Senate Republicans are still making the TV news rounds to complain about the historic U.S.-China climate agreement, in which the U.S. will accelerate its targets for carbon emission reductions and China will dramatically expand non-fossil energy sources and, for the first time ever, commit to a date for beginning to reduce emissions. Now, President Obama is expected to announce that the U.S. will be giving
$3 billion to a fund to help poor countries deal with the effects of climate change, which means the Republican outrage should be reaching head-exploding levels any minute now.
Here's the kind of response the China agreement was getting:
In an appearance on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports," Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) called the agreement "irresponsible," and argued it would "impose expensive new regulations on energy in the United States." (The agreement does not include specific regulations for the US; it merely lays out a 2025 target for emissions reductions.) [...]
"All of us want to make energy as clean as we can as fast as we can," he said. "We want to do it in ways that don't raise the energy costs for American families and impact their jobs, income, ability to provide for their families. Those are the issues we need to be focusing on."
Setting aside that the idea that "all of us want to make energy as clean as we can as fast as we can" is a flagrant lie for any "all of us" that includes Sens. Jim Inhofe and Mitch McConnell, "we'd love to do it as long as it's free" is about as empty a statement as a person can possibly make. And now in addition to saying the United States will go cleaner itself, Obama is saying the U.S. will also help poor countries adapt to the damage from the climate change to which the U.S. has been a leading contributor? Hoo boy, Republicans are gonna be pissed. Like they are any time Obama does the right thing. Or any thing at all.