DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—The New York Times ran a column Monday applauding China’s green energy transition without mentioning that slave labor has played a massive role in the country’s progress on that front. The column—written by David Wallace-Wells under the headline “What Happens if China Stops Trying to Save the World?”—gives China great credit for scaling up green energy manufacturing and installation while asserting that the American transition to less carbon-intensive energy is lagging by comparison. However, Wallace-Wells failed to mention in his piece that China’s green industry is powered with slave labor from Uyghur Muslims and other persecuted minorities. “Consider solar power, which is presently dominating the global green transition and giving the world its feel-good story. In 2023, the world including China installed 425 gigawatts of new solar power; the world without China installed only 162 gigawatts,” Wallace-Wells writes. “China accounted for 263 gigawatts; the United States accounted for just 33. As recently as 2019, China was installing about one-quarter of global solar capacity additions; last year, it managed 62 percent more than the rest of the world combined. Over those same five years, China grew its amount of new added capacity more than eight times over; the world without China didn’t even double its rate.” Dems’ Massive Green Energy Agenda Is Walking America Right Into China’s Hands, Analysis Claimshttps://t.co/YHH5A3e0fy— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 27, 2024 The Chinese solar industry, which dominates the global solar market, has been accused by the U.S. government and third-party analysts of taking advantage of slave labor. The State Department also published a July 2022 report that strongly suggests Chinese solar manufacturers are taking advantage of forced labor, and the Department of Labor put out its own 2022 report concluding that various solar products manufactured in China are produced with child or forced labor inputs. Forced-Labor-and-the-Clean-Energy-Transition-Finding-A-Responsible-Way-ForwardDownload 2022-TVPRA-List-of-Goods-v3Download The New York Times also published its own report on the Chinese green energy industry’s connections to slave labor in January 2021, suggesting that several major Chinese solar companies appear to be connected to the practice. One October 2023 assessment from The Heritage Foundation found that approximately 80% of all solar components made in China are produced using slave labor, and American customs officials have blocked solar shipments coming in from China for potential violations of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, according to Reuters. “There is progress being made around the world, but the gap between China and everybody else is much larger and more intimidating than is widely acknowledged, and the global story looks much less optimistic once you set China aside—which is, in some ways, precisely what America is trying to do by engaging in a green-tech trade war,” Wallace-Wells states in his column. China Downplays International Hopes Of Beating Carbon Emissions Targets Ahead Of Meeting With Biden Climate Czarhttps://t.co/sfm60vybNd— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 31, 2024 Using regulation and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, the Biden-Harris administration has made a huge effort to stand up a domestic green energy industry and reduce America’s reliance on fossil fuels, but cheaper Chinese products and dominance of green energy supply chains has complicated those goals. In addition to problems with slave labor’s role in green supply chains, American companies have also voiced concern that China’s price advantages and unfair trade practices threaten to wipe them out in the absence of protections just as they are starting to find their footing. Chinese solar products are low-cost because of a combination of cheap coal to power manufacturing, extensive government subsidies, and forced labor, according to Forbes and The Heritage Foundation’s October 2023 analysis. In his column, Wallace-Wells concedes that China is the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide, but he points to China’s “avoided emissions” as evidence that the country is displacing coal power for low-emissions renewables. Notably, China permitted two coal plants per week on average in 2022, according to research conducted by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “Much of the argument for those tariffs has concerned the challenge of Chinese subsidy and “overcapacity”—and what the United States and its allies might do, if anything, to enable us to properly compete with a green economy producing today twice as many solar panels as the world has demand for, as well as an [electric vehicle] company taking over the world while mostly posting losses,” Wallace-Wells continues. “But another aspect of the imbalance is perhaps more worrying, at least for those of us concerned about the pace of decarbonization: that China might back off, reducing its support for green industry in much the way that it purposefully deflated its own real estate bubble, somewhat idling the engine of the global green transition and leaving the rest of us in the lurch.” The New York Times did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post NY Times Columnist Gushes Over China’s ‘Green Transition’—Without Noting It’s Fueled by Slave Labor appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. It will take serious research and serious access to information ever to figure out which came first, the WEF chicken, or the WEF egg. But this