Eén jaar nadat Trump zich uit klimaatovereenkomst van Parijs terugtrok: een terugblik

Myron Ebell was de voorzitter van de groep die het klimaatbeleid van de regering Trump in de steigers zette. Op Climategate.nl hebben we regelmatig aandacht aan hem geschonken. Zie bijvoorbeeld hier en hier.

Onder de titel, ‘Trump prefers energy dominance to Paris‘, blikte hij onlangs voor ‘Standpoint’ terug op het feit dat het een jaar geleden is dat Trump de dramatische beslissing nam om uit de klimaatovereenkomst van Parijs te stappen. Ik pik een aantal elementen uit zijn betoog.

In the months leading up to the announcement, intense pressure was put on Trump to stay in Paris from every direction — environmental pressure groups, Democrats in Congress, mainstream media, Hollywood celebrities, countless CEOs of international corporations, and several members of his own administration, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The push by world leaders peaked at the G7 summit meeting in May 2017 in Sicily, but in the end all the cajoling and coaxing from Prime Minister May, Chancellor Merkel, President Macron, and EU Commission President Juncker did not convince Trump to break his campaign promise.

Naderhand maakte Trump een aantal opmerkingen die verwarring stichtten en de voorstanders van ‘Parijs’ hoop gaven dat de VS weer van positie zou veranderen en zich weer bij de overeenkomst zou aansluiten. Maar deze hoop bleek ijdel.

Whatever the motive, his comments have led many political leaders and informed observers in London and other European capitals to a serious misunderstanding. Here is just one example: the French President Emmanuel Macron said in his address to Congress in April, “I’m sure, one day, the United States will come back and join the Paris agreement.”

It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen in the first Trump administration or in a possible second Trump administration. And it will be very difficult for a future president — Democrat or Republican — to get the US back into Paris or any other UN agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas.

To understand why the US is not going to be lured or dragged back into Paris, it’s necessary to take seriously President Trump’s energy agenda and the critical role it plays in his programme to revive economic growth to its historic rate of 3 per cent per year — a level never approached during President Obama’s eight years in office. There are two parts to the administration’s energy agenda: increasing energy production; and using America’s energy price advantage to unleash a manufacturing renaissance. …

The US still uses more oil than it produces, but within a decade is likely to become a net oil exporter. The effects of this stunning turnaround are already being seen in the US trade deficit. Petroleum products accounted for over 30 per cent of the trade deficit in 2008, but less than 10 per cent last year — or a swing of $233 billion.

The effects will also increasingly become apparent in world politics, especially now that Mike Pompeo has replaced Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. As the energy superpower, America’s geopolitical position becomes much stronger as the position of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the other petro-states wanes. As for China, it is now the world’s largest energy user. Although China mines and burns more coal than the US (which is second in both categories), it produces roughly only one-third as much oil and one sixth as much gas as the US. Energy imports are likely to be a growing drag on the Chinese economy at least for several decades.

What should the US do with its immense reserves of coal, oil, and gas? President Obama and his allies in the climate industrial complex thought we should keep as much of it in the ground as possible. After failing in his first term to get legislation through Congress to restrict the use of fossil fuels, in 2013 Obama turned to using the Clean Air Act to promulgate new regulations that would force the closure of many existing coal-fired electric plants and ban the construction of new coal plants. …

The effects of Trump’s energy deregulatory agenda are likely to be huge. Lower energy prices will obviously benefit consumers. Electric rates for households in many American states are below 10 cents per kilowatt hour, while in Britain the rate is 22 cents and in Germany 35 cents. True, Californians and New Yorkers are paying 19 cents, but they and several other states controlled by Democrats are pursuing the European Union’s energy–rationing policies and indeed have promised to keep their share of America’s Paris commitments to reduce emissions.

Keeping electricity rates down is also going to give manufacturers a large energy price advantage over competitors in other countries. Energy–intensive manufacturing is already coming back. The number of jobs in manufacturing is a defective measure because manufacturing output can increase while employment drops due to productivity gains from automation. Nonetheless, it is significant that manufacturing lost over one million jobs in Obama’s eight years, but gained 183,000 in Trump’s first year. ….

As the European Commission states in the first sentence on its Climate Action website and in bold type:

At the Paris climate conference in December 2015, 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding climate deal.

The fact is that the Paris climate treaty is a document expressing good intentions — what is currently called virtue signalling — for every country in the world but one. When the United States makes an international commitment, it stands by its commitment. If it doesn’t, then private parties, which in this case would be that environmental pressure groups, Democratic state governors, and perhaps multinational oil corporations, file suit to force the federal government to keep its commitment. …

Thus staying in Paris would threaten to stymie President Trump’s ambitious plan to revive the American economy through deregulation and on the foundation of immense energy resources. If that plan succeeds, then US greenhouse gas emissions are going to stop declining, as they have done for the past decade, and start increasing again. The Paris treaty’s self-imposed economic straitjacket would make that impossible. ….

