be 37–43%. Researchers have called this misperception a false social reality, a form of pluralistic ignorance.^[99][100]

Climate change deniers often debate whether action (such as the restrictions on the use of fossil fuels to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions) should be taken now or in the near future. They fear the economic ramifications of such restrictions. For example, in a 1998 speech, a staff member of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argued that emission controls' negative economic effects outweighed their environmental benefits.^[101] Climate change deniers tend to argue that even if global warming is caused solely by the burning of fossil fuels, restricting their use would damage the world economy more than the increases in global temperature.^[102]

Conversely, the general consensus is that early action to reduce emissions would help avoid much greater economic costs later, and reduce the risk of catastrophic, irreversible change.^[103]

Earlier, climate change deniers' online YouTube content focused on denying global warming, or saying such warming is not caused by humans burning fossil fuel.^[104] As such denials became untenable, content shifted to asserting that climate solutions are unworkable, that global warming is harmless or even beneficial, and that the environmental movement is unreliable.^[104]

A 2016 article in Science made the case that opposition to climate policy was beginning to take a "rhetorical shift away from outright skepticism" and called this neoskepticism. Rather than denying the existence of global warming, neoskeptics instead "question the magnitude of the risks and assert that reducing them has more costs than benefits." According to the authors, the emergence of neoskepticism "heightens the need for science to inform decision making under uncertainty and to improve communication and education."^[105]

There is a range of possible mitigation policies. Disagreement over the sufficiency, viability, or desirability of a given policy is not necessarily neoskepticism. But neoskepticism is marked by failure to appreciate the increased risks associated with delayed action.^[106] Gavin Schmidt has called neoskepticism a form of confirmation bias and the tendency to always take "as gospel the lowest estimate of a plausible range".^[107] Neoskeptics err on the side of the least disruptive projections and least active policies and, as such, neglect or misapprehend the full spectrum of risks associated with global warming.^[107]

In political terms, soft climate denial can stem from concerns about the economics and economic impacts of climate change, particularly the concern that strong measures to combat global warming or mitigate its impacts will seriously inhibit economic growth.^[108]: 10

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Clive Charles Hamilton AM FRSA (born 12 March 1953) is an Australian public intellectual and Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)^[1] and the Vice-Chancellor's Chair in Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University.^[2] He is a member of the Board of the Climate Change Authority of the Australian Government,^[3] and is the Founder and former Executive Director of The Australia Institute.^[1][4] He regularly appears in the Australian media and contributes to public policy debates.^[5] Hamilton was granted the award of Member of the Order of Australia on 8 June 2009 for "service to public debate and policy development, particularly in the fields of climate change, sustainability and societal trends".^[6]

Education and academic career

Hamilton graduated from the Australian National University with a Bachelor of Arts in history, psychology and pure mathematics in 1975 and completed a Bachelor of Economics with First Class Honours from the University of Sydney in 1979. He was an Overseas Commonwealth Postgraduate Scholar and completed his Doctorate at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in 1984.^[4] His thesis was titled "A general equilibrium model of South Korean development".

He was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Fellow at the Research School of Pacific Studies of the Australian National University from 1984 to 1988 and the Director of the Graduate Program in the Economics of the Development at the National Centre for Development Studies of the Australian National University from 1986 to 1988. From 1994 to 1997 he was a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and from 1997 to 2002 he was a Fellow in Public Policy at the Australian National University and he was a Visiting Fellow of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health in 2004.

From 1988 to 1990 he was a Senior Research Economist at the Bureau of Industry Economics of the Federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources (now the Productivity Commission).

Hamilton founded the Australia Institute in 1993 and was Executive Director until 2008.^[1]

He has been an Academic Visitor at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, a Visiting Lecturer at the Oxford Martin School and a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Oxford.^[7]

He is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge and was a Visiting Scholar of the Department of Land Economy of the University of Cambridge.^[8]

He was a Senior Visiting Fellow of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies of Yale University.

