President Obama’s trip to China has been quite a show. First, he managed to alienate the entire population by walking around with gum in his mouth, a breach of decorum severe enough to get him referred to as a “rapper” and an “idler” on Chinese social media. Yes, mainstream media Obama cheerleaders, the Chinese just called him lazy. Good luck browbeating them into apologizing by accusing them of racism.
I doubt you’d be seeing those comments on China’s “social media” without the approval of the communist regime, which sized Obama up as accurately as Vladimir Putin, the mullahs of Tehran, and every other bad actor in the world. They saw a delusional ideologue ripe for a shakedown, because he was desperate to bring something, anything back home from Beijing to prove he was relevant.
He threw Tibet to the wolves in order to butter up the Chinese, declaring: “We recognize Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. We’re not in favor of independence.” Presumably he meant “we” in the imperial sense, because the nation he ostensibly represents most certainly is in favor of independence from tyranny.
China’s rulers must have been cackling with glee when Obama gave them everything they could have dreamed of, and more, by announcing a big “climate change” deal. It’s the sort of “deal” where one side gives up the store today, and the other side vaguely promises to think about doing something in thirty years or so. No prizes for guessing who emerged from the negotiations wearing a barrel. Fox News was, unsurprisingly, one of the few media outlets to come up with an honest headline: “Obama Vows Drastic Emissions Cut, Gets Little Back From China In New Deal.”
President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the U.S. has set a new goal to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by between 26 percent and 28 percent over the next 11 years as part of a climate change agreement with China.
The new target is a drastic increase from earlier in Obama’s presidency, when he pledged to cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020. By contrast, Obama’s counterpart, Xi Jinping, did not pledge any reductions by a specific date, but rather set a target for China’s emissions to peak by 2030, or earlier if possible. Xi also pledged to increase the share of energy that China will derive from sources other than fossil fuels. China’s emissions have grown in recent years due to the building of new coal plants.
“This is a major milestone in the U.S.-China relationship,” Obama told a news conference in Beijing, with Xi at his side. “It shows what’s possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge.”
The Associated Press reported that the deal was the result of months of secret discussions between U.S. and Chinese officials.
It was unclear how feasible it would be for either country to meet their goals, and Obama’s pledge was sure to confront tough opposition from ascendant Republicans in Congress.
Well, of course it’s not feasible. China plays games like this all the time; they’re currently in violation of the last vague promise they made to cut back on their carbon emissions, supposedly because their economy boomed beyond expectations. They know how to play the Greens like fiddles, and they understand how much Western politicians love to use global-warming theology as an excuse to expand their own personal power. The Politburo doesn’t need to worry about disguising its appetite for power, and they certainly aren’t going to cripple their economy to meet any “climate change” goals, but they love watching their global competitors agree to do so. As Fox News notes, “China accounts for around 30 percent of global emissions, but has only gotten serious about the issue in recent years as the large-scale impact on health and quality of life in China has come into focus, exacerbated by smothering smog in Beijing’s skies.”
Nothing should fill an American’s heart with dread faster than the idea of Barack Obama conducting a “secret discussion” with anyone. It’s a safe bet the people of the United States are getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop in any such bargain. Fortunately, the voters were wise enough to put a Republican Congress in place to block this insanity, having long since grown tired of paying forced tithe to the Democrats’ bizarre global-warming religion. Bubbled Democrats don’t yet understand how much supporting Obama’s idiotic bargain will hurt them with the public – we’ll shoot ourselves in the foot right now, while you soar past us as the world’s largest economy, and promise to think about maybe “peaking” your emissions in 2030! – so a bit of political entertainment is on tap:
“This unrealistic plan, that the president would dump on his successor, would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs,” said incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, in a statement.
But environmental advocates in the U.S. heralded the joint announcements as a game-changer that would undermine any legislative opposition.
“Now there is no longer an excuse for Congress to block action,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate’s environmental panel.
