GOP isn’t impressed with climate-change agreement

It was a strategy born of Republican intransigence, but it may well be the final nail in the climate-change coffin.

The Republican majority in Congress has made no secret of its opposition to any global agreement that aims to curtail the use of fossil fuels, which is why the just-completed 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference is being dismissed offhand.

Nearly 200 countries signed a carbon-cutting accord in Paris that aims to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and other pollutants that contribute to rising temperatures around the world.

But what was most noteworthy about the conference was the insistence by the United States that the climate deal be constructed in such a way as to avoid the need for congressional approval.

Thus, what came out of Paris is an agreement, rather than a treaty, which would have necessitated ratification by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

But it is this strategy adopted by President Barack Obama that will be the undoing of the agreement.

Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted little time in making it clear to the president that the deal “is subject to being shredded in 13 months.” Obama leaves office in mid-January 2017.

McConnell isn’t just signaling to the White House that whatever was agreed to in Paris won’t survive if a Republican is elected president. The Republican senator from Kentucky also was revealing an important aspect of the agreement: There is no enforcement mechanism. Many of the nations that are signatories wanted to strengthen the agreement by making it legally enforceable. But the Obama administration made it clear that such a demand would be a deal-breaker because the Republican-controlled Congress would deep-six it if approval of the legislative branch were required.

Thus, McConnell and his colleagues know that the United States can walk away from the agreement without the U.S. suffering any kind of a backlash.

OBAMA SENSITIVITY SHOWS

Indeed, the Obama administration was so sensitive to the political ramifications at home that negotiators objected to the word “shall” in the final draft to describe emission-cutting obligations. It was replaced by the word “should.”

To be sure, Obama sees the pact as a defining moment of his presidency and one of his most-significant diplomatic achievements, but Republicans aren’t giving him any standing ovations.

In fact, they have accused the president of putting his legacy ahead of the economic well-being of the nation.

As McConnell has noted in the past, even Democrats on Capitol Hill have misgivings about the push to end the use of fossil fuels. The coal industry, for example, has long enjoyed strong support in Congress.

There are several bills that are designed to block the administration from proceeding with various initiatives to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

One point of contention in Congress is the administration’s imposition of controls on coal-generated power-plant emissions.

In addition, several states have sued the federal government to block the clean-air standards from taking effect.

Given all of that, the question of what lies ahead for the climate-change agreement looms large. It’s anybody’s guess. If McConnell is true to his word and a Republican president summarily kills the agreement after taking office, what will the rest of the world do? It should be noted that Obama has pledged to cut U.S. emissions by as much as 28 percent by 2030. The power-plant rules the administration has formulated are critical to meeting the goal.

At the heart of the clash between the Republicans on Capitol Hill and the White House is the following question: Is climate change real?

Republicans long have argued that the science is not conclusive and that the current warming of the Earth is simply part of the cycle of the Earth’s existence.

However, what do nearly 200 nations that signed on to the agreement on climate change know that Republican leader McConnell and members of his party do not?

The American people should demand that climate change become a major issue in next year’s presidential and congressional elections to give Republicans the chance to state their case.