Works

Hamilton has written about the issue of climate change politics over a period of some 15 years.^[9] His book Requiem for a Species (Earthscan 2010) explores climate change denial and its implications. His earlier books, Scorcher (2007) and Running from the Storm (2001), were critical of the Australian Government's efforts, especially in relation to the Kyoto Protocol.^[10] Hamilton's general view about climate change is that the "world is on a path to a very unpleasant future and it is too late to stop it".^[9] Hamilton argues that to believe anything else is to deny the climate change truth and engage in wishful thinking.^[11]

Hamilton has written several books relating to consumerism and overconsumption. Growth Fetish (2003) became an Australian best-seller and suggests that the unthinking pursuit of economic growth has become a fetish, which has not led to any real improvements in levels of happiness.^[12] In Growth Fetish, Hamilton advocates the politics of wellbeing over economic growth.^[13] In Affluenza (2005), Hamilton describes how these themes play out at a personal level, as he explores the shallowness of modern consumer life.^[13] In What's Left? (2006) Hamilton comments on topics written about in Growth Fetish and Affluenza. He argues that there is an emergence of new types of "alienation and exploitation", in the form of ravages of the free market, which have "robbed life of its meaning".^[14] The Freedom Paradox (2008) relates to the nature and consequences of advanced consumer capitalism. In the book Hamilton proposes a system of "post-secular ethics" that will serve as a challenge to the "moral malaise" occasioned by the "freedom of the marketplace".^[15]

Silencing Dissent: How the Australian Government Is Controlling Public Opinion and Stifling Debate, edited with Sarah Maddison was published in 2007.

In February 2018 Hamilton published the book Silent Invasion: China's influence in Australia on the increasing involvement of the Chinese Communist Party in Australian civil society and politics.^[16]

In June 2020, British businessman and advocate of tighter China-UK economic relations Stephen Perry and the 48 Group Club launched a defamation lawsuit in an attempt to block the release of Hamilton'sHidden Hand: Exposing How The Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping The World.^[17]

Political candidate

Hamilton campaigning in the seat of Higgins in 2009

On 23 October 2009, Hamilton was announced as the Australian Greens candidate for the by-electionin the federal seat of Higgins.^[18] He ran against nine others for the seat, and came second, receiving 32.40 percent of primary votes and 39.77 percent of preferred votes.^[19] The Australian Labor Party did not run a candidate in the election.

Bibliography

Library resources
By Clive Hamilton
Resources in your library Resources in other libraries

Books by Clive Hamilton include:^[20]

Hamilton, Clive (1986). Capitalist Industrialization in Korea, Westview Press.
Hamilton, Clive (ed) (1991). The Economic Dynamics of Australian Industry, North Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive (1994). The Mystic Economist, Sydney: Willow Park Press.
Hamilton, Clive & Diesendorf, Mark (eds) (1997). Human Ecology, Human Economy: Ideas for an Ecologically Sustainable Future, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive & Throsby, David (eds) (1998). The ESD Process: Evaluating a Policy Experiment, Canberra: Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.
Hamilton, Clive (2001). Running from the Storm: The Development of Climate Change Policy in Australia, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Hamilton, Clive (2003). Growth Fetish, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive & Denniss, Richard (2005). Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive (2006). What's Left? The Death of Social Democracy, Sydney: Quarterly Essay.
Hamilton, Clive (2007). Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, Melbourne: Black Inc.
Hamilton, Clive & Maddison, Sarah (eds) (2007). Silencing Dissent:How the Australian Government Is Controlling Public Opinion and Stifling Debate, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive (2008). The Freedom Paradox: Towards a Post-Secular Ethics, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive (2010). Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist The Truth About Climate Change, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive (2013). Earthmasters: Playing God with the climate, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive (2016). What Do We Want?: The Story of Protest in Australia, Canberra: National Library of Australia^[21]
Hamilton, Clive (2017). Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hamilton, Clive (2018). Silent Invasion: China's influence in Australia , Sydney: Hardie Grant Books. ISBN 9781743794807.
Hamilton, Clive & Ohlberg, Mareike (2020). Hidden Hand: Exposing How The Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping The World, Sydney: Hardie Grant Books. ISBN 9781743795576.

