The Paris Climate Agreement is a dead non-binding treaty walking. All the signatories know this, none of them will admit it. So instead, we have to endure the ritual spectacle of UN delegates racking up yet more air miles and dumping their carbon footprint on a new location in order to wail hysterically that much, much more needs to be done to save the planet from the greatest threat evah.
This week the UN’s clown caravan has moved to Bangkok, Thailand – the preliminary to an even bigger meeting, COP24, in December in Katowice, Poland.
As the South China Morning Postreports, the auguries aren’t good:
Time is running out to save the Paris Agreement, United Nations climate experts warned Tuesday at a key Bangkok meeting, as rich nations were accused of shirking their responsibility for environmental damage.
That’s because – just as they were in Paris 2015 – the negotiations are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Western countries don’t want to stump up for what is essentially an attempted shakedown by poorer countries demanding more handouts in the name of “climate justice.”
Yes, you read that right. Not billion but trillion. That’s $2,500,000,000,000 which India was expecting to be paid over the next 15 years by the Western nations – ie mainly the U.S. – as a bribe for pretending to decarbonize its economy in line with the U.N. Paris agreement.
And, inevitably, it wasn’t just India that wanted its climate Danegeld. So did every other country which could qualify for developing world status. Here, courtesy of Chris Horner, is a document from U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern. He clearly thinks it’s funny, though I’m not sure I would if I were a taxpayer having to fund it…
In other words, Paris was never really about climate. It was a wealth-redistribution scheme in which rich nations were expected to shower poor nations with free money.
“If he were standing here, he would tell you that he feels much more knowledgable on the topic today,” said Trump’s economic advisor Gary Cohn, referring to the president’s position on climate change and the Paris agreement.
Well if that’s the case, it’s certainly no thanks to Cohn – whose advice on these matters is about as sound, reliable and unbiased as that provided by Grima Wormtongue – slippery henchman of the evil wizard Saruman – to King Theoden in Lord of the Rings.
Cohn wants Trump to keep the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement. Of course, he does. As an ex-Goldman Sachs man Cohn is a fully paid up member of the $1.5 trillion-a-year Climate Industrial Complex. It was Goldman Sachs – along with Enron – which pioneered the carbon trading schemes that helped enrich enviro-troughers like Al Gore. If the global warming Ponzi scheme ever collapses – and it will – then many of Cohn’s friends and former clients stand to lose millions in crony-capitalist “investments” currently propped up by Obama-era regulation which Cohn and his cronies are desperate to keep in place.
This also explains Cohn’s extraordinary recent attack on the coal industry – “coal doesn’t even make that much sense anymore as a feedstock” – and his risibly dishonest claim that solar and wind power can help the U.S. become “a manufacturing powerhouse.”
It’s extraordinary firstly because it is in direct and explicit contradiction of Trump’s election trail promises to bring back jobs in the coal industry.
And it’s extraordinary secondly because it is in direct contradiction of observable reality, viz: there is no economic case for wind (or solar) – inefficient, expensive energy which is heavily reliant on taxpayer subsidy. For Trump’s Economic Advisor (!) to claim otherwise is at best irresponsibly misleading, at worst a flat-out lie.
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.