Climate change: To save the world, first we had to destroy it

Beating ploughshares into swords — we’ve come full circle and reversed.

The military machine is a major polluter – why is the West turning to war and away from public need? 

First published at Substack, 3 August 2026

In the year of wildfire Europe, in the months of UK drought lamentations and parallel press cheers for intensifying conflict in Europe, may I reiterate that the military is one of the biggest polluters on the planet. Bigger than farting cows, bigger than the school run, bigger than your annual holiday flight. 

RESEARCH SHOWS:

• The US military is one of the largest polluters globally, managing approximately 39,000 contaminated sites.
• It produces more toxins than the combined output of the top five US chemical companies.
• Military activities are responsible for significant emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
• The main sources of military pollution and emissions include fuel consumption for military operations, equipment procurement, and the logistics of supply chains. Additionally, military activities contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 5.5% of global emissions.

Washington fiddles while climate change burns the world

How much did blowing up the Nordstream pipelines add to the carbon emissions tally? According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), an estimated 15 million tons of CO2 equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions, primarily due to the release of over 485,000 tons of methane. This amount of methane contributed to global warming comparable to the emissions from approximately 8 million cars driven for a year.

Wildfires are breaking out all over Europe. Huge swathes of France and Spain are being fried to a crisp. The UK is a tinderbox with some areas receiving only one percent of normal July rainfall. And a huge El Nino is gathering strength in the Pacific which will have devastating global consequences. But let’s not allow potential end of the world scenarios to dampen our testosterony predilections. All efforts are STILL set to turbo-charge the proxy war on Russia in Ukraine. 

Not only does the conflict add massively to global warming and climate change, it is ratcheting up to a direct clash with the world’s biggest nuclear power having pushed NATO right up to its doorstep. And that’s on top of the unhinged, unprovoked, illegal war on Iran and all the other arsonist’s points of ignition around the world as American imperialism goes for broke. 

Trump even blurted the quiet part out loud that Ukraine is rich in resources and ripe for plunder. “Could be worth $300 million. Could be more. Could be billions. We can take practically anything we want.” Just as they’ve done with Venezuela, and just as they intend for Russia and China.

Charge of the Light Brigade redux

Fat chance or not, the fallout from their attempts will be painful. Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg admitted that the war in Ukraine started in 2014, not 2022. (Yes, it has deeper roots going back further but that’s when the Obama administration made the big leap towards the proxy war on Russia with the Maidan coup.) But Europe insists on pursuing the race to war with Russia, with China targeted as a close second. 

Where’s the diplomacy? Where’s the public debate? 

We remember the war in Ukraine could have been over within the month until Boris Johnson crashed the imminent peace deal in March 2022. Thanks to him, it’s dragged on longer than World War II and threatens WWIII as Zelensky attempts to merge the Ukraine and Iran wars into one big mega ruck, drawing America back in to Europe. Was Johnson really Biden’s messenger boy? Or had the British deep state awoken to the opportunity to reenact The Charge of the Light Brigade into the valley of death and the land of Babi Yar? 

Climate change be damned, let loose the hogs of war

One way or another, whether from climate change catastrophe or apocalyptic world war, Western elites seem intent on burning down the world as they lose their hegemony. In a colossal act of cutting off its nose to spite its face, Chancellor Mertz has led Germany’s deindustrialisation with the loss of the cheap Russian energy that once fuelled the biggest economy in the EU. Washington chooses high food and gas prices for its people. The UK strains at the leash to follow suit. How are world leaders getting away with this national self-harm? 

Someone posted the Hermann Goering quote: 

“Naturally the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Climate change is the price we can’t afford to pay

So there it is. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Orwell’s 1984 is proving to be something of an instruction manual. Two-minute hate? Tick. Emmanuel Goldstein hate figure? Tick. 

Andy Burnham lays out his intentions by appointing war fetishist John Healey to the role of Chancellor, and that other charmer, Wes Streeting to Defence, sewing up the interests of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Along with a government cabinet rammed with “Labour Friends of Israel”, I’d venture this is a pretty accurate indication of direction of travel. Politicians involved in such matters should show us their share portfolios and be banned from the MIC revolving door when they leave office. 

