Obama lets himself get rolled by China so he can get 'climate change' deal

Welcome to the world of make-believe. Let me explain how it works. First, you pretend there is this massive problem that is threatening the existence of live on Earth. As I look out the window right this moment at four or five inches of snow falling on November 13, I would like to remind you that this purported massive problem is global warming, which has been renamed "climate change" because there have been too many four-or-five-inches-of-snow-on-November-13 type incidents, and politicians needed a new name for it that wasn't so obviously ridiculous.

So. There you have it. The unfalsifiable crisis of "climate change" is going to destroy us all, and we must act. All right, what does that mean exactly? Coincidentally, it means simply passing every liberal policy prescription that liberals want anyway, such as massive new taxes and federal controls on industry. But remember, because "climate change" is a make-believe problem, it is perfectly tailored for make-believe solutions - especially the kinds that allow presidents to head off halfway around the world and announce agreements that sound good but mean nothing.

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Unfortunately, the president is the inept Barack Obama, and that means that in order to get other countries to agree to make-believe solutions to the make-believe problem, he has to actually give real stuff up. He is that bad a negotiator. But don't worry. These scorching November days won't last much longer!

In that sense, the emissions accord sealed Tuesday night between the U.S. and China is a perfect reflection of the mindset of Western climate-change activists. Cheap and abundant energy is popular among Americans because it raises living standards and helps the economy grow. The romance of the fresh princelings of Beijing is that they needn’t abide such barriers to enlightened governance as elections, a free press, transparency, the rule of law and two political parties. They can simply order economic transformation in the next five-year plan, and censor any dissenters as Al Gore wants to do in the U.S. Thus in China Mr. Obama has found the ideal climate-change partner: A technocratic elite that can instruct the bourgeoisie how they must light their homes and commute to work. We and many others have been skeptical of a U.S.-China carbon pact, though that was because we assumed the White House and green lobby would demand terms that imposed at least some discipline on Chinese behavior. We discounted the possibility that Mr. Obama preferred the illusion of progress, and that his green allies could be rolled as cheaply as the terms of Tuesday’s accord.

Under the nonbinding, no-detail agreement, Supreme Leader Xi Jinping promises “to intend to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030,” and then maybe after that to decline. This is another way of describing the status quo. You want to know the difference between Chinese Communists and American Democrats when it comes to "climate change"? It's pretty simple, really. The Democrats are using the issue as an excuse to push for policies they want to implement anyway, but can't gain political support for without some invented crisis that people are convinced can't be solved any other way. The Communists don't need any such excuse because they have absolute power so they just do what they want. So they indulge the climate change nonsense only when it suits their purposes, as they did hear because they know Obama feels the need to go home and tell his left-wing base he "got something done" on the issue. Just so you're up to speed: Obama paid a price to get a nothing promise on a nothing issue from Communists who are guaranteed not to do anything they said they would, but it wouldn't matter if they did because it's about a completely made-up issue anyway. Enjoy the snow!