“Hyperbole toward the Paris Climate Accord, joining that of the Kyoto Protocol, is over. Dense, mineral energies are the wave of the future, while dilute, intermittent, earth-defacing renewables are in trouble. Dana Nuccitelli–are you listening?”
“The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars,” read the Guardian headline on December 14, 2015. The subtitle to Dana Nuccitelli’s piece: “195 world nations have agreed to ignore climate science denial and cut carbon pollution as much as possible.”
This, in fact, was the same hyperbole following the Kyoto Protocol more than two decades before. “We’ve bet on the future, while others have bet on the past,” proclaimed Enron lobbyist John Palmisano from Kyoto, Japan in late 1997.
But the Paris Climate Accord would be different. “In stark contrast to the shortcomings of previous international climate negotiations,” Nuccitelli’s article begins, “the Paris COP21 talks have ended with an agreement stronger than most expected.”…
“Industrial wind power, a government created and enabled industry, is not only about the uneconomic. It is about controversy and division between neighbors whose country living in the wind-swept plains has never been about gargantuan machinery generating noise, flicker, and unsightliness.”
In rural communities, proposals to erect office-building-high wind turbines pit neighbor against neighbor. Some receive checks for hosting turbines on their land; the rest dread the intrusion to their senses. And all because of a slew of tax breaks and mandates to remove a free-market situation.
“Nebraska wind farm projects cause controversy and heartache,” one article in The Fence Post was titled. “With the enticement of expected high-dollar dividends and federal production tax credits,” the article explained, “some residents in Cherry County and nearby communities are struggling with daily life challenges, which they attribute to numerous turbines emerging across the landscape.”…
[Editor Note: On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. On November 4, 2019, the U.S. formally notified the United Nations of its impending withdrawal, which will take effect in one year unless reversed.
Trump’s speech made a devastating case the Paris accord was futile in light of sovereign self-interest, discriminatory toward America, and inconsequential to global climate. Calling out the bad motives of the economic and industrial “obstructionists,” Trump’s speech was and always will be a free-market highlight.
…“Thus, as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country. This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.”