The hodgepodge of states committed to upholding the Paris climate agreement could find meeting the deal’s terms nearly impossible, especially considering the Obama administration itself wasn’t on track to keep its pledge.
The so-called “We Are Still In” campaign will fall flat unless it manages to convince nearly every fossil fuel burning state in the country to back the Paris deal. So far only the greenest states with the most to gain politically from opposing President Donald Trump have joined the pact.
Former President Barack Obama’s target of 26 to 28 percent greenhouse gas level reductions by 2025 based off 2005 emissions levels mostly missed the mark, according to an analysis in January by the Rhodium Group. The group found the U.S. would not be able to hit the mark under Obama’s climate regulations, which were substantial at the time of the Rhodium’s report.
Trevor Houser, a partner at the Rhodium Group, told Axios Tuesday that if the states signed onto the effort “follow up by developing and implementing new policy or, in the case of companies and universities, new procurement, it could have a meaningful impact.”
Major energy producing states such as Texas, Pennsylvania, and the Dakotas have not signed onto the coalition’s non-binding pact, which could greatly hamper the We Are Still In campaign. Most of the states in the campaign reside on the coasts.
Campaigners argue they’re building a bottom-up coalition that will eventually include larger states and businesses. “This is the way we’re going to get to the unusual suspects,” one organizer told reporters.
They don’t have all day, though, because the coalition will have to quickly double down on Obama-era climate regulations during the Trump administration if they intend on making the 2025 pledge.
One of the leaders of the anti-Trump movement, California Gov. Jerry Brown, has been making the rounds to generate support for the coalition. Brown browbeat his state’s legislature in April into dramatically raising California’s gas tax, as well as push for extending the state’s already massive cap-and-trade program.
The California Democrat met with China’s president Xi Jinping Tuesday morning to discuss aspects of the Paris climate deal. They both hashed out ways to push their respective entities away from fossil fuel production and closer to renewable energy to meet Paris’ ambitious aims.
Brown told reporters at the international clean energy conference in Beijing that nixing the Paris agreement is only a temporary setback, adding that China, European countries and the coalition of states should be able to fill in the gap Trump left.
“Nobody can stay on the sidelines. We can’t afford any dropouts in the tremendous human challenge to make the transition to a sustainable future,” Brown said. “Disaster still looms and we’ve got to make the turn.”
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This article originally appeared in The Daily Caller
Now I know why tighty-whiteys have that stain….It’s from people like moonbeam blowing smoke up everybodies a$$ !!!!!
The idiocy and ignorance of those mainly on the left. Brainwashing in schools have also led to this problem. The Paris Climate deal has nothing to do with climate, CO2 or the weather. It was about international control of the world and especially the United States. A major transfer of wealth from the U.S. to other nations. Thanks to Trump this isn’t going to happen but many ignorant governors are going stick with this destructive plan for their own states. It really shows how liberal ignorance can destroy when blinded from the truth.
It’s simply amazing how “saying something enough” makes it true,…..and yet, the data in no way proves that it is. Social engineering and ideology trumps every bit of common sense left on the planet.
These people are crazy. Reducing fossil fuel use will increase energy prices without anything to show for it. Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas with insignificant affect on global warming. On a global basis, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by these snowflake states is negligible. If everyone in these states did the supreme sacrifice to the global warming scare by mass suicide, there still would be no change in climate change.
Even with the abject failure of following the climatista’s nonsense by Germany seem to get thru to these Loons.
The disaster that still looms is the financial disaster that will result with subsidizing solar and wind that doubles, triples, and even quadruples the cost of energy that hits the poor and middle class where it hurts most. This will become more evident over the next 10 years as more illegal immigrants and refugees are welcomed into California, Oregon, Washington State, the Northeast, and East Coast.
The “energy poor” are spreading across the U.K. and the EU to the point where electric and gas energy are being “turned off” to 10’s of thousands of households because they cannot afford their bills! As a result, beginning in late 2013, 10’s of thousands of additional people are dying every year due to the cold. Europe has experienced a number of very cold winters over the last couple of years.
Low cost energy is a MUST for the poor and for under-developed countries who are attempting to raise their industrial output and standard of living.
These dire consequences show that the nonsense will eventually be self correcting when the devastation from implementing these climate engineering fairy tales reaches an intolerable level. Unfortunately some of us or our children may live to witness it.
“Danger still looms…” so says chicken little.
