OPINION:
The business of Washington is politics, but politics doesn’t sell without “good optics.” The White House that passed out white lab coats to a phalanx of doctors backing Obamacare in a Rose Garden photo-op, is lining up big-name companies now to pledge allegiance to “a low carbon-dioxide future” in advance of next month’s climate change conference at the United Nations. The president’s health care scheme was an expensive train wreck; his transition from fossil fuels to sun and wind could be a crash of continents. Once the splash of promotion subsides, all that will likely remain are disappointment and costs.
The Obama administration revealed its American Business Act on Climate Pledge last week, boasting that 81 companies have signed a vow “to demonstrate their support for action on climate change and the conclusion of a climate change agreement in Paris that takes a strong step forward toward a low-carbon, sustainable future.” The usual corporate suspects, including Apple, Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Facebook, General Electric, General Motors and IBM, have made commitments to such goals as reducing emissions by 50 percent, reducing water consumption by 80 percent, and purchasing only renewable energy. (The buyers of GE’s airliner engines and General Motors’s cars and trucks will still run on oil and gasoline). Participants in the Paris conference are expected to sign a sweeping agreement, decades in the works, to reduce global carbon-dioxide emissions that environmentalists say causes the globe to perspire. More important, they’re expected to set up a Green Climate Fund to pay for renewable energy projects.
Every public relations professional dreams of seeing his client praised on the president’s web page, but winning a presidential pat on the head is no guarantee of good fortune. President Obama intends to bypass Congress again by signing a binding treaty with another country, as he did with Iran to protect its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. The Obama era is winding down, however, and key Republicans are warning that Mr. Obama’s climate change agreement might not survive his departure in 2017. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sent word to foreign embassies across Washington that any deal the president makes with United Nations members may not be legally binding without Senate approval.
Developing nations haven’t needed much prompting from Mr. McConnell to pick apart terms of the pact, accusing their developed counterparts of stampeding everyone to get an agreement. At a recent preliminary conference in Bonn, a coalition of 100 poor countries that included African countries, India and China, balked at an American proposal that they, too, chip in for the Green Climate Fund. Most of the money, $100 billion a year starting in 2020, will be provided by prosperous developed countries, which should encourage the grumblers to fall in line.
Mr. Obama schemes to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but the natural globe seems to love it. “Carbon Dioxide: The Good News,” a report published recently by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, says an increase in CO2 concentration has resulted in a 14 percent rise in green vegetation globally since 1982. That means greater crop production and a more abundant food supply for the 7 billion people who live here.
The president promotes the notion that it’s cool to be green. Income redistribution, a favorite Obama goal, is favorite tool of socialists, too, but as Margaret Thatcher reminded everyone, “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Money can buy a lot of things, even love, but it can’t buy a perfect climate. Man proposes, but Nature always gets the last word.
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