Paris climate treaty dead

[Gone_Fishin]

Paris climate treaty dead


BY LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, TORONTO SUN
FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 2017 04:46 PM EDT | UPDATED: SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 2017 08:48 PM EDT

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will never admit it, the 2015 Paris climate treaty Canada signed with great fanfare died last week.

It died because of the release of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget plan.

While Trump has to get it through the U.S. Congress, which means parts of it are unlikely to survive, his clear intention to gut U.S. climate change policy by dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency spells the death knell for the Paris treaty.

Trump is proposing deeper cuts to the EPA than any other government agency, reducing its $8.2 billion budget by 31%, laying off 19% of its 15,000 staff and cutting 50 programs.

That includes funding for Barack Obama’s signature climate change initiative, his Climate Action Plan, to reduce America’s use of coal-fired electricity.

Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, made the president’s intention crystal clear Thursday.

“Regarding the question of climate change ... We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Mulvaney said. “We consider that to be a waste of your money ... ”

That means the U.S., the world’s second-largest emitter of industrial greenhouse gases (China’s first), has effectively pulled out of the Paris treaty, regardless of whether it formally withdraws.

As the leader of the developed world, America’s participation in the Paris treaty was vital to the United Nations’ Paris treaty.

That’s why the UN abandoned its previous commitment to binding emission reduction targets in Paris, to get the U.S., then under Obama, on board.


snip


Except that Trump, who has said in the past he considers man-made climate change a hoax by China to damage U.S. industry, is not only proposing to gut the EPA but has appointed Scott Pruitt to run it.

Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, an oil-producing state, sued the EPA in that capacity a dozen times before Trump installed him as its administrator.

The Paris treaty was always doomed to fail because it did not take into account that governments, at least democratic ones, operate in four or five year election cycles, not the 30, 40, 50 or 80-year time spans envisioned by the treaty.

Logically, the UN, having boasted that getting the U.S. to sign the 2015 Paris treaty (it never signed the Kyoto accord) was the key to its success, can not now credibly argue Trump’s effective withdrawal doesn’t kill it.

As for Canada, Trudeau — now imposing a national carbon pricing plan — will never acknowledge that the Paris treaty is dead, with Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna already talking about Canada partnering with China.

But let’s not kid the troops.

With Trump’s moves last week, the Paris climate treaty is as dead as the “Dead Parrot” in Monty Python’s famous skit of the same name.


http://www.torontosun.com/2017/03/18/pa ... 6e52248cad

[Jflem1983]

Yes . Thank you Donald Trump. This man has done more in a few weeks. Than I thought possible in 10 years . Good for him draining the swamp

[The Green Barbarian]

Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, made the president’s intention crystal clear Thursday.

“Regarding the question of climate change ... We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Mulvaney said. “We consider that to be a waste of your money ... ”

[Jflem1983]

I'd be alright with warmer winters

[The Green Barbarian]

I'd be alright with warmer winters

move to Phoenix.

[Jlabute]

The G20 in a communique are dropping references to Climate Change.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/worl ... e-dropped/

[The Green Barbarian]

The rats are all jumping off the sinking Man-made climate change fraud ship now that the money is drying up. Time to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new scam to enslave mankind through unwarranted fear and syphon trillions of dollars from western economies. At least, when leftist governments dumb enough to fall for these scams are in power, anyway.

[Rwede]

The rats are all jumping off the sinking Man-made climate change fraud ship now that the money is drying up. Time to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new scam to enslave mankind through unwarranted fear and syphon trillions of dollars from western economies. At least, when leftist governments dumb enough to fall for these scams are in power, anyway.

So true.

Those of us with snow on the roof remember so very well the "gasoline shortage" scam of the early 1970s.

People lined up at dry service stations, had fist fights, and decried the end of the world's fuel supply.

In the end, there was still 200 - 300 years worth of fuel within easy reach, and the shysters who perpetrated the big scam walked away with brimming bank accounts and a good laugh at gullible consumers.

Climate change scams are the exact same thing. Walk away from it and do something useful with your money.

[Jlabute]

Y2K was a scam too. A lesson about complex systems. We spend trillions on the supposed Y2K issue, not even knowing if it was an issue. Alarmists were telling us we would live in the stone ages for weeks, or months, or years, they couldn't agree on it.
It was an issue that was completely man-made with our own technology and it's understanding was beyond us. The earth is a million times more complex and we boil the imaginary issue down to just CO2.