Put faith in innovation, the free market, not flawed pacts like the Paris Agreement

Last week, as everyone on earth must know by now, President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. I say everyone must know because it was clearly the worst thing that’s ever happened, at least according to many on the left and in the media. The overwrought mourning and gnashing of teeth is a little bewildering given that even the designers of the Paris Agreement admit it would do almost nothing to stop global warming.

It’s also curious how the agreement’s supporters couldn’t get their story straight. Pundits and politicians claimed on the one hand that the U.S. withdrawal was a disaster and an abdication of world leadership, and then in the next breath asserted that the agreement would remain strong and that withdrawal would only hurt the U.S. That’s inconsistent on its face. Which is it? Will the agreement be meaningless without U.S. leadership, or does withdrawal simply mean the U.S. is missing out on all of those lucrative green energy jobs (the ones we’ve been promised for years but haven’t yet seen, other than the jobs subsidized by taxpayers)?

{mosads}It turns out the answer doesn’t matter much, because the Paris Agreement was little more than another exercise in United Nations self-congratulatory back-patting.

Even if every country adhered to its commitments—an extraordinarily unlikely scenario given the costs—the result would have been a reduction of .17 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.

And at a cost of $154 billion per year to the U.S. economy and a trillion dollars globally. Translation: it wouldn’t have done anything to curb emissions but would have made everyone poorer, particularly the most at risk populations in America and throughout the world. Perhaps that helps explain why the Obama administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification as a treaty.

It’s ironic that folks who claim to represent the hard facts of science can’t bring themselves to admit the hard fact that the agreement does virtually nothing to decrease temperatures. And this is the most important point. The question isn’t whether climage change is real or how much of it is caused by human activity. The only real question regarding the Paris Agreement is would it have accomplish any good. The clear answer is no.

The agreement—and its motivating sentiment that we must radically curb worldwide economic growth to save the planet—shows an astounding lack of faith in the power of technological innovation and the market to solve problems. The rhetorical meltdown last week is reminiscent of the left’s outrage in 2001 after President George W. Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, the predecessor to the Paris Agreement. The United States then proceeded to cut emissions faster than Europe thanks to hydraulic fracturing, an innovation that also cut the cost of energy for Americans. As author Marc Theissen has written, “It turns out that technology, not treaties, is the best way to curb emissions – and to do so without harming consumers by dramatically increasing the cost of electricity.”

I don’t agree with this president on every topic but withdrawing from the Paris Agreement was a slam dunk. The Wall Street Journal last week called the Paris Agreement a Potemkin Village. I’d actually call it a classic case of the “Emperor’s New Clothes.” Last week, someone went against the collective wisdom and pointed out that in fact the emperor was naked. Anyone interested in reducing rises in future global temperatures should hearld the president’s decision.

Stewart represents Utah’s 2nd District and is vice chair of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.