What will the U.S. do at the UN’s climate “semi-summit”?

Another big two week meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is underway in Bonn, Germany. Unlike last December’s summit meeting, this one just involves what are called the Subsidiary Bodies of the UNFCCC, so let’s call it the semi-summit.

Despite the name it is a very important meeting, one of the most important in the UNFCCC’s 26 year history. The UN’s goal is to produce the draft rulebook for the 2015 Paris Agreement, which will then be finalized at this year’s Summit meeting.

There is a very big question for the US at this meeting. Rex Tillerson is gone as Secretary of State, fired for inaction by President Trump. As we reported at the time, Tillerson fielded a team of Obama retreads at the last Summit meeting. We even called for him to be fired, which happily happened.

Now we have a new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who is reported to be a hardline skeptic of climate change alarmism. Presumably this includes not liking the would-be world-controlling Paris Agreement.

The question is what, if anything, will Pompeo do about the Bonn semi-summit? So far the answer is nothing. The US negotiating team is still basically unchanged from the Obama era. It is led by Obama appointee Trigg Talley.

Mind you these are still early days and Pompeo just took office. But letting the Obama team continue to represent the US is surely the worst thing he can do. If he does not want to quickly formulate a new US position and field a new negotiating team, then he should simply pull the US out of the meeting.

The President says we are pulling out of the whole Paris Agreement. Continuing to negotiate, with the Obama position, was Tillerson’s goofy idea. The US team should either shape up or ship out.

As for the Bonn meeting, in addition to writing the Paris Agreement rulebook, it is also about doing more stupid stuff sooner. Every country is supposed to “increase their ambition” to cut (harmless) CO2 emissions come 2020. No one is on track to even meet their present 2020 target, so instead they are upping their goals for the long term. Politicians are very good at making promises they will never have to keep.

The greenest Euros are in a bit of frenzy over this issue. Sweden has passed a nonsensical law mandating “carbon neutrality” by 2045. Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Portugal and Luxembourg say they want to do something similar.

France is working hard to replace Germany as the green Euro leader, ever since Germany admitted it could not hit its 2020 target. French environment minister Brune Poirson said in a press release: “European Union must raise its level of ambition to reach the Paris Agreement goals. France is taking its part by defining and implementing new policies for a fair and ecological transition, and is currently revising its national long-term strategy to aim at carbon neutrality at horizon 2050.”

The coal burning Eastern European members of the EU are not likely to go along with this nonsense, because they cannot possibly do it. But they are probably perfectly willing to let France and Germany try. In fact a number of the greenest EU countries are talking about banning the internal combustion engine. It does not get any crazier than this.

This growing green insanity under the Paris Agreement is yet another good reason for the US to walk away. So if Secretary Pompeo is going to do something, it should be sooner rather than later.