Today, the new administration is set to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, an international treaty among almost 200 nations to combat global warming. President Trump, who had declared climate change to be a “hoax,” announced the United States’s withdrawal from the agreement early in his term, making the U.S. one of only three countries to reject it. President Biden has promised to rejoin on his first day in office and has put together what President Clinton’s climate advisor called “by far the most experienced, high-level climate team in U.S. history.”
Apart from being necessary from a policy perspective, it is also a vitally important sign of the embrace of science and truth over denial and conspiracy theories.
Trump’s rejection of the Paris agreement in 2017 was a massive blow to the morale of the reality-based community. CFI’s Point of Inquiry podcast did two climate-focused episodes in the immediate aftermath to grapple with what it would all mean. Former Sierra Club president Carl Pope had the more optimistic take, and the perspective from The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction, was, shall we say, less so.
Image: UNClimatechange CC-BY-2.0
8 comments on “We’ll Always Have Paris”
As far as I’m concerned the Paris Climate Agreement is pathetic and has no vision. I don’t know why people talk about it like some bench mark or major development. It really doesn’t address the core of the problem. Which is too many people and too much development. More is not good. And that includes more people. The United States under the new administration is still unlikely to forge a long-term plan that actually makes sense. They invent mythical terms like “zero-carbon based energy.” And “a zero carbon economy.” They’re absolutely delusional. Nothing the human race does is zero carbon. Every fetus still in the womb already has a carbon footprint.The U.S. is an energy pig and yearly substantial increase in energy demand is guaranteed when the economy recovers. And the country spews carbon like no other as it apparently is going to add 100 million more people to its population every 50 years. The worst part is that every country in the world wants economic power like the U.S. They want development like ours. They want huge, dirty, over-crowded cities with skyscrapers that have their own zip code. Where housing is scarce and ridiculously expensive. And the city government always crippled by debt.Globalists or Third-worlders or whatever you want to name them have this mystical vision rooted in Marxism of an egalitarian world where power, riches, and development will be equally shared. They have proposed a mythical theory that economic development of the Third World will stop their destructive population growth. When really there is nothing on record to suggest that is true. Actually what we see happening is the opposite. As countries develop economically their populations continue to swell. Because the globalists’ theory is not based on science or data. It’s based on a political vision. So it was inevitable that politics would interfere with a cogent vision about climate change. What we see in the climate change debate is heavy rhetoric about “environmental justice.” The translation for that is that developed nations will be forced to help the Third World develop. Like that’s a good thing. Let’s just use one country for an example. But there are many examples. The disaster that is Pakistan is one of them. Guatemala is one of the poorest nations in the world. They really don’t have much going for them with natural resources. But still their population will double in the next 25 years. Because they just won’t stop having babies. And U.S. border enforcement has dealt with thousands of unaccompanied children from that nation crossing into the U.S. Minor children without adults. That nation can’t keep their population under control yet they will send their children to the U.S. to be raised here like our country is a giant orphanage. It’s a deadly treadmill trap for the U.S. to be forced into perpetually increasing its GDP just to keep up with incurred debt. And GDP is not keeping up. The key to climate change for the entire world is to stop growing and stop developing. Stop increasing population. Stop laying asphalt and concrete. And then we can talk about a future with carbon under control. Because what this supposedly important agreement is for the long term and in actual impact is a mere gesture.
Sorry this has so many factual errors it is dangerous.
Guatemala is very unlikely to double its population ever and certainly not in 25 years. Currently 19 million, it is expected to peak at 32 million in 2085. (Latest UN population projections, which are proving to be very reliable so far.) Total fertility rate is falling nicely and whilst lagging global average at 2.9, it will pass 2.3 (their replacement rate) in 2040, catching up with global rates.
Most importantly, THEY ARE NOT A CARBON THREAT like the USA. Guatemala is responsible for 0.6% of the carbon emissions the USA is.
The evidence from epidemiologists absolutely nails total fertility rate as a resultant correlate of poverty and for very clear reasons. Poor folk use children as insurance against their own ill health and old age when either comes.
