ROGER SIMON: Climate Change: Last Year’s Fad Goes to Paris:

In the immortal words of H. L. Mencken, “When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”

I saw this up close and personal myself while covering COP-15 in Copenhagen for these digital pages back in 2009.  Even then there was something more than vaguely dubious about the enterprise and it seemed appropriate that the conference was taking place in a blinding snow storm, a winter wonderland of global warming.  And what a boondoggle it was! Half the U.S. Congress seemed to be there, all arriving on a chartered jet in Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen. When I ran into Cong. Charlie Rangel in the gift shop of the Marriott, where he was perusing some elegant Scandinavian jewelry, and asked him if he believed in man-made global warming, he stared at me in astonishment.  How could I ask anything so preposterous, he seemed to be saying, questioning the received wisdom of the ages, and turned to the clerk, gesturing toward some silver cufflinks.

Earlier that day I had asked the same question of a delegate sitting beside me at one of the interminable panel discussions.  By chance he came from one of the Pacific Islands said to be in danger of disappearing from the rising ocean level.  His response to my question was much more forthcoming than Rangel’s.  He laughed and shook his head.  Then why are you here, I asked?  “For the money,” he said, still grinning.  And then he punched my shoulder playfully.

Even beyond the Gleichschaltung and crony corporatism (but I repeat myself) aspects of COP-21, it’s tailor-made for a president whose bespoke clothes contain no one within them: As Charles Krauthammer noted last night, Mr. Obama “Lives in His Own ‘Idealistic and Deluded, Undergrad Imagination.’”