September 30, 2025 • 16 mins
Unraveling of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and discover what practical energy security should look like today. Brigham McCown, dissects the New York Times' poignant reflection on a deal once hailed as a planet-saving milestone that, ten years later, seems more like a relic of bygone optimism. Prepare to understand why the agreement faltered and what lessons we must glean for a future fraught with geopolitical challenges and environmental imperatives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Charge Conversations, where we discussed the latest on
energy and energy related topics. I'm your host to Brigham Account.
On this episode, we're going to take a hard look
at the Paris Climate Change Agreement, what it promised, why
it faltered, and what common sense energy security tells us
about what we should be doing instead. Very recently, The
(00:23):
New York Times published an article reflecting on the state
of climate politics ten years after Paris, and what a
change It describes. What was once hailed as a landmark
deal to save the planet is now being remembered as
the high water mark of climate optimism, a moment that
has since dissolved into fatigue, backsliding in geopolitical rivalry. The
(00:47):
Times put it bluntly, the Paris era has disappeared. But
here's the point I'd like to drive home today. That
outcome shouldn't surprise us. If you look at the structure
of Paris, then you look at the realities of energy,
and if you look at what voters actually prioritize. This
unraveling wasn't a mystery. It was inevitable. And yet in
(01:08):
that failure there are lessons for what we must do
going forward to understand why Paris faltered, we really need
to remember where it came from. Back in nineteen ninety seven,
the world gathered in Kyoto, Japan, and came up with
a treaty that set binding emissions targets, but only for
developed nations. The US Senate, in a rare ninety five
(01:32):
to zero vote. I think about that ninety five to
zero rejected the idea that America should cut emissions, while
developing countries like China and India faced no obligations whatsoever.
Kyoto collapsed under the weight of its asymmetry. Fast forward
to two thousand and nine, twelve years later in Copenhagen.
(01:53):
The summit was supposed to deliver a successor treaty. Instead,
it ended in chaos, acrimony, finger pointing. The headline was failure.
Paris in twenty fifteen was framed as the breakthrough, and
in a way it was. Nearly two hundred countries signed on.
But what we don't talk about, and what we really
needed notice, is the difference. The targets weren't binding. Each
(02:17):
country submitted its own pledge, called a nationally determined contribution
or in DC in inenviro speak. The theory was that
Over time, countries would well ratchet up their ambition to
do more to cut The reality is that ten years later,
(02:38):
only about eight percent of nations even met the deadline
to update their plans, and many of those are now
weaker than they were before. In other words, Paris solved
the problem of participation by sacrificing enforcement. Everybody liked the
idea and signed on, but nobody was accountable, and there
(02:59):
are reasons for that. At the time, Paris was hailed
as the world's greatest diplomatic success. President Obama praised it
as the best chance we had to save the planet.
UN leaders described it as a moral framework for the
twenty first century, the way human rights had been defined
in the twentieth century, and for a moment it looked
(03:21):
like a new era of solidarity. Climate activists plooded the
streets Fridays for future, The Extinction Rebellion and other movements
captured media attention. Scientific reports provided dramatic warnings ice free
Arctic by twenty fifteen, and leaders repeated them on the
(03:41):
global stage. Even conservative leaders joined in the rhetoric. In
twenty twenty one, Boris Johnson, the Brexit conservative in the UK,
warned at the Glasgow Summit that it was one minute
to midnight on the doomsday clock. But rhetoric is free,
and Paris was heavy on rhetoric and light on delivery.
(04:05):
So why did Paris falter? Well, let's start with the
structural issues. First. The pledges were voluntary. Countries could promise
whatever they wanted with no penalties if they failed. That
meant Paris depended entirely on goodwill and public pressure. Even
Europeans have come to Washington and asked me, well, President
Trump doesn't actually have to withdraw from Paris. That would
(04:28):
look bad on all of us. Why don't you just
update your targets to I, A don't know whatever you want? Well,
the targets themselves were political. The much herald at one
point five degrees celsius limit was already unrealistic when it
was adopted. Scientists knew it, policymakers knew it, but it
(04:49):
made for a powerful headline. Third, the mechanism of accountability.