By making what still seems a stunning U-turn on climate and energy policies, President Trump has every prospect of leading the United States to a more prosperous and brighter future. Britain, the EU, and the rest of the world would do well to consider following his lead.

Lees verder hier.

Onder de titel, ‘Trump’s Paris Decision One Year Later: Looking Better and Better’, schonk ook Robert Bradley Jr. op WUWT (Watt’s Up With That) aandacht aan de éénjarige verjaardag van Trump’s besluit om zich uit Parijs terug te trekken. Ik pik er een aantal krenten uit.

As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country. This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.

President Trump on the Paris Climate Agreement, June 1, 2017

Climate scientist James Hansen [een fervente Amerikaanse aanhanger van de menselijke broeikashypothese] called it “a fraud really, a fake.” President Donald Trump called it “a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.” And this odd couple of alarmist scientist and skeptical politician agreed: the Obama-led Paris climate accord was all about lobbyists and imaging, not climate change.

Trump’s decision, one year in, remains bold, brilliant, and correct. And it will only get better as the rest of the world confronts the disconnect between what economic coordination and progress require and what starry-eyed bureaucrats want.

Consumers desire the most affordable, plentiful, reliable energies. Taxpayers favor neutrality, non-involvement. And governments ’round the world need to direct their limited resources to real here-and-now problems, not speculative, distant, unsolvable ones. As such, the U.S.–side Paris–deflating decision is pro-world, leaving only parasitic bureaucrats in the cold. …

Trump’s Reasoning

President Trump’s statement one year ago today on the Paris pullout comprised 2,500 words. Here are some highlights:

• “Compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 according to the National Economic Research Associates.”

• “China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years—13…. Not us. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries.”

• “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020…. Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants.”

• “Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree—think of that; this much—Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100…. In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America … in the year 2030.”

• “The [Paris Accord’s] Green Fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars of which the United States has already handed over $1 billion…. In 2015, the Green Climate Fund’s executive director reportedly stated that estimated funding needed would increase to $450 billion per year after 2020. And nobody even knows where the money is going to.”

• “The risks [of the Paris Accord] grow as historically these agreements only tend to become more and more ambitious over time. In other words, the Paris framework is a starting point—as bad as it is—not an end point.”

• “… exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States’ sovereignty and massive future legal liability. Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.”

Conclusion

The case against the Paris Agreement has only grown stronger as its “worthless words,” as Hansen called them, have run up against the reality of a business–as–usual mineral–energy world. China and India are going big with coal. The European Union’s CO₂ emissions are rising. And a globally– connected natural–gas world emerging from the shale–gas boom is locking in a fossil–fuel–future for decades to come.

“The president made a tremendously courageous decision by saying we’re going to get out of the Paris Accord, put America first, and make sure that we lead with action and not words,” stated EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. In fact, Trump’s announcement goes down as one of the greatest single energy–policy moments in recent history …

Lees verder hier.

In tegenspraak met de EU-propaganda ter zake, is de klimaatovereenkomst van Parijs niet bindend. Het is niet meer dan een verzameling intentieverklaringen van landen over hun klimaat– cum energiebeleid in de verre toekomst. De ervaring leert dat daar in het licht van nieuwe regeringen, inzichten, omstandigheden en beleidsprioriteiten nog wel eens verandering in wil komen.

De grootste partij, de VS, heeft zich uit de overeenkomst teruggetrokken. Van andere grote partijen, zoals China en India, zijn het komende decennium geen CO2–reducties te verwachten. Dat geldt eveneens voor alle ontwikkelingslanden. Het resultaat van dit alles is dat Europa zich in een geïsoleerde positie bevindt. Maar Europa heeft zich dermate vastgebeten in haar klimaat– cum energiebeleid dat het blind wenst voort te gaan op de ingeslagen weg, waarbij landen als Nederland zich als voortrekkers profileren.

Dat is uiterst onverstandig getuigenisbeleid, dat de posities van de belangrijkste wereldspelers op dit terrein negeert. Europa is in haar eentje niet in staat een significante invloed op het klimaat uit te oefenen (als dit al überhaupt mogelijk zou zijn, zelfs als alle landen mee zouden doen), terwijl het welvaartsverlies dat de betrokken landen daardoor lijden immens is. ‘All pain and no gain!’

Zie ook mijn interview met Hajo Smit op Weltschmerz hier.