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The radical running to become Maine’s next Democratic senator has a plan for energy security. This is called “surrender to China”.
Graham Plattner – the progressive oyster farmer and Marine veteran who had a literal Nazi tattoo, has the endorsement of Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren. Polls say he is ready to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins and he has recently made clear his approach to America’s most dangerous geopolitical rival.
He described the aggressive attitude towards Beijing as “absurd”, saying, “Our stance towards China should be one of cooperation rather than opposition.”
His reasoning? We have to unite to tackle climate change. If we work together with China on clean energy, the argument is, we can make fossil fuels obsolete and usher in an era of peace, prosperity and renewable energy.
Senate Hopeful Says We Must Be ‘More Cooperative’ With China to Fight Climate Change
Graham Plattner, the presumptive Senate candidate for Maine Democrats, holds an energy event in Ellsworth, Maine, on Monday, May 11, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
This is a ridiculous argument for several reasons. First, China is the worst polluter in the world and doesn’t care one bit about climate change. Second, future energy wars will focus on components of clean energy technology, not fossil fuels. And third, the answer to climate change is more American energy production and innovation, not less.
Let us take them in turn.
Cooperating with China on climate policy is the equivalent of working with Iran on nuclear policy or trusting the Amish to develop AI. It doesn’t really make any sense.
‘Congress must act’: Nonprofit study exposes green energy organization’s ties to CCP interests undermining US
China presents itself as a global clean energy leader while quietly running the dirtiest major economy on earth. China still generates most of its electricity from coal and emits more greenhouse gases than the entire developed world. Its factories operate under environmental standards that would be completely illegal in the United States, and Chinese-dominated supply chains in Southeast Asia follow the same rules.
China may produce more solar panels than any other country, but it does so because it is willing to undercut everyone else’s prices by poisoning its workers, its water, and its neighbors.
That being said, I’m sure China would be happy to produce a future Sen. Plan to be a poster child for its greenwashing. Communist countries are always looking for another Walter Duranty. (Duranty, a reporter for The New York Times, infamously won a Pulitzer Prize for stories covering how the Soviet Union murdered millions of Ukrainians in the region known as the Holodomor.)
From Mojave to Beijing: How America quietly accepted the rare earth race
As far as the energy wars of the future are concerned, environmental radicals seem to be imagining solar battery-powered, zero-emission, gathering around electric campfires, singing “Kumbaya” along with the reductionists, when there’s no need to worry about oil. Progressive favorite Representative Ro Khanna, D-Calif., recently lamented this point, arguing that the energy crisis could be avoided if we just “invested.”[ed] In solar and wind and geothermal and battery storage and electric vehicles.”
This all sounds pleasant… that is, until one remembers that China, with its hold on critical minerals, holds the key to the global supply of wind farms, rooftop solar panels, electric vehicles and other energy innovations.
Critical minerals that make clean energy possible. But according to the International Energy Agency, for 19 of the 20 key strategic minerals, China is the leading refiner with an average market share of 70%. China controls 80% or more of the midstream and downstream segments of the global battery supply chain, with near-monopoly shares of 95% or more in some categories. Lithium, cobalt, graphite, rare earth elements – the building blocks of the very clean technology that Khanna praises – pass through Chinese refineries on their way to the rest of the world.
Why should we claim industrial dominance in light of China-Europe relations
All the more reason to work together with China, right? Wrong. China has already begun to weaponize that dominance. In 2025, Beijing imposed comprehensive export controls on lithium-ion battery supply chains covering battery cells, cathode materials and production equipment. Earlier this year, Chinese export controls on rare earth elements cut U.S. yttrium imports by about 95%, pushing prices to about 69 times their pre-control levels.
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All this is no excuse for the United States to abandon clean energy. The oil and gas crisis in the Strait of Hormuz only emphasizes our need to diversify our energy resources. Rather, it is a sign that we need to beat China at their own game, increasing domestic critical mineral and clean energy production, as the Trump administration is already doing, and legislation like the Dominance Act seeks to support.
Which brings us to our final point. The environment is best not when we do more with monopolistic, heavily polluting China, but when America does more. The US shale revolution – which environmentalists still oppose – brought US emissions to a 25-year low during Trump’s first term. AI-powered data centers are set to fuel the largest private clean energy buildout in US history, all driven by market forces. And American manufacturing is nearly four times more emissions efficient than China’s.
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Growth, innovation and smart environmental rules to prevent the worst abuses have done more to cut carbon emissions than any international agreement or Chinese production facility. We don’t need China to tackle climate change. We need America First environmentalism.
Graham Plattner doesn’t want to be China’s stooge, and that’s his right. But when someone who wants to be a senator thinks that the path to peace is to cooperate with a hostile country that pollutes and controls clean energy supplies, it is worse than stupidity. This is dangerous.