Calls for cuts to be made to the UK’s welfare state to fund warfare are being made. John Healey’s role heading up the Treasury cements that. Expect a rising wave of media shills herding us, the surplus labour, into the plutocratic elite’s cattle-pens.

Death Star Britain transforms into war machine

I’ve long made the case that Britain is turning into a Death Star. This is the logical outcome of a system rolling over and morphing into its essence which no longer relies on labour, much of which is now surplus to requirements. Devoid of imagination and common humanity, politicians John Swinney, John Healey and George Roberston are making the running on behalf of the MIC. Hermann Goering’s strategy is now openly in play: All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.  

Only a few days ago, Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney tested the waters by lifting the ban on public money going to weapons manufacturers, sweetening the turn to war with a pause (not a halt) in arming Israel. UK Defence Secretary John Healey has long been stirring up enmity and fear between us and Russia, and threatening to go to war with China over Taiwan. Yesterday, George Robertson, former defence secretary and Blairite NATO chief during the Iraq War, told the nation that we were in deadly “peril” and his mates in NATO and the MIC need more money. Lots of it. Our public money.

Keir Starmer has handed over billions to the Ukraine war and promised more without end. We’re raising our NATO payments from 2.7 percent to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035. And he’s pledged Britain will actually raise defence funding to 5 percent, almost double what we’re paying now. 

How much global warming is that?

From post-war liberal order to technocratic feudalism

So, here I am looking out over a parched UK landscape, the prospect of AI centres purloining our remaining drinking water and a nation descending into poverty and danger under the new technocratic feudalism. Our politicians willingly gave up the advances we made under a flawed post-war liberal order without any fight in a giant game of Risk. Socialism would have moved society forward but now it’s all been clawed back by robber baron elites.

As Joey 周乙 says, “‘It’s capitalism in crisis choosing to destroy ‘excess capacity’ through war rather than share prosperity”.

Washington’s favourite academic, Niall Ferguson, laid it out for the public in 2011 and 2012 shortly after Barack Obama made his Pivot to Asia. Essentially, shatter wealthy, stable Europe for pillage, power and the removal of a rival bloc. I flagged it up at the time: 

Working for the Clampdown: Niall Ferguson and his “Killer Apps”

https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/niall-ferguson-tv-review/

None of this mayhem was either necessary or for our benefit. By 2018, the nations of the Eurasian landmass were emerging from America’s 2008 financial meltdown in sync, floated out of trouble by China’s huge economic and productive heft acting as a shock absorber. The future looked bright. Cheap Russian energy and peaceful trade with China ensured affordability for the masses: the twin engines of our stabilising economy on the Eurasia landmass, for the global south and for America. 

Western commentators were rejoicing that China had saved American capitalism from itself. A massive drive to coordinate combating climate change was planned with Joe Biden promising to work with the rising superpower. That is, until he performed a pivot, not unlike his old boss, and decided that clobbering China was more important.  

We could have stuck to ploughshares instead of swords in a peaceful and prosperous world. But, thanks to the elites, the only bright future we’re likely to see is the red glow of advancing flames and the flash of their nuclear toys.

It’s Empire reviving itself in its true form, like the Terminator’s endoskeleton emerging from the flames stripped of all human features. A cold killer machine, run by Cyberdyne Systems and the techbro billionaire class out of Palo Alto and the White House. 

YOUTUBE VIDEO: Anna Chen on America's transformation into the Death Star, 21 February 2026

See also this unique live timeline as it happened. Contemporaneous print and broadcast threaded on a historical through-line: Shakedown Timeline of America’s 21st Century War on China, page 4 (current, latest first): 2024 to the Present — President Donald Trump’s second term turmoil: https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/

Shakedown Timeline, page 1: 1997-2010 — Hong Kong handover & WTO to President Obama’s Pivot to Asia:https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/

Shakedown Timeline, page 2: 2010-2010 — Obama’s Pivot-to-Asia to Trump’s first presidency:https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/shakedown-timeline-page-2/

