Essay by Eric Worrall
They teach our kids – another green attack on Democracy, this time from University of Oxford Professor Stephen Lezak.
Why the US is letting China win on energy innovation
Published: August 2, 2025 1.32am AEST
Stephen Lezak
Programme Manager at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of OxfordDuring the cold war, the US and Soviet Union were locked in a desperate race to develop cutting‑edge technologies like long-range missiles and satellites. Fast forward to today and the frontiers of global technology have pivoted to AI and next‑generation energy.
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Over the past six months, the Trump administration has upended half a decade of green industrial policy. It has clawed back billions of US dollars in tax credits and grants that were supercharging American energy innovation.
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At the same time, household energy spending in the US is expected to increase by US$170 (£126) each year between now and 2035 as a result of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill, which includes sweeping changes to taxes, social security and more, will raise energy costs mainly because it strips away support for cheap and abundant renewables like wind and solar.
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China, with its authoritarian government, is less susceptible to the petroleum-obsessed dogma fueling the Republican party. It does not have prominent leaders like US politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously warned that Democrats are trying to “emasculate the way we drive” by advocating for electric vehicles. Rather, China’s leaders are seeing green – not in the environmental sense, but in a monetary one.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/why-the-us-is-letting-china-win-on-energy-innovation-261109
Lezak has written some pretty diverse studies based on his Oxford bio. The first two papers cited in his bio relate to the Gobi Desert and Mongolia. He wrote a paper on climate change and Alaskan tribal politics in 2024. Since the election of Trump he seems to have refocussed on Britain and Oxford University.
Obviously the claim renewables are cheaper, which appears to be the basis of Lezak’s criticism of Trump, is total nonsense – otherwise California and Europe would have the cheapest energy in the world.
Lezak’s praise for authoritarianism in my opinion suggests shallow brochure thinking, accepting Chinese propaganda at face value. Such thinking ignores some ugly realities, such as China’s alleged extensive use of slave labor in their renewable industry, and authoritarian China’s chaotic mismanagement of domestic energy, centrally directed resource misallocation and self inflicted economic problems.
As for China’s lack of dissenting voices and alleged resistance to dogma, people who live in China who criticise dictator Xi Jinping’s policy ideas, sometimes they disappear. Some of them reappear a few months or years after their disappearance, if they are lucky. The people who reappear usually lead much quieter, less public lives than they did before disappearing.
Stephen Lezak may see this authoritarian willingness to intimidate and crush dissent as some kind of advantage. Luckily I live in a country where for now at least I am free to disagree with this opinion.
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