Do you really believe this? China has invested more than anybody else in renewables, high speed rail, electric cars, etc... They seem pretty damned concerned about global warming. They haven't shut down all coal power plants, but they're doing a lot.

But the other half also confuses me. First off, China's had a communist party, but its economic system been very capitalists for decades. Its government more closely resembles the kind of Chinese dynasties that have existed for thousands of years, than anything else. I don't want to live under that system, but let's be honest about what kind of system it is.

Lastly, we're facing climate change. It's caused by people. The science about that is conclusive. We don't know how fast the change will be, what the impact will be, or when it'll all happen exactly. And we definitely don't have any kind of consensus or even broad agreement about what to do about it.

What I think you're actually concerned about is authoritarianism. Totalitarian governments that restrict civil rights and centralize control of the economy. I also am afraid of those things and suspect we'd find common cause in opposing them. But how would addressing climate change lead to authoritarianism? By making us take trains? Taxing petrol a lot? Taxing carbon emissions? Our current system has millions of ways we both regulate and incentivize some behaviour over others. There is no serious proposal to ban private ownership of cars, or meat, or air travel, or really anything that extreme.

What's proposed, even the most ambitious policies of Green Party politicians and radical environmentalists are pretty much tweaks of the existing economy.