U.S. Tells International Energy Agency to Drop Its Focus on Climate Change

Old_Joe

Following are excerpts from a current report in The New York Times:

The Trump administration is threatening to leave the influential agency unless it stops publishing its annual road map for cutting planet-warming emissions

The Trump administration this week threatened to pull the United States out of the world’s leading energy agency unless it abandoned its focus on tackling climate change. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that the International Energy Agency had become a “climate advocacy organization” and should stop publishing its annual road map for how countries could eliminate their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions by 2050, known as its “net zero scenario.”

“We don’t need a net zero scenario, that’s ridiculous, it’s not going to happen,” Mr. Wright, a former gas executive, said on Tuesday at a side event during the agency’s annual meeting of energy ministers in Paris. He said he wanted the agency to “focus on energy security,” but added that “if they insist that it’s so dominated and infused with climate stuff, then we’re out.”

The International Energy Agency is enormously influential, and its data and reports on everything from oil stockpiles to electric vehicle sales are frequently cited by energy companies and investors as a basis for long-term planning. The United States provides around 14 percent of the agency’s budget and is among its 32 member states.

Founded in 1974 in the aftermath of a global oil crisis, the agency was originally created to monitor global crude oil supplies and help prevent price shocks. Since 2015, however, the agency has broadened its focus under the leadership of Fatih Birol, a Turkish economist. Many member nations have urged the agency to pay more attention to rapidly growing energy technologies such as solar panels and electric vehicles, as well as the risks of global warming.

Mr. Wright’s remarks were the latest effort by the Trump administration to persuade other countries and international organizations to scale back efforts to address climate change and instead to continue to rely on fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal, the main drivers of rising global temperatures. The United States is the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and President Trump has dismissed global warming as a “hoax.”

Comment:   The only "hoax" is that we have a responsible president or Federal administration.