Shakedown Timeline, page 3: 2019-2024: Joe Biden’s presidency, Covid and Ukraine to the rise of BRICS and Donald Trump’s second term: https://www.annachen.co.uk/china/shakedown/shakedown-timeline-of-americas-21stc-war-on-china-3/

Donald Trump always wanted to play with the toys. 2018, I was early but the principle remains the same — none of us is getting out of here alive if Trump continues to be enabled by his feral support system: https://www.annachen.co.uk/2018/12/24/happy-new-year-will-donald-trumps-tiny-hand-press-the-big-red-button-in-2019/

Chinese dissident allowed limited media access: Madam Miaow back on Guardian CiF

Yep, I checked yesterday and posted on Gary Younge's powerful indictment of US Republican "Frat Boys" and discovered that my ban is at an end and I am now allowed to comment at the Guardian but under (heavy) moderation — so says the vivid red message in the comment window when I posted.

This goes back to last year when I tried to post on the Guardian's hysterical attack on the Chinese at Copenhagen following the exposé that America and other rich nations were hijacking the climate change summit as revealed in the leaked Danish Text. During this period of obfuscation, diversion and a lot of smoke and mirrors, journos at the Guardian accused CiF posters with Chinese sounding names who attempted to inject a few facts into the debate (such as it was) of being five-yuan a time tarts for the Chinese government. Because it's well known that we have no integrity or political conviction. And in the Independent, Tony Juniper of Friends Of The Earth felt emboldened enough to call the Chinese "inscrutable", a hoary colonialist term I'd thought disappeared with the Empire and Sax Rohmer.

How satisfying, then, to see today's Guardian reporting the Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh's statement that Copenhagen was destroyed by the Danish draft leak.

Dismissing Britain's attempt to blame China for the disappointment of Copenhagen, the Indian minister said the outcome was determined by a failed "ambush", targeted at the leaders of emerging economies, by the host nation Denmark. This attempted to switch a new negotiating text for the existing UN texts.

"The Danish draft was circulated at the beginning of the conference, which got mysteriously leaked to the Guardian. That completely destroyed trust. It was the leak of the Danish draft that destroyed Copenhagen from day one," said Ramesh, at a sustainable growth forum in Hainan.

This isn't to say that China is incapable of pulling stunts when it needs to, but that it still has a lot to learn from the British Foreign Office and its friends when it comes to manipulation.

One question remaining to be answered: considering Britain invented low-carbon coal burning technology and we're signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, why is China able to build 80 percent carbon-capture power stations at the rate of one a month, and we don't even have a single one? [EDIT: New York Times says current highest efficiency is 44 percent.]

UPDATE: China announces world's largest solar plant. Hat -tip James Mackenzie

UPDATE 2: Almost a month later (7th May), the Guardian comes up with a carefully constructed rebuttal. Very interesting watching the spinning on this subject.

India's Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh

Guardian admits China's green plans leave US red-faced.

Climate change: Is new Independent newspaper regime Sinophobic?

Well, I used to be a fan of The Independent, what with having Robert Fisk and being so brilliant on the Iraq war. But with an article yesterday headlined, "China's delaying tactics threaten climate deal" by Chris Green, and allowing racist epithets in their comments threads, has The Indy jumped the shark?

You know what came next. I couldn't resist posting a reply to their US BS:

That is an appalling bit of US spin and I'm amazed that Chris Green has swallowed this wholesale. I wonder just who his "sources inside negotiations" are. We can make an educated guess.

After wasting ten years under Bush, obfuscating and setting up obstructions to the talks over the past two years, Clinton rides in six-guns blazing, holding the world to ransom by demanding that the $100 billion fund for the developing world's climate change technology is contingent on China jumping through hoops of America's choosing while Obama has nothing to offer. The US is the nation who refused to ratify Kyoto — the ONLY legally binding instrument in the world that can require countries to cut emissions.

MEANWHILE ... China is soaring ahead in green technology: it has revolutionised wind turbines (using electro-magnetic principles); the entire city of Dezhou in Shandong of 5.5 million people have their appliances powered by solar energy; it has planted the biggest area of man-made forest in the world; it is charging each household $64 towards the $30 billion it needs [to pay for its cuts in emissions]; it's leading the world in electric cars and makes a key component of the car batteries. And yet you make this unfounded, unfair, bad-tempered attack. How does this help except to let the US off the hook?

