Bokhari: If Democrats Cared About the Environment, They’d Talk About China

Banning plastic straws. Carbon taxes. Stopping people from eating meat. Stopping people from having babies.

Am I just seeing things? Or are all the “climate crisis solutions” proposed by the Democrats designed to cause maximum pain to ordinary people, and almost none to wealthy elites?

Progressives almost seem to take joy in inconveniencing the masses for no reason. Take the plastic straw ban, for example. Even National Geographic — hardly an anti-environmentalist publication — admits that plastic straws comprise just 0.025 percent of the plastic in the oceans.

Contrast the minimal impact of plastic straws with the extraordinary impact of China, and, by extension, global free trade. China, alone, produces around a third of the ocean’s plastic waste. China’s CO2 emissions are greater than the U.S. and Europe combined, and keep going up.

If Democrats really believe that climate change is an existential threat to humanity, why are they proposing draconian and pointless curbs on the behavior of ordinary Americans? Why aren’t they going after multinationals that continue to do business with the world’s biggest polluter, without demanding any environmental commitments from them (and hey, maybe some human rights commitments too?).

You’d think Bernie, at least, would get this. But his big idea is to make everyone have fewer babies. Instead of tackling China, he’s proposing a distinctly Chinese policy. Just because he didn’t say “one-child policy” doesn’t mean the similarity isn’t there.

The real reason Democrats won’t go after China is that they are now the party of global elites, and global elites are constantly salivating about the profits that can be made from China’s market of 1.4 billion people. They look to Europe and America and see a dwindling middle class with a declining population. There’s no money in that, not long-term anyway. Maybe the problem could be fixed with pro-natal policies like Hungary’s, but why bother? It’s far easier to simply go overseas, to a country that does have a booming population and rising middle class.

That’s the same reason, by the way, that global elites are so vociferously opposed to President Donald Trump and his agenda. Trade restrictions on China, to protect American jobs? An outrage! The elites can’t make money off American jobs, you see. They’re just so much more expensive than...

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