The ratchet assumed that every five years countries would increase
their climate ambitions. Instead, those that have bothered to update
it all backtracked. The ratchet turned out to be a
car driving in reverse, And finally, the framework ignored energy security.
(05:15):
It treated decarbonization as a moral imperative, divorced from the
basic reality that people and nations need reliable and affordable
energy first and foremost. That single omission was fatal, even
if Paris had been stronger, though politics were already moving
(05:36):
against it. We have the populism Brexit in twenty sixteen,
Trump's election that same year, and novelist movements worldwide pushed
back against elite driven internationalism. Climate conferences were canceled. With
the onset of COVID nineteen, Activism evaporated and solidarity gave
way to fear and division. Then inflation surged, higher energy
(05:59):
prices and higher interest rates made subsidies harder to justify. Politically,
Cheap money had fueled green pledges, and when borrowing costs arose,
the economics of the Green New Deal and those like
it fell apart. And then let's not forget that wars returned.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered the largest energy crisis since
(06:22):
the nineteen seventies. European nations scrambled for gas, subsidized fossil
fuels more than renewables, and rediscovered its vulnerability. Put simply
the world. The Paris imagined a cooperative, stable, low cost environment.
It didn't exist for very long. Let's take a look
(06:42):
at a few examples. In the United States, Trump announced
withdrawal from Paris in twenty seventeen. Biden rejoined in twenty
twenty one and passed the Inflation Reduction Act, but just
three years later much of that law has been dismantled.
Neither administration care created durable bipartisans support, and what you
(07:04):
got was the consequence of that. In Canada, Mark Karney,
the former central banker term Prime Minister, scrapped the carbon
tax is this very first act. It wasn't an aberration,
it was a political landslide for him. In Mexico, President
Claudia Shinbaum, a former client scientist herself, has overseen a
(07:27):
surge in oil and gas under the bannered energy sovereignty,
and her approval ratings are sky high. Even in Europe,
ambitious climate laws have run into consumer backlash. Refinery closures
in California and the EU a like highlight how politically
driven constraints often collide with reality. Meanwhile, in the developing world,
(07:48):
the real action isn't happening because of Paris, it's happening
because of economics. In Pakistan, frustrated citizens began importing cheap
Chinese solar panels, and without coordinat the country vaulted into
the world's top solar markets. That bottom up adoption was
not a fruit of a UN summit or a global mandate.
(08:09):
It was the result of high energy prices. I suppose too.
It's worth remembering the cultural climate after Paris. For a while,
activists were treated as moral authorities. Greta Thunberg's scolded leaders
from the UN podium as a teenager extension rebellion made
headlines with disruptive protests. The media covered climate as the
(08:32):
exostential crisis of our time. Today, activists are being arrested
and jailed for protests and for criminal activities. Politicians rarely
invite them on stage unless they throw tomato soup at
the Mona Lisa or start spray painting. The public's patience
has waned. I myself waited on the tarmac in Frankfurt
(08:57):
for three hours after climate activists superglued, yes, superglued themselves
to the runways, and people have had it. It's not
more than they support affordable gasoline jobs, and heating that stuff.
You got to have the political coalition for radical action,
just couldn't convince people to stay for the course. And
(09:19):
I guess this is the crux of the issue. Energy
is not just environmental question. It is the foundation of security,
prosperity and stability. The Paris Agreement treated energy as if
it could be reorganized by pledge. But when Russian invaded Ukraine,
Europe discovered that despite the solar panels and windmills, it
(09:41):
still relied on Russian gas and oil. When price is spiked,
garments poured more money into fossil fuel subsidies than into renewables.
That wasn't hypocrisy on their part, it was just survival
and it revealed the fatal flaw of Paris. It tried
to put climate goals ahead of energy security. It may
work in a university or a think tank, but in
(10:03):
the real world it works the other way around. Secure
energy comes first. Only then can you decarbonize. And here's
the irony. Decarbonization is happening, but not because of Paris.
Global renewable investments have doubled in five years. Ninety three
percent of new power capacity worldwide came from cleaner cleaner sources.
