Timothy Birdnow

A couple of quick thoughts on Trump pulling the U.S. out of the non-treaty Paris Accord:

First, had he failed to do that he would have sealed his fate as a one term President. Mr. Trump has reneged on a number of campaign promises, and a failure to follow through on this one would have lost him the northern tier states. I don't like the way Trump did it, because he spoke of "renegotiating the deal" and made some conciliatory noises. That isn't the man we elected; we elected a bull whose purpose was to smash china into little shards, and there is no climate deal that will ever be good for the U.S. The whole point of Paris and these other international deals is to reach into the pocket of the U.S., and to restrain us. WE are the mark in this game and any deal is a case of our falling for the three card monty game.

But, but, but we are now only the third U.N. member not in the Accord! Liberal heads are exploding over that point. Well, so what? The whole deal exists because of the U.S., and it will crumble without us. Like the old League of Nations which faded away after the U.S. Senate would not ratify it, so too the Paris accord will fade away as none of the participants intended to do anything anyway. They knew the U.S. would honor the agreement, and send money, money, money! Like NATO members not paying their share, so too the Paris members would simply ignore it knowing that we would be the patsy.

And, as your mother probably asked you when you were young, if everyone jumped off a cliff would you do it too? If Europe wants to committ suicide it is their business, but we don't have to follow them.

These types of international deals were the whole purpose of the Global Warming scare from the beginning; create a powerful international order capable of overriding and eventually supplanting the nation states.

Doubt that? well don't. In a Brussels press conference Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change spilled the beans:

"This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,"

Now, this was not a wild statement by some radical NGO, but from the U.N. brass. THEY clearly see this as a money and power grab, a way to fundamentally transform human civilization. Ecological protection is clearly unimportant - if it matters at all here.

And Figueres is not alone in such drivel:

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres - "The problem is that many of our societies have an addicted –an addiction to cheap energy"

Former head of Greenpeace Gerd Leipold - "We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. … The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model,”

Former French President Jaques Chirac - "the first component of an authentic global governance. For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance.”

Former Vice President Al Gore - "I bring you good news from the U.S., ...Climate bill will help bring about global governance....But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.

Get the picture?

And they are also about redistributing wealth. The documentfor the Copenhagen summit and that eventually defined Paris clearly spelled out a massive sucking sound as trillions of dollars would be pulled out of the wealthy nations - mainly the U.S. - and given to the less wealthy. According to a Fox News report from 2009 discussing the U.N. working group's recommendations for the Copenhagen meeting:

"Among the tools that are considered are the cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions that has been espoused by the Obama administration; "carbon taxes" on imported fuels and energy-intensive goods and industries, including airline transportation; and lower subsidies for those same goods, as well as new or higher subsidies for goods that are considered "environmentally sound."

Other tools are referred to only vaguely, including "energy policy reform," which the report indicates could affect "large-scale transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports." When it comes to the results of such reform, the note says only that it could have "positive consequences for alternative transportation providers and producers of alternative fuels."

In the same bland manner, the note informs negotiators without going into details that cap-and-trade schemes "may induce some industrial relocation" to "less regulated host countries." Cap-and-trade functions by creating decreasing numbers of pollution-emission permits to be traded by industrial users, and thus pay more for each unit of carbon-based pollution, a market-driven system that aims to drive manufacturers toward less polluting technologies.

The note adds only that industrial relocation "would involve negative consequences for the implementing country, which loses employment and investment." But at the same time it "would involve indeterminate consequences for the countries that would host the relocated industries."

There are also entirely new kinds of tariffs and trade protectionist barriers such as those termed in the note as "border carbon adjustment"— which, the note says, can impose "a levy on imported goods equal to that which would have been imposed had they been produced domestically" under more strict environmental regimes.

Another form of "adjustment" would require exporters to "buy [carbon] offsets at the border equal to that which the producer would have been forced to purchase had the good been produced domestically."

The impact of both schemes, the note says, "would be functionally equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered foreign producers." (There is no definition in the report of who, exactly, is "foreign.") The note adds that "If they were implemented fairly, such schemes would leave trade and investment patterns unchanged." Nothing is said about the consequences if such fairness was not achieved."

End excerpt.

Naturally the Plutocrats in the Trump Administration were pushing to remain in Paris because it meant money to their respective organizations. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was a vocal champion of remaining (he was the guy who had Exxon Mobile switch sides in the global warming war when he was CEO) and so was Trump's darling daughter and son-in-law, who fancy themselves cosmopolitan citizens of the world. But Trump's base hated the deal and largely understood what it was about. Had Trump caved on this it would have been his end.

Now hopefully he'll regrow his stones and tackle some of his other campaign promises (amazing how so many men who tangle with Hillary wind up emasculated, their family jewels being deposited in Hil's testicle lock box.)

But as of right now, we must give The Donald a big attaboy.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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