To be honest, I haven’t paid that much attention to the climate summit in France aside from a passing interest in the protests. (Following the attacks, those have largely consisted of ranks of empty pairs of shoes, thanks to heavy security locking down the region.) But the President’s recent touting of his meeting with Xi Jinping on the subject of climate change and our “close relationship” with China produced some guffaw inducing moments in the media. (Yahoo News)

President Barack Obama on Monday touted close U.S. cooperation with China on climate change as vital to world efforts to slow global warming, even as he acknowledged persistent differences with China’s President Xi Jinping over cybersecurity and maritime security. Huddling with Xi on the sidelines of the Paris climate conference, Obama said nowhere had coordination with Beijing been more critical or fruitful than on climate change. He credited U.S. and Chinese leadership with leading 180 nations to make their own pledges to curb emissions in the run-up to the Paris talks.

Well, that all sounds just great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately for the two leaders, that headline wound up being paired pretty much on top of one which read, Smog chokes Chinese, Indian capitals as climate talks begin.

The capitals of the world’s two most populous nations, China and India, were blanketed in hazardous, choking smog on Monday as climate change talks began in Paris, where leaders of both countries are among the participants. China’s capital Beijing maintained an “orange” pollution alert, the second-highest level, on Monday, closing highways, halting or suspending construction and prompting a warning to residents to stay indoors.

Sometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words.

China talks a good game on many things but in the end they wind up doing precisely what is in their own best financial and military interests. Their claims of “progress” on climate change have been widely panned, even by those with the greatest vested interest in curbing pollution. They have lied about carbon level reductions and played games with international standards to make themselves look better on paper while essentially continuing with their same old habits.

This isn’t really even a question of climate change or carbon, though. The United States, while hated by many of our own liberal citizens and criticized endlessly, has invested heavily in cleaning up our skies, lakes and rivers, resulting in a much cleaner, healthier environment than we were heading toward in the seventies and early eighties. The real culprits on this front are massively populated and largely oppressed places like China and India. Before anyone casts stones at us they might want to take a look at that part of the world.

Still, the President’s meeting was good for a few laughs if nothing else. But it’s not entirely a laughing matter, as Stephen Moore at the Washington Times points out. The one sided obsession with climate change and carbon control has cast an unfavorable light on our failing efforts to combat the very real threat of Islamic terror.

The concern isn’t just that climate change derangement syndrome has such an obsessive grip over this president and other world leaders that they choose to take their eye off the ball. It’s worse than that: the entire global warming agenda is an impediment to the war against terror… We know from intelligence reports that the Islamic State receives as much as one-half billion dollars a year in petro-dollars. ISIS’s access to Middle Eastern oil finances a growing army of terrorists that are well armed, trained and coordinated to wreak havoc on the western world. Why then do we continue to buy oil from those who are trying to kill us? That’s especially crazy given that we now have the capacity to achieve real energy independence within five years by pursuing a pro-America energy development strategy.

We are dithering over the mastery of feel-good photo ops on subjects near and dear to the hearts of Social Justice Warriors while the real warriors of the world profit at our expense and master the arts of murder and mayhem. Meanwhile, the Climate Steward in Chief shares cocktails with the leader of one of the worst polluters on the planet who is also beefing up his military for a future which clearly doesn’t have our best interests as a key focus.

It’s enough to make you laugh… otherwise you’d probably just cry.