References

^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Hamilton#cite_ref-CappeBio_1-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Hamilton#cite_ref-CappeBio_1-2) "Clive Hamilton". Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011.
^ "CSU EXPERTS". Charles Sturt University. Archived from the original on 3 March 2011. Retrieved 9 November 2010.
^ "The Australian Climate Change Authority board announced. 21 June 2012". Archived from the original on 1 June 2013. Retrieved 22 June 2012.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Hamilton#cite_ref-CappeCv_4-1) "Clive Hamilton: Brief CV" (PDF). Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 July 2011.
^ Schmidt, Lucinda (30 July 2008). "Profile: Clive Hamilton". The Age. Archived from the original on 11 April 2011. Retrieved 7 November 2008.
^ "It's an Honour". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 15 November 2009.
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 5 October 2011.
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 27 December 2004. Retrieved 5 October 2011.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Hamilton#cite_ref-km_9-1) Kelsey Munro. Too late for all but prayers Archived 14 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 February 2010.
^ Tim Flannery. Scorcher: the dirty politics of climate change Archived 19 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine The Age, 25 May 2007.
^ Steven Yearley. Book of the week: Requiem for a Species Archived 16 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine Times Higher Education, 3 June 2010.
^ Ross Gittins. When growth turns into a monster Archived 16 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 2008.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Hamilton#cite_ref-kn_13-1) Kirsty Needham. A serious bout of affluenza Archived 10 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 May 2005.
^ Maley, Barry (1 June 2006). "When the left is half right". Quadrant. Retrieved 12 November 2008.
^ Richard King. The Freedom Paradox: Towards a Post-Secular Ethics Archived 24 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 September 2008.
^ Brophy, David (April 2018). "David Brophy reviews 'Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia' by Clive Hamilton". Australian Book Review. Archived from the original on 13 March 2018. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
^ Fife, Robert; Chase, Steven (19 June 2020). "Legal challenge halts Canadian, U.S. and U.K. release of book critical of Chinese Communist Party". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
^ "Greens announce candidate for Higgins". ABC News. 23 October 2009. Archived from the original on 26 October 2009. Retrieved 23 October 2009.
^ Australian Electoral Commission: Higgins By-election results Archived 8 December 2009 at the Wayback Machine
^ "Books by Clive Hamilton".
^ Readings Archived 20 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 4 December 2016

External links

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guk

https://yyy.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/11/hidden-hand-review-chinas-true-global-ambitions-exposed

by hutton

this is a remarkable book with a chilling message. The Chinese Communist party, for which dominating rural China in order to encircle its cities and win the civil war is part of its historic backstory, is now intent on doing the same internationally. Using whatever lever comes to hand – generously financing a thinktank in Washington, owning a part-share of Rotterdam port, encouraging “friendship” clubs like Britain’s 48 Group Club– it is aiming to create an international soft “discourse” and hard infrastructure that so encircles western power centres that the dominance of the party at home and abroad becomes unchallengeable.

China, we know, has very different definitions of terrorism, human rights, security and even multilateralism to those accepted internationally. The book spells them out and shows how intent the party is on winning international acceptance for them as vital buttresses to its power. Acts of terrorism include not eating pork or speaking out against one-party “democracy”, as the Uighurs and denizens of Hong Kong are learning. Human rights should be understood as the people’s collective right for Chinese-style economic and social development. Multilateralism means states acting in harmony with China and its view that economic development is the alpha and omega of all international purpose – the vision set out in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)....

wiki

hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World is a 2020 book by Australians Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, and is a follow up of Hamilton's 2018 book Silent Invasion. The book details the claim of "the Chinese Communist Party’s global program of influence and subversion, and the threat it poses to democracy".^[1]

The book details what the authors describe as "the nature and extent of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations across the Western world – in politics, business, universities, think tanks and international institutions such as the UN. This new authoritarian power is using democracy to undermine democracy in pursuit of its global ambitions".^[2]

Andrew Podger wrote in his book review in *The Conversation* that while it was extremely detailed, it was not a balanced and scholarly document. He said that while Hamilton and Ohlberg wanted to respond to Chinese influence by rejecting liberal economics and strengthening democratic politics, what was needed was actually a combination of both.^[3]

aha throwing your body on the gears is the last line of defense, a way for activists to try to offset corporate power (see various suppressions) so not surprising CRC/notEPA tires to tie "extremist" Extinction Rebellion to "foreign Billionaire" [well, British anyway Hohn? holm? sp]

sino-phobe

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/11/30/chinas-useful-idiots-review-of-hidden-hand-by-hamilton-ohlberg/#slide-1

trying to trash via foreign bilionaire BS ~ sino ChiComm

https://unherd.com/2021/12/does-the-ccp-control-extinction-rebellion/

no lnx

Does the CCP control Extinction Rebellion?

