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Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

> "The United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord," Trump said June 1, 2017, "but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States."

This blows my mind. The US is the most powerful country on Earth, right now. Almost everybody else agrees with the treaty, countries ranging from really rich and uniform ones such as the Netherlands down to poor and divided ones such as Somalia. Direct democracies such as Switzerland or autocracies such as Saudi Arabia. The interests involved are diverse because they basically cover everyone and everything.

How could anyone believe that the US is on the receiving end of a bad deal?!? Outside of some nutty conspiracy theory.

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You have to realize how Trump thinks. Everything is about him. If a deal doesn't make him personally look good, it's a bad deal. The Paris climate accord might be an objectively good thing, but signing it would make Trump look bad because he made an election promise not to sign it. Hence, it's not "fair" to the U.S.. However, if Trump can somehow make it look like he personally renegotiated the accord to get the U.S. a better "deal", then he can sign it because it'll make him look good.

The problem with the Paris climate accord is that it's vague and lacks any kind of enforcement. Everybody's signing it because there really is no concrete obligation attached. While some signatories may have signed it in earnest, others likely signed it just to look good. They'll announce a plan to meet the goals of the accord and then leave implementing that plan up to their successors, or just forget about it if they happen to remain in office. Look good now, don't pay later.

Given the nature of the Paris accord, there really is no better deal for Trump to negotiate. There are no binding terms to haggle over. I suppose they could change something in the deal just so Trump can say he did it and sign a "good deal". That's probably the best outcome.

There is in fact a ratchet mechanism in it. It's not a useless accord at all and those who think they can just pretend they will follow it may be in for a shock. Especially once enough signatories give it momentum.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-ratchet-mechanism-...

Wow, literally five year plans and out-virtue signaling one another who will craft more draconian regulations to warp the market.

Do you think all our problems have been solved by market forces? Especially things which we can't afford to solve in 50-60 years?

The problem with the ratchet mechanism is that it will almost unavoidably lead to goals that are utterly divorced from reality.

e.g. A nation will propose an INDC it thinks it can realistically achieve. It will be informed it's INDC is inadequate and that "more ambition is needed". So, they'll be forced to adopt an INDC that is not realistic. They'll fail to implement this, but they still won't be able to create a realistic INDC for their next five year period. Even after submitting an INDC they know they have no hope of implementing the country will likely be informed, once again, that "more ambition is needed".

Here's the thing. While the INDC's will steadily climb in their ambition, everything I've read indicates that there is no enforcement mechanism to see that they are implemented. In this sense it's Kyoto all over again. However, if the goals are too far out of reach, will we even try to reach them?

If you have information to the contrary, I'd love to see it.

Sorry to break it to you, but Trump is a nutty conspiracy theorist. Look at who he believes in: Alex Jones for one.

To be "fair", on his divorce lawsuit, he said InfoWars was a character he plays, just like Colbert. That's because his wife presented his rants as evidence to get full custody of their children.

  Under cross-examination, he spoke not only about George Soros and 
  overly potent marijuana, but also his taste for zebra meat and canned 
  exotic game hunts, and confirmed that a big bowl of hot Texas chili 
  caused him to forget details about his kids’ lives, which he’d referenced in his deposition.

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/infowars-alex-jones-loses-custo...

> In a series of tweets, he challenged Colbert to debate him in character as Tuck Buckford, adding that Buckford is too chicken emoji poop emoji to face him.

Colbert was being a softie, I see. First time I see the expression "poop emoji" being used unironically.

Well, in that case the most powerful man in the world really believes the words of a fake conspiracy theorist character. Which doesn't make it much better, doesn't it?

It has nothing to do with whether it was a bad deal or not.

The targets set in the Paris accord were all completely voluntary. The US could've stayed in, done absolutely nothing and there would have been no impact to the US economy since there is no enforcement mechanism.

So clearly this is purely political. It was about (a) fulfilling a campaign promise and (b) shoring up his base i.e. the 30% who wanted to withdraw.

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