By way of background, I am a far-left Democrat who voted for Hillary. Nevertheless I oppose the Paris Climate Accords. See the note I posted on the White House website “e-mail” system:
I am writing to support the Trump Administration’s inclination to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords (“Climate Accords”). I am by no means a conservative. I think that the Climate Accords have very little to do with climate and a lot to do with an incoherent hash of politically correct but impractical agendas. I will turn to the terms of the Climate Accords themselves but I note that they have a lengthy codicil on “gender equality.” While that may be a praiseworthy goal it has little to do with climate.
The Climate Accords work by setting an unreachable U.S. goal of 40% reduction of greenhouse gases (“GHG”) from 1990 levels. The year 1990 as a base year is itself grossly unfair to the U.S. but I digress. The failure to reach an unmeetable target will trigger an obligation to pay a large amount into a “climate adjustment fund” (the “Fund”). The Fund itself will offer full-time employment to a large contingent of bureaucrats. That to my mind is why Europe so strongly favors the Climate Accords. Such money as is distributed by the Fund for “climate adjustment” will go to Third and Fourth World “leaders” with little or no accountability for how it is spent. Can one, for example, seriously imagine leaders such as Assad, Kabila, or Mugabe using the money to protect their people from climate change.
This note purposely does not address whether or not climate change is real, or if real, if it is man-made. The Climate Accords will do little to change a single temperature on a single day in a single place. But they will cost the U.S. and its citizens lots of money, and possibly significant growth and employment. I urge you to ignore the bleats of the elites and withdraw the U.S. from the Climate Accords. And in the process make the withdrawal effective immediately, disregarding the unconstitutional and non-binding four year period placed on withdrawal. The Climate Accords were not ratified by Congress, are not a treaty and are not legislation.
OK, just so I understand, which of these options do you prefer:
[ul]
[li]Option 1: The stability of the world’s climate, food crops, sea levels, ocean chemistry and biodiversity of the entire planet should be left to go to hell, or[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Option 2: Everyone must pitch in to prevent the above from happening, with the sole exception of the one large nation represented by the last three letters of your username, which should be entitled to do nothing.[/li][/ul]
If the USA withdraws from taking action on Climate Change, I hope that other nations start to transition from trading with the USA and focus only on trading with nations that are taking at least some action. There has to be a cost to doing nothing in order to get some people to do something.
America is a great nation full of ignorant savages. We don’t trust science even though it provides us with a fantastically extravagant lifestyle even among the poorest of the poor. We don’t trust government even though it helps each American maintain a fantastically extravagant lifestyle at the expense of billions of people around the world. We don’t trust foreigners even though they are the lifeblood of innovation that provides us with an extravagant lifestyle unknown to most of history and most of the rest of the world.
In the face of this monstrously savage ignorance, maybe international agreements on climate change are not the best means by which to reduce America’s carbon emissions. Maybe there is a way to do it that is tailored to America’s savagery. After all, we’ve reduced emissions in recent years (yes, mainly due to natural gas), and renewable sources of energy have taken off. Maybe even individual states can drive the change and leave the more savage parts of America in the industrial age where they belong, rusting away.
I’m not tied to this position but the OP did make me think.
The Paris Accords won’t mediate climate change, they weren’t even designed to mediate climate change … even the proponents who understand the accords say as written it does very little …
It’s just the framework on how we deal with global warming moving forward … and as it stands no one anywhere in the world is committed to the goals set out …
I’d like to see your math these claims are based on … how are you defining the Hysteria Tensor? …
What does the Republic of South Africa have to do with this? … because if you mean the United States, you’d be mistaken … solar panels are going up everywhere … Oklahoma is getting covered in wind turbines … places like Oregon are outlawing the generation and wholesale purchase of coal-fired electricity (and not permitting gas-fired power plants) … “business as usual” doesn’t mean a freeze on technology, it mean advancing technology at the same rate … we are fixing this problem, only hysteria blinds us to our progress …
Have you read and understood this link … I quit counting after 200 MB download … can you try and focus on the specific parts you’re advancing, and can you PLEASE keep the citations shorter than The Bible …
[sigh] …
The Paris Accords are all about political fluff … withdrawing from the Accords is again all about political fluff … if we want to cut CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions, we have to cut back on energy usage, there’s no other way unless you believe in magic …
The fella they had on the PBS Newshours last night said an incredibly stupid thing … “Our children will suffer from dangerous climate change” … horseshit, that old guy’s children are going to be dead and buried, his grandchildren are going to be dead and buried by 2100 … let’s get a grip on the time spans we’re talking about, climate changes occur over time intervals longer than a human life span … sure, we notice a 5ºC difference day-to-day, and we notice this year-to-year … but decade-to-decade, I don’t think so … the hysteria claims century-to-century? … hogwash …
I thought the far left voted for Bernie in the primaries … and then just didn’t vote at all during the general … I voted for Hillary because she was the closest to the center of all the candidates … or perhaps better to say the choice with the least uncertainty …
That is not that the article says. Seems that once again you are looking at what the contrarian sources are pointing out and they also do not bother to check what the article really says.