Thursday, June 1, 2017

Forget The Paris Accords

By Richard A. Epstein

The Trump administration is currently facing a major decision—whether to withdraw the United States from the Paris Accords on climate change. The huge multi-national agreement was finalized in the closing weeks of the Obama administration, just days before Trump’s surprise victory in the presidential election. The key commitment made by the United States under the accords is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the next decade by about a quarter of their 2005 rate, with further reductions to come thereafter. But during his campaign, Donald Trump promised to pull out of the accords, and, at the recent meeting of the G-7, was the lone holdout against a ringing endorsement of the agreement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been insisting that the United States stay the course, but it appears as if Trump is inclined to honor his campaign promise to pull out of the accords, a position in line with that of Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The President’s instincts are spot on here. He should withdraw the United States from the accords and be prepared to stoutly defend his decision on both political and scientific grounds. Ironically, the best reasons for getting out of the accords are the evident weaknesses in the reasons that a wide range of businesses and environmental groups offer for staying in.

One constant refrain of both large American corporations and environmental groups is that by withdrawing from the Paris Accords, the United States will suffer a “huge missed opportunity” to work on the cutting-edge technologies of wind and solar energy. But why? At this point, solar and wind energy, as the indefatigable Matt Ridley points out, amount to at most a trivial portion of the global energy supply, less than one percent in total. Indeed, most of that production comes from state-subsidized ventures that could never survive on their own. And while firms race to collect government subsidies to develop so-called cleaner energy, none of their research is likely to solve the intractable problem of how to store wind or solar energy efficiently.

Further, to label wind and solar as “green” energy simply ignores the substantial environmental costs associated over their life-cycle of development, fabrication, installation, and maintenance. Covering the ground with huge solar panels is a form of thermal pollution; wind turbines emit a low hum injurious to people and are notorious for killing birds; and mining the materials required for the manufacture of each form of energy results in more environmental harm.

Read the rest here.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with Mr. Epstein, but since Trump has proven himself to be a wimp under that pseudo-tough exterior, I don't have much confidence that he'll do the right thing.

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