Some information provided by Matthew Dalton in The Wall Street Journal is illuminating, if not in the way he—or the WSJ—might have intended.
The US’s willingness under the Obama administration to propose major emissions reductions and put money on the table helped solidify global consensus behind the deal. It also helped persuade politicians world-wide of the need to seek more ambitious cuts and channel more money into the fight against global warming, officials and experts say.
Our willingness to put money on the table “helped persuade politicians world-wide [to] channel more money into the fight against global warming” contains a couple of disingenuousities. One is that the greater amount of money to be channeled is American taxpayers’ money, since the other nearly 200 nations party to the thing aren’t putting up much money at all—in fact, large polluters like India pledged themselves to do nothing under the accord until some trillions of dollars in “foreign aid” had been transferred to them. Pakistan, unmentioned by Dalton, pledged to “reduce its emissions after reaching peak levels to the extent possible.” But that only defines the word “peak;” it commits to nothing—other than to be one of the receivers of (American taxpayers’) OPM.
The other disingenuousity is the cynically presented strawman of “the fight against global warming.” The folks objecting to our leaving the accord will have to play with their dolly without me. There’s no fight against global warming. There is an effort to mitigate human activity’s impact on climate change, even though that impact has not had its significance established, or even suggested in any credible way. Even the direction of climate change is not established: it was just a short time ago that the same Climate Federal Funding Industry was trying to raise funding by frightening us into worrying about the coming Ice Age. (This is also the same collection of rent-seekers who tried to raise money with fear mongering about catastrophic global overpopulation.)
There’s also this from Dalton:
Despite the strong reaction of world leaders, the US’s financial contributions have been relatively small so far and its decision to withdraw doesn’t necessarily halt America’s progress on the emissions front.
Indeed. The uproar is over the fact that the others won’t have such easy access to OPM—us American taxpayers’ money. Never mind that in their bleating, these “world leaders” ignore the simple fact that we’re the leaders in cutting both pollution and CO2 emissions—we’re already at 1990s levels of CO2 emissions, and it hasn’t even been established that this plant food even is a pollutant.
And this:
When they signed the accord, governments acknowledged that the most difficult work was left unfinished. The pledges to slash emissions made by more than 190 nations fell far short of the reductions scientists say are needed to avoid the most damaging effects of climate change.
That bit of dishonesty speaks for itself.
Looks like President Trump isn’t as dumb or irresponsible as these worthies claim. The Paris Climate Accord was, and is, nothing but cynical virtue signaling by the intended recipients of OPM and by the developed nation leaders’ who promised pennies of their own and dollars of ours.
