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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCongress Moves to Sabotage the Paris Climate Summit
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/congress-moves-to-sabotage-the-paris-climate-summitDont trust the United States: as the international climate summit in Paris grinds along, this is the message Republicans in Congress are trying to send the delegates. The logic, such as it is, of the claim is that merely by making it the House G.O.P. goes a long way toward proving its validity. On Tuesday, at a news conference in Paris, President Barack Obama exhorted negotiators to keep in mind what is at stake at the summit. This one trendclimate changeaffects all trends, Obama said. This is an economic and security imperative that we have to tackle now.
Even as he spoke, congressional Republicans were doing their best to undermine him. That same day, the House approved two resolutions aimed at blocking regulations to curb U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. The first would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing rules aimed at cutting emissions from new power plants; the second would prevent the agency from enforcing rules targeted at existing power plants. Together, these rules are known as the Clean Power Plan, and they are crucial to the Americans negotiating position in Paris. (The Clean Power Plan is central to the United States pledge, made in advance of the summit, to cut its emissions by twenty-six per cent.) The House votes, which followed Senate approval of similar resolutions back in November, were, at least according to some members, explicitly aimed at subverting the talks. Lawmakers want to send a message to the climate conference in Paris that in America, theres serious disagreement with the policies of this president, Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican, explained.
As a practical matter, the importance of the votes is probably minimal. Obama has already threatened to veto the resolutions if they reach his desk, and there isnt enough support for them for an override. But the resolutions are not the only trick congressional Republicans have up their collective sleeves. President Obama has pledged three billion dollars to whats known as the Green Climate Fund. The fund is intended to help developing countries cope with climate change and also to adopt clean-energy systems. In a just world, three billion dollars is far less than the U.S. should be contributing; Republicans are threatening to block even that contribution. Leaving the fund under-financed increases the chance that poorer countries will walk away from any proposed accord.
Meanwhile, the impossibility of getting an agreement ratified by the U.S. Senate puts yet another constraint on negotiations. While many countries are pushing for a legally binding treaty, the Obama Administration is insisting on a sort of legal chimerapartly binding, partly notso that, if there is a pact, it wont require Senate approval. (The Washington Post has a good rundown on this particular problem.)
That Republicans would try to undercut the Administrations efforts to do somethinganythingto reduce carbon emissions is no surprise. Willful ignorance about climate change has become a point of pride among elected officials in the G.O.P. Recently, the Associated Press asked a panel of eight scientists to assess the accuracy of Presidential candidates tweets on climate change using a scale of zero to a hundred. (The tweets were shown to the scientists without the candidates names, to guard against bias.) All nine of the Republican candidates graded got failing scores. Donald Trump, for instance, received a fifteen, while Ben Carson got a thirteen and Ted Cruz a six. This individual understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner, Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University, who served as one of the judges, wrote of Cruzs statements. That sort of ignorance would be dangerous in a doorman, let alone a president.
<snip> Much more at above link.
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Congress Moves to Sabotage the Paris Climate Summit (Original Post)
Photographer
Dec 2015
OP
LakeVermilion
(1,042 posts)1. Not room for all of them on their Ark...fools.
kelly1mm
(4,733 posts)2. The President should not have pledged any funds without congressional approval as the
power of the purse is clearly within the realm of congress. Further, he should at least make it clear that without the binding nature of a treaty that any agreement is only binding on the US till the then President decides it is not. he seems to be trying to use some kind of global moral pressure to make sure this 'agreement' is complied with by future US governments which is foolhardy at best IMO.
If you want something to be binding you make it a treaty. If you don't have the votes for a treaty then it's not binding. Period.