Adieu, adios, addio, tschuss, sayonara, goodbye.
Hopefully not, “see you later.”
On Monday the United States formally notified the United Nations that it is withdrawing from the ill-conceived Paris climate agreement.
CFACT is the preeminent organization reporting on international climate diplomacy from a freedom perspective. We’ve been reporting on this every step of the way. We were at Kyoto, Paris, Copenhagen and all the rest. We’re headed to Spain in December.
It will take a year to get out of Paris. Multiple presidential candidates have announced their intention to quickly jump right back in if elected.
The U.S. Constitution requires Senate ratification of treaties. The U.S. did not ratify the prior Kyoto Protocol. The Paris document was styled as an “agreement” rather than a treaty by making key provisions, such as emissions targets, nonbinding. This was designed to enable President Obama to sign it without submitting it to the Senate.
Binding or not, the Paris Agreement is riddled with defects. Getting out is the right move.
The Paris Agreement would barely impact global temperature, even assuming that the most extreme climate computer models are correct, which they never have been.
It would cost a staggering fortune, potentially hundreds of trillions of dollars, while achieving next to nothing, even under its own assumptions.
It would empower a vast, international climate bureaucracy that does not value individual freedom, would undermine national sovereignty, and would redistribute vast sums to dictators and kleptocrats around the world.
The Paris Agreement places all the pressure on the United States, Europe and the developed world, while giving China, India, Brazil and other tremendous CO2 emitters a pass. China and India are building new coal plants and industrial capacity as fast as their economies will allow.
The main impact of the agreement is to shift manufacturing from American and the West to China and the East with the added environmental “benefit” of shipping goods across oceans on diesel-powered container ships.
America and other countries are buying vast quantities of intermittent, inefficient wind turbines and solar panels that are unable to provide the power we require. China has used predatory trade practices to ensure that if we insist on making this mistake, we buy the wind and solar from them.
The Paris Agreement will not meaningfully alter the temperature of the world, but it would redistribute money and power, not to our benefit.
President Trump was correct to pull us out. We should stay out.