Western activists are blind to President Xi's ambition

BY DAVID ROSE

. Is he just a useful idiot? (NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP via Getty Images)]

David Rose is aninvestigative journalistand author. His next book is about caving.

DavidRoseUK

December 15, 2021

Filed under:

Global affairs Beijing CCP Censorship China Climate change Communism Don't miss Education Environment Extinction Rebellion Fossil fuels University WEF Xi Jinping

A few blocks away from Tiananmen Square, amid the cavernous splendour of the Beijing Hotel Convention Centre, an array of senior Communist Party officials gathered in September to proclaim a clear message: by “focusing on cutting carbon emissions… China will promote green development, and continuously improve its ecology”. The annual general meeting of the China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development (the CCICED) was in full swing.

Rapturous applause filled the room, though that was hardly unexpected. Conferences run by the CCP are not usually marked by dissent, especially when they’re attended by the likes of Xie Zhenhua, who led China’s delegation to Cop26, and vice premier Han Zheng, one of the seven standing committee members of the Politburo, the Party’s supreme elite. Indeed, as the room fizzled with optimistic eco-rhetoric, you could almost forget that China is the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases — and that the new coal-fired power stations in its construction pipeline alone have a greater capacity than Britain’s entire generation fleet.

What was remarkable about this meeting, though, was the surprising presence of an external delegation: joining the CCP apparatchiks on a collection of screens dotted around the room were a number of enthusiastic Britons and other Westerners. According to the official conference report, the “foreign committee members and partners lauded China’s ecological civilisation building and its new and greater contributions to promoting the construction of a clean and beautiful world”.

Who were these people? Strange to tell, they consisted of a veritable Who’s Who of British, European and American climate activists.

Here, for example, was Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, Chairman of the Grantham Centre on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, and a longstanding government adviser who wrote a report for Blair’s Labour government on the need to go green. He told the meeting the world is beginning a “new growth story” that “fits well with China’s vision of an ecological society”.

Here too was Kate Hampton, chief executive of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which is mainly bankrolled by the billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn, a key financial backer of Extinction Rebellion and one of the world’s biggest sources of green largesse. During the meeting,Hampton said she “supported Chinese leadership on setting the global path for fulfilling Paris goals”— the attempt to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — and praised China for “supporting green Covid-19 recovery”.

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Others were equally fulsome, including Laurence Tubiana, France’s former climate ambassador and now chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, which also gives millions to British green campaigns, such as UK100, an alliance of local authorities pledged to turn Net Zero by 2030; and the Conservative Environment Network.

Also present were representatives from ClientEarth, a law firm that tries to block development in Britain and other countries on environmental grounds in the courts; the Worldwide Fund for Nature, whose president is Prince Charles; and representatives from rich and influential organisations based in America including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the World Resources Institute and the Energy Foundation.

And yet in the weeks since the CCICED meeting, Cop26 has come and gone; and largely thanks to China, any hope of a meaningful deal has evaporated. On the last day, British minister Alok Sharma was reduced to tears when India and China refused to promise to phase out coal. Back in the real world, President Xi Jinping has said China will increase annual coal production by 220 million tonnes.

Such moves have, unsurprisingly, attracted robust criticism. Professor Jun Arima of Tokyo University, one of Japan’s Cop26 negotiators, told me that allowing China to benefit from cheap, coal-fired energy will only consolidate its industrial domination. Lord Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, pointed out that China’s leaders have repeatedly shown they are not “men of their word”.

Yet those in attendance at the meeting in September have been unified by their reticence. Why?

