Other than driving us down to a Third World country — and that's certainly the goal for the most rabid "Greens" — what is the point of ruining our economy to benefit China?

no, China is not going to stop using its cheap, abundant coal reserves just to impoverish the nation and please John Kerry. It’s not that stupid.

China tells Kerry to go away: “We have our own plan, and we don’t need yours”.

Back in January, Kerry admitted that “we could reduce our emissions to zero, and it would have no effect on climate change”.

 John Sexton, Hot Air:

“China and India are responsible for just shy of 90% of the increase in CO2 being put into the atmosphere over the last decade. China alone is responsible for 69% of the increase. Even CNN can see the problem:

China’s greenhouse emissions largely come from coal — which generated over half of the country’s energy in 2019. The country’s emissions far outpace other developed nations. The nonpartisan Rhodium Group found China emitted 27% of the world’s total emissions in 2019, compared to 11% from the US, 6.6% from India and 6.4% from the European Union.

[Sexton] “The US is busy shuttering nuclear and coal plants. Here in California, we get warnings all summer about the need to limit power usage or risk an outage. Meanwhile, China gave out more permits for new coal plants last year than it did in 2018. I really can’t improve on this point made by Megan McArdle a couple years ago”

China stands to benefit by allowing us to take the financial hit from expensive climate change commitments while they continue to use cheap fossil fuels and promise to make change a priority at some later date once their economy has grown even larger. Maybe John Kerry knows this even if he would never say it openly for fear of being undiplomatic.