Editorial
The Washington Examiner
11/13/2014
It was Tuesday evening in the United States when President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced their nations had come to a historic agreement on climate change that supposedly represented a “breakthrough.” The United States pledged to reduce its carbon emissions to 25 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The Chinese pledged that they would stop their own emissions from increasing after they peak in 2030.
Obama’s backers crowed, finally having gotten some good news this month. It was a huge development, right?
Well, not really. In November 2012, the Guardian reported as disappointing news that analysts had reached “a consensus that barring any significant changes in policy, China’s emissions will rise until around 2030 — when the country’s urbanization peaks, and its population growth slows — and then begins to fall.” In other words, China did not agree to anything in this “deal” that wasn’t already expected to happen on its own.
As for the U.S. side of the deal, it is slightly more ambitious but completely nonbinding. Congress is obviously not going to go along with mandatory carbon curbs. On both sides, the climate cynicism is obvious…
The editorial continues at The Washington Examiner.
Related: The People’s Cube, Obama to China: we’ll destroy our economy by 2030; you next
Oh! Glorious Day, comrades! Dear Leader has, once again, shown us the way to make friends and save the planet…
Update: Obama’s Climate of Defeat in Beijing
…President Obama sees an agreement with China, regardless of its actual content, as a step towards a global agreement to be negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations next year. It is the prospect of climate peace in our time. But how this agreement was described in the US-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change should raise red flags…
