Rick Perry invites the Trump Administration’s opponents to have an "intellectual conversation" about climate change with him. This from his side would appear to be a concession, since Conservatives have always insisted that anyone who argues that the climate is changing because of human activity is per se an “alarmist”; anyone who presents evidence to that effect is a liar and/or an alarmist trying to sabotage American capitalism; and that people who insist that responsible policy ought to reflect the scientific consensus is making a religion of science. So even suggesting that climate change “believers” are capable of joining an intellectual conversation is mighty big.
Perry himself can’t hold an intellectual conversation that doesn’t involve Ovaltine and a nap. His job in the Trump White House is to put on his Smart Guy glasses and lay a politically acceptable face over lies and abject ignorance, so that the fossil fuel industries can buy time and force waste back into a system that seeks to eliminate it. He delivers the GOP’s focus-grouped arrogance in characterizing everything that preceded this as somehow not “intellectual” to his standards, but this once again plays to the Conservative posture that their enemies are, and always have been, just emotional; that the very scientific method itself, and all its outcomes, are compromised by subjectivity and inherent bias; in short their argument is that blistering stupidity on the Right is mirrored by blistering stupidity on the Left, and that the issue itself isn’t a matter of actual fact, but only of how one looks at it. So it can’t ever be resolved. They want the whole question of global warming to be theological and philosophical, fixed in time so that the change they fear never happens.
Perry’s vapid gambit here about “intellectual conversation” is such a transparent lie that it does more harm to the Trump White House than it does in the private sector where these decisions aren’t waiting for Perry’s sanction. The damage done by the GOP’s willful stupidity is here: the United States is in a war to lead the world energy economy of the 21st century--and the Republicans want to surrender today.
While Tesla may be building the biggest and splashiest factory, the Chinese government has launched a sweeping effort to increase the country’s dominant market share.
Roughly 55 percent of global lithium-ion battery production is already based in China, compared with 10 percent in the U.S. By 2021, China’s share is forecast to grow to 65 percent, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
“This is about industrial policy. The Chinese government sees lithium-ion batteries as a hugely important industry in the 2020s and beyond,” Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst Colin McKerracher said.
In all, global battery-making capacity is forecast to more than double by 2021 to 273 gigawatt-hours, up from about 103 gigawatt-hours today. That’s a huge opportunity, and China doesn’t want to miss it.
This is the same sort of system-versus-system, culture-versus-culture competition that gave us the Space Race during the Cold War. America rose to that challenge in 1961 and by meeting it, we leapt ahead in science and engineering in the world in the 20th century. Now the Republicans want to surrender that leadership for the 21st. Perry wants to hold an intellectual conversation at home while China competes to lead the world. We’re talking. They’re winning.