Climate Change Weekly # 563—COP 30 Week Two: Paris Agreement Failure Redux
By Sterling Burnett
James Hansen is a former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is often referred to as the father of global warming. Hansen was clearly right about one thing: the Paris climate agreement was doomed to fail from its inception, only in part for the reason Hansen was concerned about. In fact, it has failed.
COP30, a carbon dioxide (CO2)-fest of sorts, is failing. Major emitters have not shown up. Virtually all nations and regions are in serious noncompliance with their Paris Agreement goals, according to Climate Tracker, and the gap is widening. The new pitch is less about emissions than about the fantasy of cheap wind and solar and batteries heralding a new energy era. Yet the energy transition has been demoted to energy addition and now energy duplication; that is, rising energy prices resulting from climate policies.
James Hansen is a realist when it comes to the United Nations’ global warming negotiations; wind and solar energies; and the lobbying frenzy surrounding the issue. His statements should be remembered as the Paris Climate Agreement, the successor to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, turns ten years old this month.
In an interview with The Guardian in late 2015, the father of the climate alarm startled the rejoicing Progressive Left with this verdict post-COP21:
[The Paris agreement] is a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: “We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.” It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.
Continuing with these pronouncements from Hansen in the same year:
Watch what happens in Paris carefully to see if all that the leaders do is sign off on the pap that UN bureaucrats are putting together, indulgences and promises to reduce future emissions, and then clap each other on the back and declare success.
And:
Big Green consists of several ‘environmental’ organizations, including Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), each with $100+M budgets, each springing from high-minded useful beginnings, each with more high-priced lawyers than you can shake a stick at. EDF … was chief architect of the disastrous Kyoto lemon. NRDC proudly claims credit for Obama’s EPA strategy and foolishly allows it to migrate to Paris.
