Elon Musk Joins CEOs Calling For US To Stay in Paris Climate Deal (bloomberg.com)

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Wednesday he would leave President Trump's Business Advisory Council if the White House withdraws from an international agreement aimed at curbing climate change. From a report: The appeals from chief executives such as Tesla's Musk, Tim Cook of Apple and Dow Chemical's Andrew Liveris come as Trump's advisers also present him with closing arguments on the potential risks and rewards of remaining a party to the global pact. Trump also got an earful from foreign leaders and Pope Francis urging him to stay in the agreement during his first international trip as president. Cook placed a call to the White House on Tuesday to urge the president to keep the U.S. in the agreement, according to a person familiar with the move. Liveris was the driving force behind a letter from 30 major company executives backing the deal. And Musk tweeted Wednesday that he has "done all I can to advise directly to" Trump. If the U.S. leaves Paris, Musk said he would drop participation in White House advisory councils. [...] Twenty-five companies, including Intel, Microsoft and PG&E, have signed on to a letter set to run as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on Thursday arguing in favor of climate pact.

Comments

Illegal treaty.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is that this is a treaty that hasn't been approved by 2/3 of the US senate. By that alone it should be invalid but the stupid "treaty on treaties" made us less sovern.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[spiritplumber]

Sovern? Wow, it's the second new word I learn today. Can you use it in a sentence with covfefe?

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Mashiki]

Considering that seems to be the basis of all these agreements. Tax the piss out of the western world, and ignore what's going on in everyone else's, while watching them pay lip service and continue with business as normal. Yeah, I can see why the US would want to pull out. It's the same reason why the Liberals in Ontario are under a voter revolt for the same policies.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[mspohr]

I think the fact that the POTUS has progressive neurodegenerative disease which has reached the point where his extemporaneous speech is word salad and his tweets end in gibberish is a matter of worldwide concern.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[bob4u2c]

Estimates for the agreement would about $100 billion in funds per year to help out developing nations until 2025. That money would come from developed nations, ie the US being a major funding source. That alone is troubling that the US will pay to clean up other nations pollutions. Except, that is no guarantee, the nations just pledge to clean up. If they do, great; if they don't then there is no penalty or responsibility to pay back the funds.

So essentially we are just paying to bribe nations to clean up the planet, but if they don't, ehh, no big deal.

The whole things sounds like the UN, where every country has a vote and a commitment to provide funds and supplies for the common good. However, countries rarely provide funds or supplies when asked; except for the US.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Geoffrey.landis]

I've not been able to track down to verify, but it appeared this agreement in Paris, would have us in the US paying more "tax"...carbon tax, etc on all sorts of things.

Nope. The Paris agreement commits each nation "to put forward their best efforts."
That's it.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[dugancent]

According to Sean Spicer, it wasn't a typo. “The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/31/...

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Anubis IV]

I thought you were full of it because I didn't think that was even possible, so I went to look for evidence to the contrary. Instead, it turns out that you're actually right. From The Guardian's reporting of the US ratifying the Paris Agreement last year (emphasis mine):

In Washington, the Republican-controlled Congress has questioned Obama’s legal right to ratify the accord by decree, noting that the constitution grants the Senate a role of “advice and consent” in making treaties.

But the chamber does not ratify treaties, and the US also has increasingly relied on “executive agreements” since the second world war. Those agreements are not submitted to the Senate but are also considered binding in international law.

Wikipedia talks about ratification in the US in a bit more detail, since it's apparently more nuanced than I even realized as an American (again, emphasis mine):

Treaty power is a co-ordinated effort between the Executive branch and the Senate. The President may form and negotiate, but the treaty must be advised and consented to by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Only after the Senate approves the treaty can the President ratify it. [...]

The US can also enter into international agreements by way of executive agreements. They are not made under the Treaty Clause and do not require ratification of two thirds of the Senate. [...] If the agreement is completely within the President's constitutional powers, it can be made by the President alone without Congressional approval, but it will have the force of an executive order and can be unilaterally revoked by a future President. All types of agreements are treated internationally as "treaties".

So, basically, a President has the authority to make executive agreements that bind their office, inasmuch as those agreements do not extend beyond their authority. Without having looked into the specifics of the Paris Agreement, I don't know if any of its requirements go beyond the authority of what the President alone can do, but if they don't, then Obama's actions were entirely legal, even if they commit future Presidents, such as Trump, to abiding by the terms of the agreement lest they face consequences.

