InsideSources

Over the past decade, the global elite’s obsession with climate change has taken away from the many other major problems facing the planet—shown most dramatically by the invasion of Ukraine. Western European leaders should have spent the past decade diversifying energy sources and expanding shale gas instead of shutting down nuclear plants and becoming scarily reliant on Russia. But the war there is far from the only thing they have managed to ignore.

The biggest task facing humanity today remains lifting most of the world out of abject poverty. This can only happen by providing poor countries with comprehensive, reliable energy sources. That is how the rich world became prosperous and it is how China lifted almost a billion out of poverty. Yet, while the world’s rich countries are overwhelmingly powered by fossil fuels, the elite worked hard to make those energy sources both more expensive and less available for the world’s poorest.

Right now, we are still recovering from the worst pandemic in a century. Inflation, supply shortages, and possibly even recession looms over the global economy. Autocracies are reasserting themselves while food crises are already being experienced by the most vulnerable. Tuberculosis, malaria, and malnutrition—each effectively handled in the rich world—still claim millions of lives each year across poor countries.

Yet major donors and development organizations have become increasingly focused on climate solutions instead. One month after Ukraine was invaded, the head of the United Nations—an organization focused on ensuring world peace—was instead warning about “climate catastrophe,” and the “mutually assured destruction” that fossil fuel ‘addiction’ could cause.

It would be an exaggeration to say that while real threats were mounting, the world’s rich were tinkering with solar panels and banning plastic straws. But only a small exaggeration.

So, how have the elites managed to get things so wrong? One reason is that for years, the media have portrayed climate change impacts as horrendous. Today, almost every natural disaster routinely gets blamed on the climate crisis, with every new hurricane held up as another exhibit of man’s folly. Yet, hurricanes killed many more people in the past. A major scientific paper from last month documents “decreasing trends” in global hurricane frequency and strength. The data show that last year the world experienced fewer hurricanes than ever before in the satellite era, and their combined strength was one of the lowest.

The real impact of climate change is much more nuanced. The UN climate panel of scientists finds a warmer world will mean fewer (good) but stronger (worse) hurricanes. In total, that will increase damages (bad), but because the world will also get richer and more resilient, relative damages will keep declining, just slightly more slowly. This is a problem that we must not ignore. But it is far from a catastrophe. Global climate damage in percent of GDP keeps declining and climate disaster deaths have dropped 99 percent in a century.

For the best sense of what to really expect from a warming planet, we should turn to the damage estimates from the models used by President Joe Biden’s administration, and President Obama’s before that to set climate policy. This research reveals that the entire global cost of climate change—not just to economies, but in every sense—will be equivalent to less than a 4 percent hit to GDP by the end of the century.

Remember, by the UN’s own estimates the average person in 2100 will be 450 percent richer than today. Global warming means he will ‘only’ be 434 percent as rich. That is a problem, but—contrary to the histrionics—far from catastrophic.

For wealthy countries, the narrow focus on climate objectives undermines future prosperity. The world already spends more than half a trillion dollars annually on climate policies while rich-world government spending on innovation in areas such as healthcare, space, defense, agriculture, and science has been declining as a percentage of GDP over recent decades. That investment underpins our future growth. Together with a stagnant or declining education performance, rich world income has almost stalled this century. Compare this to China, where innovation spending is up 50 percent, education is rapidly improving, and average incomes have increased five-fold since 2000.

Alarmingly, despite the extraordinary focus, we are failing even to solve climate change itself. Last year saw the largest CO₂ emissions ever.

Earlier this year, the world’s elite gathered for the World Economic Forum and were asked to name “the most severe risks on a global scale over the next ten years.” They absurdly chose “climate action failure”—right before Russia started bombing Chernobyl and Kyiv.

The world has many challenges, not just the ones that get the most media attention. Climate should be tackled more effectively by funding R&D in green energy sources, so they eventually outcompete fossil fuels. We need to confront authoritarian expansionism in Ukraine and elsewhere. And to ensure long-term prosperity, the world needs more and cheaper energy, better education, and more innovation. We need our perspective back to overcome the elitist hyperbole on climate change.

