Sen. Jim Inhofe

By Senator James Inhofe Over 40 years ago, the well-intentioned Endangered Species Act (ESA) was signed into law to provide for the conservation of species and the ecosystems on which these species depend. Since then, the ESA has been hijacked by environmentalists intent on abusing this legislation to pursue their own agendas.

In 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) engaged in closed-door settlements after being sued by environmental groups over which species would be listed. These sue-and-settle tactics, a hallmark of the Obama administration, eventually lead to clandestine meetings and an agreement whereby FWS would consider, and ultimately list, hundreds more species at the direction of these groups.

Despite repeated requests from Congress, FWS has failed to provide documentation of this surreptitious activity, leaving us to speculate about collusion between environmental groups and the Obama administration. FWS continually touts the importance of science and data-based decisionmaking, but these settlements raise the question of who drives ESA listings and what the basis for those decisions are.

The administration likes to tout that it has delisted more species than any other administration, but it conveniently fails to acknowledge that the species recovery rate hovers at a mere 2 percent. The administration glosses over the minor detail that while 12 species have been delisted, hundreds more have been listed and hundreds more remain to be considered. That is the principal problem. And yet, the federal government still manages to spend billions of dollars each year on what it claims is species conservation.

It’s clear that the ESA isn’t failing because of a lack of money; it is failing because the budget is not being used for recovery. With no choice but to focus resources on listing species, as a result of lawsuits from Reforming the ESA crony environmentalists only interested in maximizing their bottom line, FWS is unable to focus resources on conservation.

These lawsuits also force FWS to designate habitats for species in a way that serves environmental groups, when really, habitats should be designated based on a comprehensive understanding of the species and its surroundings. The ESA has become nothing more than an ATM for environmental groups. The president’s notorious and ongoing disregard for sound science and a preoccupation with activist groups means that groups are able to profit handsomely from these sue-and-settle victories through enhanced fundraising activities.

Last fall, a federal district judge held that FWS failed to fully evaluate ongoing conservation methods in its decision to delist the lesser prairie chicken. A few weeks later, when FWS announced that it would not list the greater sage grouse, the administration was quick to use the grouse as an example of the ESA in action. And yet that couldn’t be further from the truth, because the federal government retained control of the species’ habitat.

Activist groups are clearly in control and not just in the way species are delisted. In Oklahoma, the American 10 Irrigation Leader burying beetle was listed as endangered in 1989 but in the decades since, the insect’s population has rebounded greatly. FWS, however, has been glacially slow to consider removing it from the list of protected species. The continued listing of the beetle is having real-world effects, unnecessarily driving up costs for businesses and development projects.

These problems highlight the need for increased state and local efforts and decreased federal efforts in order to achieve meaningful results. Not only has local involvement been shown to increase the effectiveness of species recovery, but it is beneficial to local economies. Local involvement has been limited, however, because the president is less concerned with how policies affect individuals in rural states like Oklahoma than he is with the stance of groups that have the resources to sway elections.

The president’s complicit participation in sue-andsettle tactics have given the administration the ability to cede any and all scientific responsibility by allowing the FWS agenda to be dictated by environmentalists and the courts. The FWS agenda and the implementation of the ESA should instead be determined by responsible policymaking based on sound science and by experts at the state and local level.

FWS Director Dan Ashe understands that the ESA must be reformed through legislation, and he is ready to work together with Congress to do so. In my role as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I look forward to working to reforming the ESA with bipartisan legislative proposals that benefit states while clarifying the act’s original focus and achieving real results.

Senator James M. Inhofe (R-OK) is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which has oversight jurisdiction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He has represented the state of Oklahoma for 21 years and Oklahoma’s 1st congressional district for 8 years. He also served in Oklahoma’s state house and senate from 1967 to 1977. Prior to his public service, Senator Inhofe was a businessman for 30 years. He is also a proud Army veteran.

Oren Cass

Negotiators from around the world gather in Paris this week to finalize an international climate change agreement, capping a years-long process on which hopes have been riding for global action to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. When those demanding U.S. action speak of the need to show “leadership” and foster international progress, they speak of building momentum toward Paris.

“This year, in Paris, has to be the year that the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet that we’ve got while we still can,” said U.S. President Barack Obama on his recent trip to Alaska. Miguel Cañete, the EU’s chief negotiator, has warned there is “no Plan B — nothing to follow. This is not just ongoing UN discussions. Paris is final.”

But the more seriously you take the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, the angrier you should be about the plan for Paris. With so much political capital and so many legacies staked to achieving an “agreement” — any agreement — negotiators have opted to pursue one worth less than…well, certainly less than the cost of a two-week summit in a glamorous European capital.

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Climate talks are complex and opaque, operating with their own language and process, so it’s important to cut through the terminology and look at what is actually under discussion. Conventional wisdom holds that negotiators are hashing out a fair allocation of the deep emissions cuts all countries would need to make to limit warming. That image bears little resemblance to reality.

