Climate activists demonstrate in Paris, Saturday, Dec.12, 2015 during the COP21, the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Several environmental and human rights groups are planning protests around Paris to call attention to populations threatened by man-made global warming and urge an end to human use of oil, gas and coal. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

This seems sane.

A lawyer who helped negotiate the Paris Climate Agreement decided it’d be a good idea to glue herself to the street outside the Shell Building in London.

This is the moment an environmental lawyer glues herself to the street outside the Shell building in London. Farhana Yamin helped negotiate the Paris Climate Agreement, but now her husband and son explain what pushed her to civil disobedience in the fight against climate change. pic.twitter.com/2Bx1EMd9c2 — Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) April 17, 2019

This news network in the UK is presenting this as some heroic act. Most will probably conclude that it’s just dumb.

If people like this were behind the Paris Climate Agreement, it’s no wonder it ended up being nothing more than a failed attempt at virtue signaling while green-lighting increased emissions from China and India for the next 30 years.

President Trump left the accords and the U.S. still leads the world in carbon reduction. Meanwhile, the European nations who pushed so hard for our involvement are barely breaking even or increasing their carbon emissions. That tells you that it was about having that sweet, sweet U.S. cash in the mix and not about actually saving the planet from imminent destruction (which is their viewpoint).

This woman gluing herself to the street is a perfect example of the inefficiencies of emotion vs. rational action. We see this played out across all manner of political issues, where signaling the right thing is valued more than actually doing something meaningful. While the U.S. pursues technologies like fracking and increased use of natural gas, leading to more wealth and lower emissions, Europeans would rather glue themselves to the street. Makes sense.

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