Posted on 02/22/2021 8:32:58 AM PST by karpov
The U.S. officially rejoined the Paris climate accord on Friday to much media and European applause. Our guess is that China is the most pleased because it knows the accord will restrict American energy while Beijing gets a decade-long free ride.
Paris is a voluntary agreement, and nations submit their own commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The Obama Administration vowed to slash emissions 26% or more from 2005 levels by 2025, but the Trump Administration withdrew from the accord. President Biden has now pledged to reach “net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”
Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden is committing the U.S. without submitting the Paris agreement to the Senate as a treaty. They know it would never get a two-thirds vote for approval, and probably not even a simple majority. Yet the Administration will cite Paris to justify sweeping environmental regulations to raise the cost of fossil fuels and subsidize renewable energy and electric vehicles. It will bypass Congress for much of this.
The economic damage will be real. A 2017 analysis of the Obama Paris commitments, by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation, predicted a $250 billion reduction in GDP and some 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025.
Meanwhile, China emitted nearly twice as much CO2 as the U.S. in 2018. Yet under Paris, Beijing gets a pass to increase its emissions until 2030. In 2020 China’s coal plants produced some 4,874 terawatt hours of energy—an increase of nearly 15% since it joined the pact, according to S&P Global Platts.
A new report by the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor highlights that “in 2020, China built over three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined—the equivalent of more than one large coal plant per week.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Other big carbon emitters like India are cheering, too.
Thanks!
China Joe rejoins an illegal treaty. Illegal because the Senate must ratify, but hasn’t.
Article II, section 2:
“[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; “
Yeah, tell us again, how much leftist "care" about the planet.
China made Billions by building coal fired plants at home and also abroad. Biden and the Marxists are hell bent on taking America down.
“Other big carbon emitters like India are cheering, too.”
Didn’t we read the other day that Mexico plans to build coal fired plants? Wonder which way the Mexico winds blow?
I thought Treaties had to be approved by Vote of Congress.. . . Not valid if done by Executive Order. That is why President Trump was able to UNDO Resident Obama’s EO (with his EO) when Obama tried unofficially to fool everyone that he joined the Paris Accord, when he really didn’t.
bkmk
We have 15 coal plants in operation and China has over 5000 and is building 1000 more in the next few years.
This “agreement” has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with wealth transfer, the transfer of the our manifacturing base out of our country and the hastening of our decline.
Nobody believes that America-last, nipple pinching retard won. But I can’t believe that there aren’t enough reps and senators from both sides of the aisles to check some of these insane policy initiatives.
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