Trump's big chance to make good on a campaign pledge

You can't beat Chris Horner for incisive analysis of developments on the environment-and-energy front.

First, he's unmitigatedly principled. Second, he has his facts down cold.

The latest example is his look at tomorrow's G-7 summit, and how Trump ought to handle a certain subject that will be coming up:

President Trump will attend the G7 Summit in Italy on Friday. This meeting of foreign leaders reportedly will pressure Trump to reverse his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, as Trump repeatedly promised American votershe would do, recently comparing it to the Iran deal.

For Trump, staying in the Paris Climate Agreement presents two big problems. First, this would break a promise to millions of voters who want Trump to stop former President Barack Obama's march toward energy poverty and a weaker economy.

Second, it would concede to a global pressure campaign to make U.S. energy policies increasingly unaccountable to Americans and beholden to the demands of foreign bureaucrats. Staying in the Paris agreement is also irreconcilable with Trump's energy agenda, which includes rolling back the Environmental Protection Agency's harmful Clean Power Plan.

The better option for Trump and millions of Americans would be to keep his promise and send the Paris Climate Agreement to the Senate to die. This is a critical step in unraveling Obama's war on affordable energy and maintaining self-governance on U.S. economic and energy issues. 

Horner then puts numbers on how Europe's Kool-Aid-swallowing nations have encumbered themselves with economic malaise:

To even achieve the first U.S. commitment under the Paris Agreement would require multiple Clean Power Plan mandates to significantly reduce oil, coal and natural gas use. These reductions would raise energy prices and devastate many state economies.

All of this pain would be in exchange for, as economist Bjorn Lomborg explains, an undetectable climate impact of 0.05 degrees Celsius by 2100, even under the rosiest assumptions.

Unfortunately, some White House advisers are supporting "green jobs" schemes like the Paris agreement, ignoring how these policies caused huge job losses, drastically increased energy prices and resulted in energy poverty in Europe.

In 2014, Spanish unemployment reached 25 percent, while Spain's reliance on green energy programs threatened to bankrupt the country. Spain's energy prices have spiked as much as 50 percent since 2006 and more than 4 million are unable to properly heat their homes, according to Spain's National Statistics Institute.

Electricity has become "a luxury good" in Germany, disproportionately burdening the poor, according to a leading German magazine. The country's electricity rates are approximately triple U.S. rates. 

Yes, pulling the US out of this idiotic agreement will rankle a good many of our allies, but maybe, as they see how things start shaking out, they'll be compelled to follow suit.

At least US laws and regulations won't be shaped by the ephemeral jitters and "clean" energy visions of a bunch of foreign bureaucrats who manage woefully underperforming economies.