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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (909266)	12/17/2015 8:26:31 PM
From: Sdgla	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576600

Climate Fine-Tuners Reach Another False 'Turning Point' 18 Comments BY GEORGE F. WILL Investor's Business Daily istory, on the "right side" of which Barack Obama endeavors to keep us, has a sense of whimsy. Proof of which is something happening this week: Britain's last deep-pit coal mine is closing, a small event pertinent to an enormous event, the Industrial Revolution, which was ignited by British coal. The mine closure should not, however, occasion cartwheels by the climate's saviors, fresh from their Paris achievement. The mine is primarily a casualty of declining coal prices, a result of burgeoning world energy supplies. Thanks largely to the developing world, demand for coal is expected to increase for at least another quarter-century. The mine is closing immediately after the planet's latest "turning point" — the 21st U.N. climate change conference since 1995, each heralded as a "turning point." The climate conference, like God in Genesis, looked upon its work and found it very good. It did so in spite of, or perhaps because of, this fact: Any agreement about anything involving nearly 200 nations will necessarily be primarily aspirational, exhorting voluntary compliance with inconsequential expectations — to "report" on this and "monitor" that. A single word change that brought the agreement to fruition: It replaced a command (nations "shall" do so and so) with an entreaty (nations "should" do so and so). Secretary of State John Kerry knew that any agreement requiring U.S. expenditures and restrictions on wealth creation would founder on the reef of representative government. He remembers why Bill Clinton flinched from seeking Senate ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol: The Senate voted 95-0 for a resolution disapproving the Protocol's principles, with Massachusetts Sen. Kerry among the 95. Eighteen years later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of whose invaluable functions is to be a wet blanket about moveable feasts such as the Paris conference, says: "Before (the president's) international partners pop the champagne, they should remember that this is an unattainable deal based on a (U.S.) domestic energy plan that is likely illegal, that half the states have sued to halt, and that Congress has already voted to reject." The Paris agreement probably occasions slight excitement among the planet's billion people who lack electricity, and the hundreds of millions in need of potable water. Historians, write Walter Russell Mead and Jamie Horgan of The American Interest, are likely to say that the Paris agreement ended climate change the way the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Treaty ended war. But as the ink dries on the Paris gesture of right-mindedness, let us praise the energy source most responsible for the surge of human betterment that began with the harnessing of fossil fuels around 1800.