DGS49
Diamond Member
This gathering was a total farce, but not because of intentional mockery by Russia, India, and China.
The fact is that in the third world and the developing world, all the talk of saving the planet by reducing "our" collective carbon footprint is blatant silliness. The best and fastest impetus to modernity among developing societies is the massive use of carbon fuels (mainly coal) to generate electricity, cook food, facilitate transportation, purify water and treat waste, and so on. The very idea of using solar, wind, and other "renewables" to curtail carbon emissions is so far off their radar screens as to be akin to science fiction.
This is why China and India are building new coal-fired power plants in those regions, and have no intention of scaling back for at least another decade - which is basically what they "promised" to do under the original Paris Accords.
And this is also why the realists at Paris have acknowledged that even if every single country does exactly what they said they would do, the difference in global temperatures resulting from these efforts is so small as to be ludicrous...maybe one or one and a half degrees C, as compared to DOING NOTHING. In fact, it is likely that naturally occurring technological progress will do more to impact greenhouse gas emissions than shooting ourselves in the foot, as today's Leftists advocate.
So Comrades Biden and Kerry admonish these worthies to honor their promises, and they affirm that they will do so. Utterly meaningless.
The fact is that in the third world and the developing world, all the talk of saving the planet by reducing "our" collective carbon footprint is blatant silliness. The best and fastest impetus to modernity among developing societies is the massive use of carbon fuels (mainly coal) to generate electricity, cook food, facilitate transportation, purify water and treat waste, and so on. The very idea of using solar, wind, and other "renewables" to curtail carbon emissions is so far off their radar screens as to be akin to science fiction.
This is why China and India are building new coal-fired power plants in those regions, and have no intention of scaling back for at least another decade - which is basically what they "promised" to do under the original Paris Accords.
And this is also why the realists at Paris have acknowledged that even if every single country does exactly what they said they would do, the difference in global temperatures resulting from these efforts is so small as to be ludicrous...maybe one or one and a half degrees C, as compared to DOING NOTHING. In fact, it is likely that naturally occurring technological progress will do more to impact greenhouse gas emissions than shooting ourselves in the foot, as today's Leftists advocate.
So Comrades Biden and Kerry admonish these worthies to honor their promises, and they affirm that they will do so. Utterly meaningless.