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Cato Institute: Paris Accords Are 'Meaningless'

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The Director for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, Pat Michaels, expressed his approval following Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords, telling Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that it was a waste of our money.

"It was a meaningless agreement. The only meaningful part was that the developed world, meaning us, would send $100 billion per year to the [developing] world to help them recover from climate damages. Egads!"

Michaels believes voters had agenda items like this in mind when they went to the ballot box last year.

"If you look at who voted for whom, geographically, it's very clear that the climate change issue was critical in the election last November. Mr. Trump was merely responding to the mandate that was handed to him, while the other side is so upset. You know what's going to happen? Our carbon dioxide emissions are going to continue to decline. It's not going to go up. They're going to decline. Why? Because we have this huge amount of natural gas underneath the surface of our country and we are going to continue to exploit that and substitute that for coal, which produces more carbon dioxide when used to generate electricity."

He rejected the notion that climate change should be a concern, citing wide changes to the earth's temperature over the course of history.

"Climate is a variable. It's not stationary...There were huge glaciers covering North America, thousands of feet of ice thick. That didn't happen because somebody made it happen. It happened because that's just the way it works. If you have a system that has that kind of variability, I guarantee you it's going to vary over the historical time frame that human beings are associated with."

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