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The Paris agreement is a dangerous affront to democracy. Trump was right to challenge it.

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By Paul Homewood

I have often remarked upon the fact that the British public were never consulted, never mind given the chance to vote for, the Climate Change Act in 2008, and the subsequent Net Zero plan.

Both were railroaded through Parliament, without ever appearing in any party’s manifesto.

Ben Pile takes up the story:

One of President Trump’s most controversial moves on the world stage was his withdrawal of the USA from the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Coincidentally, the US’s departure from the agreement fell the day after the US presidential election, which at the time of writing is inconclusive. Challenger candidate Joe Biden has promised to take the US back into Paris. Whatever the results of the US election, the fact of a close race reveals the unstable and anti-democratic basis on which global climate politics has been advanced.

Paris required countries to commit to greenhouse-gas emissions reduction. But as treaties go, it was a fudge which let countries to determine their own level of reductions – it was an agreement to agree, intended mostly to save the face of the hosting diplomats and the ailing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. The next UNFCCC meeting, known as COP26 (Committee of Parties) was due to take place in Glasgow this year, but it was postponed until 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. British officials and diplomats have been working hard to secure a successor agreement that will bind countries to deeper levels of commitment, aiming towards the UK’s flagship ‘Net Zero’ target. The US withdrawal had thrown a spanner in the works, as the process is based on mutual commitments of self-sacrifice to overcome the ‘free rider’ problem that haunts global agreements to protect the environment.

Full story here.

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November 6, 2020 at 04:09AM