BJORN LOMBORG: Trump cuts show Paris treaty is a paper tiger.
In truth, Trump’s action just exposes what we have known for a while: The Paris Agreement is not the way to solve global warming.
Even if every nation fulfilled everything promised — including Obama’s undertakings — it would get us nowhere near achieving the treaty’s much-hyped, unrealistic promise to keep temperature rises under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The U.N. itself has estimated that even if every country lived up to every single promised carbon cut between 2016 and 2030, emissions would be cut by just one-hundredth of what is needed to keep temperature rises below 2 C.
My analysis, similar to findings by scientists at MIT, shows that even if these promises were extended for 70 more years, then they’d only reduce temperature rises about 0.3 degrees F by 2100.
Moreover, many poor nations signed up to the treaty largely because of a promise of $100 billion a year of “climate aid” from rich nations, starting from 2020. Over the past five years, rich countries have managed to come up with only a 10th of one year’s promise.
Even its most ardent supporters treat their Paris obligations like the sham they are.
And in this country at least, calling the Paris agreement a treaty is a misnomer. Former President Obama never submitted it for Senate approval, relying instead on his pen and phone to give it more legal weight than it actually has.