OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Now will the climate-change swindlers shut up?
They got the treaty in Paris that Barack Obama says saved the world from vanishing into a black hole in space.
Have the nations of the world finally resolved the ills and pains of prostitution, wars, disease, rush-hour traffic, date rape, racism, sexism, Confederate flags waving in the breeze, airline turbulence, the infield-fly rule and diplomatic gasbaggery that make Planet Earth all but uninhabitable?
Well, not exactly. President Francois Hollande of France, the host at the Paris gasbaggery and basking in his new role as leader of the free world now that Mr. Obama has marched to the rear, told the assembled prime ministers and presidents that he can’t separate terrorism from the fight against global warming.
“These are two big challenges we have to face up to,” he says. “I believe we can act boldly and decisively in the face of a common threat. I just want to say that we are running out of time.”
We’re all running out of time, of course, and others have said it better. The Bible warns that it’s appointed unto man once to die (and after that the judgment), and Winston Churchill, in a less solemn mood, observed that in the long run there is no long run. The beggar nations of the world, addicted to their corruption and inefficient governments, showed up in Paris with their biggest begging bowls and left town as the only winners.
The “developing” nations got promises of $100 billion a year from the “developed” nations, which won’t necessarily have to be spent on anything actually helpful to their ailing, starving millions but will pay for a lot of nice things — cars, houses, additional wives, shopping tours to New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong — for the hundreds of new deputy associate assistant undersecretaries the developing countries will have to create to supervise the spending of the largesse from the United States and other sucker nations.
President Obama, who considers himself the advocate for the interests of what used to called “the third world,” was first delirious months ago at the prospect of having a big celebration in Paris. “This has to be the year the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet we’ve got while we still can,” he said on his return from a visit to Alaska, which he wanted to see before it melts under global warming. “There is no Plan B,” the chief negotiator for the European Union in Paris said on the eve of the Paris session. “There’s nothing to follow. [These are] not just ongoing U.N. discussions. Paris is final.”
But after the hosannas and shouts of joy from President Obama and his like-minded friends, Paris didn’t actually deliver anything. Each nation will be required to submit a plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but there is no objective standard it must meet or no requirement that it must achieve any reduction at all.
The beggar countries blocked a requirement that the authors of the promises use a common format, and they did not even have to mention the emissions they wouldn’t have to promise to reduce. China and India, leading the developing nations, rejected “any obligatory review mechanism for increasing individual efforts of developing countries.” Only Mexico submitted a plan by the initial deadline of March 1 of this year.
Everyone knew nobody was taking any of the “promises” seriously, that there would be no enforcement of the promises. The only consequences for non-compliance would be international “shame,” to be shamed by the likes of Lower Slobbovia and the Peoples Republic of Upper Corruptiana. India, for one example, submitted an unserious plan but said it would need $2.5 trillion in support to implement its plan.
Not everything is expected to be unenforcible. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, returned to New York on Monday and told the developed nations to get the checks in the mail. “Actions should begin from today,” he said. “The Paris agreement is a victory for the people, for the common good, and for multilateralism.” He will convene a nagging “summit” next May, at a luxury resort to be named later, to hector and bully the donor nations to get cracking. The beggar nations, their diplomats exhausted from the work of making promises they will not be required to keep, must not be further disturbed.
The functionaries at the U.N. bristle at suggestions that the agreement will be difficult to enforce. There’s no need for climate-change cops.
The United Nations will boldly point the finger at nations that won’t keep their commitments, he says. The shame, the disgrace, the mortification of it all: Getting the finger from the U.N.
• Wesley Pruden is editor in chief emeritus of The Times.
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