As American automobile ownership climbed from 40 million units in 1950 to 200 million in 2000, the countrys oil consumption surged from 6.5 million barrels daily to a peak of 20 million. During those same decades, the federal government spent $370 billion to cover the country with 46,000 miles of interstate highways, allowing cars and trucks to replace railroads as the ribs of the nations transportation infrastructure.
To drive the carbon-fueled economy of Washingtons world order, there would be a dramatic, five-fold increase in the global consumption of liquid fossil fuels during the last half of the twentieth century. As the number of motor vehicles worldwide kept climbing, crude oil rose from 27% of global fossil-fuel consumption in 1950 to 44% by 2003, surpassing coal to become the worlds main source of energy.
To meet this relentlessly rising demand, the Middle Easts share of global oil production climbed from just 7% in 1945 to 35% in 2003. As the self-appointed guardian of the Persian Gulf whose vast oil reserves represented some 60% of the worlds total, Washington would become embroiled in endless wars in that tumultuous region, from the Gulf War of 1990-91 to its present-day interventions in Israel and Iran.
Whether thanks to Britains coal-fired factories or Americas auto traffic, all those carbon emissions were already producing signs of global warming that, by the 1990s, would set alarm bells ringing among scientists worldwide. From the pre-industrial baseline of 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1880, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere kept climbing to 410 ppm by 2018, resulting in the rising seas, devastating fires, raging storms, and protracted droughts that came to be known as global warming.
As evidence of the climate crisis became undeniable, the worlds nations responded with striking unanimity by signing the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement to cut carbon emissions and surge investments into alternative energy that soon yielded significant breakthroughs in both cost and efficiency. Within four years, the International Energy Agency predicted that dramatic drops in the cost of solar panels meant that solar energy would soon be the new king of the worlds electricity markets. Indeed, as technology slashed the cost of battery storage and solar panels, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported in 2024 that the solar generation of electricity had become 41% cheaper than fossil fuels, while offshore wind was 53% cheaper a truly significant disparity that will, as technology continues to slash the cost of solar energy, render the use of coal and natural gas for electricity an economic irrationality, if not an utter absurdity.
In the game of empires, seemingly small margins can have large consequences, often marking the difference between dominance and subordination, success and failure whether the 35% advantage of enslaved over free labor, the 50% cost advantage for Dutch sailing craft over British ones, and now a 41% savings for solar over fossil fuels. Moreover, the day is fast coming when fossil-fuel electricity will cost more than twice as much as alternative energy from solar and wind power.
To assure Americas economic future, the administration of President Joe Biden began investing trillions of dollars in alternative energy by building battery plants, encouraging massive wind and solar projects, and continuing a consumer subsidy to sustain Detroits transition to electric vehicles. In January 2025, however, Donald Trump entered the White House (again) determined to roll back the global green revolution. After quitting the Paris climate accord and labeling climate change a hoax or the green new scam, President Trump has halted construction of major offshore wind projects, ended the subsidy for electric vehicle purchases, and opened yet more federal lands for coal and oil leases. Armed with extraordinary executive powers and a single-minded determination, he will predictably delay, if not derail, Americas transition to alternative energy, missing market opportunities and undercutting the countrys economic competitiveness by chaining it to overpriced fossil fuels.
Chinas Green-Energy Ride to Global Power
While Washington was demolishing Americas green energy infrastructure, Beijing has been working to make China a global powerhouse for alternative energy. Ten years ago, its leaders launched a Made in China 2025 program to storm the heights of the global economy by becoming the world leader in 10 strategic industries, eight of which involved some aspect of the green-energy transformation, including new materials, high-tech ships, advanced railways, energy-saving and new energy vehicles, and energy equipment. Those new materials include Chinas virtual monopoly on rare earth minerals, which are absolutely critical to the manufacturing of the key components for renewable energy specifically, wind turbines, solar panels, energy storage systems, electric vehicles, and hydrogen extraction. In sum, Beijing is already riding the green energy revolution in a serious bid to become the worlds leading manufacturing superpower by 2049, while erasing Americas economic edge and its global hegemony in the bargain.
So, you might ask, have any of those seemingly pie-in-the-sky plans already become an economic reality? Given Chinas recent progress in key energy sectors, the answer is a resounding yes.
Under its economic plan, China has already come to dominate the worlds solar power industry. In 2024, it cut the wholesale price of its solar panel exports in half and nearly doubled its exports of panel components. To replace its old export trio of clothing, furniture, and appliances, Beijing has mandated a new trio of solar panels, lithium batteries, and electric cars. And to put whats happening in perspective, imagine that, in just the month of May, China installed enough wind and solar energy to power a country as big as Poland, reaching an impressive figure that represents half the worlds total installed solar capacity. By 2024, China was already producing at least 80% of the worlds solar panel components, dominating the global market, and undercutting would-be competitors in Europe and the U.S. Driving all that explosive growth, Chinas investment in clean energy has reached nearly $2 trillion, representing 10% of its gross domestic product, and has been growing at three times the rate of its overall economy, meaning it would soon account for a full 20% of its entire economy.
With similar determination, its electric vehicles (EVs) are now beginning to capture the global car market. By 2024, 17.3 million electric cars were made worldwide, and China produced 70% of them. Not only are Chinese companies opening massive robotic assembly plants worldwide to crank out such cars by the millions, but they are also making the worlds cheapest and best cars with the YangWang U9-X hitting a world speed record of 308 miles per hour; BYDs latest plug-in hybrid models, priced at only $13,700 and capable of traveling a record 1,200 miles on a single charge and single tank of gas; the YangWang U8 with a capacity to literally drive across water; and the Xiaomi SU-7 displaying a high-tech driver interface that makes a Tesla look like a Ford Pinto.
Since an EV is just a steel box with a battery, technology will soon allow low-cost electric vehicles to completely eradicate gas guzzlers, enabling China to conquer the global car market with full electric cars like the self-driving BYD Seagull sedan already priced at $8,000, models like BYDs Han with a 5-minute charge time thats faster than pumping a tank of gas, and sedans like the Nio ET7 with a standard range on a single charge of 620 miles. And most of that extraordinary technological progress has happened in less than four years, essentially the time remaining in Donald Trumps second term in office.
An Agenda for Americas Economic Future
By discouraging alternative energy and encouraging fossil fuels, President Trump is undercutting Americas economic competitiveness in the most fundamental way imaginable. Amid an historic transformation in the worlds energy infrastructure (comparable in scope and scale to the coal-fired industrial revolution), the United States will spend the next three years under his watch digging coal and burning oil and natural gas, while the rest of the industrial world follows China as it pursues technological innovation to the furthest frontiers of the human imagination. Indeed, the latest annual report from the worlds energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency, states bluntly that the transition away from fossil fuels is inevitable as the world, led by a surge in cheap solar power in the Middle East and Asia, installs more green energy capacity in the next five years than it has in the last 40 combined.
By the time Donald Trump leaves office in 2029, this country will be distinctly on the imperial decline amid fast-paced changes that will make electric vehicles universal and solar-powered electricity an economic imperative. And just as the Dutch used energy technology to capture their imperial moment in the seventeenth century, so the Chinese will undoubtedly do the same in this century.
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