Of course, if the Paris Agreement required anything beyond the President's authority, then you're quite correct about it being an illegal ratification, in which case...well...nothing really changes. Trump would still have the authority to revoke it, but his office would still be bound by it anyway, given that it has already entered into force internationally.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[aicrules]

It is utter bullshit that we have to do this for it to work. United States turned the corner on its own. Yeah maybe some countries are behind us, but so? While pollution is generally accepted to be a "bad thing" there is NOT conclusive evidence that siphoning off money from US and other developed nations to SUPPOSEDLY combat pollution in developing nations is necessary to stop some cataclysmic climate change.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[cryptizard]

When President Obama ordered a hamburger with dijon mustard it was a headline in right-wing media showing how elitist he was.

Re: Illegal treaty.

[ganjadude]

maybe other countries, but it has no meaning in the USA

Re:Illegal treaty.

[SlaveToTheGrind]

The Paris agreement commits each nation "to put forward their best efforts."
That's it.

Funny thing -- I went and pulled up the text of the Paris Agreement and couldn't find the words "put forward their best efforts" anywhere.

What I found were words like "bound," "obligation," and 117 instances of the word "shall" sprinkled like croutons in the 7300+ word salad.

But hey, let's say all that really does just compress down to "put forward their best efforts." If that's really true, "withdrawing" from such an amorphous "commitment" may not change anything at all in the real world and thus all this hyperventilating is premature at best.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[skullandbones99]

You have missed the following points.

Pollution is a world wide issue. Pollution from the US will affect other counties because we live in the same atmosphere.

The Paris strategy is:

1. Get governments to specify their own plans to tackle Climate Change for their own country. Periodically review the plan every few years to see whether more aggressive reduction targets can be reached such as due to better technology becoming available.

2. Recognise that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant and create a Carbon Tax so that the pollutant becomes costed into the balance sheets of companies. This allows capitalist market forces to push towards cheaper and better solutions by reducing the amount of pollutant because now there is a cost for polluting.

3. Pay compensation to countries that are affected by the pollutant. Such as loss of land due to flooding due to sea level rises.

4. Provide clean technologies to developing countries so that their fossil fuel based solutions can be replaced.

Even if you are a climate change denier, you probably wish to live without breathing in Nitrogen Dioxide gas from car fumes. The Paris strategy will also fix car emissions.

I predict that various US state governments will defy the US Federal government and those states will continue to co-operate with the Paris agreement.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[rahvin112]

This is an outright lie.

The Paris agreement is a 100% voluntary "we'll do our best" agreement. It's precisely BECAUSE the US participated in the drafting that the agreement is like that. Trump dropping out of the agreement just ensures the US won't be involved in the future at the expense of an agreement that costs NOTHING.

The Paris agreement is a promise to do our best to lower carbon emissions and no one but us gets to decide what our best is. There is nothing hostile or bad about this agreement unless you're an ideologue that likes to ignore reality. Not surprising given the current administration.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Namarrgon]

Here's a radical thought: why not read it for yourself? It's quite short. Until you do that, you're just echoing the opinions and preconceptions of others.

If you do, you'll note:
  - the word "tax" does not appear in the Agreement
  - the word "must" does not appear in the Agreement

The vast majority of it simply encourages parties to use their best efforts to reduce their domestic emissions. Nowhere does it lay down specifics as to what or how, and nowhere does it commit anyone to anything. It's all very vague and voluntary.

For the paranoid, Articles 9 and 11 are the ones about helping less-developed countries - let me know if you can find any onerous commitments in there. I'll wait.

Re: Illegal treaty.

[cryptizard]

What is mainstream? Fox News is the most watched news network and they are definitely not left wing.

Re:Illegal treaty.

[Namarrgon]

First, if you read that in context, Edenhofer is clearly just reminding people that environmental policy is inextricably tied to economic policy, which seems obvious enough - if you accept that emissions are tied to growth. However, since that 2010 interview, and for the first time in history, that's clearly no longer the case - growth has continued, while emissions have actually slowed. A big reason for that is another thing he's been proved wrong about - gas is cheap now. The dramatic drop in cost of renewables is another.

But none of this is particularly relevant, because the IPCC does not set policies - countries do that. The IPCC's primary role is science - citing the evidence for climate change, and assembling the best predictions we can make, so that countries can make informed policies instead of reacting blindly. The science of what's happening to the planet exists independently of any responses we might choose to take.

Comments like yours are designed as distractions, attempts to discredit the organisations, but they can't make the evidence go away. You can certainly argue for your preferred policies or solutions, but you can't challenge the science with FUD about bureaucracies. Nature doesn't care, and closing your eyes to what's really happening is only going to raise the cost of coping with it.

Re: Illegal treaty.

[Plumpaquatsch]

What is mainstream? Fox News is the most watched news network and they are definitely not left wing.