I'm not the only one to observe that Obama has come naked to the table and some are speculating that he has been set-up to fail by right-wing elements in government.

Wen Jiabao has said that any internationally supported cuts will of course be subject to international scrutiny — meaning legally binding global decisions made through a successful treaty. He is refusing to be browbeaten by the world's worst polluter per capita over China's voluntary national mitigation action which will be legally binding within China.

If he's heard Scott Ritter admit the Iraq WMD teams were also espionage groups I dare say this might also have swayed him. Who'd want the agents of such a warmongering nation swarming over their country?

China has pledged that its cuts (40-45 per GDP unit) will be adhered to even if Copenhagen fails, unlike others such as Japan that says its cuts are contingent on a deal. If China sticks to its targets it will set the international benchmark for looking after the environment. If it doesn't, then go ahead and poke them with a sharp stick.

Yet another article is headlined, "China holds the world to ransom".

The fan-boys gushed breathlessly:

It was unforgettable political theatre. Like a poker player with a sudden new bet, the power-dressed Mrs Clinton changed the game instantly as she pulled her gigantic sum out of the US back pocket and slammed it down on the negotiating table.

Er ... it's not actually America's money, though, is it? This is the combined world fund to help the third world develop green technology and meet climate targets.

Let's remember it's not China that's been belching out carbon emissions for over a hundred years. America has cheated the Kyoto figures, claiming to aim to cut emissions by a measly 17 percent by 2020. But this is against 2005 levels and not the Kyoto base year of 1990, meaning if we're lucky, the US will have made cuts of only 4 percent. No wonder they put the rat into ratify and refused to sign up.

Currently producing four times the emissions of China per capita, even if all had gone well at Copenhagen, the US would still have been allowed to pollute at twice the rate of the poor countries for each man, woman and child by 2050.

In another Independent article, "Tony Juniper: China is a country that dislikes being told what to do", the Chinese are accused of that old colonialist cliché, being "inscrutable". What is this, the 19th Century?

Is Tony Juniper — environmentalist and director of Friends of the Earth — aware that a third of all China's emissions are produced making goods for ... guess where? How about Western markets picking up the carbon bill?

To top it off, The Indy ignores its own moderation policy. The moderators may be off getting some seasonal cheer but perhaps someone should be awake when posts titled "Obama and the Chinks" come in. Would they allow equivalent racist epithets for other minorities or are we a special case?

The Guardian has also evidently been briefed along the same lines but it is the Independent that's picked up this particular bone with gusto and run with it, such as with this vicious article today.

John Prescott in The Guardian is good, though.

But the atmosphere was soured by the US, first by its climate change special envoy, Todd Stern, who said emissions "isn't a matter of politics or morality or anything else, it's just maths", which completely ignored the per capita argument. President Obama's speech blaming China didn't help either. The US has pushed the Chinese hard on emissions cuts. Fine when you've had your industrial revolution. But China and the other developing countries need that growth. Understandable when more than half of the planet is living on less than $2 a day.

This from Joss Garland sounds right on the money: Historic failure that will live on in infamy

UPDATE: I've just remembered that the new Indy editor, Roger Alton, was the editor of the Observer when bizarrely it was part of a media bloc that kept trying to stitch up the UK Chinese community and blame it for the Foot And Mouth Disease outbreak which devastated large swathes of Britain in 2001. MAFF minister Nick Brown stated that this was nonsense and completely untrue. So what's going on at The Independent?

Madam Miaow on the Copenhagen climate change summit

Johann Hari, the Indy's one remaining journalist worth reading, gives an overview of the truths Copenhagen ignored here

More on post-Cop15 sinophobia in the Guardian here

Madam Miaow on BBC World Service TV: China and Copenhagen Opening Day

Anna Chen in the studio for the BBC World Service "World Have Your Say" programme on the first day of the Copenhagen climate conference, Monday 7th December 2009.

Posted at YouTube in three parts.

