Although Absurd, the Proposed Paris Treaty Is Still Very Dangerous

The proposed Paris non-treaty treaty, even though it objectively does little to advance the stated objectives of the climate alarmist cause, is nevertheless dangerous because it is contributing to that cause. The very weak logical connection to achieving the movement’s stated goal–reduced human CO₂ emissions–does not make it benign since the movement as a whole is very dangerous to the future of Western economic progress, objective science, and economic development, as explained in my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad.

The cause is somewhat less dangerous to the rest of the world since they generally realize that economic advancement is far more important than the alleged threats to the world’s climate from slightly more human caused emissions of CO₂. But in the Western World there are actually people who believe the climate fantasy and that it is worth sacrificing economic growth and development for the unproven and almost certainly imaginary alleged climate change reduction resulting from an imperceptibly slower growth rate of human CO₂ emissions than might otherwise occur without the proposed treaty.

The Paris Proposed Treaty Has Some Public Relations Benefits to the Climate Alarmists

Although the climate alarmist spinmeisters have had to work extra hard to portray the proposed Paris treaty as a huge triumph for the climate movement, it will still play an important role in perpetuating their continuing fantasy. One reason for its importance to the movement is that Paris was not another total disaster like Copenhagen. And it will be used to argue that there actually is a unified international climate alarmist movement despite the overwhelming evidence of a basic split between the developed countries (DCs) and less developed countries (LDCs) on this issue. This split first became evident at Kyoto in 1997 and had a devastating effect on the Copenhagen conference 1n 2009.

Another reason for the importance of the proposed Paris treaty is that Obama and other alarmist supporters apparently plan to wage their “transformative” campaign for CO₂ reductions politically rather than primarily through legislative action. Obama has already claimed that the Republican Party is the only major party in the Western World to “deny climate change” (translation–oppose his climate program), and appears to hope that climate alarmists can sway public opinion enough to carry them to “victory” despite the lack of enough Senate votes to ratify the proposed Paris treaty. If this is their aim, the proposed Paris treaty is of some importance as a campaign platform to sway public opinion.

A third reason for concern is the possible interaction between the proposed Paris treaty and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which if approved by the Senate could provide a backdoor enforcement mechanism for the proposed Paris treaty.

The proposed treaty has repaired some of the public relations damage done at Copenhagen and provided an improved facade of unity, but has done little to solve the basic underlying DC/LDC split, which is unlikely to ever go away given the overwhelming importance of increasing fossil fuel use to LDC economic development.

The skeptic movement in the Western World, however, ignores the climate alarmist movement and its proposed Paris treaty at its peril and the very real danger that it poses for future economic progress in the Western World. India and China will continue to pursue their economic self-interest despite all the new verbiage to try to hide their differences with the Western climate alarmists. But the facade looks better and the split is a little less obvious to casual observers.