In taking a big step toward fulfilling a core campaign
promise to improve American business competitiveness and the jobs that flow
from that, President Donald Trump last week withdrew the United States from the
Paris climate agreement. Despite
frequent and widespread intentionally-misleading references to that accord as a
“treaty,” it is nothing of the sort as it was never affirmed by the Senate as a
treaty but rather was simply Obama’s personal commitment. Donald Trump is a different president with
different commitments.
The whole tale of this Paris accord serves as an especially
emblematic example of the underhanded way foreign governments have been taking
advantage of the United States, retarding its competitiveness while sucking up
American money, supported by the American Democrat Party. The United States has been the Europe’s cash
cow for 70 years, effectively subsidizing their welfare state while they ignore
their NATO financial obligations.
The supposed purpose of the accord is to address global
warming. To start with, I remain unconvinced
that man-caused global warming is real.
Earth’s climate is always changing.
Not long ago in geologic terms we have had a Little Ice Age, and in fact
some observers believe that the earth is coming out of a long-term relatively
cool period. The important, bottom line
is that science means skepticism and requires hypotheses to be proven with
methodology and data honestly obtained, shared, and reproduced. However, many global warming believers have
not behaved like scientists but rather like religious fanatics, shouting down
skeptics, at best ostracizing them and at worst threatening to imprison them for
climate change “denialism” (e.g., Robert Kennedy Jr.). As to climate “facts,” there is evidence of widespread
fraud and dishonesty in the climate “science” community regarding measuring and
reporting data. And finally, the
elitists who preach the global warming gospel themselves do not behave as if
they really believe it (e.g.: global
warming high-priest Al Gore’s Saudi oil-money mega-million dollar payoff for
opposing cheap American fossil fuel energy; his many mansions with the energy
footprint of mid-sized American towns; and his international jet-setting in
private planes with other rich, preening climate hypocrites like Leonardo
DiCaprio).
Now to the Paris climate accord. The best summary of the issue that I have
seen comes from Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute, who made the following key
points via twitter [the emphases in italics are mine]:
- The accord failed a year before Paris, in 2014 in Lima, when the world abandoned the pretense of reaching a firm climate agreement. Instead, [the revised accord] established a new process where each country chooses whatever voluntary commitment it wants, [and] all are automatically accepted.
- The Paris conference itself was largely a collation and stapling exercise. Of course they reached an "agreement."
- But this agreement came at the expense of acknowledging or addressing the actual tradeoff at the heart of climate policy: Developing countries need to build a lot of fossil-fuel infrastructure to develop as quickly as possible; doing so locks in emissions. If you don't want them to build fossil-fuel infrastructure, you have to tell them to develop more slowly. They're not interested in that.
- Unsurprisingly, these developing countries made Paris commitments to continue with business as usual. And then everyone applauded.
- But the individual commitments made in Paris, and thus their sum, do not depart from the trajectory the world was already on. Strangely, climate activists seemed enthusiastic – almost as if they cared more about the optics of agreements than climate action.
- Further, President Obama, did make an aggressive commitment on behalf of the United States. This created a terrible dynamic. Reviewing progress each year, countries with weak commitments would be applauded for "success," [but the United States would] be chastised for falling behind.
- This is now happening: "China, India to Reach Climate Goals Years Early, as U.S. Likely to Fall Far Short"
- Why would the United States remain party to such an agreement? There has been little argument that we should do it for "the climate." Instead, the [argument for the “agreement”] seems to be that if a debating society exists, one must attend. Weak pledges and noncompliance are OK, just not honesty.
The important take-away from this overview is that to the
insider globalist bureaucrats the Paris accord really isn’t about the climate. As the saying goes, follow the money.
On June 1, Trump announced his decision to withdraw from
Obama’s commitment; from the Wall Street
Journal (link):
Mr. Trump, framing his decision
mostly in economic and political terms, pointed to the agreement’s lesser
requirements for the world’s other leading carbon emitters, China and India. He voiced his concern for protecting the
environment and eschewed any reiteration of his past claims that climate change
isn’t real, but he said his decision is rooted in protecting the country’s
interests. “This agreement is less about
the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage” over
the U.S., the GOP president said.
