Essay by Eric Worrall
China undercut the world’s industries with gross human rights abuses, but Mann thinks China is the world’s climate leader.
Time to turn up the heat on action
By Michael E. Mann | China Daily Global | Updated: 2026-06-08 19:29
Climate crisis leaves no room for complacency
The past three years have been the hottest on record. Research shows that such extreme heat is virtually impossible without warming caused by humans. With modest assistance from El Nino, the continued burning of fossil fuels made this possible.
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Part of the problem is that the US, once a leader in climate action, is now backsliding under its current leadership. The bilateral climate agreement between China and the US during the Barack Obama administration set the stage for the landmark Paris Agreement in 2016.
Since then, only China has made good on its end of the bargain. In 2014, it promised to peak carbon emissions before 2030. Driven by an expansion in renewable energy deployment, including wind, solar, battery technologies, electric vehicles and high-speed rail, China’s carbon emissions have entered a “flat or falling” trend well before the 2030 deadline.
The US once prided itself on being the hub of technological innovation. That honor has now shifted to China. …
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The US is no longer the conductor of the bullet train that is the global clean energy revolution. It should decide whether to climb on board or get left behind at the station. The rest of the world, and China in particular, should remain resolute in moving toward a global clean energy economy. The stakes could not be higher.
Read more: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202606/08/WS6a26a7a6a310d6866eb4d12f.html
Back in the real world, China’s renewable industry has been cited multiple times for gross human rights abuses by credible sources. Even President Biden’s administration acted to censure China’s horrific genocide against Xinjiang Uyghurs, and the extensive use of slave labor in Xinjiang’s coal powered renewable manufacturing industry.
The horror doesn’t stop with the enslaving of the men. While men are enslaved in the coal mines, factories and fields of Xinjiang, China allegedly moves Han men from other parts of China into the homes of those missing men. The men who visited slavery and horror on Xinjiang men, who hold those men’s fate in their hands – husbands, sons, uncles, nephews – allegedly then force themselves upon the families of the men they enslaved, living in the homes of their victims, alongside the women whose menfolk are being mistreated.
Read the article above – even the Biden administration cited forced labor and sexual abuse as reasons for sanctioning some Chinese companies.
The companies Biden sanctioned were likely the tip of the iceberg. I’m not alone in this view.
Yet to greens like Mann, China is an innovation leader, an inspiration others should aspire to follow.
Tyranny never lasts forever. One day there will be an accounting, the survivors of this horrific abuse will get to tell their story. There will be a great shaming of those who tried to give China a free pass for the humans rights abuses which are being perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party’s renewable energy industries. I sure hope Michael Mann is still around to see that day.
