It Never Mattered: Paris Agreement Just Revealed To Be Total Sham. Trump Was Right.
Recall all of the great weeping and gnashing of teeth from leftists and radical environmentalists when President Donald Trump announced in 2017 that he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate his predecessor had signed the nation onto.
It was literally the end of the world as we know it, in their view, as unchecked air and water pollution would explode exponentially, humans would die horrible, climate change-related deaths and it was all the fault of an uncaring and climate change-denying Trump.
But a report from Investor’s Business Daily last week suggests that all of the uproar about Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreemnt was really just noise and much ado about nothing, as the international pact to address climate change and carbon emissions has been revealed to be essentially worthless.
That’s right, the much-ballyhooed agreement — praised by former President Barack Obama as “a turning point for our planet” — which saw more than 200 nations make pledges to cut carbon dioxide emissions by unreasonable amounts within a short time frame, ostensibly in order to prevent “catastrophic” climate change, has since been exposed as a massive case of all talk and no action.
An organization known as Climate Transparency just released a comprehensive report that focused on the top G-20 nations and looked closely at the actions the individual nations had taken to “transition to a low-carbon economy.” The process involved studying the latest emissions reports from 2017 along with roughly 80 other indicators, including “decarbonisation, climate policies, finance and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.”
Investor’s Business Daily noted that the study had found that none of the G-20 nations had made pledges that were even close to being in line with the goals set by the Paris Agreement, which itself was based on a United Nations-declared minimum acceptable levels of CO2 emissions that would prevent the “catastrophic” warming of the globe by 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
That means that even if all of the G-20 nations had met the pledged CO2 reductions they had set following the Paris Agreement, it still wouldn’t have been enough of a reduction to meet the far lower level of CO2 as set by the U.N.
On top of that, the study found that most of the G-20 nations weren’t even on track to meet the meager CO2 emissions reductions they had pledged themselves to. The study specifically called out the European Union as “not on track to meet its 2030 target” — as well as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Turkey.
Making matters even worse, more than half of the G-20 nations actually saw their level of CO2 emissions increase over the past two years, despite the pledges to reduce such emissions. Specifically, those nations are: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Turkey.
Meanwhile, according to Investor’s Business Daily, Saudi Arabia is on track to actually double its CO2 emissions by 2030. Turkey is pressing forward with more coal-powered energy production in spite of its pledge — as is Japan. Brazil has actually expanded its deforestation operations instead of reducing them, and Russia’s targeted reductions were so ridiculously weak as to not even need a significant reduction to reach them.
And then, of course, there is China, already known as the world’s worst polluter, which fully intends to continue increasing carbon emissions until 2030 before it even begins to think about reducing them to the levels of the Paris Agreement, IBD reported.
All of that to say this: The Paris Agreement was a hoax that was never really about taking substantial steps to protect the environment, and was instead designed to serve as a massive virtue-signaling measure that would kneecap developed national economies to help boost developing and underdeveloped economies, a sickening version of the Marxist desire to redistribute national wealth more equitably.
It never mattered who was part of the agreement. Its goals were below what the environmentalist fantatics wanted, and none of the countries that were so boastful about being a part of the agreement apparently had any intention of ever following through on even their half-hearted commitments.
All of the talk about the glorious achievement of the Paris Agreement was just that, talk, and not at all indicative of any actual achievement, save for the opportunity for nations to appear virtuous and pat themselves on the back as good little environmental Marxists.
Trump was able to see that — as did millions of his supporters — without the aid of the Climate Transparency report on the G-20 nations, which in essence has confirmed that Trump made the right decision in withdrawing the U.S. from the flawed and useless agreement.
Perhaps the most ironic aspect of all of this, though, is that in spite of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement — and in spite of horrified predictions to the contrary from Democrats and the liberal media — the U.S. nevertheless led the world in actually reducing carbon emissions in 2017, based on data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute.
To be sure, there is nothing wrong with nations making efforts to reduce their carbon emissions and other forms of pollution — indeed, such efforts should be generally applauded.
That said, it should be done on an individual and targeted basis by each nation that takes into account its own unique situation, so as not to overly disrupt and hamper its own economy, and not as a part of some meaningless, virtue-signaling international agreement that binds certain countries while allowing free rein to others.
That would be called a sham.
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