In the Rose Garden yesterday, President Trump said, “In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.”
He dismissed the Paris Climate Accord (PCA) as “the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.” (Editor’s note: The full transcript of Trump’s remarks is at the bottom of this post.)
Naturally, this has leftists apoplectic.
Prior to Trump’s speech, John D. Sutter, the CNN columnist and millennial nitwit who suggested that we start eating dog meat, claimed ditching the PCA “would be a middle finger to the future.” In a column littered with the typical authoritative phrases we’ve come to expect from the Climate Chicken Littles—“consensus of climate science,” “science on this is solid,” etc.—Sutter insists the “fate of the planet—and the mess we shove on future generations—hangs in the balance.”
Perhaps the future Sutter is referring to is that of the global elites, who will no doubt benefit politically from the PCA and will find ways to benefit from it financially. Undoubtedly, their future is threatened if the U.S. refuses to play along.
But the future of American workers is endangered if we go along with PCA. Trump wants to return manufacturing jobs to the U.S., and that can’t be done by reducing energy production as required by the PCA. Adhering to the agreement would almost surely require the U.S. to ramp up production in renewable energy—i.e., wind and solar—which is tremendously inefficient.
It would also force us to commit to some sort of carbon trading scheme. There are two such systems in the world. The one in Europe has been a dismal failure. The other, an agreement among states in the Northeast, has…well, let those brilliant whippersnappers at Vox explain it to you: “The Northeast’s carbon trading system works quite well. It just doesn’t reduce much carbon.”
Then there is the PCA’s big insult to anyone with more intelligence than a toad: Wealthy nations will have to provide “climate financing” to nations in the developing world to help them adjust to the changing climate and develop renewable energy. Given the history of corruption in foreign aid, do the global elites really expect us to believe that third world leaders will do what they are supposed to with climate financing dollars?
We should all just give the PCA a middle finger.
