Daily Planet #5: Tooze on China's Energy transition

I want to understand how China is (if?) becoming an Ecological Civilization and what the rest of us can learn from that transformation. BTW, this doesn't have to give us warm fuzzy feelings because:

It's totally possible to combine authoritarian politics with ecology, but of course, that's better than authoritarian politics without ecology.

There can be many forms of ecological thought.

China's 'energy stack' has many elements but electrification is a big part of it. This transcript of a talk that Adam Tooze gave in Beijing is an introduction to some of these developments. Money quote:

And part of my mission, as I see myself, in intervening in Western conversations in the current moment, especially on what you might call the progressive side of climate politics in the West, is to bring home the scale and the drama of what needs to happen and what will be driven by the Chinese side--what, in fact, is already being driven.

Transcript: Adam Tooze at CCG

On June 30, 2025, Adam Tooze, Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University, Director of its European Institute, and renowned author of the Chartbook newsletter, visited the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) in Beijing for keynote speech, a dialogue with CCG Founder and President Henry Huiyao Wang, and a Q&A session with a live audience.