From the Global Warming Policy Foundation, we see a UK court has blocked expansion of Heathrow Airport citing to incompatibility with the Paris climate treaty. That’s the “non-binding” ‘not-a-treaty-“agreement“‘, that withdrawing from is silly because, you know, it won’t actually do anything so why not stay in…
This lawfare was long-predicted, in a late 1990s paper, updated in late 2003, and the 2017 CEI paper “The Legal and Economic Case Against the Paris Climate Treaty” by Chris Horner and Marlo Lewis, Jr.
This reality being visited on the UK was plainly an intended outcome, is not at all dependent solely upon that country’s own rather extreme Climate Act, and was a certain outcome to be visited on the U.S. And which will be, even if President Trump follows through with his withdrawal scheduled for November 4, 2020, if whoever is president in January 2021 decides to re-enter.
As suggested in the Horner/Lewis paper, that is the peril of doing the right thing — withdrawing — the wrong way — by dignifying Pres. Obama’s illegitimate “pen and a phone” approach to what was obviously a treaty. Which treaty would have failed under the U.S. system requiring broad approval, if dealt with honestly, according to precedent, vs. now threatening to gut the Senate’s Art. II, Sec. 2 role.
It remains the case that the Senate should, but won’t, take it up as a treaty, unless of course the White House forces the issue by transmitting it for a ratification vote (sorry, but the norms have already been busted).
It was fear of such democracy that was behind the great if thoroughly unconvincing efforts to insist it’s ‘non-binding’, it’s ‘not a treaty!’.
Which arguments were just shattered in a confrontation with the UK courts.