If President Donald Trump merely pulls the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, it will be like cutting the head off a dandelion. It will look good for a while until equally bad agreements quickly grow back when a Democrat occupies the White House again. Trump needs to dig up the roots of Paris—the 1992 U.N. climate treaty—if he is to keep his campaign promise to “stop all payments of the United States tax dollars to UN global warming programs.”
Trump can, and should, get the US out of the Paris Agreement, of course. Besides the scientifically unfounded objective of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels,” as if we had a global thermostat, the agreement lets so-called developing countries largely off the hook despite the fact that non-OECD countries are now the greatest source of energy-related emissions. Consider the agreement’s emission targets for the US versus China, currently the world’s largest emitter, for example:
- The Obama administration agreed to an economy-wide target of reducing US greenhouse gas (82% of which is carbon dioxide (CO2)) emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025.
- China agreed “to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030” and to other measures such as those designed to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption. Taking into consideration expected economic growth in China and other factors, their target translates into about a 70% increase above its 2005 level in 2025.
Yet writing in the Chicago Tribune, Paul Bodnar, a Special Assistant to former-President Obama and a key architect of the 2014 US-China deal (which has the same emission targets as Paris), echoes the position of many opinion leaders when he asserted, “The Paris Agreement…puts China, India, and other emerging markets on equal footing with the United States.”
Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth.
Time has come to totaly defund The Useless Nations and the IPCC as well as UNESCO and defunding the various eco-wacko groups the Paris Agreement is a devils bargin
Bodnar is full of crap . The USA Senate when addressing Kyoto passed a resolution 95-0 stipulating that among other things an economic analysis must be done and that “developing” countries must have matching mandatory emission reductions
not “pledges ” before the USA would consider being party to the one sided UN
wealth transfer scheme . Kyoto 2 was not even agreed to by Russia , Japan , Canada
and the USA.
Setting aside the massive science fiction supposedly justifying this scam $ Trillion dollar heists of tax payers are only valid when voted on and approved by elected
representatives . Obama knew full well this con game would never get elected officials in Congress support hence the melba toast language and sleazy back door Obama
administration approach . It only worked while he was in office or some other AL
Gore clone .
President Trump correctly assessed it and promised to exit the Paris Pledge . Earlier analogy correctly stated taking the head off a dandelion doesn’t kill it and neither does throwing sand on it pretending it doesn’t exist . Either put it to a vote or rely on the earlier 95-0 by partisan Senate vote which has already addressed the issues .
Mr. Trump was 100 % correct in his characterization and it will be the easiest $
Trillion dollars ever saved by following through on his election promise .