USA joins Syria and Nicaragua as the only nations not in the Paris Accord

They, like china and india, are exempt

But if the accord is not somehow "legally binding" for member countries, then what is the point at all? If countries can do whatever they want regardless of membership, won't they?

Or are you saying that more countries will pull out?

Thank god that the state of reality isn't determined by the consensus of retards or dishonest scumbags.

They don't have to do anything until 2030, when they can just pull out or keep requesting infinite extensions which will inevitably be granted.

Also, propaganda. Another way the Supreme Leader can make the US look bad.

>then what is the point at all?
That's a good question I haven't really seen answered beyond essentially saying "it's a nice gesture" or "it'll provide a future framework when we decide to do something that's actually enforceable."

Because the whole thing is smoke and mirrors. It's just a way to funnel wealth and power away from the US. No shit the rest of the world is foaming at the mouths over us leaving.

Nothing will ever be enforceable unless you're talking about turning the UN into a one world government NWO that goes in and attacks nations for having too many smoke stacks. Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

It's not legally binding ironically at the US's request. A legally binding agreement would need to be ratified by the Senate, and they believe that climate change is a hoax. So the US requested that the agreement not be legally binding so that it could be done just through executive action.

So, again, what's the point of the UN at all?

You could include provisions for member states enacting sanctions if a country fails to meet goals and refuses to take corrective action. That's not really enforceable in the sense you can make them do it but if everyone isn't willing to take the measures they said they would then the agreement isn't worth anything anyway.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

*takes deep breath*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

*takes time to recover*

Wait, let me get this stra-

>burden sharing

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

To extort gibs from America/Europe to give to third world shitholes

AHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHA

>China and India, the two biggest polluters are exempt from having to do anything, but still get cash payouts from other countries
I have no idea why someone would think this is a scam

Yeah, the whole thing seems entirely impotent. Even if we didn't pull out, it would accomplish nothing. This is a libtard talking point and nothing more.

>The scientific community is wrong
>Every other country on earth is wrong
>I, who have not studied climate science in an even cursory way, am right

You trump voters are asinine little memelords. Isn't there a thread on /gif/ where you should be complaining about interracial porn? Wouldn't that be more fun than shitting on the science board?

Paris agreement is bullshit. It's just a way to siphon wealth from 1st world to 3rd world countries. Hell, China counts as a "developing nation" so they get free handouts and also don't need to abide by any of the conditions for another IIRC 15 years.

And on top of that, there's shit about the necessity of taking in fucking migrants. The whole thing is cancer

>it's not legally binding so didn't matter anyways
>we'd have to pay billions of dollars to chinese
Pick one already, retards.

China and India want energy. Coal is, from a purely monetary standpoint, one of the cheapest forms of energy. It is what the west used for a long time when it was developing its industry. Now, China and India are going through the same process. Thing is, we do have better forms of energy now, but they're more expensive. So, if we want China and India to utilize power other than coal, we are going to need to provide some support to get them to develop those better, but more expense, forms of energy production.

The west's wealth is in part built on the fact that we reaped the benefits of coal back before we understood the downsides. That has allowed us to get to the point where we can develop other energy sources. But if we want to get the rest of the world to go straight to those post-coal energy sources, we're going to need to use the position that we got from using coal before in order to help the rest of the world make that step up. Otherwise, they're going to just follow the same development track that we did, and use coal for a long time in the process.

> being such a cuck that you think paying chinks and loos to continue breeding out of control is a good idea
kys shitlib

This thread isn't much better than what's on /pol/.

How do people become the willing, unpaid mouthpiece of the coal industry?

Epic memes and being so tied to a political party that logic and reason go out the window. The USA could bomb Canada right now and people would stand up to defend it.

Welcome to the end times.

Tribalism. There's a large number of people who will rail against something if the opposing tribe supports it. In this particular case, the left supports action on climate change, and a large number of people here define themselves by their opposition to anything associated with the left. Thus, their membership in their tribe and their fanaticism in opposing the enemies of that tribe leads them to gladly adopt a position that actually doesn't serve their own interests at all. They shill for the coal industry because they believe in opposing the left no matter what, and they'll gladly do that for free.

