Senate GOP Demands Biden Submit Paris Agreement (Which Isn't A Treaty) For Ratification As Treaty

[hatrack]

On Monday, two Republican senators, Steve Daines of Montana and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, unveiled two measures aimed at undercutting the Paris Agreement. The first, a resolution officially introduced by Daines, says the president should “submit the Paris Agreement to the Senate for review and consideration.” The text of the resolution says that the president can only enter into a treaty if two-thirds of the Senate supports it. The second, a bill introduced by Blackburn, would prevent tax money from being used to rejoin the Paris Agreement. “This bill and resolution will ensure not a single dime of American’s hard-earned money goes toward the Paris Climate Agreement,” Senator Roger Marshall from Kansas, a cosponsor of the bill, said in a statement.

It is highly unlikely that either measure will get much airtime in the Senate, chiefly because Democrats control the upper chamber and get to decide which bills do and don’t get taken up. But, Democratic majority aside, the senators’ measures don’t have a future in the Senate because they don’t make any sense. “The basis for each of these actions is just wrong from a policy standpoint,” Roger Pielke Jr., professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Grist.

The resolution is predicated on a constitutional requirement that says presidents can’t enter into treaties without the Senate’s support, but the US has never engaged with the Paris Agreement as a treaty. President Obama joined the accord via executive order, President Trump withdrew using the same method, and President Biden re-joined the agreement last month via, you guessed it, executive order. “In the imaginary world where this would be adjudicated, say in the courts, there’s no way it would be understood as a treaty,” Pielke said.

The bill preventing taxpayer dollars from being used to rejoin the agreement is also off base. The Paris Agreement is an “agreement to agree,” Pielke said, which means no American dollars are actually funding the thing itself. Money will come into play domestically in the US if legislators pass bills aimed at helping the nation meet its emissions-reduction targets under the Paris Agreement. And the US has already paid approximately $1 billion into the United Nations Green Climate Fund to help poor nations deal with the consequences of climate change, but there is no financial requirement of joining the Paris Agreement in general. “Somebody says we’re going to cut funding for Paris, it doesn’t even mean anything because there is no such thing,” Pielke said.

EDIT

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/02/how-congressional-republicans-are-responding-to-bidens-climate-agenda/

[Kittycatkat]

1. And Biden would agree, why? This is just more absurdity.

[bullimiami]

2. how about FU. Trump dismantled actual treaties and they didnt make a peep.

[atreides1]

3. Another Russian asset???

Republican Sen. Steve Daines was part of a congressional delegation to Russia, but departed earlier than his colleagues on the trip. He did leave Russia before the 4th of July, spent time in D.C., and then flew to Montana where Trump was holding a rally!

Could it be that Daines returned early to provide Trump with a face to face report on what the Russians were willing to do...in order for Trump to get re-elected?

Daines i just another Russian asset and Blackburn is about as useful as tits on a bull!!!