What’s the deal with the climate-change deal Obama made with Chinese President Xi Jinping?
The leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations dress up in silk teddies to do this (in 22 words):
One leader “pledges” to do what he said he’d do five years ago.
The other “pledges” to do nothing for 15 years.
Obama committed the U.S. to concrete, measurable goals — 26-28% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, from the 2005 baseline, by 2025. But Obama had already committed to similar goals back in 2009 at the United Nations. For his part, Xi “pledged” that China would “plan” to have her CO2 emissions peak by the year 2030.
On the bright side, while Chinese carbon emissions skyrocket as a result of its rapid emergence from the stone age, along with heavy reliance on coal, U.S. emissions are already in steady decline, thanks to the moribund Obama economy, and the fact that those nice Chinese folks burn the coal to make the stuff that we use, so we don’t have to soil our hands with manufacturing…or coal. So, Obama’s climate change pledge is do-able, as long as Democrats keep their boot on the throat of the U.S. economy through taxation, regulation and profligate entitlement spending.
One can’t help but hope that the New York Times is right that Democrats will make climate change the centerpiece of their 2016 president campaign.
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