So more than 190 nations signed an agreement in Paris over the weekend that says yes, by golly, they will all do something to reduce carbon emissions and thereby save the planet.
President Barack Obama, who had been beating the drum for such an accord for virtually his entire presidency, said the deal “can be a turning point for the world.” He claimed it may well be “the best chance we have to save the one planet we’ve got.”
Yeah, sure it is. Even Secretary of State John Kerry, who was the chief American negotiator at the meetings, was honest enough to admit that whatever the West does will make virtually no difference to what happens. Listen to the blunt truths Kerry acknowledged
The fact is that even if every American biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what — that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.
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And he continued his harsh but realistic assessment by saying:
If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions — remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions — it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65 percent of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.
I was kind of surprised to hear our chief negotiator admit so openly that whatever changes we make in the industrialized world won’t make any difference to the so-called threat. But that no doubt helps explain why representatives of the West agreed to cough up some $100 billion to bribe the developing countries to reduce their carbon emissions.
Remember, everyone agrees that China is the world’s biggest polluter. So we’re going to cut them some big checks if they’ll agree to stop building so many coal-burning plants?
Fat chance that will happen. And fat chance that the U.S. Congress would ever agree to such payola, even if the communist rulers of China promised to go along with the plan.
This helps explain why, once again, the Obama administration made sure the deal it negotiated would not be called a treaty and, thus, require approval by the Senate. The president and his cohorts knew that this deal would be dead on arrival in the Senate, if they ever tried to submit it for approval. Not only would the Republicans oppose it, so would a bunch of Democratic senators from energy-producing states.
So once again Obama prefers his dictatorial method of governing, rather than following the Constitution. Is anyone surprised?
Does anyone really expect this deal to make a difference? Of course the world’s poorest countries will go along with it; they’ll be only too glad to receive several billion dollars in handouts from the West to help them install solar panels and take other steps to develop “clean” energy.
And even many countries in the West will happily pay lip service to the accord. After all, it replaces the binding targets from the Kyoto Protocol they signed back in 1997 with new, voluntary targets. There is no enforcement mechanism in the Paris agreement, so it really won’t matter how much (if any) they reduce their carbon emissions.
What we’ve got here, ladies and gentlemen, is a public-relations stunt. Representatives from more than 190 countries had a wonderful time in Paris yammering about it for the past two weeks.
Now they can return home, boasting about all they have done to save the world from pollution. And confident that a bunch of the billions of dollars the West has promised to send their way will somehow find its way into their own pockets.
This is the way the world works. And this is the kind of meaningless “victory” that Obama thinks will enhance his legacy.
Not if honest historians get to tell what is really going on.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest. This article first appeared on PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.
