On December 12, 2015, climateers the world over celebrated as a new climate change accord, known as "the Paris Agreement," was approved. It was the culmination of four grueling years of behind-the-scenes negotiations designed to save the planet from catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). At the stroke of the gavel marking its acceptance, the more than 40,000 climate change diplomats from 195 countries erupted into cheers, ovations, high-fives, champagne toasts, tearful embraces, and, of course, rampant backpatting.
“This is truly a historic moment,” proclaimed United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon — the first "truly universal agreement on climate change." According to the New York Times, President Obama "strode triumphantly into the Cabinet Room of the White House to declare victory in his quest" for the ambitious deal. An ebullient John Kerry tweeted: "#COP21 agreement is the strongest, most ambitious global climate agreement ever negotiated." It is "the best chance to save the one planet we got," intoned Mr. Obama, perhaps too choked up for grammar. Or perhaps he noticed the Eiffel Tower illuminating the phrase "no Plan B," and the shuddering possibility that the deal — his vaunted legacy — could fall apart.
It is a progressive's dream: a profligate, utopian scheme that will fail, even if it achieves its goal.
Scaremongering climateers tell us that, unabated (i.e., absent the Paris climate change accord), mean global temperature will rise 3.7 °C by 2100, rendering earth uninhabitable. With the accord, the nations of the world pledge to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to levels intended to limit the rise to no more than 2.0 °C. But the decline in GHG emissions resulting from the Paris agreement is predicted to reduce the temperature rise by a vanishingly small 0.2 °C. That is, if the pledges of all 195 participating nations are carried out to a tee, including the expenditure of trillions of dollars on green technology, the mean global temperature will rise 3.5 °C by 2100, rendering earth uninhabitable.
While cameras inside the convention hall captured the joyous tears of climate diplomats as they celebrated fabricated success, they missed the angry tears of climate activists outside, as they rebuked the Paris agreement as an irresponsible, fraudulent charade, too diluted to be of any meaningful value. The soft-spoken Dr James Hansen, father of CAGW, referred to the deal as "a fake," "a fraud," "just worthless," and "just bullshit." But it will establish a colossal, intrusive UN climate bureaucracy that will haunt the world forever. It is a progressive's dream: a profligate, utopian scheme that will fail, even if it achieves its goal. Measured on a scale of maudlin self-congratulation (the auto-aggrandizometer), this is progressivism's finest achievement in central planning.
Although the agreement is not legally binding, climate change luminaries such as Obama, Kerry, and Ban Ki-moon assure us that the emission reduction goals will be met. Signatory nations must fulfill their pledge or face international ridicule through the agreement's clever "name-and-shame" mechanism. There is nothing like peer pressure to bring totalitarian police states such as China into compliance.
Similar pressure will be applied to support the Green Climate Fund — a coffer to be filled annually with $100 billion from rich nations for the purpose of cajoling poor nations into remaining poor.
Without the fund, none of the 130 nations of the developing world would have signed the agreement. With the fund — according to the delusions of progressives from the developed world — dictators, bureaucrats, and crony industrialists from impoverished countries will purchase exorbitantly expensive solar panels and windmills instead of extremely cheap coal, oil, and gas, and they will convince their citizenry that chronic disease and poverty can wait while 0.2 °C is shaved off the 2100 global temperature. (To the 1.3 billion people who have never experienced electricity, what's the rush?)
There is nothing like peer pressure to bring totalitarian police states such as China into compliance.
To ensure compliance, the Paris accord mandates that all nations shall report on their emissions reduction progress every five years — “a serious form of enforcement and compliance,” insists Mr. Kerry. Patting himself on the back, Kerry said that the voluntary pact (a 31-page cornucopia of vague commitment, toothless aspiration, and astounding deceit) would "prevent the worst most devastating consequences of climate change from ever happening." Who knows? With CAGW thought to be so solved, progressives may use the Paris agreement as a model to tackle other vexing problems, such as social injustice or income inequality. At this very moment, liberal thinktanks could be pondering the idea of bribing African or South Asian countries into pledging lower birth rates; or shaming Islamic terrorist organizations when their beheading reduction pledges are not met.
