It's official! GOP enviro-denialists are now more primitive than the heretofore pro-environmental-marauding Chinese gov't

Presidents Xi and Obama conclude what the NYT's Mark Landler calls their "unexpectedly productive two days of meetings."

by Ken

That's two days in a row the president has not just controlled the news cycle, but done it with actual governing-type stuff, announcing what sure look to be big-issue policy commitments on the side of the angels. Yesterday it was his seemingly serious commitment to preserve Net neutrality; now it's the announcement, as what the NYT's Mark Landler calls "the signature achievement of an unexpectedly productive two days of meetings" between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, of "an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases."

As part of the agreement, Mr. Obama announced that the United States would emit 26 percent to 28 percent less carbon in 2025 than it did in 2005. That is double the pace of reduction it targeted for the period from 2005 to 2020.

China’s pledge to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, if not sooner, is even more remarkable. To reach that goal, Mr. Xi pledged that so-called clean energy sources, like solar power and windmills, would account for 20 percent of China’s total energy production by 2030.

Naturally, as a Washington Post team reports, "GOP congressional leaders denounce U.S.-China deal on climate change." They could hardly do otherwise. After all, the specter of a care-nothing, do-nothing People's Republic of China has become a crucial underpinning for the climate-change denialists and general environmental-peril denialists of the Right. The, er, logic is that (a) there is no crisis, and (b) even if there were, it's out of our hands since out nearest rival as a mega-polluter, China, won't do anything about it.

It's easy to get caught up in bean-counting what is known about the agreement, trying to figure who's giving up what and who comes out ahead, but it didn't take long as word of the announcement spread for people to begin grasping the larger significance: that the PRC appears to have reached a turning point.



For years now we've been watching the Chinese steadfastly not deal with its massive and massively growing pollution problem, and it has been an article of faith in certain circles to declare that there's no point in enlightened Western gummints (this would be, like, us, the world's most aggressive environmental contaminators -- USA! USA! USA!) trying to take action to curtail the out-of-control climate-change spiral since those upstart mega-polluters the Chinese won't do anything to stand in the way of their industrial leap forward. And now the joke's on us.

Ya gotta love it. You would figure that when it comes to not dealing with stuff they don't wanna deal with, there's hardly any group more immovably resolute than the leaders of the People's Republic of China. But now we find them showing signs of facing up to the reality of environmental degradation, while here in the U.S. of A. our Republican Party, giddy with electoral triumph, takes a deep breath and plunges ever deeper into denial!

Incoming Senate GOP committee chairs as well as other aspiring Senate majority movers and shakers are falling over one another to announce their intention not just to block future environmental-protection initiatives but to rollback the pathetically inadequate measures already in place. USA! USA! USA!

Already I've had a couple of great pieces passed along making the connection between the Chinese position and the GOP's: Jonathan Chait's "China Tries to Save Earth; Republicans Furious" on New York Magazine's "Daily Intelligencer" webpage, and Brian Beutler's "Even China's Communist Party Accepts That Climate Change Is Real. Republicans Still Don't." on newrepublic.com.

Brian Beutler includes a video collage, for the strong of stomach, from Climate Desk via Mother Jones, what Mother Jones calls a "Supercut of Republicans Using China As an Excuse to Do Nothing About Climate Change." Brian goes on to say:

I think the significance of that point runs deeper than the damage done to one conservative excuse for inaction. The key thing about the "why should we act if China won’t?!” excuse is a failure of moral imagination. You only say something like that if you're extremely confident that the world's developing economies won't turn around and embarrass you by seeking to limit their own emissions—that they share your particular cynicism, nihilism, or denialism.

It’s not just that China is mature enough to grapple with climate science and the GOP isn't, but that conservatives are so far down these rabbit holes that they've convinced themselves no other rational, developing economy (i.e. non-U.S. and E.U.) would treat this as a problem that needs solving.

What it comes down to, Brian says, is that "the problems that climate pollution causes are real, and even the least accountable governments in the world understand that they need to be addressed -- even if not for the purest, most idealistic reasons." Not, however, if you're an American Crackpot Conservative.

Jonathan Chait, meanwhile, has an elegant summary of the Crackpot Conservative position:

Conservatives oppose taxes or regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions, therefore they dismiss scientific conclusions that would justify such regulations, and therefore they also dismiss geopolitical analyses that would have the same effect. On the right, it is simply an a priori truth that nothing could persuade China to limit its emission.

He makes clear that we're in uncharted territory here:

It is obviously far from a settled fact that China will actually fulfill its commitments. (Or, for that matter, that the United States will — a Republican president in 2017 could, and probably would, bring American emissions reductions to a screeching halt.)

"At the same time," he writes,

people who closely study Chinese politics report that it has well-considered internal reasons for reducing carbon pollution, not even considering the general interest it shares with the rest of humanity in mitigating a global calamity. Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has previously expressed skepticism, offers guarded optimism on China’s new promises.

Jonathan goes on to have some naughty fun watching the kingpin crackpot denialists, people like pre-certified loony tune Jim Inhofe, soon-to-be chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, squirm in the face of today's news.

I wouldn't worry about Crazy Jim and Miss Mitch, though. They and their Crackpot Conservative brethren have a secret weapon: decades of experience at treating reality as Public Enemy No. 1.

Consider, for example, Jonathan's citation of Miss Mitch's "diplomatic insight": "As I read the agreement, it requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years." After describing this, rather charitably, as "an extremely ignorant way to read the agreement," Jonathan ventures that what our Mitch has in mind "is that China’s highly ambitious targets apply in 2030," and he "seems to believe China can do nothing until then, and perhaps pull a huge New Year’s Eve 2030 all-nighter frantically replacing thousands of coal plants with nuclear and solar." However, "if McConnell reads the agreement more carefully, or even consults with people who understand how environmental accords work, he might realize that other countries have ways of tracking your progress and calculating whether you’re on track to meet a future emissions target."

Does this sound like our Mitch, though, reading the agreement more carefully or consulting with people who understand how environmental accords work? No, not to me either. "More likely," Jonathan suggests, "he would just come up with a different soundbite to justify his position." Now that sounds like our Mitch!

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