While the Paris climate agreement has always been fundamentally flawed, we’ve just gained new evidence saying as much. According to a new United Nations report, just about every major nation is failing to achieve its carbon reduction target under the Paris accord.
One of the key culprits? The European Union.
The U.N. notes that three recent studies of EU emissions indicate that the political bloc will fail to reach its carbon reduction target. While the report offers optimism that the EU will take action to meet its obligations, increasing public anger over gas prices and other energy cost considerations make me far more skeptical of that. Germany, for example, continues to rely heavily on dirty coal. This situation is made worse by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s rejection of nuclear energy.
Then there are the familiar carbon emitter powerhouses: the U.S., China, India, and Russia. While all these nations continue to spray out carbon, I want to pay particular attention to China here. While China continues to emit twice as much carbon as any other nation, many Western observers now claim that China takes its pledge to reduce carbon emissions very seriously.
But the facts patently do not bear this out. China systematically lies about its carbon emissions, and its economic model remains dependent on sustained growth at high rates. All of this conflicts with Xi Jinping’s pledge to former President Barack Obama to attempt to reduce emissions from 2030 forwards. That pledge was held up by the Obama administration as a major foreign policy success. Sadly, as with many Obama foreign policy “accomplishments,” it was actually a sad joke.
So what’s going on here?
Ultimately it’s a failure of compliance. In a most basic sense, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that if European democracies are willing to breach their formalized commitments, so too will authoritarian states like China and Russia. Until new technologies exist that can protect energy consumption with less damage to the environment, national governments will continue to be reluctant to pummel their populations with energy policies that raise costs and hurt the economy.
Note here that the green energy economy remains a boondoggle, resting on government subsidies and inefficient employment structures.
In short, the Paris climate accord is far less impressive than many would have us believe.
