One of the country’s most prominent climate change doubters sought to pour cold water Saturday on celebrations over the historic Paris Agreement aimed at reducing global warming.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., said in a statement Saturday he would work to kill the agreement when the American delegation returns home from the French capital. Inhofe pointed out that the agreement’s most significant portions, the commitments to cut greenhouse gases and the funding from developed countries to developing ones, are not legally binding.
Because it is voluntary, the deal does not require Senate approval.
Inhofe, who once took a snow ball onto the Senate floor to show why he doesn’t believe global warming exists, compared the agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. Reached in the late 1990s, the Kyoto agreement was summarily killed by the Senate.
“This agreement is no more binding than any other ‘agreement’ from any Conference of the Parties over the last 21 years,” Inhofe said. “Senate leadership has already been outspoken in its positions that the United States is not legally bound to any agreement setting emissions targets or any financial commitment to it without approval by Congress.”
Inhofe’s problems with the deal seem to be the strain it would put on the fossil fuel industry and other parts of the American economy. He raised concerns about President Obama’s regulatory practices and called the agreement potentially crippling for the economies of the developed world, while countries like India and China will benefit greatly.
Noah Wall, national director of FreedomWorks, a conservative group, said Obama would have a tough time getting the agreement through Congress.
Both chambers have passed resolutions blocking the Clean Power Plan, the central part of the United States’ commitments to the Paris deal that promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels within 25 years.
“These regulations come with a hefty price tag for consumers. The EPA’s anti-coal regulations, by the agency’s own admission, will cost more than $8 billion each year. Others put the cost significantly higher, with annual estimates ranging from $29 billion to $39 billion,” Wall said. “Innovation in all sectors of the economy has led to human achievement and prosperity. What is happening in Paris will undermine this progress and leave consumers worse off.”
Some environmentalists were also not thrilled with the Paris agreement, but for opposite reasons than their unfamiliar bedfellows.
Friends of the Earth International released a statement Saturday morning, after a draft of the deal became public, with the subject line “the ship is going down.”
“The draft Paris agreement puts us on track for a planet three degrees hotter than today. This would be a disaster,” said Asad Rehman, the group’s spokesman at the conference. “The reviews in this agreement are too weak and too late. The finance figures have no bearing on the scale of need. It’s empty. The iceberg has struck, the ship is going down and the band is still playing to warm applause.”
While there are many skeptics of the deal — most speakers after the deal was adopted said the deal is not perfect — environmental advocates were mostly thrilled to avoid the failure of Copenhagen six years ago and leave Paris with a deal.
Former Vice President Al Gore, one of the world’s most visible climate change activists, was singled out for thanks by French President Francois Hollande and took several bows Saturday.
In a statement released after the deal was adopted, Gore said the grandchildren of those at the conference would thank them for their work.
“This universal and ambitious agreement sends a clear signal to governments, businesses, and investors everywhere: the transformation of our global economy from one fueled by dirty energy to one fueled by sustainable economic growth is now firmly and inevitably underway,” he said.
