Good on you for calling out the hypocrisy of European leaders for protesting the Russian invasion while continuing to buy Russia's oil!
But you must be consistent in your calling out hypocrisy: Trump mistreated friends and allies on the global stage while at the same time expecting fealty.
If I did this in my personal life, I'd quickly be out of friends and allies. So it is no surprise that the U.S. is in the position it is in today. And to contain China, you need allies.
Without friends or allies, the only game left to play is the old prisoner's dilemma. No more stag hunt. And the diminishing returns of the prisoner's dilemma quickly become evident for all to see.
The hate-to-views ratio (probably seen in comments) on this research piece is going to be very high...and I appreciate the balls it took to publish it.
This is an intellectually unserious attempt to retrofit grand strategy onto what is, in reality, rhetorical posturing. The argument depends on freezing China’s carbon intensity while extrapolating GDP growth, despite clear evidence that emissions per unit of GDP have been falling for years as cheaper and superior technologies such as solar, batteries, electrification, and transmission scale. Treating this kind of deliberately extreme assumption as a plausible base case is not realism, it is manufacturing inevitability.
The rare earth argument fails at an even more basic level. Reserves are not supply. The constraint is processing and supply chain integration, not ore in the ground, and Greenland would be among the slowest, most expensive places on Earth to build that capability in any relevant timeframe. Inflated claims about global reserve shares only underscore the sloppiness.
The military framing is equally weak. The United States already has basing rights and longstanding defense arrangements in Greenland, just as it did throughout the Cold War. Sovereignty is not required for access, and threatening it only undermines cooperation that already works.
What’s presented as hard-headed realism is, in fact, a series of category errors strung together to justify a conclusion that collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
Very well said. This was by far the flimsiest piece I’ve read near, sorry to say. Drawing a line from all these straw men to ‘we need to own Greenland’ can only be done in Orange crayon!
Hi Alexander, apologies if my earlier comment came across as harsh. I did not mean it personally. I strongly disagree with your analysis and, more importantly, with the implications it carries in an already heated geopolitical context.
On China’s coal use specifically, the empirical trend is very clear. Data from sources such as Our World in Data show that coal’s share of China’s electricity generation has fallen from roughly 70 percent in 2010 to just over 50 percent in 2024. That decline has occurred despite rapid growth in total electricity demand, which makes it more significant, not less.
If you look at the scale of non-coal capacity additions, especially wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and now storage, China is adding more clean power each year than any other country in absolute terms, and at a pace that increasingly covers most or all incremental demand growth. This is why several independent analyses now argue that China’s carbon emissions may have peaked in 2024 or 2025, or are at least very close to peaking, even if year to year confirmation will take time.
It is also worth noting that since the Paris Agreement, most mainstream climate models have revised projected warming pathways downward. This is largely due to faster than expected deployment of renewables, electrification, and efficiency gains, with China being a central driver of those trends rather than an outlier resisting them.
When you look at technology fundamentals, the direction of travel becomes even clearer. The cost curves for solar, wind, batteries, and grid-scale storage continue to fall, and China dominates manufacturing in each of these sectors. That translates directly into faster deployment, faster electrification, and faster decarbonization, both domestically and globally.
You are absolutely right that China is the world’s largest emitter today in absolute terms. But it is equally true that China is decarbonizing and electrifying faster than any other major economy, driven by technological capability and cost advantages that no other country currently matches. Ignoring that trajectory risks misreading both the climate picture and the strategic implications that flow from it.
Campbell: is net zero possible if China continues to consume as much coal as they do today in the future
GPT 5.2
Short answer: No — not in any meaningful, physical sense.
If China continues to consume coal at today’s levels indefinitely, global net-zero is arithmetically impossible unless you assume implausibly large, permanent negative-emissions systems.
Below is the clean breakdown, with the math made explicit.
Yes, that is exactly the point: China’s future energy mix will not resemble its current level of coal dependence. I am not arguing for immediate net zero, nor did I claim that outcome. Rather, I am referencing the range of mainstream climate projections from institutions such as the IEA, which now cluster around roughly 2.5°C of warming under current policies. Those projections were substantially worse a decade ago, and there are sound reasons to believe they may still err on the conservative side today.
