It’s worst to take meaningless action than to take no action at all.
This is because meaningless action makes us feel like something was done as a way to “get
off their backs,” but then as a consequence there is less pressure to change anything.
Enter: The Paris Climate Change Agreement. “The Paris Agreement was a charade, for
those truly concerned about climate change. As in many other cases, international agreements
provided the semblance of addressing major issues, giving national politicians something
to take credit for, but made no discernible real-world difference.” — John Bolton,
The Room Where It Happened I’d argue the Paris Agreement did more harm
to the climate change movement than if it was never signed because then our world leaders
wouldn’t have been able to go home and say, “See! I took action on climate change! Vote
for me!” Stripped of the ability to say this, there
would have been more political pressure for them to actually take domestic action to curb
carbon emissions and air pollution. “The [Paris] agreement simply requires signatories
to set national goals, but doesn’t say what those goals should be, nor does it contain
enforcement mechanisms. This is theology masquerading as policy, an increasingly common phenomenon
in international affairs.” — John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened
You should call, “Bull!” whenever virtually every single nation agrees to something, especially
when human rights abusers like China and Russia do something “for the greater good,” because
it’s a clear sign there’s no real enforcement mechanism. China will not sacrifice a single
point of productivity for climate change. The reason why Trump pulled out of the agreement
is because it was a way for Obama to legislate domestic policy unilaterally from abroad (constitutionally
treaties are supposed to receive 2/3 vote from U.S. Senate). The Obama Administration
set our national goals so high that there’d be no way for us to meet them without doing
great damage to our economy. To highlight this point consider none of the major industrialized
nations have implemented the policies they had envisioned nor have they met their pledged
emission reduction targets. In my opinion, the Paris Agreement is one
big hoax that comes at the expense of real climate change reform!
Ultimately, global warming (or less controversially we can speak in terms of “air pollution”)
will end the same way slavery did…innovation. Slavery ended because slave labor was more
expensive and less productive than cheap labor. Slavery ended because of the Industrial Revolution;
Air pollution will end because of a Green Revolution.
Politicians can put policies in place that incentivize green innovation, such as by raising
gas taxes or carbon taxes, and then using that money to build more public transportation
and green cities. In other words, I agree with Elon Musk whose company had benefited
from government subsidies, but who ultimately believes government subsidies aren’t the
way to go… “Me & other private money funded Tesla for
first 7 years, got IPO+ govt money for 3, now paid back. Yes, carbon tax would be a
better way.” — Elon Musk, tweet “Yes, I am arguing against subsidies and
in favor of a tax on the end bad created. Market will then achieve best solution.” — Elon
Musk, tweet Carbon has negative externalities. In a fair
society, you pay for the damage you cause. Period.
Economists — both liberal and conservative — love carbon taxes. The levies, they say, would
create market incentives for people to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels and, more
important, encourage the development of new “clean” technology.
Makes perfect sense, but to many voters and, hence, to many politicians, carbon taxes mean
something else: They require consumers to pay higher prices today in return for the
promise of a more livable planet sometime in the future. — Howard Stein, Tax
Policy Center Raising carbon taxes are unpopular, even for
a lot of people who claim to care about the climate, because often times they feel someone
over there in the distant future should have to pay for it, i.e. instead of raising taxes
they sign a toothless international agreement or give away subsidies with a Chinese credit
card to cherry-picked green energy companies where most of them will end up failing anyway
(but of course not before the politician gets his ribbon-cutting photo-op in front of the
“green” factory). If you want to be able to distinguish who
actually cares about the environment and who is a fake… ask them if they support raising
the gas tax or implementing a carbon tax? Most Republican and Democrat politicians will
say no. Politicians like to talk to the talk, agree
to the agreements, but rarely do they walk the walk when their political self-interest
comes in conflict with the greater good.