(10:26):
It took seventy years to install the first tarawatt of
solar power, two years for the second. Then we're about
to hit a third. But you see, this momentum comes
from markets, not summits, and it comes where and when
it makes sense. Chia alone counts for nearly three quarters
of global solar and wind construction. It's not because they
(10:47):
believe in the Green New Deal. They believe in Paris,
they believe in energy security. They're using it all. Everything
they can get their hands on, whole nuclear, oil, gas, renewables.
They want it all. Developing countries are also adopting clean
tech because in some places it's cheaper and easier. I
(11:13):
guess the real story of the energy transition today is competition.
The United States is, in fact a petro state, so
is China. Nations are racing for advantages, especially in the
era of more energy is required AI and data centers.
They're not pledging in harmony and singing together. In the
(11:34):
New York Times article Jason Bordoff, who I respect very much,
and he has his own podcast up at Columbia University
on energy. You should check it out so that everybody
talks about realism, pragmatism, but nobody knows what the heck
it means. Well, I don't know if that's entirely true,
but just in case, let's define them right here and
right now. Well. Number one, realism means that recognizing the
(11:57):
fossil fuels still supply a ey percent of global energy,
even after trillions and investment and all this talk. We
live in a fossil fuel world, and that transitions where
any transition takes decades, not months, not days, not a
(12:17):
couple of years. Realism means understanding that base load power
cannot be replaced by intermittent sources without massive infrastructure, storage,
and high costs. Being pragmatic means pursuing all the above
solutions simultaneously. Being pragmatic means understanding that natural gas is
a bridge fuel. Nuclear fuel including SMRs are, together with
(12:42):
natural gas, a cornerstone. Carbon captured and hydrogen or supplements
renewables where and when they make sense, act by reliable,
dispatchable power. That's what being pragmatic means. In other words,
realism and pragmatism aren't vague slogan. It's about having common sense.
So what should we be doing? Where can we go
(13:05):
from here. Number one, we need to recenter on energy security. Affordable,
reliable energy must come first. Without it, politics collapse, our
economy collapses, and our national security is undermined. Affordable and
reliable and a lot of it. All the above. We've
got to use natural gas, nuclear ccs, hydrogen, hydro power, renewables.
(13:31):
Not ideology but practicability. We have to reform permitting. We
have to streamline approvals for new electric transmission lines, for reactors,
LNG terminals, pipelines, and time is money and delays kill projects.
We need to support the Global South on their journey
by helping nations leapfrog to cleaner energy by supporting bottom
(13:54):
up adoption. And we need to accept competition, cooperate where
we can. Titians not a dirty word. Rivalry could be
a driver for innovation. If nations innovate out of self interest, great,
the whole world develops. Let's do it this November, all
the same folks will gather again, this time in Brazil
(14:16):
for what we call COP thirty. I've been talking about
this for thirty years. Ten years after Paris, each country
is supposed to arrive with new deadlines, but deadlines have
already been missed, and enthusiasm is quite honestly pretty low.
And honestly, I think that's okay because the real future
of energy won't be decided in Brazil or at Davos
(14:36):
or in New York. We won't be taking our private
jets to jet into Switzerland to chat about it. It'll
be decided in Houston and Beijing, in the Gulf of Mexico,
in a South China Sea, in the Persian Gulf, maybe
in Alaska, in factories, laboratories, and markets and supply chains.
The Paris Agreement will fade into history. Is a notable
(14:57):
but flawed experiment, but the next chapter will be written
in the language of realism, security, and pragmatism. The Paris
Climate Change Agreement failed because it was built on aspirations
rather than reality. It assumed solidarity where rivalry prevailed. It
assumed affordability when costs loom large. It assumed poverty and
(15:18):
scarcity instead of affordability and abundance. And it assumed urgency
where voters preferred caution. We shouldn't be surprised and we
shouldn't be discouraged either. Though the lesson is simple. Energy
transitions require a longer glide path, and they succeed when
they're grounded in security, competition, and common sense decarbonization. If
(15:39):
that's your thing, has to come through innovation, not coercion,
through markets, not mandates, through realism not rhetoric. If we
follow that path, we may very well achieve more than
Paris ever could. You've been listening to Charge Conversations of
Joe Strecker Production. If you like what you've been listening to,
please hit that subscribe button. Even better, still share it
(16:00):
with somebody. I'm your host, Brighan McCown, senior Fellow the
Thoughts At Institute, and I'll see you next time for
another episode of Charged Conversations m
Welcome to Charge Conversations, where we discussed the latest on
energy and energy related topics. I'm your host to Brigham Account.
