“Praise goes to Donald Trump. He waited, listened, and decided. American First. Consumers First. Taxpayers First. Global climate and energy planners and an intellectual elite last.”
The good news is that the Paris climate agreement, weak and aspirational to begin with, will increasingly go the way of the Kyoto Protocol. President Trump did a big favor for the US and the world by pulling out.
Progressives, weep not. Remember what the father of the climate alarm, James Hansen, said about the heralded 2015 agreement:
“[The Paris agreement] is a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
– James Hansen, quoted in Oliver Milman, “James Hansen, Father of Climate Change Awareness, Calls Paris ‘A Fraud’.” The Guardian, December 12, 2015.
Conservatives and Libertarians, rejoice. Never forget what one of Paris’s architects, John Holdren, science advisor to Barack Obama, once said about the United States:
A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States … Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political.
– Ehrlich, Paul; Ehrlich, Anne; and Holdren, John. Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman Company, 1973, p. 279.
Praise goes to Donald Trump. He waited, listened, and decided. American First. Consumers First. Taxpayers First. Global climate and energy planners and an intellectual elite last.
Trump is 100% right.
It would have been a disaster for the US the invest in a failure from day one at the rate of about $3 billion per year to help the leaders of poor countries set up numbered accounts in Switzerland.
Obama, without permission from the US Congress, committed $3 billion to a Green Climate Fund to literally buy the votes of poor countries, so they would commit to COP-21. Some of these countries are among the most corrupt in the world. That money will disappear into Swiss bank accounts, instead of being used for COP-21 goals, as there is NO monitoring mechanism in place. Obama transferred $1 billion just before Trump was sworn in. Because the US is leaving COP-21, the other $2 billion STAYS IN THE US. See URL for full transcript of COP-21 withdrawal announcement.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-paris-climate-agreement-withdrawal-announcement-full-transcript/
If the world is making so little progress towards RE, then the US, “doing its RE part” by staying with COP-21, would be engaging in an expensive exercise in futility.
The RE movement is primarily driven by Europe, Japan and others, because they have insufficient domestic energy resources. Europe, Japan and others want the US to stay with COP-21, as a big source of cash for future financing of the Green Climate Fund, and because they would become less competitive versus the US, if they increased investments in RE and the US did not.
The US, with chronic budget deficits of about $500 billion/y, already has a huge trade handicap, largely due to overinvesting in defense spending to maintain its world leadership peacekeeping role, and underinvesting in the goods and service sectors. For decades, Europe, Japan and others have underinvested in defense, because of the US protection guarantee; only 5 of 28 NATO nations spend at least 2% of GDP on their own defense.
Europe, Japan and others have been shirking the world peacekeeping burden, as it would divert investments from their goods and services sectors. Instead, they invested in producing and exporting superior goods and services, which the US did not. This causes the US, hamstrung by having to adhere to World Trade Organization rules, to have chronic trade and budget deficits, each about $500 billion/y.
Europe, Japan and others want to keep the good times rolling, i.e., have the US protect them for free, if possible, in hamstrung mode, with chronic trade and budget deficits, WTO rules, and COP-21 requirements.
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Let me help Al Gore some more.
Excerpt from: http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cop-21-world-renewable-energy-and-world-trade
COP-21 is a non-binding, CO2 emission reduction agreement, which aims to limit the world temperature to 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level during the 1861 – 1880 period by 2100. By 2015, the increase was about 1.0 C. That leaves just 1.0 C to go. This may appear minor, but is not.
Based on projected CO2 emission, population, and economic growth trends, the 2 C increase likely would be reached by about 2045, and a 4.3 C increase likely would be reached by 2100, based on the MIT and Lomberg analyses.
MIT claims, with FULL implementation of the voluntary, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) agreed to during the COP-21 conference, and kept in place till 2100, COP-21 would prevent about 0.2 C of any warming that would occur by 2100, i.e., instead of 4.3 C from pre-industrial baseline, it would be 4.1 C by 2100. See Page 2 of MIT URL. Bjorn Lomberg estimates COP-21 would prevent about 0.17 C, in close agreement with the MIT estimate.
That means the agreed COP-21 emission reduction would be grossly insufficient. In fact, the COP-21 emission reduction would have to be increased by about a factor of 100 to achieve the 2 C target by 2100, according to Bjorn Lomberg. Based on outcomes of about a dozen prior COPs, the RE investments required for such a huge CO2 emission reduction likely will not take place. See Lomberg URL.
https://globalchange.mit.edu/sites/default/files/newsletters/files/2015 Energy %26 Climate Outlook.pdf
http://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
As part of COP-21, the US offered* an INDC to reduce US CO2 emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The INDC CO2 emission reduction would be at a 14% more rapid rate during the 2015 – 2025 period, than during the 2005 – 2015 period, which greatly benefitted from the reduced burning of coal and increased burning of natural gas. See below table with 2025 targets based on data from Page ES-10 of URL.
* Obama did not submit the COP-21 agreement to the US Congress for ratification. Thus, COP-21 is not a US treaty obligation. Many other nations also have not ratified COP-21, including Russia.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-02/documents/2017_complete_report.pdf
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