“The spat in Bonn highlights what many opponents of the Paris Agreement believed: the global climate crusade is really about redistributing global wealth.”

“Expect European governments to announce revised carbon reduction targets, as their inability to reach their 2020 targets becomes clear. Kicking the ball down the road and focusing on the new goals makes it easier to avoid explaining why earlier targets were missed. Next year will likely usher in an era of environmental mea culpas from Europe.”

Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported that the organization’s members’ carbon emissions increased last year by 1.8% compared to 2016.

The performance of the individual countries was mixed. Among the five countries accounting for 10% or more of total EU emissions, three were up significantly, one was essentially flat, and one was down materially.…

[Editor note: This is a repost from Marlo Lewis, Jr.’s piece from last year, published at the CEI blogsite. It is particularly relevant given the increasing isolation of R Street and the Niskanen Center in the climate-change debate.]

“… it is untrue that conservatives have been trying to beat something with nothing. Our “something” is climate realism and an energy sector free to power a growing economy because government eschews all forms of market favoritism.”

“The 2016 elections have given conservatives and free marketers an unexpected and rare opportunity to help a bold president change the direction of national policy. We squander that opportunity if we instead legitimize the progressive movement’s anti-fossil fuel crusade and promote an economically-destructive tax that would actually grow government under the pretense of streamlining it.”

“A new ethic is needed for corporate America, one where cronyism, obvious or subtle, is uncovered, reported, and criticized by the media and the public. Corporations will do the right thing under the new norms of a free, civil society.”

Corporations can practice Principled Entrepreneurship™ wherein “good profits” are derived from private property rights and voluntary exchange. Common ethical standards are respected in this quest as well.

Or corporations can practice contra-capitalism, mixing rent-seeking (cronyism) with philosophic fraud and imprudence.

A major corporation, ExxonMobil, and a major trade association, the Edison Electric Institute, used their financial and membership powers at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to go contra-capitalist on the issue of a resolution challenging the science behind Obama’s 2009 Clean Power Plan.

As described by Sterling Burnett at Climate News:

A resolution calling on the U.S.…

“We in the petroleum industry are not dismissing the global climate change issue. But I don’t believe anyone should have the moral authority to deny people the opportunity to improve their way in life by arbitrarily depriving them of the means…. I hope that the governments of this region will work with us to resist policies that could strangle economic growth.”

– Lee Raymond, CEO, ExxonMobil (2010) [1]

Think Progress (the successor to the Joe Romm-founded Climate Progress at the Center for American Progress) published a recent piece by Mark Hand, “Industry Opposition Leads ALEC to Withdraw Anti-Climate Resolution,” subtitled “Right-wing lobbying group fails to pass resolution targeting EPA finding.”

Some excerpts from Hand’s piece follow:

A secretive right-wing lobbying group failed to pass a resolution this week that called upon the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw its 2009 finding that greenhouse gases are endangering the planet.