Steam continues to rise from a cooling tower at the Datong coal-fired power plant in Qinghai province.
The Biden administration formally rejoined the Paris Climate Accord on June 19, criticized for hurting the U.S. economy and benefiting the Chinese Communist Party. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial explaining why the Chinese Communist Party likes Biden’s return to the climate agreement, which was endorsed and retweeted by Republican members of Congress.
The Paris climate agreement is a voluntary agreement in which countries submit their own commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Former President Trump (R-Texas) has argued that the Paris Climate Agreement is a “total disaster” for the U.S. economy, while it is too lenient on greenhouse gas emissions for communist China.
When Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, he said it “is the latest example of an agreement that Washington has joined that works against the United States, leaving other countries to reap the benefits and allowing American workers and taxpayers to absorb the costs in the form of lost jobs, lower wages, closed factories and a dramatic reduction in economic production.
The Trump Administration formally announced its withdrawal from the agreement in 2019.
In a Feb. 21 editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled “Why Beijing Loves Biden and Paris,” the article writes that the U.S. officially rejoined the Paris climate agreement to much media and European applause. We suspect that China (the Chinese Communist Party) is the happiest because it knows that the agreement will restrict U.S. energy development, while Beijing gets a free ride for at least a decade, i.e., it doesn’t have to worry about restrictions on its development due to emissions requirements.
The article talks about Biden’s intention to return to the climate agreement by bypassing Congress, which is unlikely to pass the deal. However, the administration will use the signing of the Paris agreement as a justification for sweeping environmental regulations to raise the cost of producing conventional (fossil) fuels and provide subsidies for renewable energy and electric vehicles, and it will bypass Congress to do much of that, the article says.
Paris Agreement inevitably takes its toll on the U.S. economy
A subsequent editorial in the WaPo named the climate agreement as inevitably costly to the U.S. economy. The economic losses will be real and inevitable, the article writes.In 2017, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Capital Council conducted an analysis and projection of Obama’s commitments in the Paris climate agreement, which would reduce gross domestic product by $250 billion and lose about 2.7 million jobs by 2025.
Nicolas Loris, deputy director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, said the Paris climate agreement will take a heavy toll on American families and businesses.
“It will be very expensive for American households and businesses because 80 percent of our energy needs are met through carbon-emitting conventional fuels.” Loris told the Epoch Times, “Regulating them and subsidizing alternatives will hurt American families and taxpayers.”
It’s the free market, not the Paris agreement, that drives emissions reductions
The WaPo editorial also compared emissions reductions in the U.S. and China. China emitted almost twice as much carbon dioxide as the United States in 2018, the article said. Yet under the Paris agreement, Beijing was given a pass to increase its emissions until 2030. According to S&P Global Platts, Chinese coal power plants produced about 4.874 trillion kilowatts of energy in 2020, and emissions have increased by nearly 15 percent since China joined the agreement.
The article cites a new report from the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor, which highlights that “in 2020, China will build more than three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined, equivalent to at least one new large coal power plant is built every week.” The report says that last year Beijing also launched more than 73.5 million kilowatts of “new coal power plant proposals,” five times more than “the rest of the world combined.
The China Daily article states that as cheaper natural gas replaces coal, the United States is estimated to generate only 78.8 billion kilowatts of coal-fired energy in 2020. Thanks to natural gas, a conventional (fossil) fuel, the U.S. has outpaced most of the world in reducing emissions, reaching its lowest level since 1992 in 2019, and it is free market forces, not the Paris agreement, that are driving this sharp reduction in emissions.
Article questions U.S. concessions on trade Taiwan over return to climate deal or
Even if every country fulfills its commitments, the climate impact of the Paris climate agreement will be tantamount to zero, says the WaPo article. Mr. Biden will send his climate deal envoy, John Kerry, to lobby China and everyone else to reduce emissions, which will also please President Xi Jinping. Mr. Xi will be happy to make promises about the future while asking the United States to make concessions today on Taiwan, trade and other issues. The Chinese Communist Party will certainly be happy to see the United States actively weaken its own economy.
The editorial was endorsed by Republican members of Congress. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ (R-CA) office tweeted that rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement on the same terms puts the U.S. at a clear disadvantage relative to China (the Chinese Communist Party), a move that would only make the Chinese Communist Party rejoice, not the U.S. president.
Senator Rick Scott (R-UT) also tweeted that the Paris Agreement does nothing to hold the world’s worst polluters like Communist China accountable.
“We can grow our economy while taking care to protect our environment, but we should never rejoin this Paris agreement that is bad for America.” He said.
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