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Running for the next Democratic Senator in Maine has a security plan. It is called “surrender to China.”
Graham Platner – a progressive oyster farmer and marine veteran who had a real Nazi tattoo, has been endorsed by Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Polls say he is ready to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins and he has recently outlined his approach to America’s most dangerous rival.
“Our position toward China should be one of cooperation rather than opposition,” he said, calling the hawkish stance toward Beijing “absurd.”
His reason? We must work together to tackle climate change. As long as we work with China on clean energy, the logic goes, we can make fossil fuels obsolete and usher in an era of peace, prosperity, and renewable energy.
AT THE RELIABLE SENAN WE SAY WE SHOULD ‘CERTAINLY COOPERATE’ WITH CHINA TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE.
Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Maine, held a power event in Ellsworth, Maine, on Monday, May 11, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
It is a farcical argument for many reasons. First, China is the world’s worst polluter and doesn’t care about climate change. Second, future energy wars will focus on clean energy technologies, not fossil fuels. And third, the response to climate change is producing more American energy and innovation, not less.
Let’s take these in turn.
Wanting to cooperate with China on climate policy is like working with Iran on nuclear policy or trusting the Amish to develop AI. It literally makes no sense.
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China presents itself as the world’s clean energy leader while quietly running the world’s dirtiest economy. China still generates most of its electricity from coal and emits more greenhouse gases than all developed countries combined. Its factories operate under environmental standards that would be completely illegal in the United States, and Chinese-dominated supply chains throughout Southeast Asia follow the same playbook.
China may produce more solar panels than any other country, but it does so by willingly poisoning its own workers, its own water and its neighbors to undercut everyone on the price.
That being said, I’m sure China would be happy to make Sen. Platner is the poster child for its green washing. Communist countries are always looking for another Walter Duranty. (Duranty, a New York Times reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize for stories covering how the Soviet Union killed millions of Ukrainians in the so-called Holodomor.)
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As for the future energy wars, the environmental radicals seem to envision gathering around the solar battery, zero emissions, electric campfire, singing “Kumbaya” and commies if there is no need to worry about oil. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., recently argued against this point, saying the energy crisis will be avoided if we “invest.”[ed] in solar and wind and geothermal and battery and electric vehicles.”
It all sounds absurd … that is, until one remembers that China holds the keys to the world’s supply of wind farms, rooftop solar panels, electric cars and other energy innovations through its squeeze on precious minerals.
Essential minerals make clean energy possible. But according to the International Energy Agency, for 19 out of 20 essential minerals, China is the leading refiner, with an average market share of 70%. China controls 80% or more of the middle and lower segments of the global battery supply chain, with near-monopoly shares of 95% or more in other categories. Lithium, cobalt, graphite, rare earth elements – the building blocks of the cleanest technology Khanna praises – pass through Chinese refineries on their way to the rest of the world.
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All the more reason to cooperate with China, right? It’s wrong. China has already begun to exercise that dominance. By 2025, Beijing imposed sweeping export controls on lithium-ion battery supply chains covering battery cells, cathode materials, and manufacturing equipment. Earlier this year, China’s export controls on rare earths reduced US yttrium imports by nearly 95%, sending prices up to about 69 times their pre-control levels.
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All of this is no reason for the United States to abandon clean energy. The oil and gas crisis in the Strait of Hormuz only underscores our need to diversify our energy resources. Rather, it’s a sign that we need to beat China at its own game, diversifying production of precious and clean mineral energy, just as the Trump administration has been doing, and laws like the DOMINANCE Act seek to support.
Which brings us to our final point. The environment doesn’t do very well when we do too much with China, which consumes too much, which pollutes too much, but when America does more. America’s shale revolution – which environmentalists still oppose – reduced US gas emissions by 25 years during Trump’s first term. AI-driven data centers are poised to spark the largest clean energy deployment in American history, all driven by market forces. And US manufacturing is four times more efficient than China.
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Growth, innovation and smart environmental regulations to curb the worst abuses have done more to reduce carbon emissions than any international agreement or Chinese manufacturing facility. We don’t need China to deal with climate change. We need America First Environmentalism.
Graham Platner doesn’t want to be a China hawk, and that’s his right. But if a wannabe senator thinks the path to peace is cooperating with a hostile country that pollutes and controls the supply of clean energy, that’s worse than stupid. It is dangerous.