On this episode, we're going to take a hard look
at the Paris Climate Change Agreement, what it promised, why
it faltered, and what common sense energy security tells us
about what we should be doing instead. Very recently, The
(00:23):
New York Times published an article reflecting on the state
of climate politics ten years after Paris, and what a
change It describes. What was once hailed as a landmark
deal to save the planet is now being remembered as
the high water mark of climate optimism, a moment that
has since dissolved into fatigue, backsliding in geopolitical rivalry. The
(00:47):
Times put it bluntly, the Paris era has disappeared. But
here's the point I'd like to drive home today. That
outcome shouldn't surprise us. If you look at the structure
of Paris, then you look at the realities of energy,
and if you look at what voters actually prioritize. This
unraveling wasn't a mystery. It was inevitable. And yet in
(01:08):
that failure there are lessons for what we must do
going forward to understand why Paris faltered, we really need
to remember where it came from. Back in nineteen ninety seven,
the world gathered in Kyoto, Japan, and came up with
a treaty that set binding emissions targets, but only for
developed nations. The US Senate, in a rare ninety five
(01:32):
to zero vote. I think about that ninety five to
zero rejected the idea that America should cut emissions, while
developing countries like China and India faced no obligations whatsoever.
Kyoto collapsed under the weight of its asymmetry. Fast forward
to two thousand and nine, twelve years later in Copenhagen.
(01:53):
The summit was supposed to deliver a successor treaty. Instead,
it ended in chaos, acrimony, finger pointing. The headline was failure.
Paris in twenty fifteen was framed as the breakthrough, and
in a way it was. Nearly two hundred countries signed on.
But what we don't talk about, and what we really
needed notice, is the difference. The targets weren't binding. Each
(02:17):
country submitted its own pledge, called a nationally determined contribution
or in DC in inenviro speak. The theory was that
Over time, countries would well ratchet up their ambition to
do more to cut The reality is that ten years later,
(02:38):
only about eight percent of nations even met the deadline
to update their plans, and many of those are now
weaker than they were before. In other words, Paris solved
the problem of participation by sacrificing enforcement. Everybody liked the
idea and signed on, but nobody was accountable, and there
(02:59):
are reasons for that. At the time, Paris was hailed
as the world's greatest diplomatic success. President Obama praised it
as the best chance we had to save the planet.
UN leaders described it as a moral framework for the
twenty first century, the way human rights had been defined
in the twentieth century, and for a moment it looked
(03:21):
like a new era of solidarity. Climate activists plooded the
streets Fridays for future, The Extinction Rebellion and other movements
captured media attention. Scientific reports provided dramatic warnings ice free
Arctic by twenty fifteen, and leaders repeated them on the
(03:41):
global stage. Even conservative leaders joined in the rhetoric. In
twenty twenty one, Boris Johnson, the Brexit conservative in the UK,
warned at the Glasgow Summit that it was one minute
to midnight on the doomsday clock. But rhetoric is free,
and Paris was heavy on rhetoric and light on delivery.
(04:05):
So why did Paris falter? Well, let's start with the
structural issues. First. The pledges were voluntary. Countries could promise
whatever they wanted with no penalties if they failed. That
meant Paris depended entirely on goodwill and public pressure. Even
Europeans have come to Washington and asked me, well, President
Trump doesn't actually have to withdraw from Paris. That would
(04:28):
look bad on all of us. Why don't you just
update your targets to I, A don't know whatever you want? Well,
the targets themselves were political. The much herald at one
point five degrees celsius limit was already unrealistic when it
was adopted. Scientists knew it, policymakers knew it, but it
(04:49):
made for a powerful headline. Third, the mechanism of accountability.
The ratchet assumed that every five years countries would increase
their climate ambitions. Instead, those that have bothered to update
it all backtracked. The ratchet turned out to be a
car driving in reverse, And finally, the framework ignored energy security.
