As president Biden rushes to to un-do the work of President Trump, I take issue with one action in particular: rejoining the Paris climate accord. You don’t have to be a climate science denier to be against the Paris accord as originally agreed; you just have to be awake.
Note that I have no problem with America working towards a greener, cleaner and self-sustained energy infrastructure. Nor do I deny that this is something we – along with the rest of the world – must do to preserve our way of life. But it must be done fairly, uniformly and simultaneously to prevent unintended consequences.
My primary concern with the Paris climate accord is that it is a voluntary commitment allowing different countries to have different goals for their global warming emissions reduction. The U.S. has committed to an aggressive goal; other countries have not (guess who…). The result could be that American products are priced out of the international (or even domestic) markets due to increased compliance costs associated with America’s bold emissions reduction goals. If this happens we’ll lose our manufacturing base; we’ll end up buying our products from other countries that might not have the same emission standards or Paris accord commitment, resulting in even more emissions than if we had continued production here without any additional reductions. It’s a double-whammy: lose our industry AND increase total global emissions. Not a good combination.
Instead we must insist on trading partners who agree to meet the same Paris accord commitment as we do or pay a tariff commensurate with the difference in manufacturing costs associated with emissions compliance. This will require productivity-based emissions goals – in other words, comparable products should have comparable emissions no matter where produced. Complicated – yes, but the alternative is to wipe out our own industrial base while increasing worldwide emissions.
Dump the Paris accord, President Biden, until it treats all polluters equally.