One wonders why this president would unilaterally pursue a Paris agreement that does nothing more than hurt the country he took an oath to protect.
There will be a lot of high-fives and hyperventilating over the much-anticipated Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted by the Twenty-First Session of the Conference of the Parties meeting in Paris.
Under the banner “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” 25,000 delegates from 196 countries gathered recognizing that “climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet and thus requires the widest possible cooperation by all countries, and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, with a view to accelerating the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.”
We’ll Do Nothing But Blow Smoke
After two weeks of tough negotiations, it turns out the final “agreement” includes lots of less-than-decisive words like “should,” “pledges,” “ambitions,” and “voluntary participation,” and in the end requires no country to do anything to reduce CO2 emissions. That truth did not prevent billionaire environmentalist Tom Seyer’s group NextGen Climate from sending out an email to supporters declaring, “We Did It!” The simple question is, did what? United Nations (UN) delegates managed to expend lots of energy and effort on an agreement that does nothing. Really nothing!
With the president and the White House declaring victory, surely the agreement will save the world. But apparently they don’t believe that, either. Secretary of State John Kerry said “even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what—that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.”
Kerry added, “If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions – remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions – it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65 percent of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.”
One wonders why this president would unilaterally pursue such a policy that does nothing more than hurt the country he took an oath to protect.
Americans Know It’s Hype
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Kerry also said, “I don’t believe the American people, who predominately do believe what is happening with climate change … are going to accept as a genuine leader someone who doesn’t understand the science of climate change and isn’t willing to do something about it.”
But the people are simply not buying it. During the height of the Paris conference, with all the media hype, a Wall Street Journal online poll asked, “Do you believe humans are responsible for climate change?” Even when told the UN weather agency has reported that this decade is on track to become the warmest since 1850 and that 2009 could rank among the top-five warmest years, only 12 percent of respondents answered “YES”.
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