In fact, emissions reductions are barely on the table at all. Instead, the talks are rigged to ensure an agreement is reached regardless of how little action countries plan to take. The developing world, projected to account for four-fifths of all carbon-dioxide emissions this century, will earn applause for what amounts to a promise to stay on their pre-existing trajectory of emissions-intensive growth.

Here’s how the game works: The negotiating framework established at a 2014conference in Lima, Peru, requires each country to submit a plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, called an “Intended Nationally Determined Contribution” (INDC). Each submission is at the discretion of the individual country; there is no objective standard it must meet or emissions reduction it must achieve.

Beyond that, it’s nearly impossible even to evaluate or compare them. Developing countries actually blocked a requirement that the plans use a common format and metrics, so an INDC need not even mention emissions levels. Or a country can propose to reduce emissions off a self-defined “business-as-usual” trajectory, essentially deciding how much it wants to emit and then declaring it an “improvement” from the alternative. To prevent such submissions from being challenged, a group of developing countries led by China and India has rejected“any obligatory review mechanism for increasing individual efforts of developing countries.” And lest pressure nevertheless build on the intransigent, no developing country except Mexico submitted an INDC by the initial deadline of March 31 — and most either submitted no plan or submitted one only as the final September 30 cut-off approached.

After all this, the final submissions are not enforceable, and carry no consequences beyond “shame” for noncompliance — a fact bizarrely taken for granted by all involved.

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Perhaps not surprisingly, the submitted plans are even less impressive than the process that produced them. In aggregate, the promised emissions reductions will barely affect anticipated warming. A variety of inaccurate, apples-to-orangescomparisons have strained to show significant progress. But MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change calculates the improvement by century’s end to be only 0.2 degrees Celsius. Comparing projected emissions to the baseline established by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change back in 2000 shows no improvement at all.

The lack of progress becomes even more apparent at the country level. China, for its part, offered to reach peak carbon-dioxide emissions “around 2030” while reducing emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65 percent by that time from its 2005 level. But the U.S. government’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had already predicted China’s emissions would peak around 2030 even without the climate plan. And a Bloomberg analysis found that China’s 60-65 percent target isless ambitious than the level it would reach by continuing with business as usual. All this came before the country admitted it was burning 17 percent more coalthan previously estimated—an entire Germany worth of extra emissions each year.

Sen. John Barrasso

When the U.N. climate-change talks convene in Paris next week, the risks will be high for American taxpayers. President Obama wants a climate deal and is willing to pay dearly to get it. The inevitable outcome is a plan with unproven benefits and unreachable goals, but very real costs. It will be up to Congress to check the president’s ambition of committing the U.S. to an international green scheme that will produce little or no return.

The ostensible goal of the Paris talks (Nov. 30-Dec. 11) is to convince countries to commit to enacting laws that reduce carbon emissions. That fits President Obama’s vision of a world without fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The American people oppose these policies, but the president has shown himself determined to circumvent Congress.

The Obama administration has already imposed burdensome regulations—for instance, the sprawling Clean Power Plan aimed at wiping out the coal industry—that will raise the cost of energy and put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work. Now the president wants his negotiators to use these international climate talks to pile on more restrictions.

This pact is as unnecessary as it will be damaging. America’s share of world-wide greenhouse-gas emissions has been declining for more than a decade, to 13% today from 24% in 2000. China pumps out 23% of the world’s emissions. Emissions from India, which account for 6%, are expected to triple between 2010 and 2030.

In an agreement with China, President Obama has already pledged to reduce America’s net greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 25% by 2025. In return, China has agreed to “peak” its carbon-dioxide emissions in 2030. In other words, the U.S. will have to make drastic emissions reductions immediately, while China is allowed to carry on for the next 15 years.

Todd Stern, the chief American negotiator heading to Paris, has tried to justify the disconnect. Mr. Stern recently told the Senate that developing countries need to be allowed to keep emitting so that their economies can continue to grow by 8%-9% a year. “If you’re an economy which is growing at eight or nine percent a year because that’s the stage of development you’re in,” he testified, “it’s pretty hard to say you’re supposed to slam on the brakes and go negative overnight.”

Why should the U.S. accept a plan—and pay to grease the deal—that keeps its economy stuck at 2% growth while American taxpayers subsidize other countries’ economies growing at 9%?

Almost as bad is that President Obama will likely pledge $3 billion of taxpayers’ money to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund. Developing nations are eager to accept this cash, which in theory they will use to address the effects of extreme weather. It seems more likely that the money will end up in the pockets of government officials in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

If President Obama and the experts in Paris want to help the developing world, they should focus on things that actually will do good, rather than those that will make the negotiators feel good. They could start by helping these countries tap their own energy resources. Building power plants would do more to lift people out of poverty than the Green Climate Fund ever will.

The envoys in Paris should understand: Congress does not support the president’s $3 billion promise. Earlier this year Mr. Obama requested in his budget the first $500 million installment. That budget was voted down 98-1. Congress should continue to reject this spending and insist that any agreement reached in Paris be subject to Senate approval—regardless of whether or not the administration formally calls it a treaty.

