It is time for checking the pockets. Donald Trump killed
the whole deal by pulling out.
THE G-20
The G-20 is a twice-annual public relations festival of
photo opportunities where heads of state get to let voters back home know how
important they are.
The only problem is, the G-20 meetings are not important.
Nothing ever comes out of them that changes anything.
The G-20 always ends with a series of pronouncements.
These pronouncements carry no weight. No money is transferred. No sanctions are
imposed. The G-20 is toothless.
This year, Trump buried it by pulling out of the Paris
Accords, a really big PR stunt by the impotent United Nations. In response to
Trump's decision, the G-20 announced:
The Leaders of the other G20 members state
that the Paris Agreement is irreversible. We reiterate the importance of
fulfilling the UNFCCC commitment by developed countries in providing means of
implementation including financial resources to assist developing countries
with respect to both mitigation and adaptation actions in line with Paris
outcomes and note the OECD’s report “Investing in Climate, Investing in
Growth”. We reaffirm our strong commitment to the Paris Agreement, moving
swiftly towards its full implementation in accordance with the principle of
common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the
light of different national circumstances and, to this end, we agree to the G20
Hamburg Climate and Energy Action Plan for Growth as set out in the Annex.
Without the United
States in the agreement, it is dead in the water. The United States government
has no intention of enforcing anything, or even acknowledging the legitimacy of
the criteria, and the Paris Accords are as impotent as the United Nations, and
the whole world knows it.
This is why it is so amusing that the G-20 bureaucrats
thought it was important to get the politicians to sign this announcement. The
bureaucrats do not perceive that the obvious impotence of the Paris Accords
make the following language political theater: "the Paris Agreement is
irreversible." What in fact is irreversible is Donald Trump's decision to
pull the plug on the whole stunt.
There is no way for them to come back 3 1/2 years down
the road and tell the public that the Paris Accords are just as important in
2021 as they were in 2017. If nothing's happened in the interim, there really
is not anything to worry about. In fact, there is not anything to worry about.
But a three half-year delay reminds the public that all the hoopla about the
necessity of the Paris Accords was political balderdash. Nothing happened
between 2017 and 2021.
The Paris Accords had no teeth. Trump has now made this
clear to the whole world. He has put the whole project on hold, and nothing bad
has happened. Nothing bad will happen. No apocalyptic scenario is going to come
true.
The global warmers desperately wanted some kind of
official sanction for the legitimacy of the global warming scenario. Now the
largest nation in the West has opted out. What is the warmers' fallback
position now?
It is clear that Trump is not going to promote any kind
of foreign aid program based on global warming. Yet that was a big part of the
whole stunt.
A Republican Congress is not going to force Trump to send
hundreds of millions of global warming dollars to the political basket cases
known as the Third World. The Democrats, should they come into power in 2019,
can write any bill that they want, but Trump will veto it.
Trump has made it clear to politicians of the West that
their agenda with respect to global warming is in the freezer until he is out
of office. They are trying to breathe new life into the corpse, but it isn't
working.
The Paris Accords are all dead, not mostly dead.