Re: coal, in Tooze's lecture, (roughly here in the youtube video) he points out that after Kyoto, China undertook a national industrialization project that, according to estimates, killed 1.4 million chinese citizens a year, because of increased air pollution, which is why wj refers to coal.
However, there has been a 'hard pivot' against that. Here is the youtube transcript, cleaned up a bit
we're talking here of a truly violent process of transformation which the Chinese regime can be fairly said deliberately opted into as a choice and then pivoted hard against and that pivot begins in the 2010s. It is a matter widely understood of regime survival because there's only so many times people can see their babies choking to death before uh you need to pivot. By the early mid2010s the air pollution standards imposed on Chinese coal fired power stations were actually more strenuous than those in either the United States or Europe. As unpalatable and as uncomfortable it is, we need to reckon with the fact that the cleaning up of China's first phase of dramatic hypergrowth was accompanied under the leadership of Xi Jinping by a extremely explicit commitment to environmental protection at first on a limited scale and then secondly on a global scale culminating in that Chinese appropriation of Europe's vision of green modernization in 2020.
2026-02-02 23:07:38
Tooze's observation fits in with what I think are the bullshit quality of SDGs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals The SDGs are universal, time-bound, and legally non-binding policy objectives agreed upon by governments. They come close to prescriptive international norms but are generally more specific, and they can be highly ambitious. The overarching UN program "2030 Agenda" presented the SDGs in 2015 as a "supremely ambitious and transformative vision" that should be accompanied by "bold and transformative steps" with "scale and ambition"
One could argue that the Orange douche blew that one out of the water, but I thought it was western-centric from the start.
I also listened to this Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast with an energy analyst
https://youtu.be/i__iaPepixk?si=dKiCa75BrryAhVNP
I only understood half of it, but coupled with Tooze's observations, leaves me deeply uneasy.
2026-02-01 09:31:08
And another one, a Guardian piece on Tooze
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/15/the-crisis-whisperer-how-adam-tooze-makes-sense-of-our-bewildering-age
2026-02-01 08:39:45
Adam Tooze lecture. Rather dense, tossing a raft of references off
https://youtu.be/gLnxzkiB-GI?si=v2Zw4M6Ky6VcuQ1d
2026-02-01 04:30:23
Don't worry, nous, I remember when McKinney cited Freddie de Boer explaining that this was a guy who understood the left. (though I'm not suggesting you are doing the same with Krugman, it just always comes to mind when I think about who one cites and why)
About the Krugman link, Tooze and Klein both note, with astonishment, that the tariffs on India is higher than the tariffs on China.
A section I didn't highlight but was interested in, was Tooze's comparison with defeating Germany without Russian help to dealing with climate change without the Chinese on board, which was certainly thought provoking.
Fun chinese proverb for y'all
宁为太平犬，不做乱世人
Better to be a dog in times of peace than a human in times of chaos.
Re: coal, in Tooze's lecture, (roughly here in the youtube video) he points out that after Kyoto, China undertook a national industrialization project that, according to estimates, killed 1.4 million chinese citizens a year, because of increased air pollution, which is why wj refers to coal.
However, there has been a 'hard pivot' against that. Here is the youtube transcript, cleaned up a bit
we're talking here of a truly violent process of transformation which the Chinese regime can be fairly said deliberately opted into as a choice and then pivoted hard against and that pivot begins in the 2010s. It is a matter widely understood of regime survival because there's only so many times people can see their babies choking to death before uh you need to pivot. By the early mid2010s the air pollution standards imposed on Chinese coal fired power stations were actually more strenuous than those in either the United States or Europe. As unpalatable and as uncomfortable it is, we need to reckon with the fact that the cleaning up of China's first phase of dramatic hypergrowth was accompanied under the leadership of Xi Jinping by a extremely explicit commitment to environmental protection at first on a limited scale and then secondly on a global scale culminating in that Chinese appropriation of Europe's vision of green modernization in 2020.
Tooze's observation fits in with what I think are the bullshit quality of SDGs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals
The SDGs are universal, time-bound, and legally non-binding policy objectives agreed upon by governments. They come close to prescriptive international norms but are generally more specific, and they can be highly ambitious. The overarching UN program "2030 Agenda" presented the SDGs in 2015 as a "supremely ambitious and transformative vision" that should be accompanied by "bold and transformative steps" with "scale and ambition"
One could argue that the Orange douche blew that one out of the water, but I thought it was western-centric from the start.
I also listened to this Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast with an energy analyst
https://youtu.be/i__iaPepixk?si=dKiCa75BrryAhVNP
I only understood half of it, but coupled with Tooze's observations, leaves me deeply uneasy.
And another one, a Guardian piece on Tooze
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/15/the-crisis-whisperer-how-adam-tooze-makes-sense-of-our-bewildering-age
Adam Tooze lecture. Rather dense, tossing a raft of references off
https://youtu.be/gLnxzkiB-GI?si=v2Zw4M6Ky6VcuQ1d
Don't worry, nous, I remember when McKinney cited Freddie de Boer explaining that this was a guy who understood the left. (though I'm not suggesting you are doing the same with Krugman, it just always comes to mind when I think about who one cites and why)
About the Krugman link, Tooze and Klein both note, with astonishment, that the tariffs on India is higher than the tariffs on China.
A section I didn't highlight but was interested in, was Tooze's comparison with defeating Germany without Russian help to dealing with climate change without the Chinese on board, which was certainly thought provoking.
Fun chinese proverb for y'all
宁为太平犬，不做乱世人
Better to be a dog in times of peace than a human in times of chaos.