World Have Your Say: Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAMXCfnju6c



World Have Your Say: Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJVdKb5N-o8


World Have Your Say: Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNeA8WZ6TyY


Read Madam Miaow on China, Copenhagen and climate change

UPDATE: Anna Chen on BBC World TV on the final day of the Copenhagen summit

Madam Miaow on BBC World Service TV: China and Copenhagen

Anna Chen in the studio for the BBC World Service "World Have Your Say" programme on the first day of the Copenhagen climate conference, Monday 7th December 2009.

Posted at YouTube in three parts.

World Have Your Say: Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAMXCfnju6c



World Have Your Say: Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJVdKb5N-o8


World Have Your Say: Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNeA8WZ6TyY


Read Madam Miaow on China, Copenhagen and climate change

UPDATE: Anna Chen on BBC World TV on the final day of the Copenhagen summit

China, Copenhagen and climate change

Monday sees the start of the Copenhagen climate conference, marking the end of a two-year period which aims to see a far-reaching and legally binding global agreement on how to combat climate change.

China is widely regarded as the Big Bad in this scenario, called “the world's biggest polluter”, and yet the West has been belching out carbon emissions for 160 years with no serious sign of abatement. The US is still the biggest polluter per capita with Americans still consuming a huge proportion of the world’s resources. I don’t know whether the figure of one American kid consuming the same as 100 Bangladeshi children still holds true, but the nation that wants gas at ten cents a gallon and persists in its divine right to drive Humvees is telling China to shut the fridge door.

That is not to say that China isn’t storing up some massive problems for itself if things stay the same. When I was taken around China with my family in the 1970s, everyone rode bicycles and the air of the cities was pristine. Now it’s so bad that one Chinese filmmaker was telling me that she had to get out of Shanghai after three weeks because her lungs were packing up.

But, no, China is whipping boy for the failures of the developed world to sort out the mess they made. Never mind that one of the G8 group of industrialized nations is doing its best to sink any agreement. Canada is currently sitting on the planet’s second largest oil reserves which it plans to release into the markets and the atmosphere, and is the first Kyoto signatory to renege on the deal. Also implicated in these Canadian plans are Shell, BP and RBS. Our RBS.

In contrast, Chinese President Hu Jintao signaled a change in policy in September, promising a "notable" decrease in the carbon intensity of China's economy by 2020.

"At stake in the fight against climate change are the common interests of the entire world," Hu said. "Out of a sense of responsibility to its own people and people across the world, China fully appreciates the importance and urgency of addressing climate change."

Hu added that his country would plant forests across an area the size of Norway, and generate 15% of its energy needs from renewables within a decade.

China hasn’t given detailed figures as to how this will be achieved and I trust that environmentalists within and without will keep up the pressure until it does. I am, however, optimistic that China will end up leading the world in renewables technology if only for the reason that this is going to be a major global industry and fortunes stand to be made.

China has introduced a whole slew of newly released renewable energy and clean technology regulations, while all the West can come up with are delusional carbon market exchanges where rich nations buy carbon allowances from poor nations. Over five million people in the city of Dezhou, Shandong, use electric appliances powered by solar energy.

Each Chinese household will be expected to pay the annual equivalent of $64 to contribute towards the $30 billion dollars per year China needs to invest to meet its climate aims.

Let’s hope they succeed where we’ve failed. If not, China will have let us all down and helped finish the global destruction we started 160 years ago with the industrial revolution.

Ultimately, production based on need not greed is the only way out.

UK flood map here

Babeuf has just sent me the Wikipedia list of countries by carbon emissions per capita showing that Qatar is number 1, the US is number 9, and China is number 96.

UPDATE: George Monbiot on the climate change deniers.

Madam Miaow (Anna Chen) appears on BBC World Service TV tomorrow (Monday 7th December 2009) to discuss Copenhagen on "World Have Your Say" at 15:30-16:00. Also on World Service radio later in the evening. Can't watch it live in theUK but the BBC will be putting it on YouTube in a few hours, linked at worldhaveyoursay.com. The radio can be listened to on BBC iPlayer.

Sinophobia and the media following Copenhagen

Madam Miaow banned in the Guardian, Comment is Free. But speech isn't.