People should learn from their mistakes. The last time President Obama took it upon himself to “lead” a U.N. climate fest was at Copenhagen in December, 2009, which, from the point of view of my greener friends, was a notorious failure.
Today, he’s back, this time at Ban Ki-moon’s U.N. “climate summit,” but not a lot of his global peers are going to be there. Prime Ministers from China, India, Canada, Australia and Germany have all decided to stay home.
Together, they emit almost three times what the U.S. does, which means we are going it alone in New York. Any policy we agree to is meaningless. According to the EPAs “Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change” (yes, it is MAGICC), if we emitted not another molecule of carbon dioxide between tomorrow and January 1, 2100, the amount of warming that would be prevented is a mere 0.14°C, an amount too small to reliably measure. That’s probably an overestimate, too, as the EPA appears to have overestimated 21st century warming.
EPA assumes that the “sensitivity” of surface temperature to a carbon dioxide doubling is 3°C, an amount very likely far too great, compared to what is being observed. Or, perhaps, compared to what is not being observed, as global surface temperatures have held constant for 17+ years now (actually 19, according to Cato scholar and eco-statistician Ross McKitrick), according to the surface annual temperature history that climate scientists cite the most. So the “saved” warming from any policy is likely to be even less than what MAGICC says.
You’re not going to hear that from the President. As happened at the 2009 Copenhagen disaster, the President and the Secretary-General will declare a roaring success.
In Copenhagen, that meant that all participants had to submit specific action plans to reduce emissions within two months. But, a bit more than a month before the deadline, the U.N.’s climate commissioner, Yvo deBoer, announced that they really didn’t have to. Then he resigned.
There’s still no new international agreement to replace the failed Kyoto Protocol. But, last month, the President got people pretty worked up when he proposed a new, U.N.-sponsored agreement (a treaty—or a modification of an existing one—by any other name) on climate change that he didn’t think would require ratification by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, counter to what is explicitly stated in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of our constitution:
[The President] shall have Power, by and with Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…
Not only is the president going to be quite lonely at the U.N., he could be setting the country up for a huge constitutional conflagration.
It’s not going to happen on his watch, though. Any agreement that he signs on to won’t likely take effect until at least 2016. Even under the most rosy Democrat-wave election that year (one is likely to happen, given the demographics of the Senate crowd that is up for re-election), there’s no way 67 are going to vote to ratify a treaty that differentially harms the U.S. while China and India keep increasing their emissions dramatically.
Of course we’re going to hear the rhetoric, repeated again today, that the U.S. has to “lead by example.” Well, Mr. President, with those big emitters and the developing world saying “no way,” no one is going to follow. In 2012, the last year for which we have reliable data, the U.S. contributed 14% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Together, the five big no-shows emitted almost three times as much as us, and their fraction can only grow as both China and India are determined to develop their economies.
If we were really going to lead by example we would show the world how our free economy has resulted in investments in clean, big power sources like shale gas. The developing world is currently lacking in large sources of dense energy. If we’re going “lead by example,” maybe that example should be that governments should get out of the way of economic development and cleaner energy will follow.
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