At around 2.5°C, climate impacts are clearly meaningful and warrant sustained mitigation and adaptation, but they are often overstated in certain contexts, including Greenland ice dynamics, and are not globally catastrophic as they are sometimes portrayed. The more relevant analytical question is the pace of structural change in China’s energy system. Renewable energy deployment is expanding at an extraordinary scale, and if historical cost-curve declines in solar and battery technologies continue, even approximately along their past trend lines, the picture by 2035 will look fundamentally different from static assessments based on today’s coal use. That dynamic, rather than present-day emissions snapshots, should frame serious forward-looking climate analysis.
I haven’t done that research but I may. If you’re asking because you think CHINA NO COAL traces some sort of line to US MUST OWN GREENLAND (if this is what you’re doing), in my opinion you are being far too clever. (And this by no means any critique of you as an analyst, that’s not my intent.).
If the US can find a path to do 90% of what it needs to do without the collateral damage of forcefully appropriating it from an ally, don’t you think that makes more sense? Whether China stops using coal or not?
If Denmark doesn’t want to sell at any price. is Greenland valuable enough due to minerals and location to break up NATO / shed blood over? Methinks not
Smart strategy to win Greenland at the cost of losing Europe and Canada. Because that it what is happening right now; no it's not posturing. Watch what happen next.
The post presents a fascinating, if unconventional, strategic argument for Greenland's future role in global geopolitics and resource management. By connecting disparate economic threads like the Evergrande collapse to the island's melting ice, it challenges readers to think about the Arctic as a central theater for the next decade's most significant shifts.
Is USA still buying Russian Uranium, Titanium (for aeroplanes) etc. ? I hope not. Then USA would be the worst ally of USA (behind EU of course). What else are we still buying that is missed in various narratives ?
Interesting parallels. Around 2011, I began arguing that globalization had created social, economic and political imbalances across and within countries. Historically, such imbalances signal a shift toward populism and deglobalization.
By 2021, I suspected the re-orientation of global supply chains would trigger commodity scarcity and a decade of 'secular stagflation.' When Russia invaded Ukraine, I looked deeper into how Europe might replace Russian energy. Marx famously argued that 'capital is distilled labor' - I realized finished goods are essentially distilled energy. For instance, 35% of the cost of aluminum is electrolysis, which explains why Iceland is a major producer—it leverages abundant, cheap geothermal power. Unfortunately, beyond the króna, I couldn't find a liquid, pure-play instrument for Icelandic assets, as most producers are global conglomerates.
Greenland fits a similar thesis, but the implicit "Trump volatility" may dampen risk-adjusted returns. Given that post-COVID policy is increasingly driven by interests rather than values, the better play may be via vol-washed private assets, specifically those with privileged access to the Trump administration. This isn't my game, although it's a logical one.
More generally, I find secular, macro-thematic ideas like this produce low Sharpes. It's just as important to have cyclical macro conditions aligned, which I think currently are for commodities writ-large. Low conviction view, though...
"I find secular, macro-thematic ideas like this produce low Sharpes."
I don't advise using them for the day to day. I advise them for considering your strategic (aka secular) asset allocation strategy.
You shouldn't time the equity market with this, but anyone not considering the end of globalization in the asset and currency composition of their long term portfolio is either lying or not paying attention.
hmm. got me thinking. One challenge with the narrative is the very long term time horizon. I am not convinced that the US administration is playing 4D chess ... at times I wonder if they could manage tic tac toe. One interesting test might be the quantum of beachfront property owned by the TEAM. If your thesis is right there is an awful lot of water coming off the shelf in the medium term !!
Good on you for calling out the hypocrisy of European leaders for protesting the Russian invasion while continuing to buy Russia's oil!
But you must be consistent in your calling out hypocrisy: Trump mistreated friends and allies on the global stage while at the same time expecting fealty.
If I did this in my personal life, I'd quickly be out of friends and allies. So it is no surprise that the U.S. is in the position it is in today. And to contain China, you need allies.
