PETER CLACK: Virtually all heavy industry across the West is now in chronic decline. Simultaneously, the supply chain for this transition has been handed lock, stock, and barrel to Beijing.

Thank you to Colonel Towner-Watkins. 

Virtually all heavy industry across the West is now in chronic decline. Manufacturing jobs are being hollowed out, striking directly at power-intensive sectors like electric arc steel, aluminium smelting, and fertiliser production. Once-abundant, cheap, and reliable hydrocarbon energy is being degraded and decommissioned in favour of weather-dependent renewables. Simultaneously, the supply chain for this transition has been handed lock, stock, and barrel to Beijing. China now produces roughly 90% of all photovoltaic components, refined critical minerals, and panel hardware—cementing its position as the greatest manufacturing power in history through an unprecedented transfer of Western wealth. --Peter Clack

This may well go down as the single greatest transfer of public assets by elected democratic governments in world history.

Without any serious consultation with their own citizens, Western governments eagerly aligned with the UN and signed onto framework agreements like the 2015… pic.twitter.com/6eMyecYn5H

— Peter Clack (@PeterDClack) September 17, 2026

This may well go down as the single greatest transfer of public assets by elected democratic governments in world history. Without any serious consultation with their own citizens, Western governments eagerly aligned with the UN and signed onto framework agreements like the 2015 Paris Accord. What began as voluntary international targets rapidly morphed into binding domestic legislation. The resulting legacy is the systematic exclusion of taxpayers from decision-making, while administrations power ahead, committing billions in subsidies to unproven pet projects—such as Australia’s much-hyped green hydrogen initiative. Virtually all heavy industry across the West is now in chronic decline. Manufacturing jobs are being hollowed out, striking directly at power-intensive sectors like electric arc steel, aluminium smelting, and fertiliser production. Once-abundant, cheap, and reliable hydrocarbon energy is being degraded and decommissioned in favour of weather-dependent renewables. Simultaneously, the supply chain for this transition has been handed lock, stock, and barrel to Beijing. China now produces roughly 90% of all photovoltaic components, refined critical minerals, and panel hardware—cementing its position as the greatest manufacturing power in history through an unprecedented transfer of Western wealth. In place of high-density power generation, more than a million wind turbines and an estimated 9 billion solar panels are now scattered across open farmlands, hillsides, and coastal vistas. Because these sources are intermittent and unreliable, integrating them into existing power grids presents a colossal $21 trillion global infrastructure challenge. Prior to this shift, Western industrial policy prioritised dense, dispatchable energy security. Today, governments unilaterally lock in multi-decade decarbonisation commitments that outlast their electoral tenures by decades. Vast tracts of public and agricultural land are greenlit and bulldozed for transmission corridors, access roads, and sprawling industrial turbine arrays—all to serve an intangible belief system that vilifies carbon dioxide, the very driver of essential energy and biological growth. The tangible result? Some of the most expensive household power bills in modern history, the destruction of dispatchable coal and gas capacity, and severe damage to national industrial, economic, and defensive resilience. As one outraged writer noted, Net Zero stands as perhaps the most diabolical act of self-inflicted harm ever visited upon democratic nations by their own leadership. Government by regulatory decree is not government by representation. Mandating a multi-decade economic rewiring without an explicit electoral mandate violates the fundamental social contract between the state and the citizen. Locking in 30-year subsidy contracts strips future generations of their democratic right to adjust policy based on real-world performance.

If we weren’t so accustomed to being betrayed, it would be recognised for what it is: a raw, heavy-handed exercise in power at the expense of the people.