The Patriot Post® · The Phony Climate Deal With China

Barack Obama waves around five magic beans from his climate change talk with the Chinese while China walks away with the cow. On Tuesday, the White House announced it made an agreement with the Communist nation limiting carbon emissions. Obama’s in China this week, where the world’s two biggest energy producers hashed things out before UN delegates meet in Paris in December 2015 to write a new treaty regulating the world in response to supposedly man-made global warming.

Just like he has with so many other policies, Obama went it alone. Most everyone was surprised by the announcement that China and the U.S. had reached an agreement – a bad sign on an issue so large as climate change. But it’s a bum deal, and the Republican-led Congress must rescue Obama from himself.

During his first term, Obama set the goal of cutting the nation’s emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. This week’s announcement increases that goal of cutting emissions to 26-27% of 2005 levels by the year 2025. The White House said it was opening trade with China for “sustainable environmental goods and clean energy technologies.” The nations will be working to study responses to climate change together.

While Obama pledges to further cut emissions – strangling business and increasing the almighty power of the EPA – China pinky-promises (with fingers crossed) it will begin to decrease its emissions by 2030 and start to produce 20% of its energy from clean energy sources. Only years after the United States has met its goal will China think of following in those footsteps. Really? We’re supposed to believe this?

Last September, it was checkup time at the UN. Every country, from Ebola-stricken Liberia to large, industrialized nations, gathered in New York City to share specifics of what each had done to combat the scourge of global warming.

China slunk into that climate summit like the slacking student in a group project. It’s a “responsible major country,” said Zhang Gaoli, Vice Premier of the State Council of China, who added, “We will announce post-2020 actions on climate change as soon as we can.” The world’s biggest polluter, one of the giants when it comes to industry and energy production, had nothing.

In response to this week’s U.S.-China announcement, the UN released a statement: “Today, China and the United States have demonstrated the leadership that the world expects of them. This leadership demonstrated by the Governments of the world’s two largest economies will give the international community an unprecedented chance to succeed at reaching a meaningful, universal agreement in 2015.”

It took Obama – not the U.S. – a promise to further cut and cripple the U.S. economy for China to agree to the most basic of plans that would be agreeable to the ecofascists in the global community.

Senate Republican leaders hope to undermine Obama’s environmental policies. One of Congress’ most important tools is control of the purse strings. Republicans could defund Obama’s environmental policies, hamstring new EPA regulation by withholding funds and weaken Obama’s presence at the UN 2015 Paris meeting.

Indeed, the GOP believes it has a mandate from voters to stand in the gap against Obama and his economically damaging environmental policies. In a statement, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, “The President said his policies were on the ballot, and the American people spoke up against them. It’s time for more listening, and less job-destroying red tape. Easing the burden already created by EPA regulations will continue to be a priority for me in the new Congress.”

But Obama has plenty of moves to hinder the Republicans’ pledge to work against his green policies. Obama still wields the veto pen and Republicans don’t have veto-proof majorities in either chamber. But neither can Obama enter into a binding international treaty. So he uses his phone to create working groups, research centers and initiatives with China – all little things compared to what Obama would truly like to accomplish.

“It’s hollow and not believable for China to claim it will shift 20 percent of its energy to non-fossil fuels by 2030, and a promise to peak its carbon emissions only allows the world’s largest economy to buy time,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said. “China builds a coal-fired power plant every 10 days, is the largest importer of coal in the world, and has no known reserves of natural gas. This deal is a non-binding charade.”

Obama has his five magic beans, a pat on the back from the UN, a boiling political fight when he returns to Washington and a long road until the UN meeting in Paris. Going it alone has weakened Obama on the global stage. He can only go so far before the Constitution reins in his unlawful attempt to transform the country. But he’s still trying.