Without friends or allies, the only game left to play is the old prisoner's dilemma. No more stag hunt. And the diminishing returns of the prisoner's dilemma quickly become evident for all to see.
The hate-to-views ratio (probably seen in comments) on this research piece is going to be very high...and I appreciate the balls it took to publish it.
haha, aww thanks
This is an intellectually unserious attempt to retrofit grand strategy onto what is, in reality, rhetorical posturing. The argument depends on freezing China’s carbon intensity while extrapolating GDP growth, despite clear evidence that emissions per unit of GDP have been falling for years as cheaper and superior technologies such as solar, batteries, electrification, and transmission scale. Treating this kind of deliberately extreme assumption as a plausible base case is not realism, it is manufacturing inevitability.
The rare earth argument fails at an even more basic level. Reserves are not supply. The constraint is processing and supply chain integration, not ore in the ground, and Greenland would be among the slowest, most expensive places on Earth to build that capability in any relevant timeframe. Inflated claims about global reserve shares only underscore the sloppiness.
The military framing is equally weak. The United States already has basing rights and longstanding defense arrangements in Greenland, just as it did throughout the Cold War. Sovereignty is not required for access, and threatening it only undermines cooperation that already works.
What’s presented as hard-headed realism is, in fact, a series of category errors strung together to justify a conclusion that collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
Very well said. This was by far the flimsiest piece I’ve read near, sorry to say. Drawing a line from all these straw men to ‘we need to own Greenland’ can only be done in Orange crayon!
thanks for the feedback!
I agree the first theme assumes that China will not stop using coal.
What evidence do you see that they will?
Hi Alexander, apologies if my earlier comment came across as harsh. I did not mean it personally. I strongly disagree with your analysis and, more importantly, with the implications it carries in an already heated geopolitical context.
On China’s coal use specifically, the empirical trend is very clear. Data from sources such as Our World in Data show that coal’s share of China’s electricity generation has fallen from roughly 70 percent in 2010 to just over 50 percent in 2024. That decline has occurred despite rapid growth in total electricity demand, which makes it more significant, not less.
If you look at the scale of non-coal capacity additions, especially wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and now storage, China is adding more clean power each year than any other country in absolute terms, and at a pace that increasingly covers most or all incremental demand growth. This is why several independent analyses now argue that China’s carbon emissions may have peaked in 2024 or 2025, or are at least very close to peaking, even if year to year confirmation will take time.
It is also worth noting that since the Paris Agreement, most mainstream climate models have revised projected warming pathways downward. This is largely due to faster than expected deployment of renewables, electrification, and efficiency gains, with China being a central driver of those trends rather than an outlier resisting them.
When you look at technology fundamentals, the direction of travel becomes even clearer. The cost curves for solar, wind, batteries, and grid-scale storage continue to fall, and China dominates manufacturing in each of these sectors. That translates directly into faster deployment, faster electrification, and faster decarbonization, both domestically and globally.
You are absolutely right that China is the world’s largest emitter today in absolute terms. But it is equally true that China is decarbonizing and electrifying faster than any other major economy, driven by technological capability and cost advantages that no other country currently matches. Ignoring that trajectory risks misreading both the climate picture and the strategic implications that flow from it.
Campbell: is net zero possible if China continues to consume as much coal as they do today in the future
GPT 5.2
Short answer: No — not in any meaningful, physical sense.
If China continues to consume coal at today’s levels indefinitely, global net-zero is arithmetically impossible unless you assume implausibly large, permanent negative-emissions systems.
Below is the clean breakdown, with the math made explicit.
1. What “net zero” actually constrains
Net zero means:
Anthropogenic CO₂ emissions – durable removals = 0
This is a global carbon-budget constraint, not a moral or policy label.
To keep warming near 1.5–2.0 °C, remaining lifetime CO₂ budgets are roughly:
1.5 °C: ~250–400 GtCO₂ remaining
2.0 °C: ~900–1,150 GtCO₂ remaining
At today’s emissions (~37–40 GtCO₂/year), we burn:
the 1.5 °C budget in ~7–10 years
the 2.0 °C budget in ~25–30 years
This math is independent of politics.
