Robert Tracinski uses a Federalist column to pour cold water on those who believe the Paris climate talks produced much beyond — pardon the pun — hot air.
… [T]he global warming conference ended with the Paris Agreement, which was hailed by both The Guardian and Slate as the “end of the fossil fuel era.” The formulation was repeated elsewhere. It’s almost as if they got the same PR memo or something. Oh, silly me. They got it from Al Gore.
So clearly this deal imposes some kind of harsh, new restrictions on all the nations of the world that will cause a “transformation of our global economy” — also Gore’s words.
Except that it won’t. The deal does say that the 195 nations promise to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions dramatically. But the operative word here is “promise,” and in the world of politics — especially international politics — is worth considerably less than the paper it is written on. Let’s put it this way. If you believe this agreement really commits the world to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to “net zero” by the second half of this century, then you probably also believe that the latest congressional budget deal will actually impose big spending cuts and balance the federal budget sometime after 2020.
The same Guardian report that proclaims “the end of the fossil fuel era” also admits that “The overall agreement is legally binding, but some elements — including the pledges to curb emissions by individual countries and the climate finance elements [a multi-billion-dollar giveaway to poor countries] — are not.” So everything is legally binding, except the actual heart of the agreement. Moreover, several big industries are exempted, including air travel, shipping, and the biggest one, agriculture. Together these industries account for about a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
As with most big international confabs, this is more like an agreement to have an agreement: “[T]he agreement reached on Saturday depends on political will, with countries setting their own climate action plans.” In other words, it’s a legally binding commitment by individual countries to go back and think about doing something that might actually be legally binding.
In the case of the United States, the evasiveness on this issue is almost comical: “The deal was carefully constructed to carry legal force but without requiring approval by the U.S. Congress — which would have almost certainly rejected it.” You can tell this is a report in a British newspaper, because they seem to have no idea that it is impossible for an international agreement to “carry legal force” in America without being ratified by the Senate. The Paris Agreement, in short, is just Barack Obama’s fantasy. It is not the law of the land.
