We’ll Always Have the Illusions of Paris The climate talks will have zero impact on global temperatures.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/well-always-have-the-illusions-of-paris-1449015377
The running melodrama of the world climate-change talks reassembled in Paris this week, and word from the worthies is that this time the 196 nations are poised for a momentous breakthrough. Well, not quite. The politicians want a deal so badly that they’ll accept anything that can pass as one, but it won’t amount to much.
Not that you’d know this from the grandiose rhetoric. President Obama called it an historical “turning point,” the “moment we finally determined we would save our planet.” French President François Hollande declared: “Never have the stakes of an international meeting been so high, since what is at stake is the future of the planet, the future of life.” And Pope Francis chimed in that “if I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the edge of suicide.” The theme is Apocalypse Right Now.
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The last climate talks collapsed in 2009 amid differences between rich and developing nations. The International Energy Agency estimates developing countries will emit 70% of world CO2 by 2030 and contribute 170% of emissions increases between now and then. Without their participation in a deal, atmospheric CO2 will continue to accumulate whatever the U.S. does.
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The problem is that countries like China (the No. 1 emitter) and India (No. 3) won’t undermine their economic growth or stop eradicating desperate poverty to assuage Western neuralgia. World-wide, some 1.3 billion people still live without electricity. So the negotiators simply gave up the pretense of trying to agree to a legally binding agreement.
Instead, countries will volunteer their own random carbon emissions-reduction targets and the actions they may or may not take to meet them, with no global goals. There are no consequences for failing to comply or even common standards for measuring improvement. In echt-United Nations idiom, these pledges are called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs.
The Chinese INDC says carbon emissions will peak sometime before 2030, maybe, unless they don’t. And even this vague aspiration was determined before the Communist Party revealed that China burned 17% more coal per year than it formerly disclosed.
But no INDC exposes the Paris farce better than America’s. Mr. Obama promises that the U.S. will reduce CO2 emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas inventory, that would be some 1.8 billion fewer tons of CO2-equivalent in a decade. Yet the U.S. INDC outlines only about a billion tons, 45% short of the goal.
Keep in mind that the reductions the Administration has identified touch everything from coal-fired power plants to landfill management to efficiency standards for home appliances. Mr. Obama doesn’t lack ambition so much as legal authority; most of these unilateral rules are being challenged in the courts. Yet his green diplomats still can’t explain how the U.S. will meet the targets they are selling in Paris.
Not that Mr. Obama’s plan won’t damage U.S. jobs and living standards. Energy-intensive industries like manufacturing, chemicals, cement and pulp and paper will be particular victims and may decamp for overseas. The President is trading away the competitive advantage of cheap U.S. natural gas for a bag of anticarbon promises.
Moreover, nothing that emerges from Paris will have a discernible effect on world temperatures. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the INDCs that have been released so far and concluded that temperatures in 2100 will rise 3.7 degrees Celsius if they are followed to the letter. Then again, these are the same scientific models that predicted much higher temperatures than we’ve had.
The other big item on the Paris agenda is the one that these confabs always come down to—cash. Most developing-world INDCs are conditioned on an enormous wealth transfer. To try to resuscitate talks in 2009, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State pledged a $100 billion public-private fund that would flow to poorer nations for climate mitigation. But the poor countries have wised up and are now demanding much more for “climate justice.”
Poorer nations claim they are owed a debt for carbon that Western industrialization released decades ago and will be disproportionately harmed by climate disasters. “The cost of action is not $100 billion. It is trillions—$100 billion is just a reparation,” said Prakash Javadekar, the Indian environment minister who is the Ta-Nehisi Coates of the climate-grievance movement.
Mr. Obama isn’t negotiating a treaty, because that would require two-thirds Senate ratification that he will never obtain. Thus he can make any “political agreement” finance promise he likes. But no one outside the West Wing believes Congress will earmark a dollar for windmills in Guangzhou and dikes in the Maldives.
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Which is just as well based on what we know about climate change. The world has warmed modestly in the last 35 years, nearly all of that before the last 15. It may or may not warm more in the future, and the effects could be helpful in some places, harmful in others.
The best insurance is not to force-feed windmills on India, or hand more power to government mandarins who will parcel out how much carbon each country can emit. The remedy is faster economic growth so richer societies are better able to adapt to whatever happens. If Bill Gates wants to spend his billions looking for non-carbon energy solutions, great. It’s his money, and innovation is essential to energy progress. The talks in Paris are beside the point.
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