I'm not necessarily opposed to action on climate change. It's just that this "agreement" in particular is dogshit.

Interestingly enough, the most environmentally friendly thing the US can do is to reclamation its manufacturing and production which would severely reduce the amount of pollution from India and China (and thereby globally) both due to the US's stricter environmental laws and the reduced ocean and aerial freight shipping..

China will not change. They are not required to, nor do they show any real interest in doing so. They have, I believe 10 years give or take to increase emissions, but there are no real consequences other than stemming the tide of free money and cutting them off.

You could impose trade sanctions I suppose, but China was decently off before its markets were exposed to the west and the west loves it's cheap goods and China loves the wests resources and you're not going to go to war because they go over a smokestack quota.

The entire agreement has no teeth and in the end does very little to actually change anything. It is a hollow and meaningless thing.

But rather than try to come up with a better solution or way of doing things, people just scoff and turn their noses up that someone would dare deny their golden calf tribute.

Steps need to be taken certainly, however this will do nothing of the sort. I hope though that I end up eating crow.

China will change or China will fall. The ruling party knows that. They're essentially stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they maintain power based on their ability to keep the economy moving at a breakneck pace. On the other hand, if temperatures continue to rise, they're looking at a massive increase in food prices and probably a civil war. Getting the entire world to agree to move on climate change is important to them because it mitigates the downsides of action. If everyone is doing it, then relative to other nations they can at least someone maintain their position economically.

But if a nation like the US refuses to do anything on climate change, then they're stuck with the worst of both worlds. The temperature continues to rise and thus they risk civil war, while at the same time their economy is at a relative disadvantage if they try to go ahead and do something anyway.

> The entire agreement has no teeth and in the end does very little to actually change anything. It is a hollow and meaningless thing.
At the insistence of the US, because an actually binding agreement would need Senate approval.

This.

Not the same person but:
>Getting the entire world to agree to move on climate change
No it's getting the entire world to hand over cash to give to countries so everyone can pretend to care and look good.
>If the US refuses to do it then...
So then I guess we'll see how truly dependent on the US literally every other fucking country is and if they can't keep it together without the US's billions, but everyone elses then it was never going to work in the first place.
Unless everyone gangs up on the countries that break the agreement and go to war, no one's going to do a damn thing.
The solution always seems to be "Just tax it"

It's literally the feelgood inaction that makes no difference that Zizek was talking about

The shared burden clause is a load of shit. Why should we give China free money? They, along with India, are the only targets of this agreement based on the virtue that we have never heard of massive pollution anywhere else.
China has plenty of money. They could fix this by themselves if they want. They just refuse to because that would increase manufacturing costs and cause offshoring manufacturers to move to some other shithole.

In reality, the best way to solve global warming is to give China the middle finger, take away all manufacturing, and put them where they belong--their home countries, where environmental protections are stricter.

Of course, it's impossible to do this because the environmental protections are too god damn strict. Is anyone in this thread aware that there are -zero- lead processing facilities in the United States, and probably the entire North America? The last one in America got shut down a few years ago because they couldn't keep up with regulations. Same with American steel. All raw resource processing in America is completely stunted because it's all been in China and Mexico for the past few decades.

I don't know how you guys don't understand that you're the ones to blame for this, not conservatives.

China is already aggressively investing in agriculture R&D to assure food security without relying on imports. If they aren't going to hinge food security on foreign trade they certainly aren't going to hinge food security on foreign cooperation in something as contested as climate accords.

>Pay countries trillions of dollars over the course of several years to maybe decrease the global temperature a fraction of a percent if they all play nice and actually follow the rules... after about 100 years give or take.

> Why should we give China free money?
Because the step up from coal to cleaner forms of power is expensive. China needs energy in order to not collapse into civil war. They aren't married to any one way of generating it, they use coal because it is cheapest since its real costs are external and not factored into its price up front. Money is required to get them to use other forms of power.

> They just refuse to because that would increase manufacturing costs and cause offshoring manufacturers to move to some other shithole.
And they don't want that because that would lead to a revolution against the ruling party since it can no longer provide the prosperity that is the basis of its legitimacy.

