by James Delingpole
July 3, 2017

According to a shocked report in the green, EU-linked propaganda outlet Climate Change News this represents a disastrous cultural surrender which

“….shows the degree to which the German presidency has bent to the will of the Trump White House.”

In public, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has been talking tough on climate change, promising to put it at the forefront of the G20 summit and making none-too-subtle swipes at any world leaders out there who happen to dissent from her position.

Without naming him, Merkel appeared to lament U.S. President Donald Trump’s uncertainty about human-induced climate change, saying, “We can’t, and we won’t, wait until the last person on Earth is convinced of the scientific evidence for climate change.”

Behind the scenes, however, it would appear that Merkel’s negotiating teams have been bending over backwards to tone down the climate action plan and avoid an embarrassing rejection by Donald Trump.

This can be seen by comparing the two draft climate action plans for the summit, one from March and the revised one from May. According to Climate Change News, American negotiators have watered it down considerably.

“The US massively weakened the language in the energy part of the action plan,” one source with knowledge of the negotiations said. “It pushed for references to so-called ‘clean’ fossil fuels and made it less explicit that the energy transition has to be built on energy efficiency and renewables.”

“It also provided cover to some other G20 members – such as the Saudis and Russia – to weaken some climate sections of the document, including the pledge to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.”

Here are some of the elements which have been removed from the original draft:

  • A 2025 deadline for the end of fossil fuel subsidies
  • References to the risk of “stranded assets”
  • A call for “the alignment of public expenditure and infrastructure planning with the goals of the Paris Agreement”
  • A push for carbon pricing
  • A commitment to publish mid-century decarbonisation blueprints by next year
  • A pledge to develop a “profound” climate plan for multilateral development banks
  • Seven references to the UN’s 2018 review of nationally-determined contributions
  • 11 references to the 2050 mid-century pathway for net zero emission
  • 16 mentions of infrastructure decarbonisation

In other words, this represents the most massive victory for climate rationalism and energy realism – and a crushing and humiliating defeat for the global green blob.

It’s also a spectacular vindication of the Trump presidency.

As I argued in December last year before the inauguration, Trump had the potential to become a climate super hero: the one man on earth with the power to turn back the tide of green lunacy which has swamped the planet for last four decades.

The Green Blob’s tentacles extend everywhere: into our kids’ classrooms (where they are brainwashed with environmental propaganda); into our universities (where whole departments have now been hijacked by green junk science—because hey, that’s where the money is); into the mainstream media (most of which repeats, unquestioningly, the spurious claims of impending eco-disaster put out by environmental activists and publicity-hungry university departments); into business, which now wastes billions on environmental compliance and billions more on energy costs artificially inflated by the almost entirely unnecessary government-mandated drive for renewables); into government (where few politicians, even now, have the nous to appreciate that they have been sold a pup and who still continue to inflict more “sustainable” initiatives on their hapless electorates); into the economy, where jobs have been killed and growth blighted by measures designed by eco-fascists on a self-admitted mission to destroy Western industrial civilisation; into the environment, which has been ravaged by the very things we’re told are supposed to help save it—from bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco crucifixes to those forests in the US which have been chopped down to create wood-chip biofuels to be burned at Britain’s Drax power station to the rare-earth minerals mined in appalling conditions in China to make wind turbines; into the cost of living (inflated by green taxes, regulations and tariffs), where in some cases people have been driven into fuel poverty and an early death because governments like Obama’s have caused electricity prices “necessarily” to “skyrocket” by mandating renewables over cheaper, more reliable fossil fuel.

This insanity has been allowed to prevail, largely unchecked, for over four decades. While enriching a corrupt few, it has caused misery to billions. It costs the global economy at least $1.5 trillion every year in “decarbonisation” expenditure which serves no purpose other than to give virtue-signallers a warm glow of self-righteous satisfaction.

And no major politician, anywhere in the world, has had either the courage or the conviction to deal with it.

Until now.

Yes there have been a few wobbles on the way, including some resistance even from within his own administration. But though the battle is far from won, what’s clear is that Trump really means what he says about making America’s energy economy great again. (And undoing the disastrous legacy of the Obama administration).

Here’s another encouraging sign, from a speech earlier this week:

President Donald Trump announced he’s lifting Obama-era policies preventing the financing of overseas coal plants, along with reviewing policies hindering nuclear energy.

“We will begin to revive and expand our nuclear energy sector, which I’m so happy about, which produces clean, renewable and emissions-free energy,” Trump said during a speech Wednesday. “A complete review of U.S. nuclear energy policy will help us find new ways to revitalize this crucial energy resource.”

Trump will encourage the World Bank to finance coal plants in developing nations, and his administration will begin a comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear power policy. The administration is expected to push a permanent nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

It is all part of a drive towards what Trump is calling “U.S. Energy Dominance”.

This is good news for the U.S. which will benefit from cheaper energy, more meaningful energy-sector jobs in industries like shale gas, oil and coal (as opposed to pretend ones servicing wind turbines and solar panels) and will be less reliant on imports from despotic regimes.

But it will also, ultimately, be good for the world because it will force on its economies a choice which they might otherwise never have been in a position to make:

a) Do we carry on down the self-destructive, decarbonization path which is hampering economic growth, killing jobs, and destroying the environment with wind turbines, solar panels and biofuel projects?

or

b) Do we follow America’s commonsense path – ditch all the greenie crap, save the birds and bats currently being sliced and diced by wind farms, and allow ourselves once more to be prosperous and free?

No one else is going to say it so I guess I’m going to have to. Thank you Donald Trump for saving the world.

— Delingpole: Germany Surrenders to Trump, Waters Down G20 Climate Plan #Winning originally appeared at Breitbart.