Of course if all you watch is FOX News, you'll never learn about their ratings drop. Failing Faux News would never report on that.

http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/may-2017-ratings-for-first-time-since-2000-msnbc-beat-fox-news-cnn-on-weeknights/330611

Well....

[JWW]

If you don't want international agreements of the United States to be predicated on the whims of Presidents, then you should make the international agreements treaties....

Trump should send it to the Senete

[Silver Surfer 1]

Considering that Obama never sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification, the United states was never a signer of this treaty.

The reason Obama never sent it to the Senate is that both Republicans AND Democrats were against it and would not vote for it.

This is not about Trump and his policy's. This is about America and what a terrible treaty this would be for America and all Americans if the Senate ratified it as currently written.

Trump would be smart to punt this to the Senate and let everyone see that most Democrats in the Senate would not support it as written either.

Re:Trump should send it to the Senete

[DogDude]

his is about America and what a terrible treaty this would be for America and all Americans

Yeah, it would be terrible to prevent a few hundred thousand deaths a year. Terrrible.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

Re:Trump should send it to the Senete

[swillden]

Considering that Obama never sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification, the United states was never a signer of this treaty.

One nit: Treaties are rarely sent to the Senate for ratification. That's the constitutionally-defined process, but getting 2/3 approval of the senate is generally harder than getting a majority in both House and Senate. So usually what we do is to write legislation that contains the treaty terms and pass it through both houses and then on to the White House for signature like any other purely-domestic law. Treaties handled this way are called "congressional-executive agreements", and it's been the usual treaty process for most of the nation's history.

For completeness, in addition to congressional-executive agreements and formal treaties, there is one other type of international agreements the US enters into, called a "sole-executive agreement". Those are signed only by the president, because the terms commit the US only to things that are within the president's power to direct. A common example is treaties related to the behavior of US military forces stationed in other countries, called Status of Forces Agreements. As commander-in-chief, the president can order the military to abide by the agreements, so there's no need for Congress to get involved.

Re:Trump should send it to the Senete

[swillden]

any ratified treaty becomes as binding as the US Constitution itself

That's not true. It's a common mis-reading of the Supremacy Clause, but it's wrong, and SCOTUS has made that clear in multiple rulings. Specifically, the Clause says:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The confusion arises because it's easy to read the word "Constitution" in "any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of Any State" as referring to the US Constitution, but it doesn't, it refers to the "Constitution... of Any State". That is, it's "(Constitution or Laws) of Any State", not "(Constitution) or (Laws of Any State)". The correct interpretation is actually clear if you look at the first part of the Clause, which clearly places the Constitution, Federal Law and Treaties all on the same level. Not that they are on the same level, but they all supersede anything the states may do.

Treaties have exactly the same force of law as any other federal law, which makes the choice of senate ratification or the normal legislative process a purely tactical one, with no effect whatsoever on the "strength" of the agreement. If treaties (however passed) conflict with any other federal law, courts use the same processes for breaking the ties that they would use with any conflict between laws.

and it's significantly tougher to back out of it if it's suddenly a bad treaty for the country

This is true, for exactly the same reasons that it's easier to pass a congressional-executive agreement than to ratify a formal treaty in the first place.

Other countries may not feel as confident in that model as the Constitutional Treaty

Mostly they don't know or care.

these days I believe other countries are getting a lot more out of us than we're getting out of them, so I'm sure they're more than willing to "risk" it.

That's what Trump thinks. I think he's going to prove that it's not true.

Re:Does Cook have a moral leg to stand on here?

[Fire_Wraith]

A couple of nitpicks:
One, the battery factory is in Nevada. Musk's car factory is in California, as is his rocket factory.
Two, the pollution this agreement deals with is the sort that has an affect on a global scale, hence the need for a global agreement.
Three, China is actually stating they'll remain in the Paris agreement regardless of what Trump does.

If Trump thinks he can negotiate a better deal, then I'm pretty sure most people, including those CEOs, would be all for him taking a crack at it. What he's considering is nothing of the sort.

Re:Meanwhile in the lithium refinery in china.

[DogDude]

Green energy isn't so green when you see this.

Oh, that's cute. We've got probably 200,000 people dying prematurely from air pollution from auto emissions.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

And if you want to compare apples to apples, Google "Deepwater Horizon".

Re:Would have nothing to do with electric cars...

[DogDude]

The fact that the diminishing of the treaty may affect world-wide popularity of electric cars would not affect Elon Musk's feelings on the subject. Not at all...

Any same, intelligent human would prefer electric cars to what we have now.