> Of course, it's impossible to do this because the environmental protections are too god damn strict.
Moving the industry to a place with stricter environmental standards only works if those environmental standards remain in place. If you get rid of them, then it defeats the point.

Serious question: Why does Veeky Forums give a fuck about climate change, when every time I see a climate change thread, everyone says it's too late and we're all going to die anyway?

Great, so the combined cash of the rest of earth can help them. Surly a few billion less without the US won't do much anyway.

>US leaves Brazil, Chile, Mexico, El Savador, Guatemala, Columbia, Venezuela, Argentina, Ethiopia, Chad, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Niger, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Yemen, Albania, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, (((Israel))), Jordan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, et al.

Not looking so bad in my personal opinion.

> Why does Veeky Forums give a fuck about climate change
Because it's a classic case of science being fucked over by politics, and that makes people angry.

If the US keeps on producing GHGs, then it will all be pointless. The US alone is big enough to drive a global temperature increase on its own, especially if it sinks to using more coal power. The US needs to be a part of any action on climate change otherwise it won't work.

Allowing China to move to cleaner forms of energy, assuming they even bother to do so, would increase manufacturing costs, leading to manufacturers moving onto the next shithole. As you said, this would cause a civil war because they lose their source of prosperity--indulgent western consumerist resources.

You have to look beyond the first step. Without making it legally binding, China is just going to hold onto the money without doing anything. If they can colonize Africa and send their manufacturing there, so can we.
Since it's impossible to make the agreement legally binding with our current administration, the agreement is worse than worthless.

All memes aside, most of those are shitty countries.

>Only the US is actually choosing to stay out because they believe that climate change is a hoax.
Wasn't even an official argument utilized by the government. The main concern was that China was getting all the benefits of virtue signalling about Climate while taking none of the negatives. India actually gets money out of this deal. Even the developed nations have to cut do a fraction of what the U.S is forced to do in this agreement.

>leading to manufacturers moving onto the next shithole.
Unless everyone is doing it at the same time.

> Since it's impossible to make the agreement legally binding with our current administration
It wasn't possible to do it with the republican controlled senate either. That, however, is a problem unique to US politics, that stems from the the republican party's insistence that climate change is a hoax. That isn't a view shared even by conservative parties in other countries. The problem lies specifically with republican orthodoxy.

You're ignoring the second condition of my statement: if the climate is already fucked beyond repair, then it wouldn't matter. So why care?

>unless everyone is doing it at the same time.
Are you implying that we can turn every third world country into first world countries at the same time?
That's completely delusional. There will always be a shithole. When the day comes that India has somehow been brought up to Western standards, or China somehow stabilized, there's going to be a Congo waiting to take its place, ruled by the same despots it was ruled by decades ago.

> Wasn't even an official argument utilized by the government.
No, it's just be the thing that the republican party has been constantly saying, and they are in complete control of the entire US federal government.

> Even the developed nations have to cut do a fraction of what the U.S is forced to do in this agreement.
Other developed nation don't have as large a carbon footprint as the US.

As for China and India getting money, that's basically a requirement of action on this issue. Changing from coal to cleaner forms of energy costs money. The west has money and cleaner energy technology because it was able to exploit cheap coal power prior to us knowing the downsides. Thus, if the west doesn't want the rest of the world to follow the same coal-heavy track, then it needs to use its position (which was built on coal) to assist the rest of the world in developing alternate forms of energy. Which takes money.

something doesnt have to """matter""" for people to care about it

Even then, it's stupid because the average person in a first world country consumes between 9 and 15 times the amount of resources as someone in the third world.

>China needs energy in order to not collapse into civil war.
China isn't some third world shit hole dumbass. They are an industrial powerhouse with a massive economy that produces so much, that Xi has to go around gallivanting in Africa finding shitholes for Chinese companies to renovate in order to keep expansion going. They easily have the funds necessary to convert themselves.

So it's like a religious thing?

Nice try Chang, we all know that China is destined to break into tiny pieces every couple hundred years. China's people are starving. They're like a really big Mexico with a huge army. Your idea of expansion only applies to the already-ruling class.