2. China’s coal use alone breaks the equation
China today:
Burns ~4.5 billion tonnes of coal/year
Coal produces ~2.4 tCO₂ per tonne
⇒ ~10–11 GtCO₂/year from coal alone
Total China emissions ≈ 12–13 GtCO₂/year
That means:
China ≈ 30–35% of global CO₂
China coal alone ≈ 25–28% of global CO₂
If China holds coal flat:
The entire remaining world would have to go deeply net-negative to offset it.
3. What would be required to offset China’s coal?
Let’s assume the rest of the world reaches true zero (already heroic).
You still must remove:
~10 GtCO₂ every year, forever
Compare to reality:
Removal MethodTodayOptimistic 2050RequiredDAC (Direct Air Capture)~0.01 Gt~0.1–0.5 Gt10 GtBio-energy CCS~0.05 Gt~1–2 Gt10 GtNatural sinks (forests/soils)~net 0 to negativedecliningunreliable
Gap: ~5–10× larger than best-case optimistic projections
Energy cost: ~10–20% of global electricity
Land/water: continent-scale
Permanence: unproven over centuries
This is not an engineering plan — it’s wishcasting.
4. “But what if everyone else over-achieves?”
Even if:
US + EU + Japan go net-negative
Global aviation, shipping, steel, cement all solved
No rebound effects
You still run into:
Thermodynamic limits (energy to remove CO₂)
Geologic limits (secure storage capacity)
Political limits (who pays forever?)
Net zero cannot be achieved by one region decarbonizing harder while another maintains fossil baseload.
5. What is possible instead
If China keeps coal near today’s level, the realistic outcomes are:
Scenario A — “Net Zero on Paper”
Offsets
Creative accounting
Temporary sinks
No temperature stabilization
→ Warming continues
Scenario B — Partial Decarbonization World
Slower warming
~2.5–3.0 °C trajectory
Heavy adaptation + geoengineering pressure
Scenario C — Forced Adjustment
Climate damage + resource stress eventually force China off coal
Not voluntary, not orderly
6. The core misconception to call out
Net zero is not additive across countries.
It is constrained by physics, not ambition.
If the marginal tonne of coal keeps being burned, someone else must permanently un-burn it — with energy, land, capital, and political will — forever.
That scale does not exist today.
Bottom line
If China continues consuming coal at today’s level:
❌ 1.5 °C: impossible
❌ 2.0 °C: effectively impossible
❌ Global net zero: not physically credible
✔️ Only slower-than-otherwise warming, not stabilization
If you want, I can:
Quantify how fast China would need to taper coal for net zero to re-enter the feasible set
Compare coal vs nuclear vs hydro replacement rates
Or show why energy-intensity + growth math makes “coal flat” itself unstable long-term
Yes, that is exactly the point: China’s future energy mix will not resemble its current level of coal dependence. I am not arguing for immediate net zero, nor did I claim that outcome. Rather, I am referencing the range of mainstream climate projections from institutions such as the IEA, which now cluster around roughly 2.5°C of warming under current policies. Those projections were substantially worse a decade ago, and there are sound reasons to believe they may still err on the conservative side today.
At around 2.5°C, climate impacts are clearly meaningful and warrant sustained mitigation and adaptation, but they are often overstated in certain contexts, including Greenland ice dynamics, and are not globally catastrophic as they are sometimes portrayed. The more relevant analytical question is the pace of structural change in China’s energy system. Renewable energy deployment is expanding at an extraordinary scale, and if historical cost-curve declines in solar and battery technologies continue, even approximately along their past trend lines, the picture by 2035 will look fundamentally different from static assessments based on today’s coal use. That dynamic, rather than present-day emissions snapshots, should frame serious forward-looking climate analysis.
I haven’t done that research but I may. If you’re asking because you think CHINA NO COAL traces some sort of line to US MUST OWN GREENLAND (if this is what you’re doing), in my opinion you are being far too clever. (And this by no means any critique of you as an analyst, that’s not my intent.).