The problem with the Paris Treaty

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize this is going to be an unpopular analysis, but hear me out. Let's do a cost/benefit analysis:

Cost:
The estimated cost of being in the treaty is $1.28 trillion. *

Benefit:
*IF* everyone meets their goals (which they wont), the temperature will reduce 0.05C by 2100 *from* the projected 5C. (so an increase of only 4.95C) **

Some other facts:
- The global temperature increase which scientists say will be "catastrophic and irreversible" is 2C ***

So, the question you need to ask yourself is NOT "am I a good person, because I'm 'doing something'?", but rather "Do I want to pay $1,280,000,000,000 to jog off a cliff rather than sprint off a cliff?"

Yes, we should do our best to keep the planet clean and the habitable - but is stuffing $1.28T into this the best way to go about it? Couldn't the money be better spent on battery technology, nation-wide electrical fill stations, hyperloops, and other technology we have not even thought of yet (rather than paying someone like Kenya for carbon credits to excuse us using old polluting technology we can't afford to replace)?

* https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060042242
** http://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
*** https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-paris-climate-summit-and-un-talks

Re:Does Cook have a moral leg to stand on here?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Two, the pollution this agreement deals with is the sort that has an affect on a global scale, hence the need for a global agreement.

2A, this agreement requires nothing be done before 2020 (Yes, Obama signed onto something that wouldn't actually take effect till the end of Hillary's/Trump's first term).

2B, The $100B/year that it is projected to cost is a myth. India alone needs almost twice that, according to India's government.

2C, guess who was expected to pay for the whole thing?

Re:Does Cook have a moral leg to stand on here?

[magarity]

I've traveled a lot in China and I'm pretty confident that if they meet the treaty requirements it will be because the official government report says they did.

Re: Meanwhile in the lithium refinery in china.

[CustomSolvers2]

It is not simply a matter of suffocation, but studies (including on the ISS) show issues with cognitive function, kidney function and bone loss.

?! Seriously?! I worked during 2 years for a company whose business was focused on emissions (mostly from internal combustion engines) and, as per my knowledge, all the industry wasn't even considering CO2 as a pollutant until relatively recent times. Also I wasn't aware about the fact that humans (or any other living being) are systematically generating poisonous-to-themselves compounds. Are you saying that just breathing is bad for your health?! Wow! You should quickly let everyone know about your discoveries because there are lots of people wrong out there. The medical community should start recommending people not breathing and/or not being around of other breathing things. Logically, I believe that all what you are saying is completely true, but just for future readers not knowing you, your knowledge and intentions as well as I do (random other AC), would you mind to share some reference from a reasonably trustworthy source somehow supporting your words?

The Paris agreement technically covers all relevant GHGs.

According to Wikipedia, you mean H2O, CO2, CH4, N2O, O3, CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs. If this is true (why or how could I doubt about the reliability of such a trustworthy source of knowledge as you have proven to be?!), it would mean that, out of the main pollutants from internal combustion engines, they only care about the referred CO2. Note that N2O has nothing to do with the dangerous NOx (NO + NO2), also that its other name (laughing gas) gives a good idea about its actual relevance.

Sorry, two for two.

Yes, I agree I think that the first paragraph reflects much better your surprisingly in-denial (dishonest?!) ignorance though.

I'd post links but I am on mobile, so a bit more trouble.

But you did share all that knowledge with the rest of the world anyway. Thanks! And I am saying that as both a human and a learner.

Jennifer Law did one of the studies, as a NASA flight surgeon, it should be public documentation though. And fo the other, just read the treaty.

Jennifer Law doesn't sound like the kind of made-up name intended to be appealing to gullible audiences? Like the fake name used by a scammer or what Sarah Silverman's last trailer is mocking with "Tom Virtue"? Also a flight surgeon?! Are now (flight!!) surgeons taking care of emissions and their effects on health? I thought that all this was taken care of by biology-focused specialities, but what has a surgeon to do with anything of this? And also NASA (well... they might do some work on emissions, although not sure that via their flight surgeon)?! Please, do a little effort as soon as you can and share a like to that breaking-through research! We have to let the industry and the world know! They have done so many mistakes and Jennifer is so unfairly not extremely famous!

DISCLAIMER: yes, this post contains looooots of sarcasm.

$2.3 trillion a year lost due to fossil fuels

[archer, the]

Each year the US loses $600 billion due to the health problems caused by using coal as an energy source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... . That doesn't include any negative effects from climate change.

Gasoline-related health problem estimates are $1.7 trillion per year: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... . Again, that doesn't include any negative effects from climate change.

So yes, I'd like to spend $1.3 trillion a year in an effort to stop harming my neighbors.