The United Nations has officially confirmed what many of us, including President Trump, knew already: the Paris climate accord was a complete waste of space.
As UN Environment admits in its latest Emissions Shortfall report, even when you add up all the CO2 reduction pledges made by all the signatory nations at Paris, it still comes to only a third of what is supposedly necessary to stop the world warming by more than 2 degrees C by the end of this century.
According to UN Environment’s head Eric Solheim, the world is heading for disaster:
“One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future. Governments, the private sector and civil society must bridge this catastrophic climate gap.”
Another way of looking at it, though, is that President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accord is now fully vindicated. Had the Agreement been ratified, the U.S. would have handed countries like China and India a huge competitive advantage over the American economy. But – as even the UN now admits – it would have made no discernible difference to the alleged problem of “global warming.” So what, exactly would have been the point?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has released a video urging President Trump to keep his campaign promise and withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.
It features a speech President Trump gave in May 2016 explaining exactly why he wanted to pull out:
“This agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over our energy and how much we use right here in America. No way!”
He adds:
“We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of the United States’ tax dollars to UN global warming programs”.
The video concludes:
Mr President. Don’t listen to the Swamp. Keep your promise. Withdraw from the Paris climate treaty. Send it to the Senate.
Now, however, he appears to be having second thoughts. His administration is reportedly divided on the issue, with White House insiders including Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arguing for the U.S. to remain inside the UN Paris agreement, supposedly in order to keep a “seat at the table.”
That would make it more expensive than a solid gold, diamond-encrusted seat at the table of King Croesus then. In fact, it would make it – at $65 trillion – the most expensive seat at the table in the history of the world.
And the $65 trillion, by the way, is a conservative estimate. This – according to calculations by Bjorn Lomborg – is the lower end estimate of how much it would cost the world if all the signatories of the Paris climate agreement stuck to their CO2 reduction commitments.
First, Bjorn Lomborg, accepting climate-change advocates’ assumptions about how much warming comes from carbon dioxide, showed in a peer-reviewed study that implementing all provisions of all signers to Paris would prevent only 0.306 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming by 2100.
What would it cost? Unofficial estimates by the United States, European Union, Mexico and China amount to $739-$757 billion per year.
Those parties account for about 80 percent of signatories’ emissions reduction pledges. Other pledges would have similar costs per unit, implying something in the range of $185-$189 billion.
All told, $924-$946 billion. Per year. Every year from 2030 to the end of the century. “And that’s if the politicians do everything right. If not, the real cost could double,” Mr. Lomborg said.
So, for $65-$132 trillion, we might — if the alarmists are right — reduce global average temperature by a third of one degree by 2100. That’s $212-$431 billion per thousandth of a degree of cooling.
But if you think things just couldn’t any more stupid, wait till you hear what the effect of pouring all that money down the drain on futile carbon-dioxide reductions schemes will have on the state of the Earth’s climate.
Here is what a peer-reviewed study by Bjorn Lomborg says.
It will, by 2030, reduce “global warming” by the almost immeasurable 0.048 degrees C.
And by the end of the century, it will reduce “global warming” by 0.17 degrees C.
Even if every nation in the world adheres to its climate change commitments by 2030 the only difference it will make to “global warming” by the end of this century will be to reduce the world’s temperatures by 0.048°C (0.086°F).
That’s 1/20th of a degree C.
Let’s put this into perspective.
Earlier this year, Climate Change Business Journal calculated that the annual cost of the global warming industry is $1.5 trillion.
If you want to know what that looks like in numerals it is:
$1,500,000,000,000
And if you want a better idea of how it looks conceptually, I highly recommend this infographic visualisation.
To put it another way, even if you’d spent $1 million a day every day since the birth of Jesus, you’d still be less than half the way to reaching $1.5 trillion.
Or, to put it still another way, $1.5 trillion is the same amount we spend annually buying stuff we want and need via online shopping.
The Occupy crowd invite us to feel bitter and angry and cheated by the $700 billion it cost to bail out the US banks after the 2008 crash – and perhaps they’re right. But at least that was just a one-off payment. With the climate change industry we’re talking more than twice that amount being wasted every single year.