(05:15):
It treated decarbonization as a moral imperative, divorced from the
basic reality that people and nations need reliable and affordable
energy first and foremost. That single omission was fatal, even
if Paris had been stronger, though politics were already moving
(05:36):
against it. We have the populism Brexit in twenty sixteen,
Trump's election that same year, and novelist movements worldwide pushed
back against elite driven internationalism. Climate conferences were canceled. With
the onset of COVID nineteen, Activism evaporated and solidarity gave
way to fear and division. Then inflation surged, higher energy
(05:59):
prices and higher interest rates made subsidies harder to justify. Politically,
Cheap money had fueled green pledges, and when borrowing costs arose,
the economics of the Green New Deal and those like
it fell apart. And then let's not forget that wars returned.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered the largest energy crisis since
(06:22):
the nineteen seventies. European nations scrambled for gas, subsidized fossil
fuels more than renewables, and rediscovered its vulnerability. Put simply
the world. The Paris imagined a cooperative, stable, low cost environment.
It didn't exist for very long. Let's take a look
(06:42):
at a few examples. In the United States, Trump announced
withdrawal from Paris in twenty seventeen. Biden rejoined in twenty
twenty one and passed the Inflation Reduction Act, but just
three years later much of that law has been dismantled.
Neither administration care created durable bipartisans support, and what you
(07:04):
got was the consequence of that. In Canada, Mark Karney,
the former central banker term Prime Minister, scrapped the carbon
tax is this very first act. It wasn't an aberration,
it was a political landslide for him. In Mexico, President
Claudia Shinbaum, a former client scientist herself, has overseen a
(07:27):
surge in oil and gas under the bannered energy sovereignty,
and her approval ratings are sky high. Even in Europe,
ambitious climate laws have run into consumer backlash. Refinery closures
in California and the EU a like highlight how politically
driven constraints often collide with reality. Meanwhile, in the developing world,
(07:48):
the real action isn't happening because of Paris, it's happening
because of economics. In Pakistan, frustrated citizens began importing cheap
Chinese solar panels, and without coordinat the country vaulted into
the world's top solar markets. That bottom up adoption was
not a fruit of a UN summit or a global mandate.
(08:09):
It was the result of high energy prices. I suppose too.
It's worth remembering the cultural climate after Paris. For a while,
activists were treated as moral authorities. Greta Thunberg's scolded leaders
from the UN podium as a teenager extension rebellion made
headlines with disruptive protests. The media covered climate as the
(08:32):
exostential crisis of our time. Today, activists are being arrested
and jailed for protests and for criminal activities. Politicians rarely
invite them on stage unless they throw tomato soup at
the Mona Lisa or start spray painting. The public's patience
has waned. I myself waited on the tarmac in Frankfurt
(08:57):
for three hours after climate activists superglued, yes, superglued themselves
to the runways, and people have had it. It's not
more than they support affordable gasoline jobs, and heating that stuff.
You got to have the political coalition for radical action,
just couldn't convince people to stay for the course. And
(09:19):
I guess this is the crux of the issue. Energy
is not just environmental question. It is the foundation of security,
prosperity and stability. The Paris Agreement treated energy as if
it could be reorganized by pledge. But when Russian invaded Ukraine,
Europe discovered that despite the solar panels and windmills, it
(09:41):
still relied on Russian gas and oil. When price is spiked,
garments poured more money into fossil fuel subsidies than into renewables.
That wasn't hypocrisy on their part, it was just survival
and it revealed the fatal flaw of Paris. It tried
to put climate goals ahead of energy security. It may
work in a university or a think tank, but in
(10:03):
the real world it works the other way around. Secure
energy comes first. Only then can you decarbonize. And here's
the irony. Decarbonization is happening, but not because of Paris.
Global renewable investments have doubled in five years. Ninety three
percent of new power capacity worldwide came from cleaner cleaner sources.
(10:26):
It took seventy years to install the first tarawatt of
solar power, two years for the second. Then we're about
to hit a third. But you see, this momentum comes
from markets, not summits, and it comes where and when
it makes sense. Chia alone counts for nearly three quarters
of global solar and wind construction. It's not because they
(10:47):
believe in the Green New Deal. They believe in Paris,
they believe in energy security. They're using it all. Everything
they can get their hands on, whole nuclear, oil, gas, renewables.
