Al Gore and illegitimacy: No one voted for net-zero emissions by 2035

OPINION:

Al Gore, the former vice president, Nobel laureate and tobacco farmer, the guy who literally made his money by selling out to Arab oil traders, has been making the news lately by banging his soapbox against the upcoming 28th United Nations Conference of the Parties.

For the tragically unhip, the Conference of the Parties is where the international “leaders” and cool kids get together and focus all of their intellectual capacity on solving the problem of climate change.

Just kidding. They usually focus all of their intellectual capacities on a handful of commas in the pro forma communique and deciding where the party will be next year.

This year’s party is scheduled for December in the United Arab Emirates, which is smack dab in the middle of the Middle East. That means, as both a practical and geographic matter, this year’s conference on climate change is going to wind up talking about the ongoing necessity of producing, processing, and refining oil and natural gas, which account for about 80% of the world’s primary energy supply.

All of this has made the inspiration for the unreadable and unwatchable love story (Mr. Gore) most unhappy.

From the air-conditioned comfort of his private jet, he has fumed that the presence of oil and gas companies at the conference somehow delegitimizes the entire proceeding.

He may have a point about the legitimacy of the operation. But the idea that the presence of energy companies is out of bounds — at an event littered with people who have the largest carbon footprints on the planet and which would be literally impossible without aviation fuel, natural gas-generated electricity, gasoline-powered limousines, etc. — is the kind of thing that makes normal people derisive toward self-parodying figures like Mr. Gore.

Back to the legitimacy of the proceedings for a moment. Given that the United Nations presents itself as a quasi-government organization, it is worth wondering how these particular people came to make these decisions, even if they are comically unenforceable.

I didn’t vote for any of these people, and I don’t know of anyone who did. No one voted for the Kyoto Protocol, which forms the basis of the U.N.’s efforts on climate change. No one voted for the Paris Accord, which supposedly committed the United States to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 or to net zero by 2050. It’s a little unclear.

Here at home, no one voted for net-zero emissions by 2035 or 2050 or whatever the date might be. No one voted to ban gasoline-powered automobiles by 2035. Those were wisps of ideas by former President Barack Obama that President Biden and his stenographers in the legacy media talk about as if they represent some grand, universally accepted national commitment.

They are not. In fact, just last week, in the first actual vote on any of this, the House of Representatives — all of the Republicans and eight Democrats — voted to amend the Clean Air Act to specifically preclude a ban on gasoline-powered vehicles.

If legitimacy means anything, it means that political power is granted by the people to elected representatives through the mechanism of the ballot. The vast majority of the participants at the conference of the parties were not elected by anyone.

So, as painful as it is to write these words, the inventor of the internet may have himself a point.

Finally, we could also think about legitimacy in a different way. Do the results of the effort warrant deference to those doing the work? In other words, we defer to experts — carpenters, neurosurgeons, bartenders — because they are ostensibly better at certain tasks than we are. But the measure of their legitimacy is in the results of their work.

How is the conference of the parties doing according to that measurement of legitimacy?

Not very good. From 1973 to 1997 (when the Kyoto Protocol was signed), global emissions of greenhouse gases increased by 12 billion tons. In the 25 years since Kyoto, those emissions have increased again by … 12.5 billion tons.

How about concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? In the last 25 years, they have increased by more than 50 parts per million. In the 25 years before Kyoto, they increased by 35 parts per million.

So however you think about climate change — existential threat, solvable problem, nuisance, hoax — everyone should be able to agree that what the conference of the parties is doing is not getting it done.

That lack of progress, combined with the uncertain provenance of its participants, is all we need to question the legitimacy of the conference of the parties. The former vice president would be on more solid ground if he joined us.

• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is the president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House. He can be reached at mike@mwrstrat.com.