Paris accord does nothing about real pollution

Donald Trump is famous for stepping on his own message. There’s no doubt about that. However, the message is still worth sending and he sent a big one when he pulled us out of the Paris Climate Treaty. The bullet we dodged is largely unknown by the American people. It’s time they knew.

First of all, and this is a trap many conservative outlets fall into as well, the Paris agreement does not reduce pollution. It ostensibly reduces CO2, which is not a pollutant. In fact, CO2, if you’ll remember back to 5th-grade science class, is beneficial to the planet. It’s what plants take in from us in order to give us oxygen. The reduction of CO2 could only hope to be a two-tenths of one degree reduction by the end of this century. And that’s if you make the leap of faith that reducing CO2 emissions has any effect on temperature.

The evidence suggests that it does not. According to satellite data, temperatures over the last two decades have remained steady despite the increase in carbon dioxide. 

And before we get too far away from this lame argument that CO2 is a pollutant, it’s instructive to bring in a recent World Health Organization study. Real air pollution is how we should be measuring countries. How clean is their air? We’re talking smog. Air quality that is actually detrimental to health. And, by the way, there is no CO2 in smog. The WHO ranks the United States as one of the cleanest countries on the planet. We’re as clean as Iceland when it comes to air quality. We’re also cleaner than all of the G-7 nations, the ones that have been having a hissy-fit over our leaving the Paris agreement.

This is something the Branch Algorians can’t seem to get through their thick skulls. The real issue is air pollution. We have spent untold amounts of money on technology that converts real air pollution into carbon dioxide, and we’ve been very successful at it. Now the crazy dirt people out there want us to pay up. Obama committed us to $3 billion for the so-called Green Climate Fund. This is the conduit through which wealth is redistributed. We’ve already coughed up a billion dollars and guess who gets the money. Countries like Iran and North Korea and other countries hostile to the United States. And do you really think they’ll use the money to reduce CO2? Do you?

I remember a trip to Rome several years back. I don’t want to gross you out, but at the end of the day I would blow my nose and the discharge would be black. Their air pollution is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. People walk around Beijing with surgical masks on. They routinely issue air quality warnings. The Paris agreement does nothing to change that. Do you hear me? The Paris agreement does nothing about real air pollution. Nothing.

We have got to educate the American public on how they’ve been bamboozled. Al Gore shortened carbon dioxide to “carbon” for a reason. To fool you into believing that CO2 was something dirty. It’s not. CO2 is as natural as oxygen. They’ll probably demonize that before it’s all said and done.

President Trump needs to seize this opportunity and completely change the discussion. We’re a world leader in clean air. The rest of the world needs to follow us instead of us following them over this cliff of economic destruction under the guise of “saving the planet.” According to the World Health Organization, we already are.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.