Earlier this month, a Politico headline reported a "White House showdown on Paris deal set for next week," to resolve "simmering tensions" regarding "a major point of dispute between the moderate and nationalist wings of the White House."
That planned April 18 meeting was subsequently postponed indefinitely due to top official "scheduling conflicts." Reuters reported a White House official saying that Trump aids will later "discuss the options, with the goal of providing a recommendation to the president about the path forward."
Contentions surrounding various options revolve around three primary issues: whether the U.S. should opt out of the Obama administration’s pledge to be party to agreement terms; whether to stop financing the U.N. Green Climate fund; and whether to withdraw all future taxpayer funding for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change which sponsors and publicizes the underlying political climate science.
The White House plans to announce a Paris deal decision on or before the start of a May 26th G-7 meeting in Taormina, Sicily. A determination to comply will have huge economic and social consequences. According to Nera Economic Consulting, meeting all of Obama’s commitments to the Paris accord would cost the American economy $3 trillion and 6.5 million industrial sector jobs by the year 2040.
Premised upon ginned-up U.N. sponsored alarmism, the global wealth redistribution hornswoggle hoodwinks developed countries into "helping developing nations deal with climate change" through blame and shame tactics. Obama committed the U.S. to do this by lowering our nation’s agriculture-fertilizing CO2 emissions between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2024. Emission reductions would then be ramped up every five years.
And how much of that climate change menace (also known as, global warming), are we helping to reduce?
To put the benefits into perspective, a peer-reviewed study by Bjørn Lomborg concludes that if every nation faithfully fulfilled their promises, it would (maybe) lower total global temperatures over not doing so only a total 0.306 degrees by this century’s end.
U.S. participation in the Paris agreement also commits many more $ billions of U.S. financing to non-compliant polluting countries in penance and restitution for America’s unfair fossil energy-enriched prosperity.
Much of the green we are generously pumping into that Green Climate Fund is going to China, whose "developing country" status not only exempts them from having to pony up contributions to the fund, but even enables them to cash in.
China has been building a new coal-fired plant about every 7 to 10 days. That fuel consumption amounts to more than 4 billion tons of coal each year, compared to less than 1 billion tons in the United States.
Meanwhile, as China, India, and other really dirty and expanding emitters enjoy exemptions, the U.S., with far better environmental protections, subsidizes their economic advantages.
On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Trump promised to cancel U.N. Paris accord participation as "bad for business," a deal that would delegate "foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use." He also pledged to stop all U.S. payments to U.N. global warming programs.
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has also gone on record stating that the U.S. should exit the deal, a view shared by Trump strategist Stephen Bannon.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on the other hand, argued during his Senate confirmation hearing that the U.S. should maintain a "seat at the table." Others who likely agree, include National Economic Council head Gary Cohn who hosted a carbon tax meeting, along with Ivanka Trump and her influential husband Jared Kushner.
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who previously described the science behind climate change as "phony," now appears to be wobbling. He most recently told G-7 energy ministers in Rome that Washington, D.C. is still reviewing its policies and "reserves its position on this issue."
Let’s hope that position adopts an unfalteringly upright rejection of an assault upon virtually all aspects of American life. This includes costly impacts upon everything we produce, consume and export, along with the industries, employment and wages that go with them. The greatest of those burdens would weigh upon the poorest among us.
As Richard Morrison at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) warns, "The Paris Climate Treaty is inherently toxic to American institutions of self-government. The agreement provides a framework for a global, political pressure machine to exist for decades."
The planet and its creatures will be no worse off by opting out. The climate will continue to change as it always has, glaciers will continue to retreat and advance, polar bear populations will continue to grow, and rain forests will continue to be grateful for that CO2 nourishment.
Yes, and Al Gore's $9 million ocean-view Montecito, Calif. home will continue to remain safely above rising tides of doom despite those copious emissions he spews jet-setting around the world to tell us otherwise.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom”(2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2012). Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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