Global warming is once again a hot-button issue–and that isn’t just because temperatures in Washington, D.C. have reached the 90s. President Obama made the Paris Climate Accords a central part of American environmental policy and his personal presidential legacy. Now that Donald Trump is in the Oval Office, the U.S. has not only pulled out of the agreement, information about climate change was removed from the Environmental Protection Agency website in late April. This week, the mayors of twelve cities developed their own sites to keep the information online.

“Deleting federal webpages does not reset the scientific consensus that climate change is real,” said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee in a statement. “The American people are entitled to the publicly-funded EPA research on climate change. And while the federal government continues to undermine the progress we’ve made on climate change, cities are taking a stand. San Francisco will continue our fight against climate change by taking aggressive local actions to protect our citizens and planet.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was the first to announce the republication of the information in a web post on Sunday.

Lee and Emanuel were joined by the mayors of Atlanta, Boston, Evanston, Fayetteville, Houston, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, and St. Louis. The mayors are also part of a group of 270 U.S. mayors who pledged to honor the goals of the Paris climate accords by pledging to promote electric vehicles and to cut emissions.

The city-maintained sites allow access to archived versions of the EPA pages on climate change, causes of climate change, and how human activity is causing the climate to warm. The pages had been quietly removed from the agency’s website in late April, causing uproar among environmentalists.

EPA head Scott Pruitt has expressed doubt over man-made climate change, telling an interviewer in March that, he did “not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

However, the EPA’s public affairs department has stressed that the EPA website was being updated, not removed. J.P. Freire, the EPA’s associate administrator for public affairs, told CNN in April that the agency was working “to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”

The information contained on the EPA website includes basic science on climate change, ways in which the weather is impacted by greenhouse gas emissions, and federal policies undertaken to mitigate these effects. The pages do not include any research or information that can only be obtained through the EPA website.

The EPA website still contains information about how climate change affects the water sector, as well as information about greenhouse gases and global warming potentials. That isn’t enough for the mayors, however, who see American withdrawal from the Paris Agreement as the first sign of a schismatic shift in environmental policy.

The mayors’ move comes as the U.S. reiterated its commitment to leaving the Paris Climate Agreement by refusing to join breakout sessions discussing global warming policy at the recent meeting between G7 environmental ministers in Bologna, Italy. Pruitt only attended the summit’s first day on Sunday, before returning to Washington and leaving Acting Assistant Administrator Jane Nishida to represent the U.S.

While other members of the group lamented the lack of American participation, the Trump administration believes that other mechanisms exist to promote pollution reduction and energy efficiency. In a formal statement, the U.S. said that it would continue to “engage with key international partners in a manner that is consistent with our domestic priorities, preserving both a strong economy and a healthy environment” and believes that the most effective way of achieving these goals is to work outside of the Paris Agreement.

“We are resetting the dialogue to say Paris is not the only way forward to making progress,” said Pruitt on Monday. “Today’s action of reaching consensus makes clear that the Paris Agreement is not the only mechanism by which environmental stewardship can be demonstrated. It also demonstrates our commitment to honest conversations, which are the cornerstone of constructive international dialogue.”

“The United States will continue to show leadership by offering action-oriented solutions to the world’s environmental challenges. We have indicated a willingness to engage on an international stage that stands to greatly benefit from American ingenuity, innovation, and advanced technologies. We have already demonstrated significant progress towards mitigating environmental problems and we will continue to develop these for the benefit of all nations,” he continued.

Pruitt points out that, without the Paris Agreement, the United States has already cut its emissions to 1994-levels.

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President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord was far from surprising. After all, the agreement had never been popular with conservatives, and Trump had campaigned against it last fall. In the wake of the president’s announcement, various groups, including environmental organizations, and the states of New York, Washington, and California have announced that they disapprove of the president’s announcement and intend to continue to support the agreement. Four Native American tribes also announced on Friday that “they will continue to uphold and support the Paris Climate Change Agreement (sic).” Although effective as a statement of support, the announcement demonstrates the limits of tribal authority under the American system.