Absolute shitholes aren't appealing to industry, because they lack the security, stability, and infrastructure that businesses want to take advantage of. It's not places like South Sudan that see the biggest influx of manufacturers.

No, we're not going to turn every third world country into a first world country at the same time. What we should try to do is get the parts of the world that have industry (and thus meaningful GHG emissions) to move away from energy sources that produce GHGs. If the world's industrial powers move collectively on a transition away from fossil fuels, you don't get as much of a relative change.

>No, it's just be the thing that the republican party has been constantly saying, and they are in complete control of the entire US federal government.
If Trump wanted to pull out because he thought Climate Change was a hoax he would have said so. Nor would he have said that he was willing to renegotiate the deal.

Also
>Changing from coal to cleaner forms of energy costs money.

Are you dumb enough to think that the Chinese don't have money and that they are still a "developing nation." If the Politburo easily has the power convert to cleaner forms of energy. They literally destroyed the Three Gorges River to create a hydroelectric damn to power themselves.

There is nothing special about China, any country can manufacture cheap plastic shit

Just because the Trails of Dust documentary show how terrible absolute shitholes are at industrializing doesn't mean that they can't eventually. When that Chinese money finishes pouring the foundation, you can bet everyone else is going to jump in for a piece of that pie.

This post literally does not negate the point that the Chinese government has no fucking need for handouts. The economy and their revenues are more than able to support a transition into a cleaner future.

Because the Paris Accord is nowhere near draconian enough to have a major effect on the future of our planet.

>Chinese government has no need for handouts
you said it, not me
maybe the "shared burden" clause should be reworked? China is not a developing nation by any means and deserves nobody's money.

Being subject to the bureaucracy that went along with the Paris Accord is meaningless when the U.S. could start the process to convert to new breeder reactors and nuclearize its energy grid on its own.

>trails of dust
Empire of Dust*

>Other developed nation don't have as large a carbon footprint as the US.
We're actually slightly better than Australia on a per capita basis and only slightly behind Canada.

>new breeder reactors
That'll only happen when boomers die off. The hippie generation ruined nuclear and generated undying misinformation for their shitty anti-war rhetoric, and now we're paying the costs of ignorant fools who think nuclear power is going to make them grow three legs and have superpowers.

Never underestimated the ability of people to find an excuse to continue with their own selfish behavior. If you ask a person to sacrifice anything, they will find a way to justify not doing it. "Oh, it doesn't matter, the problem isn't real, there's nothing that can be done, there's no point." People are even able to hold contradictory beliefs at the same time in order to justify continuing to behave selfishly, believing simultaneously that the Paris accord is a massive, draconian money-drain and at the same time it doesn't require anyone to do anything.

> selfish
If not wanting to totally fuck over the American economy in the name of letting shitskins continue to breed out of control is selfish, then you bet I'm selfish.

cuck

So the gist is we lavish China and India with boatloads of cash so that they can pinkie swear to reduce emissions in the future. Why would anyone want to opt out of that deal?

Some of these established energy corporations could have made profits from developing alternative energy stuff before others do - why the insistence on coal then?

Also
>/pol/ hates coalburners
>but they also want to burn coal themselves
An impetus for reflection...

Wtf I love Nicaragua now.

Because coal provides jobs for West Virginia. Trump needs to create rural jobs somehow.

Literally this

>have the world's top universities
>still think climate change is a hoax
America is a fucking meme

rejection of climate science has now become a "conservative" position

America is a first world nation with a third world nation embedded inside it. On the one hand, yes, it does have high quality universities. On the other hand, it has areas of soul-crushing poverty filled with people who turn to alcohol or opiates or whatever they can get their hands on in order to make life a little more bearable.

Just to clear out some misunderstandings here, the Paris agreement has nothing to do with handouts.It is a non-binding agreement to cut one's own emission.

The 3 billion dollars ""handout"" is a goodwill gesture signed by Obama
nytimes.com/2014/11/15/us/politics/obama-climate-change-fund-3-billion-announcement.html
To improve the US's standing during the agreement.

If you disagree with the handout, you can cancel the handout as executive action without repercussion and without leaving the non binding agreement by itself.