Last year, in their book Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World, Clive Hamiltonand Mareike Ohlberg revealed how China influences Britain and other Western democracies by seducing their elites. Its ‘useful idiots’ often believe they are acting for the common good, but become blind to Xi’s avowed ambition: for China to achieve global supremacy by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Maoist revolution.

Nowhere is this more effective than in the climate movement. I asked a specialist researcher fluent in Mandarin to examine open-source material from the Chinese web. The results suggest Western greens have become prime targets. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising: before he was a climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua helped run the Party Discipline Commission, which operates a secret prison network where torture, according to Human Rights Watch, has long been rife.

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I asked Hamilton if China’s wooing of Western environmentalists explains why the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide has aroused so little protest? He believes it is likely: “They’ve fallen for what the Party calls ‘discourse control’ — to shape the way the rest of the world thinks and talks about China, presenting the Chinese government in a favourable light. Toadying to the Party leadership is letting them off the hook.”

For Lord Stern, this is nothing new: his environmental record is littered with papers saying CCP leaders are making great progress, and suggesting — prematurely — that their coal use and emissions have already or will soon peak. In 2014, for example, he claimed in a paper for the World Economic Forum that China was “emerging as a global leader in climate policy”. His co-author was He Jiankun, a ‘counsellor’ to China’s top administrative body, the State Council, and the director of the Energy, Environment and Economy Institute at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Three years later, following the the annual WEF jamboree at Davos, Stern said: “The world is looking for a climate champion. In China, it has one.”

Has Stern been naïve and let himself get too close to the CCP? Certainly for the Party, Tsinghua University has a special role: it is Xi Jinping’s alma mater, and home to multiple labs conducting secret research for the People’s Liberation Army. Yet the pair still work together: Stern’s spokesman told me that Tsinghua and the LSE are joint leaders of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate, which held two international meetings before Cop26 with contributions from Alok Sharma, US climate envoy John Kerry,and — of course — Xie Zhenhua.

This year, for what it’s worth, Stern has called on China to stop building new coal-fired plants. But he still spoke at this year’s CCICED, while his spokesman told me that China remained “keen to learn from the UK’s example of world-leading action on climate change” and said the rate of increase in its emissions had slowed enormously. While this may be true, China’s emissions continued to rise even through the pandemic, and now exceed the total produced by rest of the developed world.

On paper, at least, you might argue there’s no harm in that. After all, the CCICED’s “mission” is to build “a more beautiful China and a green and bountiful world”. Who could possibly object?

Hardly anyone, I suspect, until they learnt that, the CCICED’s Chinese members include not only top Party bosses but officials who work with China’s United Front Work Department, one of the CCP’s main instruments for exerting influence abroad. Among them is Li Xiaolin, a top party cadre and the daughter of China’s late president Li Xiannan. Until recently, she was the chair of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries — which, as Hamilton and Ohlberg show in their book, is one of China’s most important foreign influence organisations.

What does this mean in practice? According to Patricia Adams, director of the Toronto-based environmental think tank Probe International, in 2017 a new Chinese law forced foreign NGOs there to submit to “close supervision” by the Ministry of Public Security, responsible for crushing dissent and controlling China’s secret police. Any organisation deemed to have “harmed the national interest” risks having its assets seized, its staff jailed, and being permanently banned.

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Adams knows this fully well: in 2014, when the new law was being discussed, two Chinese academics she was working with were arrested and later jailed, and Probe International named as co-conspirators. Their crime? “Picking quarrels and provoking troubles” for speaking out on issues such as the rule of law. After that, Adams tells me, “it was no longer safe for us to work in China”. As for the Western environmentalists who still do, she adds: “They hope they can influence China’s leadership. But they are also aware that for them, to publicly criticise China’s policy would be suicide.”

Take, for example, the aforementioned CIFF, whose Chief Executive attended the CCICED gathering in September. Along with the WWF and ClientEarth, it has a branch in China which is subject to CCP control. There, the CIFF employs one Wang Yi as its “independent adviser on climate projects”. As chance would have it, he also happens to be a high-ranking member of China’s puppet parliament, the National People’s Congress.