“As sovereign nations, we stand with the countries around the world to support the Paris Climate Change Agreement and we join with them to protect this precious place we all call home,” said Swinomish Tribal Chairman Brian Cladoosby.

In a press release, the tribes explained that, since the U.S. federal government had failed to address the “the urgent and existential threat” of global climate change, it was “a moral and practical necessity for tribal, state, and local governments, in collaboration with average citizens everywhere, to fill the leadership vacuum.” In the statement, they state that addressing climate change falls under tribal authority.

The statement brought together tribes from far-flung reaches of the country. Standing Rock rose to national prominence during the pipeline protests in North Dakota last year. While the other tribes share Standing Rock’s commitment to environmental protection, they are from Washington and Alaska. The Quinault reservation is on the southwestern corner of Washington’s Olympic peninsula, while the central council of the Tlingit and Haida is located in Juneau, Alaska. The Swinomish are a small (less than 1,000 members) tribe in Washington state.

“For hundreds of years the pollution based economy has degraded our home,” Cladoosby continued. “We can no longer allow a failed system to continue to destroy the planet. The Paris Climate Change Agreement reflects the global consensus that we must act together and we must act now.”

The tribes’ statement was supported by the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest association of Native American tribes.

“We will work to ensure that all parties respect, promote, and consider Indigenous peoples’ rights in all climate change actions, as is required by the Paris Agreement,” said NARF Executive Director John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, in a statement.

The NCAI stresses that native tribes have an intimate knowledge of their surrounding environments which makes them more sensitive to the effects of climate change.

“Through years of tireless effort, the link between traditional knowledge, sustainable development, and cultural resilience is now reflected in the international conversations that take place around climate change policy,” continued Cladoosby.

In the statement, the tribes called on the United Nations to invite other native tribes to make this important commitment to the health of the planet. Significantly, neither the joint statement, nor the statement from NCAI binds the tribal governments to any specific policy changes. In part this reflects the realities of reservation economies, which, in general, do not involve much heavy industry.

Despite this, tribal groups have argued that despite having a negligible carbon footprint, indigenous people are severely impacted by the effects of climate change because of their close relationship to the land.

“Alaska tribal governments are living with the early but significant effects of climate change,” said Richard Peterson, president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Tribes of Alaska. “Our traditional knowledge learned over millennia within our aboriginal lands leaves us with no doubt that immediate action to reduce the impacts of climate change is our duty as sovereign indigenous governments.”

Peterson said that the tribe would participate in the agreement, but did not elaborate on which parts it intended to uphold. Meanwhile, Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation, tells InsideSources that a national response will be organized next week at the mid-year conference of the National Congress of
American Indians. (Sharp is also vice president of NCAI.) She did not elaborate on the effect supporting the Accords would have on tribal industry.

The Paris Climate Accords imposed strict emissions requirements on signatories. So far, the tribes have not pledged themselves to similar cuts.

While the statements stress that the tribes are “sovereign nations,” this term does not mean that they have the same legal status as a foreign country, like France. The statement exposes the limits of tribal authority. Like any other private organization, tribes can adopt internal policies to promote values they support. Additionally, they are considered governmental entities under American law with authority somewhere between that of a state and a city. Since the 1830s, relationships between tribes and the United States government have been based on the principle that tribes possess a nationhood status and retain inherent powers of self-government and tribal authority.

At the same time, the United States government acknowledges a federal Indian trust responsibility, which encompasses both moral and legal obligations on the part of the government. It also limits tribal authority by granting certain responsibilities to the federal government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs describes this trust responsibility as “a legally enforceable fiduciary obligation on the part of the United States to protect tribal treaty rights, lands, assets, and resources, as well as a duty to carry out the mandates of federal law with respect to American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages.”

