By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Saving the planet has never been so easy.
The Paris climate talks concluded in a rousing round of
self-congratulation over an agreement that, we are told, is the first step
toward keeping Earth habitable. If generating headlines and press releases
about making history were the metric for anything, Paris might be as
consequential — if misbegotten — as advertised.
The fact is that Paris is very meta. The agreement is
about the agreement, never mind what’s in it or what its true legal force is —
namely, nil. Paris is a legally binding agreement not to have legally binding
limits on emissions. It might be the most worthless piece of paper since the
Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawed war — about a decade prior to the outbreak of
World War II.
Politico
reported that the talks were almost derailed at the last minute by the
accidental insertion of the word “shall” deep in the text, which, by implying a
legal obligation, was to be avoided at all costs (the U.S. Senate would never
give its assent to a legally binding treaty). The U.S. scrambled to change the
offending word to “should.”
The Paris summit operated on the principle of
CBDRILONCWRC, or “Common but Differentiated Responsibility in Light of National
Circumstances With Respective Capability.” That means nothing was actually
mandated on anyone because that proved — understandably enough, dealing with
all the countries in the world — completely unworkable.
Instead, countries came up with so-called Intended
Nationally Determined Contributions. That’s climate bureaucratese for “You make
up your emissions target, whatever it is, and we will pretend to take it
seriously.” Thus, do the waters recede and Earth is saved from looming climate
catastrophe.
Even if you believe the extremely dubious proposition
that somehow the climate “consensus” perfectly understands perhaps the most
complicated system on the planet, and can forecast with certitude and in detail
what the global temperature will be a century from now, Paris is a charade. The
best estimates are that, accepting the premises of the consensus, the deal will
reduce warming 0.0 to 0.2 degrees Celsius.
President Barack Obama praised 180 countries for coming
to Paris “with serious climate targets in hand.” This was ridiculous climate
grade inflation. As Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute points out, Pakistan
produced a one-page document promising to “reduce its emissions after reaching
peak levels to the extent possible.” For this we needed a headline-grabbing
global confab?
No one will mistake Pakistan for an industrial
juggernaut. How about China, the world’s largest carbon emitter? It promises to
reach peak emissions around 2030, when one U.S. government study estimates that
it would hit peak admissions anyway, Cass notes. The more China promises to
confront climate change, the more it stays the same.
India’s assurance that it will make a roughly 30 percent
improvement in carbon intensity is, according to Cass, also about where it was
projected to be headed anyway. India still wants to double its output of coal
by 2020. As The Guardian put it,
India “says coal provides the cheapest energy for rapid industrialization that
would lift millions out of poverty.” India would be correct.
The agreement’s celebrants believe that by making
countries report their progress on cutting carbon emissions and by sending a
stern signal against fossil fuels, Paris will catalyze painful cuts in carbon
emissions somewhere off in the future. It speaks to a naive belief in the power
of global shame over the sheer economic interest of developing countries in
getting rich (and lifting countless millions out of poverty) through exploiting
cheap energy — you know, the way Western countries have done for a couple of
centuries.
If this is the best hope of the climate alarmists, their
global campaign will be a welcome fizzle. All things considered, it probably is
best that they occupy themselves with grand meetings and with the exertions
attendant to believing their own PR. Otherwise they could do real damage.
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