Chinese Media: ‘AI Investment Should be Diverted to Climate Action’

Guest Essay by Eric Worrall

From the South China Morning Post:

“… Trillions of dollars of bubble-inflating equity investment continue to pour into tech stocks while critical areas … such as climate change alleviation continue to go underfunded. …”

Macroscope | Why force of law is world’s best hope for beating climate change

We need radical solutions reinforced by legal statutes to bolster the fight against climate change and make polluters pay

Anthony Rowley
Published: 4:30pm, 2 Aug 2025

The law has emerged as a powerful weapon in the war on global warming, with a series of landmark judgments seeking to make governments legally responsible for limiting greenhouse gas emissions arising from the use of fossil fuels. This move is one of the strongest yet in the fight against the existential threat of climate change, but it raises the question of who will pay for necessary remedial actions.

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There is at least one obvious remedy to this dilemma which apparently few people – least of all stock investors – are willing to acknowledge: regulating the flows of market investment. Trillions of dollars of bubble-inflating equity investment continue to pour into tech stocks while critical areas of socioeconomic investment such as climate change alleviation continue to go underfunded. This has to change if we and the planet are to survive.

The world does not lack the savings needed to finance its own sustainability or even survival. However, what it does lack is adequate and intelligent channelling of those savings into long-term investment instead of short-term stock speculation. Banking systems are highly regulated in many jurisdictions nowadays to prevent the recurrence of past excesses and crises, but not so with stock market investment, where the dangerous cult of equity remains intact and largely ungoverned.

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Growing nationalism among many advanced and some developing countries could stand in the way of the adoption of global regulations, including those relating to climate change, but global warming knows no borders. It is a common enemy that needs to be fought by common action. The world is likely to learn a hard lesson from this era of tariffs and trade fragmentation, courtesy of Trump’s many ill-considered and dictatorial actions.

Hamstringing Western stock markets with regulations and diverting resources away from strategic priorities like AI research. I wonder who stands to gain from that?

Journalist Anthony Rowley got one thing right. Nations and regions which prioritize climate action have no chance of winning the AI race. Just look at Europe, Canada and Australia’s lack of progress.

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