The various federally-recognized Native American tribes have been granted lands under the terms of various treaties. These areas are generally exempt from state jurisdiction and tribes retain control over taxation, the passage and enforcement of civil and criminal law, licensure, zoning, and other elements of self-governance. Although recognized as tribal nations, they are not considered foreign countries, but rather treated like states.

“Limitations on inherent tribal powers of self-government are few,” explains the Bureau of Indian Affairs, “but do include the same limitations applicable to states, e.g., neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or print and issue currency.”

According to this understanding of treaty rights, under American law, no Native American tribe would be allowed to sign the Paris Climate Accord, which was negotiated as an international treaty, just as no individual state could sign the treaty. Neither tribal authority nor state government extends to negotiations or treaties.

Tribal governments aren’t the only ones whose climate activism may be unconstitutional. Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, writes that the United States Climate Alliance formed by California, New York, and Washington, may be an impermissible interstate compact.

“The alliance faces some potential constitutional challenges and limitations,” writes Kontorovich. “The Interstate Compacts Clause, article I, section 10, clause 3 provides that ‘no state … may enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign power,’ without the consent of Congress.”

Calling the Interstate Compacts Clause a “a clear textual limit on state power,” he explains that states forming an “alliance” to achieve the same policy ends that otherwise would be accomplished by the United States government via international treaty “is exactly the kind of side deal the Constitution sought to prevent states from cutting.”

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Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and the labor movement came to vastly different conclusions over how withdrawing from a recent multinational climate agreement will impact jobs.

The Paris Climate Accord seeks to address environmental issues mankind might be contributing to. The agreement specifically sought to address greenhouse gas emissions, which many believe are responsible for climate change. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement arguing it wasn’t a good deal for the United States.

“On these issues and so many more, we’re following through on our commitments,” Trump said Thursday at the White House. “I am fighting every day for the great people of this country. Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.”

The decision by the president to withdraw was already being met with political battle lines before it was officially announced. His administration and many others on the right applauded the decision as a good move for the economy. Democratic leaders denounced it as destructive to the environment.

“The United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate accord is this administration’s bold commitment to promoting pro-growth principles and rebuilding America’s manufacturing base, which was under siege by the Paris accord,” Acosta said in a statement. “The U.S. Department of Labor remains laser focused on ensuring all Americans have access to good, safe jobs and will continue standing arm-in-arm with the American worker.”

National unions expressed a vastly different viewpoint when it came to the decision. While unions traditionally lean left, environmental issues tend to have a bit more of a gray area since so many union members work in industries that would benefit from projects like the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Pulling out of the Paris climate agreement is a decision to abandon a cleaner future powered by good jobs,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement Thursday. “A deteriorating environment is not the only thing at stake here. When our leaders isolate America from the rest of the world, it hurts our ability to raise incomes for working families and achieve fairness in the global economy.”

The Paris Climate Accord was negotiated by representatives from 195 countries at a 2015 global climate change conference in Paris, France. Former President Barack Obama and his administration became major advocates for the agreement in his final years in office.

“By withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, President Trump and his self-interested political allies are killing the creation of new industries and jobs,” Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, said. “Already, in the United States, clean energy jobs vastly outnumber fossil fuel jobs, with solar and wind energy at the forefront.”

President Trump was able to withdraw from the agreement because it wasn’t considered a treaty under domestic law. Obama did not get consent from the Senate which would have been required. Without Senate approval, the president had no legal obligation to uphold the agreement.

“For many years, the United States has been a leader in innovation and technology to combat climate change,” United Steelworkers President Leo W. Gerard said. “Withdrawing from this non-binding agreement further cedes our strength in this sector to China, and signals to domestic innovators and manufacturers that the United States will not support them.”

Trump has centered his presidency on a promise to help domestic workers and the economy. The president has argued on many occasions that the government has failed workers and companies alike. Reducing Obama-era environmental policies have been a major focus of that message.

