The UN and the Biden Administration Want Net Zero for the U.S.—While China Opts for Energy Realism
13 hours ago Guest Blogger 50 Comments
By Rupert Darwall
September 16, 2024
Six days after this November’s presidential election, the annual United Nations climate change talks will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan. Unlike the election, no one is holding their breath. Baku will be the twenty-ninth in the series. Climate change regularly draws gatherings of world leaders like no other. When the U.S. president shows up, everyone who is anyone turns up, too. These events often represent milestones in the upward ascent of global climate action. In the beginning, there was the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, attended by President George H. W. Bush. Then came the Kyoto Protocol, with President Bill Clinton shrewdly sending Vice President Al Gore to Japan. The 2009 Copenhagen climate summit (attended by President Barack Obama) is memory-holed; that’s when China, along with India, Brazil, and South Africa, vetoed a binding climate treaty, redeemed by the 2015 Paris climate agreement (President Obama again).
Yet the only year that matters for climate realism is 2006, the year of the great cross-over, when China’s emissions of carbon dioxide overtook those of the United States. This helps explain why China wielded its veto three years later at the Copenhagen climate summit. By 2019, America’s carbon dioxide emissions had fallen by 875 million metric tons from their 2005 peak. Over the same period, China’s rose by 3,511 million metric tons. Twelve years of falling American carbon dioxide emissions were erased by three years of rising Chinese emissions.
Source:
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissionsThis leads to a reality check about America’s climate policy as practiced by Presidents Obama and Joe Biden. In terms of the amount of human-induced carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere, what America does or does not do is of decreasing significance. The emissions math nullifies the claim of solipsistic climate activists that unless the U.S. drives its emissions towards zero, various forms of climate catastrophe will be visited on Americans. But here’s the rub: even though America’s emissions account for a rapidly declining proportion of global emissions, the negative economic impact of climate policy on the U.S. economy, on jobs, and on Americans’ standard of living is growing.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/09/18/the-un-and-the-biden-administration-want-net-zero-for-the-u-s-while-china-opts-for-energy-realism/
