Det er glædeligt for alle – og især amerikanerne – at Trump besluttede sig for at honorere et valgløfte og trække USA ud af Paris-aftalen. Trumps timing er dog elendig, da jeg har så dårlig tid i disse dage. Det er der til gengæld forstandige mennesker, der har haft. Bjørn Lomborg har siden ‘aftalen’ “Legally binding – only go up to 2030, and only commit the world to achieving less than 1 per cent of the carbon cuts that would be needed to keep temperature rises under 2 degrees Celsius.” i Paris skoset indholdet gentagne gange, senest i The Daily Telegraph

Hours before Donald Trump announced that the US would be quitting the Paris carbon-cutting treaty, UN Secretary General António Guterres took to the President’s preferred medium, Twitter, to declare that climate action is “unstoppable”.

The clear message, reinforced by leaders from the European Union and China, is that the rest of the world will continue with the Paris Treaty without US involvement. Their resolve is quickly going to smash into three incontrovertible truths.

First, the Paris Treaty will be the most expensive global agreement in world history. Cutting emissions without affordable, effective replacements for fossil fuel means more expensive power and less economic growth.Calculations using the best peer-reviewed economic models show the global price tag of all the Paris Treaty promises –through slower GDP growth from higher energy costs – would reach $1 trillion to $2 trillion every year from 2030. Without US involvement, the rest of the world must cough up between $800 billion and $1.6 trillion annually.
Furthermore, the treaty hinges on the delivery of $100 billion a year in “climate aid” to developing nations, starting from 2020 – a vow that slightly awkwardly came originally from the U.S.

These huge costs have imperilled the Treaty since its signing. It is not difficult to imagine other leaders balking at slowed growth, or to envisage wealthy nations reneging on the promised aid.
“Unstoppable”? It remains to be seen if that bravado withstands an economic downturn.

Lomborg giver ikke meget for alternativ energi, der skønt subsidier i størrelsen “hundreds of billions of dollars in annual subsidies, we only get, according to the International Energy Agency, 0.5 per cent of the world’s energy needs from wind, and 0.1 per cent from solar PV”. I 2015 skrev Lomborg i New York Post

The problem with the deal is simple, and was obvious from before it was even signed. The Paris agreement talks a big game. It doesn’t just commit to capping the global temperature increase at the much-discussed level of 2°C above pre-industrial levels. It says that leaders commit to keeping the increase “well below 2°C,” with an effort to cap it at 1.5°C.

But this is all talk.

My own peer-reviewed research, published in the journal Global Policy, shows that all of the treaty’s 2016-2030 promises on cutting carbon-dioxide emissions will reduce temperatures by the year 2100 by just 0.05°C. Even if the promised emissions cuts continued unabated throughout the century, the Paris agreement would cut global temperature increases by just 0.17°C. Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reach a similar conclusion.

And that’s assuming countries actually live up to their promises: The treaty’s nonbinding.

(…)

By the United Nations’ own reckoning, the treaty will only achieve less than 1 percent of the emission cuts needed to meet target temperatures. So instead, signatories point to the fact that beginning in 2020, countries will be asked to lay out more ambitious targets every five years. In other words, 99 percent of the problem is left for tomorrow’s leaders to deal with.