Whatever comes of the Paris talks, there is reason to be wary. We’ve seen the Obama administration’s negotiating skills. Anyone who watched the Iran nuclear agreement play out has good reason to be nervous about the concessions this administration will make in closed-door negotiations.

Consider that Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly bankrolled environmental causes in Europe to stop fossil-fuel exploration. It is a cynical ploy to stifle competition so that he can continue to hold Europe hostage to Russian energy exports. Yet President Obama seems to be playing into Mr. Putin’s plans.

Other countries will gladly support a deal that transfers money to them while weakening the U.S. They are sure to praise President Obama’s “leadership” in the process. The question is whether the American people—and Congress—will allow such a deal to slip by, or whether they will stand up and be heard.

BJORN LOMBORG

The United Nations climate conference in Paris starting Nov. 30 will get under way when most minds in the French capital will still understandably be on the recent terror attacks. But for many of the 40,000 attendees, the goal is to ensure that climate change stays on the global economic agenda for the next 15 years.

The Paris conference is the culmination of many such gatherings and is expected to produce agreements on combating climate change. President Obama and the dozens of other world leaders planning to be in Paris should think carefully about the economic impact—in particular the staggering costs—of the measures they are contemplating.

The U.N.’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres, says openly that the aim of the talks is “to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” That outlook will be welcome among attendees like the delegation from Bolivia. That country’s official material submitted for the talks proposes a “lasting solution” for climate change: “We must destroy capitalism.”

Perhaps capitalism as “a system of death” is a minority view, but the agreements coming out of Paris are likely to see countries that have flourished with capitalism willingly compromising their future prosperity in the name of climate change. But before ditching that economic model, it’s worth considering how much progress it has brought.

For one, life expectancy in the past 150 years has more than doubled, to 71 years in 2013 from fewer than 30 years in 1870. Meanwhile, billions of people have risen out of poverty. One and a half centuries ago, more than 75% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, consuming less than $1 a day, in 1985 money. This year the World Bank expectsextreme poverty to fall below 10% for the first time in history.

It is telling that U.N. officials provide no estimated costs for an economic transformation. But one can make an unofficial tally by adding up the costs of Paris promises for 2016-30 submitted by the U.S., European Union, Mexico and China, which together account for about 80% of the globe’s pledged emissions reductions.

There is no official cost estimate for Mr. Obama’s promise to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26%-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. However, the peer-reviewed Stanford Energy Modeling Forum has run more than a hundred scenarios for greenhouse-gas reductions and the costs to gross domestic product. Taking this data and performing a regression analysis across the reductions shows that hitting the 26%-28% target would reduce GDP between $154 billion and $172 billion annually.

The EU says it will cut emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Again, there is no official estimate of the cost given, which is extraordinary. The data from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum suggests hitting that target would reduce the EU’s GDP by 1.6% in 2030, or €287 billion in 2010 money.

Mexico has put into place the strongest climate legislation of any developing country, conditionally promising to cut greenhouse-gas and black-carbon emissions by 40% below the current trend line by 2030. The Mexican government estimates that cutting emissions in half by 2050 will cost between $6 billion and $33 billion in 2005 money, but that is many times too low. Peer-reviewed literature, supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the EU, suggests that by 2030 the cost would already reach 4.5% of GDP, or $80 billion in 2005 money.

China has promised by 2030 to reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions, per unit of GDP, to at least 60% below 2005. Using the data from the Asia Modeling Exercise we find that hitting this target will cost at least $200 billion a year.

So in total, the Paris promises of the EU, Mexico, U.S. and China will diminish the economy at least $730 billion a year by 2030—and that is in an ideal world, where politicians consistently reduce emissions in the most effective ways.

Experience tells us that won’t happen. For instance, policy makers could have chipped away at emissions efficiently with modest taxes on carbon, or by switching electrical generation to natural gas. Instead many countries, including the U.S. and those in the EU, have poured money into phenomenally inefficient subsidies for solar and biofuels, which politicians go for like catnip. The EU’s 20/20 climate policy—the goal, embarked upon in 2010, to cut emissions 20% from 1990 levels by 2020—is the clearest example of such gross inefficiency.

A 2009 study of the targets, published in Energy Economics, estimated that “inefficiencies in policy lead to a cost that is 100-125% too high.” It’s likely that in the future even more money will be wasted propping up green energy that is both unaffordable and inefficient.

Another 127 nations have made promises for Paris that increase the total emissions cuts by one-fourth. The cuts on the table in Paris, then, will leave the global economy, in rough terms, $1 trillion short every year for the rest of the century—and that’s if the politicians do everything right. If not, the real cost could double.

All of these high-flown promises will fail to accomplish anything substantial to rein in climate change. At best, the emissions cuts pledged in Paris will prevent a total temperature rise by 2100 of only 0.306 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a peer-reviewed study I recently published in Global Policy.

If nations formalize their planned carbon cuts in Paris and then stick to them, Ms. Figueres’s economic transformation will indeed happen: But it won’t be a transformation to be proud of.

Mr. Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, is the author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (Cambridge Press, 2001) and “Cool It” (Knopf, 2007).