They want it all. Developing countries are also adopting clean
tech because in some places it's cheaper and easier. I
(11:13):
guess the real story of the energy transition today is competition.
The United States is, in fact a petro state, so
is China. Nations are racing for advantages, especially in the
era of more energy is required AI and data centers.
They're not pledging in harmony and singing together. In the
(11:34):
New York Times article Jason Bordoff, who I respect very much,
and he has his own podcast up at Columbia University
on energy. You should check it out so that everybody
talks about realism, pragmatism, but nobody knows what the heck
it means. Well, I don't know if that's entirely true,
but just in case, let's define them right here and
right now. Well. Number one, realism means that recognizing the
(11:57):
fossil fuels still supply a ey percent of global energy,
even after trillions and investment and all this talk. We
live in a fossil fuel world, and that transitions where
any transition takes decades, not months, not days, not a
(12:17):
couple of years. Realism means understanding that base load power
cannot be replaced by intermittent sources without massive infrastructure, storage,
and high costs. Being pragmatic means pursuing all the above
solutions simultaneously. Being pragmatic means understanding that natural gas is
a bridge fuel. Nuclear fuel including SMRs are, together with
(12:42):
natural gas, a cornerstone. Carbon captured and hydrogen or supplements
renewables where and when they make sense, act by reliable,
dispatchable power. That's what being pragmatic means. In other words,
realism and pragmatism aren't vague slogan. It's about having common sense.
So what should we be doing? Where can we go
(13:05):
from here. Number one, we need to recenter on energy security. Affordable,
reliable energy must come first. Without it, politics collapse, our
economy collapses, and our national security is undermined. Affordable and
reliable and a lot of it. All the above. We've
got to use natural gas, nuclear ccs, hydrogen, hydro power, renewables.
(13:31):
Not ideology but practicability. We have to reform permitting. We
have to streamline approvals for new electric transmission lines, for reactors,
LNG terminals, pipelines, and time is money and delays kill projects.
We need to support the Global South on their journey
by helping nations leapfrog to cleaner energy by supporting bottom
(13:54):
up adoption. And we need to accept competition, cooperate where
we can. Titians not a dirty word. Rivalry could be
a driver for innovation. If nations innovate out of self interest, great,
the whole world develops. Let's do it this November, all
the same folks will gather again, this time in Brazil
(14:16):
for what we call COP thirty. I've been talking about
this for thirty years. Ten years after Paris, each country
is supposed to arrive with new deadlines, but deadlines have
already been missed, and enthusiasm is quite honestly pretty low.
And honestly, I think that's okay because the real future
of energy won't be decided in Brazil or at Davos
(14:36):
or in New York. We won't be taking our private
jets to jet into Switzerland to chat about it. It'll
be decided in Houston and Beijing, in the Gulf of Mexico,
in a South China Sea, in the Persian Gulf, maybe
in Alaska, in factories, laboratories, and markets and supply chains.
The Paris Agreement will fade into history. Is a notable
(14:57):
but flawed experiment, but the next chapter will be written
in the language of realism, security, and pragmatism. The Paris
Climate Change Agreement failed because it was built on aspirations
rather than reality. It assumed solidarity where rivalry prevailed. It
assumed affordability when costs loom large. It assumed poverty and
(15:18):
scarcity instead of affordability and abundance. And it assumed urgency
where voters preferred caution. We shouldn't be surprised and we
shouldn't be discouraged either. Though the lesson is simple. Energy
transitions require a longer glide path, and they succeed when
they're grounded in security, competition, and common sense decarbonization. If
(15:39):
that's your thing, has to come through innovation, not coercion,
through markets, not mandates, through realism not rhetoric. If we
follow that path, we may very well achieve more than
Paris ever could. You've been listening to Charge Conversations of
Joe Strecker Production. If you like what you've been listening to,
please hit that subscribe button. Even better, still share it
(16:00):
with somebody. I'm your host, Brighan McCown, senior Fellow the
Thoughts At Institute, and I'll see you next time for
another episode of Charged Conversations m
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