Al Gore, the former vice president and a leading advocate for limiting climate change, called the announcement “a major step forward in the global effort to solve the climate crisis.” He said more will be required — “including a global agreement from all nations — but these actions demonstrate a serious commitment by the top two global polluters.”
McConnell pronounced himself “particularly distressed” by the deal in a press conference, where he lamented the President’s refusal to accept the results of the 2014 elections and move toward the middle. He also noted that Obama’s deal with Beijing amounts to dumping a hot mess into the lap of his successor, ensuring “higher utility rates and far fewer jobs,” as part of the President’s “ideological War on Coal that will increase the squeeze on middle-class families and struggling miners.”
You may recall McConnell’s 2014 Democrat opponent, Allison Grimes, ran on a platform of fooling Kentucky voters into thinking this was precisely the sort of issue where she would fight Obama to the bitter end. Fortunately for Kentuckians, they saw through Grimes; McConnell had better put up the kind of hellacious fight that makes his constituents happy they sent him to fight against Obama’s War on Coal instead.
[youtube
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) also blasted the deal. “This announcement is yet another sign that the president intends to double down on his job-crushing policies no matter how devastating the impact for America’s heartland and the country as a whole,” said Boehner. “It is the latest example of the president’s crusade against affordable, reliable energy that is already hurting jobs and squeezing middle-class families.”
Next to taking action against the ObamaCare fraud, nothing will help Republicans win seats in 2016 more easily than opposing Obama’s climate-change claptrap. This might be what it takes to make a few shaky red-state Democrats switch parties. Boehner mentioned some House Republican initiatives to rein in the out-of-control EPA. Now that Harry Reid is no longer Senate Majority Leader, it’s time to get those bills moving again.
Of course, since we’ve long trespassed against the boundaries of power our Constitution set on the presidency, it’s possible Obama will impose a good deal of his fake “treaty” through executive orders and regulatory fiat, rather than presenting anything to Congress for ratification. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warns that strong action will be needed to protect the American economy from this assault:
This deal is the latest move by the president to circumvent congressional approval, in this case by using a ‘politically binding’ promise to others that he hopes make his EPA’s rules untouchable here at home.
The intention here is to effectively embed his proposed and highly vulnerable EPA rules through soft commitments like this (and the Paris agreement next year repeating it), despite not being legally binding. Under what is known as customary international law, countries are obligated to keep promises that are repeated so often or so well understood, or at minimum not violate their ‘object and purpose’.
However, for President Obama to meaningfully promise to China, or anyone else, that the US will curb our carbon emissions requires Senate ‘advice and consent’ — ratification under the Constitution. This move is instead a clear attempt to pressure U.S. lawmakers, courts or the next president’s EPA to leave Obama’s greenhouse gas rules alone. He seeks to use promises to others to seal the deal on his domestic war on coal. The Senate should vote in January to instruct the world, our courts and anyone else who is interested that this represents no more than legally meaningless freelancing.
There’s a theory going around that congressional Democrats will try to get the Keystone XL pipeline moving, in a last-ditch effort to save the seat of Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Obama’s climate-change deal should scuttle that little plan; Louisiana voters would have to be straight-up delusional to think a concession on Keystone means anything compared to the economy-killing blockbuster bombs Obama just promised the tyrants of Beijing he would unload on the United States. Maybe Obama calculated that his symbolic deal with China would cheer up environmentalists enough to make defeat on Keystone palatable; it has been said that opposition to the pipeline is one of the few things holding the green wing of the Democrat Party together, its psychological importance far exceeding its dollar value.
The broader American public has had its fill of symbolic gestures, the sacrifice of their prosperity to left-wing ideology, and the sorry spectacle of foreign strongmen rolling Barack Obama like dough. There is serious work to be done in building a real recovery, with robust career creation. It’s time for President Obama to stop fiddling around with secret agreements, photo ops, and spending our money to buy imported political cudgels he can use against our representatives.
