Obama's Paris agreement in simple terms

Today the Obama Administration will sign the Paris climate agreement at a ceremony in New York, a move that is projected to severely impact the U.S. economy with ironically negligible impacts for the environment. The agreement will not only set the stage for increased regulation, but will crush U.S. economic output, reduce household income for millions, and likely lead to hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.

The agreement is a product of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, where President Obama met with world leaders to commit the U.S. to non-binding emission reduction targets. Under the agreement, Obama committed the U.S. to wholly improbable reduction goals of 26 to 28 percent by year 2025.

Through a litany of regulations stemming from the agreement, Obama has essentially offered up the U.S. economy as a sacrificial lamb to further his own legacy.  Sadly, the agreement will not just hurt the country’s growth as a whole, but will trickle down to low-and-middle income Americans. As a result of the agreement, energy costs will skyrocket, in turn raising the cost of utility bills for families and increasing the costs of consumer goods.

A recent study by the Heritage Foundation projects that the Paris agreement and resulting policies will increase electricity costs for a family of four between 13 and 20 percent annually. The study also projected American families will see over $20,000 of lost income by year 2035. Such regressive policy hits the nation’s most vulnerable hardest, who ironically are the same people Obama uses to justify the deal. 

The Paris deal is also slated to reduce U.S. GDP by over $2.5 trillion, and result in an average shortfall of nearly 400,000 jobs by 2035. Of the 400,000 jobs lost, an estimated 200,000 will be in the manufacturing sector. This means Americans will also see the costs of consumer goods such as electronics, paper products, and apparel increase, inevitably taking more out of household income.

With such drastic costs to the U.S., American’s would expect an equally drastic benefit on the other end, yet that is simply not the case. Policies such as those resulting from climate deal would, even with a complete elimination of U.S. carbon emissions, result in less than two-tenths of a degree Celsius reduction in global temperatures. 

It is all to clear the Paris climate deal is all cost and no benefit for the U.S., and the Obama Administration is comfortable sacrificing low-and-middle income Americans, along with thousands of jobs and GDP, for an environmental benefit that is negligible, at best.