To what extent that compromises his impartiality is anyone’s guess. But it is striking that the CIFF — a registered UK charity — gives away millions of pounds to projects in China. These include an £18 million grant to “help contribute to peaking China’s emissions”, £14 million to give China “evidence-based recommendations” for renewable energy, and, most astonishingly of all, £8 million to assist China “in global climate governance”.

This might not matter quite so much were Sir Christopher and the CIFF not prominent funders of green causes in Britain and Europe. He has personally given £50,000 to Extinction Rebellion, with a further £150,000 from the CIFF. When these payments emerged in 2019, Hohn said: “I recently gave them £50,000 because humanity is aggressively destroying the world with climate change and there is an urgent need for us all to wake up to this fact.”

But not, apparently, to China’s role in it. When I asked an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson why they never said anything about China, she told me: “It would be divisive to put pressure on one particular nation. It would be hypocritical.”

Yet the CIFF’s China connection extends well beyond Extinction Rebellion: it is also the biggest funder of the European Climate Foundation, based in Brussels but with an office in London, to which the CIFF donated £29 million last year. Strikingly, the ECF’s deputy chair is a familiar figure: the CIFF’s Kate Hampton.

Like the CIFF, the ECF website provides few details of the groups it funds. But its UK ‘grantees’ include ClientEarth and the Conservative Environment Network, an alliance of more than 100 Tory MPs and peers set up by environment minister Zac Goldsmith and his plutocrat brother Ben.

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Its ‘global ambassador’, meanwhile, is the Prime Minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, a self-declared “Sinophile” who said last year that China “will come over to our side”, and it was vital “not to raise the temperature” by criticising them. He added he had recently enjoyed “a wonderful, wonderful meeting with the Chinese ambassador”, at which, after discussing global warming, they had sung the Flanders and Swann song ‘Mud, Glorious Mud’ together, inspired by mud’s supposed ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

And yet for all the pledges made in recent years by China and Western environmentalists, the evidence suggests that any future action will be strictly on China’s terms. For many years, Chinese leaders avoided trying to promote the Communist system in the West, but since Xi took power in 2012, this has changed. China, says Clive Hamilton, now touts the ‘China model’ as superior to the West’s.

Anyone doubting this had only attend yet another Beijing meeting, held in June at a Chinese government office by the Foreign Environmental Cooperation Centre, part of China’s environment ministry. The meeting’s attendees included staff from the CCICED, and discussed “the building of ecological civilisation and the community of common destiny”. One leading participant was Chen Xiangyang, the Director of China’s Total State Security Outlook Research Centre — an arm of the Ministry of State Security, which has helped to direct a regime of surveillance against Chinese citizens.

Meanwhile, Qiushi, the CCP’s theoretical journal, published an article in Chinese this year which explores how foreign environmentalists can be utilised. The idea of ecological civilisation, it says, is “Marxist and scientific by nature”, and will have a big role in spreading the China Model’s appeal.

None of this is hidden. This article uses Chinese documents, but all are available on the Mandarin web. Yet climate change activists continue to blindly give China a free pass on its emissions and continued use of coal.

An ECF spokesperson told me: “Climate change impacts every country and so we work with every country, and of course that includes China.” A CIFF spokesperson added: “China is the world’s largest emitter and its transition to a net zero economy is therefore of utmost importance to the entire world. CIFF’s work in China aims to accelerate this transition.”

ClientEarth said: “As a result of our work delivering legal training, the legal system in China is now used to hold Chinese government bodies to account… We are focused on reducing pollution and bringing down emissions both in China and from its overseas investments.” And a WWF campaigns chief added: “All countries need to contribute towards reducing emissions to net zero by 2050. By promising to stop building coal plants abroad, China had ‘given an important signal’.

Ultimately, however, the meaning of that “signal” remains unclear. Is it a sign that President Xi is seriously committed to saving the planet? Or is it a sign that he understands how to fool an influential group of Western environmentalists, with the intention of making that planet his own?

clive hamilton

Being "lukewarm" or "skeptical"

Delaying climate change mitigation measures

Education and academic career

Works

Political candidate

Bibliography

See also

References

External links