It’s been quite a year. A year of movement.
2021 ended with some sense that the world was turning to climate with a seriousness that it had altogether lacked in the years of “blah blah blah.” Yet then Russia — Putin, really — invaded Ukraine thinking perhaps that this was his last best chance to use his domination of fossil fuel power to cow Europe after an imagined lightning victory. Gasoline prices soared, grain became precious, dinner party conversations (once again happening) turned much more often to the provenances of and supply chains for sunflower oil and neon and fertilizers than perhaps anyone outside of a commodity trading house was prepared for. The ensuing tumult was so multifaceted and overlapping that polycrisis became a term of art, quickly adopted and then, at least by some, derided. There’s much more to say about polycrisis, but that’s another post.
Three examples of 2022 being a year of movement, requiring radical reframing often in a flash. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, as mentioned above. The flip in US politics over three weeks in July and August from the Biden presidency as failure to triumph with the passage of the stripped down Build Back Better agenda in the Inflation Reduction Act. China’s astonishing speed from praising zero-COVID without end to dozens of flash protests to letting the virus rip.
Given my China focus, I’ll stay on this for a moment. While the idea that China would exit dynamic zero-COVID sometime in 2022, or emphasize the dynamic over the zero, was a reasonable proposition, the way that it has happened is surprising and worrying. The tactics that had served to keep the virus at bay from for two years basically failed with Omicron; I called it a catastrophic success back in May. But lockdowns persisted with no real effort to inoculate the elderly over the summer. People hoped that the Party Congress was the holdup and looked for signs of opening afterwards. But what happened was different. No signs of change on COVID or economic policy, a market sell off, then in response to the collapse suggestions that moves were happening. Then when the virus spiked, some mayors clamped down again. People’s frustrations, roiling for months, exploded. Sparked by deaths in the fire in Urumuqi, protests targeting not just zero-COVID but also Xi Jinping happened in dozens of cities around the country. Then, just like that, it’s gone. I know people desperate to flee out of Beijing at the end of November as the protests seemed likely to augur long lockdowns, and then a week later others were happy to travel into China as zero-COVID was just done. Remarkable. The extent of letting it rip without precautions—even just the basic “flatten the curve” advice from Spring 2020—seems unfathomable. My condolences to all those who have already lost loved ones in this wave and my thoughts with those who fear that they still might.
More prosaically, it was a year of transitions for me personally, both in physical and professional terms. The family moved back to Ithaca following a sabbatical year in DC, our gas furnace died allowing us to do our part to electrify everything, the twins began kindergarten (unbelievably). Professionally, Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts became a real object in the world instead of a stressful set of ideas in my head and files on my computers. Its publication was fundamental to the other professional transitions — moving to working on climate change wholeheartedly, my willingness to take over directorship of Cornell’s East Asia Program, and my promotion to full professor (starting Jan. 1, 2023).
I should link to all of my writing from the past year. That seems a bit hard. I strongly urge you to read “Political Science, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change,” that I wrote a year ago and that Gabe Rosenberg published on his substack.
Beyond that, I hope you do find some value in Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts, as well as the various pieces that I spun out about it.
Interview: Jeremy Wallace on The Chinese State’s “Limited, Quantified Vision”
Why protesters are targeting Xi Jinping for China's 'zero covid’ failures
I was also happy that Foreign Affairs chose my piece with Henry Farrell and Abe Newman, Spirals of Delusion, as one of its best of 2022.
Finally, I have a new piece of research (joint with Victoria Liu) coming out in Environmental Research Communications, “What’s Not Trending on Weibo: China’s Missing Climate Change Discourse,” that … does what it says on the tin.
“By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” —A.A. Milne
This both resonates and sounds dissonant to me as a parent of young children. I certainly do not run and jump and sparkle as they do, but despite my years I have to admit that I do not know always know where I am going. On the other hand, the idea that there is no hurry feels quite distant to me as well.
Twitter’s strange turn these past two months has made my internet life a bit weirder, as Dan Drezner wrote about here in his year-end post. As for me in the year(s) to come, I’ll be writing here and in other venues—academic and more popular—on China and climate. It’s been fun having this outlet — and gratifying that many people subscribe and read it. I’m planning on posting more regularly here — both shorter form reactions to pieces of news as they come out (e.g. on the geopolitical implications of the IRA) as well as the longer form quasi-rants that you’ve become accustomed to. So, I look forward to honoring your attention and connecting with you in the next year. Thanks for this amazing annum. Good luck and be well to all in 2023.