If you thought Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s predictions that climate Armageddon is only 12 years around the corner was aggressive, Beto O’Rourke has already narrowed down the time-frame on our impending deaths to a mere 10 years!
No news on what inched us two years closer to oblivion overnight – but the solution is always the same – just agree with whatever policies liberals are trying to guilt-trip you into supporting.
The latest “solution” has been to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, an Obama-era agreement that Trump withdrew from in 2017. Earlier in April the House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced the Climate Action Now Act in an attempt to block Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement and revert us to Obama’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions between 26-28% by 2025 (below 2005 levels).
Any opposition to Democrats climate change “solutions” are inevitably framed as Republicans not caring about the environment, when in reality, Republicans simply don’t want feel good “solutions” that are “solutions” in name only. Any climate alarmist that’s paid attention to the aftermath of Trump’s Paris pullout should be relieved – but then again they wouldn’t be alarmists anymore if they did that.
While the U.S. is in a minority of countries that haven’t signed onto the Agreement, most other countries would’ve benefited at the U.S.’s expense with our inclusion. Who wouldn’t sign onto a deal that allows you to bilk another country for elusive climate goals?
Semblances of Sanity
Sane takes were hard to come by following Trump’s pullout from the agreement. The Cato Institute, no friend of Trump, praised the decision, noting that the Paris Agreement would do little to actually combat climate change while imposing massive costs that disproportionately fall on the American taxpayer. As they wrote in a public statement:
The Paris climate treaty is climatically insignificant. The EPA’s own models show it would only lower global warming by an inconsequential two-tenths of a degree Celsius by 2100. The cost to the U.S.—in the form of required payments of $100 billion per year from the developed to the developing world—is too great for the inconsequential results. These very real expenses will consume money that could be used by the private sector to fund innovative new technologies that are economically sound and can power our society with little pollution.
The goal of the Paris agreement is to bring temperatures down “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
A Subsidy from the U.S. to the Developed World
In addition to Cato, some organizations have been sounding the alarms for years before Trump’s pullout. Had the U.S. joined the Agreement, it would’ve been a subsidy to the developing world (who, as you will learn, are not meeting their goals). Turkey’s actions indicate the Agreement was a power grab to get U.S. money for some developing countries. As reported by Reuters in July 2017:
The U.S. decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement means Turkey is less inclined to ratify the deal because the U.S. move jeopardizes compensation promised to developing countries, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said.
Erdogan was speaking at the G20 summit in Germany where leaders from the world’s leading economies broke with U.S. President Donald Trump over climate policy, following his announcement last month that he was withdrawing from the accord.
Erdogan said that when Turkey signed the accord France had promised that Turkey would be eligible for compensation for some of the financial costs of compliance.
“So we said if this would happen, the agreement would pass through parliament. But otherwise it won’t pass,” Erdogan told a news conference, adding that parliament had not yet approved it.
“Therefore, after this step taken by the United States, our position steers a course towards not passing this from the parliament,” he said.
India, Iran, South Sudan, Niger, the Central African Republic, Cuba, Egypt, Paraguay, and some others made similar threats; that they would continue polluting if not properly compensated from the Agreement (effectively at our expense).
Nation’s that Receive the Most Sacrifice the Least
While the U.S. would’ve faced the largest bill from the Paris Climate Agreement, many other countries only pledged to cut a sliver of their emissions. Those countries received all the net monetary benefit – and had to sacrifice the least.
Yemen only pledged to cut 1% of greenhouse gas emissions, while Peru says they can cut emissions 30% by 2030 below baseline – yet that still amounts to a net 22% increase in pollution overall. And that’s with billions of dollars in funding! North Korea, meanwhile, says their pollution will double by 2030 (above 2000 levels), and that’s best-case scenario.
Developing countries received $48 billion from rich countries in 2015-2016 and will receive $100 billion by 2020 if goals are met. For reference, this is nearly equal to the entire U.S. foreign aid budget of $49 billion in 2016.
That’s the massive bill America was being asked to foot while the rest of the world paid pennies – and was there any reason to believe the Paris agreement would actually succeed in its goals?
For the progress on that, stay tuned for part 2.