Returning to reality, the pledges of the landmark Paris accord (an agreement that will not work even if its pledges are met) will not be met — not even close. Rich countries will try; they will achieve some token, largely symbolic, degree of success. Poor countries won't bother; they have vastly more pressing challenges. No matter the size of the Green Climate Fund, the developing world will not be persuaded to replace cheap, reliable fossil fuels with expensive, unproven solar and wind technology — technologies that, after more than 30 years of development, still rely on subsidization for survival. These are also technologies that have become staggeringly more expensive after only five years of the enormous, unsubsidized strides in US fracking technology that have produced staggering declines in oil and gas prices. Oil prices, for example, which have been above $100 per barrel since 2011, have plummeted to below $40.
Media accounts credit Obama for the agreement's acceptance. They say that in pledging the US to draconian emission cuts, he leveraged the rest of the world to follow. But the US is in no position to make such a commitment, it is not legally bound to do so, and there is neither congressional nor popular support for it. Warned Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, “Before his international partners pop the champagne, they should remember that this is an unattainable deal based on a domestic energy plan that is likely illegal, that half the states have sued to halt, and that Congress has already voted to reject.”
This lack of enthusiasm is produced, in no small part, by the economic stagnation that has plagued the US economy from the day Obama took office. With unprecedented, and growing, national debt, declining net worth, and labor participation at its lowest since the Carter years, where will the money come from?
Dictators, bureaucrats, and crony industrialists from impoverished countries will convince their citizenry that chronic disease and poverty can wait while 0.2 °C is shaved off the 2100 global temperature.
Ironically, the most promising source of money is the energy bonanza that fracking has created — the very source of prosperity that progressives seek to ban, in their efforts to decarbonize the world's economies. Unleashing US energy production could swiftly stimulate the US economy, lift incomes and wages, expand the middle class, create new jobs, generate enormous tax revenues, and eradicate the debt. But with the 2016 election drawing near, Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton pledges to outdo Obama. She plans to build 500 million solar panels and promises that 33% of all US electricity will be generated from wind and solar by 2027. Not to be outpandered by Mrs. Clinton, rival candidate Bernie Sanders promises 80% by 2050; and Martin O’Malley promises 100%.
It is highly unlikely, however, that a beleaguered American public will allow a Democrat president to shutter its energy goldmine, thereby continuing economic stagnation. As to the prospect of a Republican president, McConnell says that Obama should not make "promises he can’t keep." Nor should he "take credit for an ‘agreement’ that is subject to being shredded in 13 months.”
The Paris deal has no chance of thwarting CAGW — if planet salvation was even an important consideration. For those who are astounded by Mr. Obama's claim of victory, or who are wondering how so much credit could be awarded for so little accomplished, his triumph has nothing to do with saving the planet. It is a purely political victory — one for which he does deserve credit, and the highest of praise from progressivism, considering the coming creation of the UN climate change behemoth.
It is this deceitful absurdity that has progressives doing cartwheels and patting themselves on the back. The agreement itself is irrelevant, serving only to set the stage for future global central planning. The four years taken to write it featured little more than a backroom search for language that would read like a treaty but would be watered down and rendered toothless enough to get 195 nations to sign it — of which, 130 had to be bribed with the Green Climate Fund. It is not legally binding; the emissions reduction pledges are voluntary and aspirational, enforced only by the palsied hand of a “name-and-shame” system of global peer pressure. As to contributions to the slush fund, rich countries are "strongly urged" to fulfill their commitments.
The watering down process persisted to the end, holding up the vote to adopt the agreement for two final hours. Fearing that the Obama administration might be required to seek Senate approval for a binding treaty, US diplomats insisted that the word "shall" be changed to "should" in a clause on meeting emissions targets. They might as well have found a place for "pretty please" or "just bullshit."
