President Obama and the President of China jointly have announced a deal on carbon emissions . . . for 2030, when both of them will be in retirement. The details of the deal have yet to be hammered out — or hammered and sickled out, as the case may be.
The Western media are cheering this as an historic agreement. It is in fact a bilateral PR stunt.
Obama calls this “a major milestone.” It is in fact a major headstone. It marks an interred corpse. This deal is dead on arrival.
Because China never reports its carbon emissions in detail, the deal is operationally irrelevant. Because Obama doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hawaii of getting any carbon emissions deal past Congress, the deal is operationally irrelevant. The Western media are cheering about this, as if it represents a major breakthrough. It is in fact evidence that Obama is the lamest lame-duck President since Herbert Hoover.
This guy is grabbing at straws. He is trying to turn “No, you can’t,” into “Yes, I can.”
It is a deal that has been in planning stages secretly for five months. He announced it to the voters exactly a week after his party had its head handed to it in the mid-term elections.
All of this is preparation for a new treaty through the United Nations in 2015. But no President ever bothered to submit the 1997 Kyoto Protocol Agreement to the Senate for ratification. It was supposed to go into effect in February 2005. It is a dead letter. It is unenforceable. No one tries to enforce it.
The White House bulletin speaks only of “intention,” as in “I intend to divorce my wife, and marry you, because I am committed to you [every Thursday].”
3. Today, the Presidents of the United States and China announced their respective post-2020 actions on climate change, recognizing that these actions are part of the longer range effort to transition to low-carbon economies, mindful of the global temperature goal of 2℃. The United States intends to achieve an economy-wide target of reducing its emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025 and to make best efforts to reduce its emissions by 28%. China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early and intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030. Both sides intend to continue to work to increase ambition over time.
What about sanctions for violating specific standards? No mention of this. Just intentions.
Who might impose such sanctions? The United Nations? How would the U.N. enforce its authority, assuming that it can get the world’s politicians to surrender sovereignty to the U.N.?
2. To this end, President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping reaffirmed the importance of strengthening bilateral cooperation on climate change and will work together, and with other countries, to adopt a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties at the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris in 2015. They are committed to reaching an ambitious 2015 agreement that reflects the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.
Translation: “The UN’s PR stunt of 2005 failed, so we will try again in 2015.”
4. The United States and China hope that by announcing these targets now, they can inject momentum into the global climate negotiations and inspire other countries to join in coming forward with ambitious actions as soon as possible, preferably by the first quarter of 2015. The two Presidents resolved to work closely together over the next year to address major impediments to reaching a successful global climate agreement in Paris.
Translation: “A lame duck President and a Communist career hack — ‘United States’ and ‘China’ — are now going to ‘work together.’ ” I mean, what could go wrong?
An historic agreement? “Yes, I see! Yes, I believe! Yes, we can!”
It is the next stage of a U.N. PR stunt that is going nowhere, announced 22 years after the 1992 Kyoto resolves, which went went nowhere.
This will be forgotten in a couple of weeks. The UN will not get its treaty ratified in 2015. There will be no enforcement of any of this.
It is, in short, ObamaGas.
If you'll notice, China didn't AGREE to anything! And Obie is just beating the "global Warming/ Climate Change" drum. You would think that after six years — almost seven — he'd LEARN to be a president. But his adoring retinue of Nobel committee, "enlightened" personas and "news" media have kept him elevated above the fray. He reminds me of the guy who jumps into the crowd off the stage and everyone holds him up in a prone position. Well, his "presidency" has been a waste of oxygen, and a big, self-induced "wedgie" to the whole world. Thanks, liberal voters. 'Hope you've learned your lesson. By the way, seven of the 13 years the U.S. has been "at war" have been under HIS watch (but he wasn't watching, was he — he was on the 13th tee).