J.B. a true Autocrat. How will we Californians undo the destruction of this man? His ignorant supporters blame the Congress and not him. They have no clue of the domain of power the executive has. Congress passes a budget and the governor spends it. How? He appoints heads of departments to do his will. The elites in California have spoken and the peasant class shall fall in line.
Jerry Brown-eye should be more vigilant about the CO2 emissions from all the dope smoke from his and his ilk’s bongs, bowls, joints, and hookahs!
I’m so tired of these delusional liberals and their Chicken Little attitude toward this climate change myth. It’s increasingly obvious that it’s bogus. Even Michael Mann was forced to admit that the climate hadn’t warmed as he predicted.
Decades into the future, this climate change panic will seem like the one which seized the world in 1910 when Halley’s comet was supposed to do something terrible. The ridiculous lengths which climate scientists have gone to in propping up their illusion will make future generations shake their heads. They’ll find the CAGWa claims as silly as the ones science made a century-and-a-half ago about our future. Of course the perpetrators of this climate hoax will be dead by then and so will most of us.
I’m already shaking my head, and have been for some time, about all the GW/etc. hype and claims. Another scam by the left to fleece the rubes, sorta like the midway games at a carnival or casino. The hue and cry from the left is cuz they finally realized not everyone believes the hype, and Trump shut down the game for the US.
So true. We said the Emperor has no clothes and the courtiers are in a panic.
Exactly. And since most people are ignorant when it comes to science, they’re easily convinced that carbon dioxide is a poisonous gas. It is in fact plant food. It’s carbon monoxide which is the dangerous gas but try telling that to all the gullible leftists.
The calculation (by the alarmists themselves) of 0.02 C (or even 0.15 C if all countries followed their own agreement) is such a clear indication of the Lunacy of the Left that nothing remains to be said on any of their endless rants.
What is there to say about carbon dioxide? It has been disappearing so that he present day carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is only one sixteenth part of CO2 we used to have in the Cambrian, 500 million years ago. Understanding why this happens is quite simple: the internal workings of the planet earth are slowing down, same way it happened to Mars. Its giant volcanoes that once belched carbon dioxide are now silent. A linear connection from carbon dioxide recorded in the the Cambrian to the point that represents the present day can be extrapolated to show that carbon dioxide will disappear entirely from the earth in only 13 more million years. CO2 is plant food and plants will disappear in half that time.And along with plants, all higher life forms, including us, will also disappear. The only effect your silly decarbonation will have is to slightly decrease the time left for us on this earth. I suggest switching all funds assigned to climate research now over to a maximum effort to discover inhabitable planets we can reach. And all non-research climate funds go to geo-engineering research. It must be done immediately because the fate of mankind is too important to let politicians screw up the effort to bail us out of this Armageddon trap.
P.S.: Put someone on to determine an accurate SD for the timeline.
Your 13 million years into the future is completely irrelevant. A million years into the future is irrelevant. If we are extremely lucky we will have a Star Trek future in maybe 250 years. That is the time when we seriously start looking for other inhabitable planets. Without it, interstellar travel is utterly pointless. Next, we are never going to detect extraterrestrial signals…furthermore there is no guarantee there are any extraterrestrials to begin with – we could be it!
I honestly do not care what these nut jobs do. If they want to charge their own states taxpayers higher rates to pony up the billions of dollars that they expected the U.S. taxpayers to pay to enrich third world dictators, let them do it. We refuse to give any of our taxpayer funds to people ignorant enough to believe that they can pay money to change the weather. It is probably the oldest scam in the world. Pay me and I will make it rain. I cannot believe that these people actually believe it. And carbon dioxide? Try living without it. A true educated environmentalist would try to increase it as it would result in a real green revolution as in increased plant and tree growth. Just a side note, if we did not have the “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere to block some of the sun’s rays, it would really make the temperature rise and as a side “benefit” the incidence of skin cancer would increase do to the increase in sun’s energy. Let it be and thank God we have this so called “greenhouse” gas layer. The only reason for this “Global Warming/Climate Change” campaign is to attack the old “Military-Industrial Complex” by attacking fossil fuels to cripple manufacturing which these people will make their lives better. We all care about the health of our planet and its people which is why we are standing up to the whackos.
China and India will play only if they get paid big bucks every year. It will be a hoot to see how these states are going to pony up the $billions to pay China and India. All this to promote a fraud.
Even if the whole world followed the Paris agreement it would have no measurable effect. The Paris agreement is just a polished Turd and it still stinks.