After Trump announced that he was not renewing Obama’s
personal pledge (again, personal since the US commitment was never a treaty),
the reaction from the left wing, both foreign and domestic, was fast and
furious. Even some weak-kneed, dopey nominal
Republicans like Mitt Romney had a harsh word. Many accord supporters referred to it as a “treaty”
(e.g.: Bill Clinton; some American national news organizations) that the United
States “cannot just get out of” (European Commission President Jean-Claude
Juncker). But they lie. They know full well that it is not a binding treaty
and that all they had was an Obama personal pledge and nothing more.
So what’s going on?
Why the vehemence? Well, we must
ask cui bono? – who stood to benefit from Obama’s “aggressive” pledge to the
Paris accord, and just what did that pledge consist of? For one thing, it consisted of an Obama
promise to shovel, for starters, $3 billion in American taxpayer money to some
international climate group to promote renewable energy in the world. The New York Times reports that Obama has already
transferred $1 billion to the United Nations “Green Climate Fund.” (And the three biggest global polluters – China,
India, and Russia – have so far contributed nothing.) Who controls and disburses all that money – unelected
globalist elitists, no doubt, with gargantuan expense accounts. And who would stand to make mega-bucks from
all that additional spending on alternative energy projects – none other, for
example, than big-time Democrat donor and Obama pal Tom Steyer, who’s made a
fortune in alternative energy off government contracts funneled to him by
Democrats. Steyer, seeing this gravy
train cut off, unsurprisingly did not take Trump’s withdrawal very well,
calling it “a traitorous act of war against the American people."
Moreover, the Paris accord contained restraints on
manufacturing that impeded American competitiveness. One European auto executive lamented that if
his American manufacturing competitors were not held back in their energy use
by this accord then he would need his government to compensate for the
heightened American competitiveness. Here’s
what the Paris Accord has meant for American business, from a horse’s mouth (link):
"The regrettable announcement
by the USA makes it inevitable that Europe must facilitate a cost efficient and
economically feasible climate policy to remain internationally competitive,"
Matthias Wissmann, president of the German auto industry lobby group VDA, said
in a statement on Friday [June 2].
"The preservation of our
competitive position is the precondition for successful climate protection. This correlation is often
underestimated," Wissmann said, adding that the decision by the United States was disappointing. The VDA said electricity and energy prices
are already higher in Germany than in the United States, putting Germany at a
disadvantage. [Emphasis mine]
Another European bureaucrat worries that without all the American money to support the accord,
presumably meaning, in no small part, money for the high salaries, swanky hotels,
and fancy meals for bureaucrats like himself, he is “unsure about its future.” And so it goes.
Every reasonable person wants to do all that is necessary to
sensibly and efficaciously promote and maintain the cleanest environment
possible somewhere short of having all humans commit suicide. Clean air and clean water are essential and
must be responsibly protected. But
ginning up global warming hysteria based on fudged data and biased models – whose
implications and predictions have repeatedly failed to materialize – is a con,
driven partly by faith-based neo-religious frenzy, partly by hypocritical moral
preening, and partly by nefarious profiteering.
This Paris climate accord is part of that big con, as globalists
seek to reduce American competitiveness while grabbing a mountain of American cash
for themselves, all in the name of addressing the global warming hysteria they
themselves have created. In this hustle
they are aided and abetted by many American Democrats who see themselves less a
part of America than as part of a global elite entitled to live the high life
off the backs of the tax-paying, hard-working benighted rubes in the country whose
traditional values they disdain.
R Balsamo
Commentaries by Oren
Cass on this subject:
The most recent: We’ll Never Have Paris: The climate
change agreement was designed as a feel-good, do-nothing program – https://www.city-journal.org/html/well-never-have-paris-15231.html?platform=hootsuite
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/leading-nowhere-futility-and-farce-global-climate-negotiations-7816.html
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