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As of Thursday, America is beginning to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. Despite being a longstanding campaign promise by President Donald Trump, the move was contentious to say the least. Environmentalists lamented the announcement, while many conservatives hoped that leaving the climate agreement would provide a boost to the American economy. Somewhat unexpectedly, many major oil companies and other large corporations came out in favor of the agreement, reflecting the realities of shareholder pressure and operating an international business.

In a statement in the Rose Garden on Thursday, Trump stressed that the Paris Climate Accord hurt the American economy and American workers. Citing a study by the National Economic Research Associates, he said that the terms of the accord could cost America as many as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, and close to $3 trillion in lost GDP.

“The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers — who I love — and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production,” he said.

The move was met with approval in conservative circles, many of which saw the Paris Climate Accord as an ineffective and costly means of addressing climate change. More surprisingly, industry figures had mixed reactions, with several major energy companies speaking out in favor of the Paris Climate Accord.

For some companies, the increased focus on climate change comes at the behest of shareholders. At its annual meeting in Dallas this week, ExxonMobil shareholders approved a proposal to force the company to release assessments of how technology advancement and global climate change policies could affect the company’s business. Company management had resisted the proposal, saying that their business plans were available through other reports, but others saw the vote as an important step toward broader climate change disclosure.

“This is an unprecedented victory for investors in the fight to ensure a smooth transition to a low carbon economy,” New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, a trustee of a retirement fund which co-sponsored the proxy resolution, told the Wall Street Journal. “Climate change is one of the greatest long-term risks we face in our portfolio and has direct impact on the core business of ExxonMobil.”

The Paris Climate Accord also created stability. At a shareholder meeting last week, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods urged the administration to stay in the agreement, saying that the industry “need[s] a framework like that to address the challenge of climate change and the risk of climate change.”

Additionally, although the United States has pulled out of the agreement, most European countries remain. This means that large corporations like BP and Shell, which are based in Europe, will still have to toe the politically correct line in their international operations.

Other companies are unlikely to abandon the goal of increased energy efficiency after spending billions on new technologies. General Electric, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt expressed disappointment with the administration’s decision, has made reducing energy consumption a key part of its business. Ford also signaled that it would continue technology investments to make its vehicles more efficient and emit less carbon dioxide. The company also says that it is not abandoning long term plans to develop affordable fuel cells.

Some in the industry say that leaving the Paris Climate Accord increased market uncertainty and that companies are loathe to invest in expensive projects like nuclear power plants without some assurance that future policies will remain consistent.

“Executives are making multibillion-dollar decisions about assets that last decades. Suddenly injecting a bunch of uncertainty into the debate makes long-lasting, slow-to-build, expensive assets—like nuclear—even riskier,” said Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

However, Trump’s decision has strong support from one key corner: the coal industry. Coal has been struggling to compete with cheap natural gas for the past several years, and Obama-era policies like the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Climate Accord only exacerbated the adverse business climate. Leaving the accord, like overturning the Clean Power Plan, has been a boon to the industry.

“In following through on his promise, President Trump is supporting America’s uncompromising values, saving coal jobs, and promoting low-cost, reliable electricity for Americans and the rest of the world,” said Robert Murray, controlling owner of Murray Energy.

Peabody Energy, a coal company based in St. Louis, also supported Trump’s decision, saying that remaining in the agreement “would have substantially impacted the U.S. economy, increased electricity costs and required the power sector to rely on less diverse and more intermittent energy.”

Some industry observers take a cynical view of the situation, saying that oil and gas companies have an incentive to promote clean energy standards that will force out coal.

“The only way to get the price of gas back up is to kill coal. The Paris Agreement kills fossil fuels, but it kills coal first,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Signal.

For the time being, the only certain prediction is increased uncertainty. Although the regulatory environment has recently become more friendly to coal, natural gas remains low and provides a cheap way to produce clean electricity. Meanwhile, investor pressure and the uncertain future of Trump’s regulatory changes make companies hesitant to make dramatic investment shifts.

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