If the US can find a path to do 90% of what it needs to do without the collateral damage of forcefully appropriating it from an ally, don’t you think that makes more sense? Whether China stops using coal or not?
If Denmark doesn’t want to sell at any price. is Greenland valuable enough due to minerals and location to break up NATO / shed blood over? Methinks not
Did I say it was? Thought I was pretty clear it's NOT worth breaking up NATO.
What part of "a fair market price" did you not understand? How can I make this more clear?
Smart strategy to win Greenland at the cost of losing Europe and Canada. Because that it what is happening right now; no it's not posturing. Watch what happen next.
are you familiar with the idea from game theory of cheap talk?
That's why i said what this space. It's not gonna be only words. Maybe I will be proven wrong, but I think not.
Great analysis. I'd bet 90% of USA doesn't know China emits this much c02. Maybe 80%
Idk maybe the simple explanation is he just has dementia
The post presents a fascinating, if unconventional, strategic argument for Greenland's future role in global geopolitics and resource management. By connecting disparate economic threads like the Evergrande collapse to the island's melting ice, it challenges readers to think about the Arctic as a central theater for the next decade's most significant shifts.
Thanks. You made it click for me that Greenland is a place where the dirtiness of the rare earth refining would indeed be acceptable.
It's interesting to re-focus on climate in the current "post-vibe shift" information environment (at least that's my graph).
You might enjoy this presentation from 2019 if you haven't already seen it. https://youtu.be/SreyKm9Iyws?si=hQsaPCbRn9dqu364&t=1444
Something clearly was in the air by the late 2010's/early 2020's - the show Borgen dropped a Fourth Season which is about Greenland in 2022.
A lot of the 'green energy' infrastructure in China might end up being malinvestments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BalI6H4m1e4
Is USA still buying Russian Uranium, Titanium (for aeroplanes) etc. ? I hope not. Then USA would be the worst ally of USA (behind EU of course). What else are we still buying that is missed in various narratives ?
fair point but the US buys $700m of uranium they couldn't get anywhere else
Europe buys $30bn of energy they could source from elsewhere, which effectively covers the entirety of Russia's current account.
Just not the same order of magnitude.
Interesting parallels. Around 2011, I began arguing that globalization had created social, economic and political imbalances across and within countries. Historically, such imbalances signal a shift toward populism and deglobalization.
By 2021, I suspected the re-orientation of global supply chains would trigger commodity scarcity and a decade of 'secular stagflation.' When Russia invaded Ukraine, I looked deeper into how Europe might replace Russian energy. Marx famously argued that 'capital is distilled labor' - I realized finished goods are essentially distilled energy. For instance, 35% of the cost of aluminum is electrolysis, which explains why Iceland is a major producer—it leverages abundant, cheap geothermal power. Unfortunately, beyond the króna, I couldn't find a liquid, pure-play instrument for Icelandic assets, as most producers are global conglomerates.
Greenland fits a similar thesis, but the implicit "Trump volatility" may dampen risk-adjusted returns. Given that post-COVID policy is increasingly driven by interests rather than values, the better play may be via vol-washed private assets, specifically those with privileged access to the Trump administration. This isn't my game, although it's a logical one.
More generally, I find secular, macro-thematic ideas like this produce low Sharpes. It's just as important to have cyclical macro conditions aligned, which I think currently are for commodities writ-large. Low conviction view, though...
"I find secular, macro-thematic ideas like this produce low Sharpes."
I don't advise using them for the day to day. I advise them for considering your strategic (aka secular) asset allocation strategy.
You shouldn't time the equity market with this, but anyone not considering the end of globalization in the asset and currency composition of their long term portfolio is either lying or not paying attention.
100% agree
hmm. got me thinking. One challenge with the narrative is the very long term time horizon. I am not convinced that the US administration is playing 4D chess ... at times I wonder if they could manage tic tac toe. One interesting test might be the quantum of beachfront property owned by the TEAM. If your thesis is right there is an awful lot of water coming off the shelf in the medium term !!