unelected, informal group of highly influential global elites has often been able to either seemingly predict, or seemingly help make happen – some major trends and events that affect the whole world. After all, one of the first places where careful observers could see a clear shift toward making not only “mis/disinformation” a thing – but presenting it as a powerfully harmful one, in need of all sorts of new rules, policies, and laws – have been the World Economic Forum (WEF) gatherings. WEF founder Klaus Schwab keeps beating the same drum – and why wouldn’t he? The narrative has clearly taken root and is being parroted the world over. Now we have the 2023-2024 WEF report, and in there Schwab continues to lament about “the rise” of what the group and its “executive arms” (be they in governments, or legacy media) choose to consider as “mis/disinformation.” “Global collaboration” on this and other select topics (such as “transition to a green economy”) is what Schwab inevitably wants more of – but also, what he calls collaboration between governments, businesses, and civil society. If you read “business” as Big Tech, and “civil society” as various censorship, fact-checking outfits formally masquerading as benevolent non-profits – you have what is, at least in the US, officially investigated and strongly suspected to be unlawful collusion to suppress free speech. Regardless of what interpretation of this “collaboration” may be true, Schwab just wants more of it. He makes it clear in the annual report that provides an overview of “the 10 centers and the Forum’s initiatives, coalitions and flagship reports, as well as the latest progress from the Forum’s core functions, leadership, and governance.” Yet another “cusp of a profound systemic transformation” is ahead of us, if the WEF founder is to be believed. Schwab talks about “transformative shifts,” lists five of those, and one is “Societal polarization and rise of misinformation.” Here, Schwab says polarization is happening because of the need for people to “reaffirm” their identities. That, in and of itself, is a very interesting observation – but Schwab interprets it as a force-feeding “cultural, political, ideological and social divides and the rise of mis and disinformation.” Pacifying people in need of reaffirming, as he put it, their identities, seems to be the proposed solution, as this part of the “essay” suggests: “Inclusive dialogues, promoting mutual understanding and creating environments where diverse views and identities can coexist harmoniously.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Klaus Schwab Calls for “Global Collaboration” To Combat “Misinformation” appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Canada is about to start grappling with yet another piece of divisive and controversial proposed legislation, this one coming from the opposition Conservatives, and heavily touching on online age verification. The bill that is set to be presented when the parliament resumes work this month, according to its proponents, deals with protecting Canadians on the internet while also managing to protect their civil liberties. However, despite what those promoting the bill are saying, the situation is not as clear-cut as all that: the consequences of the plan could also see some online anonymity tools swept away. The idea revolves around giving online harassment victims a chance to go to a judge and ask that the person behind the bullying be unmasked. Furthermore, the bill’s ambition is to bring clarity to various scenarios and criminal thresholds for these events – specifically, those under which “online operators (like social media platforms) must disclose the identity of an alleged abuser.” Still under the real or hyped-up notion of “clarity” that the opposition says the present government has been unable to provide with its legislation, is the idea to make repeated criminally harassing material sent anonymously “an aggravating factor.” This last bit refers to the so-called burner accounts, and here, although the bill does not clarify (pun intended) the real-world person behind such an account must be identified. Meanwhile, the only way to know if the same perpetrator had sent material from multiple anonymous accounts would be to identify them. The implication is clearly there when the draft mentions that online operators “must disclose the identity of an alleged abuser.” All this brings up the question – identify them how? And that road inevitably leads to a method involving age verification. Despite the authors of the bill taking pains to assure both the parliament and the public that this will be done with proper privacy-preserving measures in place, the concept of online age verification remains one inherently restrictive and exclusionary. But the bill’s authors seem keen to cover all the talking points: at once promising “privacy-preserving trustworthy age verification,” legal protection for online harassment victims, and, separately, inevitably, they’re also “thinking of the children” (“the new Conservative legislation will provide mechanisms specifically designed to protect minors who are online,” as one commentator said), plus – platforms who don’t comply will face “penalties and consequences.” The upcoming bill is being pitted against the government’s much-criticized Bill C-63, and the hope is to place this new legislative effort in a positive light in comparison. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Canadian Conservatives Propose Bill for Online Digital ID Verification and Anonymity Restrictions appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

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