The point is that once again China is teaching us to think at scale. The future scale of a more developed, post-Western world is gigantic. If we are to have any hope of climate stabilization the only realistic policy, therefore, is not some twee Western European vision of “sustainability”, it is radical and transformative. Cities will be bigger, energy needs will be bigger, production will be bigger than anything we have previously conceived.

clean energy needs not just to be efficient, or optimal, it needs to be bludgeoningly, overwhelmingly, unanswerably DOMINANT.

This cycle is precisely what we need. China is teaching the world to think big.

“Right now, Beijing is offering cheap, clean power, employment, trade and a route to prosperity. Washington is offering tariffs, policy chaos, White nationalist memes and South Korean workers in shackles after a raid on an EV battery factory. This is no way to win the grand strategic contest of the 21st century.”

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-409-beyond-the-marshall