President Trump: Don't Pussyfoot Around On Climate Policy!
/One of President Trump's unequivocal campaign promises was to pull out of President Obama's Paris Climate Agreement. Now there is talk that he is going squishy. Trump going squishy? And on this issue of all things?
Climate propagandist Coral Davenport has a report in the New York Times on March 2, headline "Trump Advisors Are Split on Paris Agreement on Climate Change." The advisors advising Trump to stick with the Paris Agreement are said to include Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, First Daughter Ivanka Trump, and of course the Washington Blob of career diplomats. Tillerson -- wasn't he the very embodiment of evil in his role as CEO of ExxonMobil until just a few weeks ago? Here's how Davenport articulates the position allegedly now advocated by Tillerson et al.:
[Ivanka] Trump, Mr. Tillerson, and a slew of foreign policy advisers and career diplomats who argue that the fallout of withdrawing from the accord could be severe, undercutting the United States’ credibility on other foreign policy issues and damaging relations with key allies. . . . Foreign policy experts say withdrawing from Paris would have far greater diplomatic consequences than President George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the world’s first global climate-change accord, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. “I think it would be a major mistake, even a historic mistake, to disavow the Paris deal,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat and under secretary of state under Mr. Bush. "In international politics, trust, reliability and keeping your commitments — that’s a big part of how other countries view our country,” Mr. Burns said.
Really, is this the best they've got? "Undermining the United States' credibility" and "damaging relations with key allies"? Under the Paris Agreement, the United States will supposedly cut its "carbon emissions" by 26 to 28% by 2025. That's only eight years away. The only mechanism that might actually work that has ever been proposed for achieving such drastic reductions would be to multiply the cost of electricity and gasoline to such a high level that American citizens will become hugely poorer and will be stuck shivering in the dark at home. China's side of the "agreement" is to continue increasing its carbon emissions by as much as it feels like through 2030, and then (when it thinks it will have fully electrified the countryside and everybody will have cars and its emissions will be about triple ours) maybe leveling off, unless it changes its mind. (As usual for a Davenport article, she just brazenly lies about China's supposed commitments: "[T]he Paris agreement includes commitments from every nation, rich and poor, to cut emissions, including China and India, the world’s largest and third-largest polluters." Fake news, anyone?) Among all people who are actually awake, this "agreement" makes the United States a laughingstock. The representatives of the other countries were all giggling behind Obama's back when he signed off on this. The guys from China and India must have split a gut. OK, many of the representatives from Europe were likely exceptions. They are also laughingstocks.
And what exactly is this supposedly "severe fallout"? That other countries will suddenly realize that we are no longer so stupid that we will cripple our economy for no purpose? In what way is our failing to decrease carbon emissions drastically over the next eight years even something that other countries care about? Maybe because they were planning to move in on our export markets as we stupidly priced our exporters out of business? Why do we owe them that? I say let's go for the "severe fallout"!
James Delingpole, now working at Breitbart, has a somewhat different take:
Man-made global warming is evidently and demonstrably not a problem. The people who pretend otherwise are crooks, liars, idiots or shills. CO2 does far more good than harm. Fossil fuels aren’t running out – especially not now we’ve discovered the game-changing technology of hydraulic fracturing – and are the ideal solution to our energy needs. Renewables are a waste of everyone’s time – and always will be.
There is copious evidence to support all these statements and it’s really about time those of us on the winning side of the argument stopped pussyfooting around and apologising for being 100 per cent right. That should include everyone in the Trump administration. No more cautious speeches equivocating as to whether carbon dioxide is a problem or not, and whether we ought to have more renewables in the mix. This is a revolution; we’ve got truth and justice on our side. . . .
I could quibble with a few things there. For example, renewables are not just a "waste of everyone's time"; instead, they are a tool of impoverishment for the masses and enrichment for a handful of well-connected crony capitalists. But overall, amen!