The decision to "leave" the agreement was purely out of spite for the environment, so that if US the biggest emitter per capita leaves it might cause a cascading effect so other countries might leave too.

this, it's just trying to spite the international community despite the international order overwhelmingly benefiting America because it makes Trump look like a strongman who Takes No Shit (tm).

Wellllllll, I don't know how "pro-American" ethnically replacing America is though.

It was supposed to provide financial incentive. Developing countries would get paid with an achievement-based system. The US was supposed to provide a good chunk of that, but now...

>It was supposed to provide financial incentive. Developing countries would get paid with an achievement-based system. The US was supposed to provide a good chunk of that, but now...

No sir you're literally and not figuratively wrong. You're talking about international cap and trade policy, which is just one of the idea floated around and wasn't being implemented.

There is no incentive structure in Paris other than muh bragging rights because it is a NON-BINDING agreement. It's like America's biggest loser reality show, countries just get to brag and nothing else.

Here are some links from the sites itself
ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/negotiations/paris_en

ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/international/negotiations/paris/docs/qa_paris_agreement_en.pdf

Please read it so that people can make informed arguments rather than argue straight from their guts

Why not retrain/reeducate those people so that they can get jobs outside the coal industry?

Post something that confirms that the Accord is working and not feeding into the bank accounts of corrupt politicians.

From what I've pieced together on the matter, it seems Trump made a move out of sheer spite based off his personal beliefs on the matter.

However, after doing a bit of research, I think it can be said that the Peace Agreement was a bit weak in some areas, and it does seem as if India and China are not going to be required to pay their fair share, and I think it's a fair argument that the US is being expected to follow a higher standard than everyone else and is expected to pay the most.

At the same time, I am also getting sick of how the media treats "science" as if it's some infallible thing and furthermore when these scientists scoff at those who disagree with the importance of their findings and doings. These people seem hell bent on asking for trust with one hand and insulting with the other, and it's getting real fucking ridiculous.

Still, it's possible that this thing may have good repercussions in the long run. Perhaps this agreement wasn't the right way to handle the situation, and perhaps a better solution can now come in its place.

Because that would be government spending, which is Bad, except when it's defense spending. This is just how American conservatism works. Never mind that the net effect of retraining programs may well be positive (more manufacturing firms making higher-end products moving to the US, less chance of another retard like Trump being elected due to rural resentment, etc.)

>not feeding into the bank accounts of corrupt politicians.

It is a non binding agreement to cut one's goal. There's no exchange of money whatsoever so there is no money going to feed bank accounts of corrupt politician.

All the pledged money are sign of goodwill, with the US committing a pitiful $3billion, the EU $59 billion (lol) and OECD developing countries pledging $60 billion.

It doesn't have to be binding you autist. Everyone agreed (NON-BINDINGLY) to pay developing countries for doing their part. Someone could be a dick and stiff them (if they want to get shat on by the world), but the countries will still largely get paid if they are doing good. There's going to be way less money to go around without the US being a volunteer.

> non-binding
So what's the big deal about Trump not bothering with it? If it does nothing, then not taking part does nothing.

There are already efforts to do just that, but most have failed. They tried to do a program where Kentucky/Ohio/West Virginia would be trained in tech stuff, and then companies were going to remote-outsource programming/tech work out to the cheaper rural areas.

They ran into a problem because the internet coverage even in cities in those areas is terribly slow. So slow and shitty that working remote is not really an option.

Surely they can improve the communications and transportation infrastructures in those areas; the United States is not a poor nation. Seems to me that they gave up so easily and so early, "muh profits muh spendings muh savings"

> They ran into a problem because the internet coverage even in cities in those areas is terribly slow.
Why isn't their state government doing something about that? It sounds like a straightforward case of infrastructure that a state needs to be competitive. Fuck, the federal government sends money down to the states for exactly that.

There's no money in the state government, they can barely keep the existing infrastructure functioning, never mind upgrading it or building new stuff. And the money that comes from the federal government is generally soaked up just keeping the roads around the cities paved. Rural areas don't even have that.

All of the internet providers are privatized.

how the fuck do you make something legally binding among nation states retard. nuke the USA for leaving?