Development, like the burgeoning off grid developments in Africa and India, ensure their carbon trajectory as they lift themselves out of poverty will be nothing like we earlier dirty countries, the UK, and the USA. Each successive industrialisation has had lower and lower carbon intensities and the late arrivals will use the least.
Grow up America. A few more immigrants into a country with a population density 90 per square mile (UK 700 and still mostly green spaces) will only lift your economy.
Nor does that mean it must consume more if you focus on circular economic models. (This is your real issue as you are nudging towards. The USA has one of the least sustainable economies. Your first need is to tackle the dementedly narrow perspective of neo-classical economics, and the kleptocracy it sustains. Germany is a better model, Low GINI, Trade surplus and a whole days less work per week because the bosses pay is civilised. They can far more afford to be green.)
And what’s this about dirty cities? City dwellers have the lowest carbon footprints of all citizens.
Whilst I’m about it. Not only has asphalt only 5 to 10% of the embodied carbon as concrete, roads made with it have double the lifespan (20 years not 10). The USA tend to specify concrete for roads where the UK for instance is wedded to asphalt. This is harmful scrimping on infrastructure.
A final suggestion to all.
The best two hours you’ll ever spend contemplating the future prospects of the planet are to be found here…
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/
The most revealing historical and projected curves under “probabilistic projections” then “population” are
total population; 0-14; 0-24
Under “probabilistic projections” then “fertility” is
total fertility (number of children per woman)
Under “probabilistic projections” then “life expectancy” is
both sexes
And all for every country and larger region.
Taking the World and total fertility we see that global fertility crashed after 1970. Replacement rate is 2.1 for developed countries and 2.3 for less developed countries due to worsened health/lifespan.
Look at the population of young folk 0-14, 0-24 and see it has flat-topped already more or less. We already know by this that the population is peaking. Why is it still going up? Look at life expectancy and look at its steady rise as healthcare becomes widespread. The health dividend will continue to carry population numbers up for a generation or two even after total fertility falls below replacement rate.
Now compare Guatemala with Cuba. Healthcare and welfare have crashed Cuban fertility rates, so much so that its population has peaked AND its already decent life expectancy continues to rise.
Lifting people out of poverty doesn’t mean everyone is craving American lifestyles (shudder). They/we are not. More to the point the Cuban carbon footprint is only 30% above Guatemala per capita. A Guatemalan produces 10% of an American’s Carbon emission, a Cuban 13%.
Controlling others’ fertility is a distraction to the problem of economic reform in richer nations. More to the point it is necessarily coercive, with huge potential kick-back and will plunge the already poor into still greater poverty removing some of their only assets from them (kids). Substitute those assets like Cuba (other social democratic models exist in northern Europe) and the problem fixes itself with the greatest possible satisfaction to all.
We already can feed everyone well enough, if only we cared and organised better, so the fears of burgeoning populations for a few generations more is not the issue in itself.
The issue is waking up to sustainability and circular economies and swapping financial institutions from short-term gambling to long-term infrastructure investments to meet the needs of the next two generations.
What is thrilling about developing nations is that they can (and do) leapfrog technology and implement the new, reduced and zero carbon technologies right from the outset. The priority for those not working in the area but in rich hydrocarbon guzzling nations is to worry about who to vote for to put your own dirty house in order.
Excellent sequence of posts there, Phil – thank you.
I’m becoming increasingly tired of wealthy (in global terms, anyway), white Westerners demanding that poorer, black people in the developing world make drastic sacrifices to fix the messes that we WWWs have created in the first place.
Exactly so, Marco.
Apologies to Dennis if I/we came on a bit strong there. But the needs are thumpingly plain (gas and oil guzzling must stop with the worst most drastically) and there is a lot of rear-guard misdirection coming out from old, dirty industries keen to delay and harass those inevitable changes.
Laurie’s link to the interview with Kim Stanley Robinson in the book thread is most worthwhile.
Laurie’s link doesn’t work so directly and my earlier link to the same material doesn’t work at all now, so here’s a third…https://www.breaker.audio/the-ezra-klein-show/e/76978090
Thanks Phil. Your new link works just fine.