Harvard Proposal for Green Belt and Road Proves How Massive Environmentalist Looting Is

Aug. 9, 2019 (EIRNS)—A team of American and Chinese engineers at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Applied Sciences has unintentionally, in a new study, shown that an economic environmentalist “green revolution” would be a looting mechanism far beyond the capacity of “normal” taxation of populations to support. Significantly, they did thisby studying China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and producing a report “The Potential of Photovoltaics to Power the Belt and Road Initiative,” which was published June 27, 2019 in Joule magazine, an online sister publication of Cell, which calls itself “a home for outstanding and insightful research, analysis and ideas addressing a key global challenge: the need for more sustainable energy.”

This extraordinarily detailed study, using satellite sensing data and weather histories of 66 geographically continuous countries collaborating with the BRI, proposes to put aside the oil, coal and nuclear power projects in which China is leading the investment, and instead provide exclusively solar power infrastructure for them. Their estimate of the cost of doing this—over $13 trillion—is more than 10 times the greatest amount China projects to invest in all forms of basic infrastructure along the Belt and Road.

The highest estimate of the infrastructure investments which China and Chinese companies envisage in Belt and Road infrastructure, is roughly $1.2-1.3 trillion—this estimate made by PwC which produces annual reports on the BRI. But, according to a report on the study in Science Daily, “Solar Energy Could the Belt and Road Initiative Green” study instead calls for spending $11.2 trillion to install solar power infrastructure (and covering 34,000 square miles with solar panels), plus $2 trillion for cross-border new electric grids since there is a mismatch between the countries’ electricity needs and their solar infrastructure capacities.

And this is not all the BRI countries.

It would require the equivalent of a 3% surcharge on all national and local tax revenue of all nations in the world for 10 years to do this, were it possible! It could not even be attempted this without hard-core looting of the poor and middle class in all countries of the BRI.

For another comparison, this would be about 250 times the annual U.S. total investment in electricity capacity and distribution.

Just make this immense investment “and then the power is free!” say the authors in a meaningless exultation.

The John A. Paulson School of Applied Sciences is named for the hedge fund magnate who made a killing on the 2008 crash of mortgage backed securities and derivatives, and gave $400 million to the school, which had been established in 2007.