If you hate success but love long meetings, and even longer plane trips, then the State Department is looking for you: Become a climate diplomat.

As I explain here, here, and here, negotiations for a legally binding, multilateral treaty to address the supposed problem of “global warming” are futile. According to the International Energy Agency, it would cost $45 trillion to de-carbonize global energy production to the liking of global warming alarmists. There is simply no precedent for international burden sharing of this magnitude, short of war, and the threat of winters gradually warming doesn’t galvanize interstate cooperation quite like the threat of, say, the Nazis.

Because a global response to global warming is impossible, multilateral climate negotiations haven’t budged since they started twenty years ago, with the foundation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Then, as now, there are two stakeholders pushing for action:  Western European nations, who want the world to agree to the carbon standards they set for themselves* so as to avoid a competitive disadvantage on the international market for energy intensive goods, and developing countries, who want to profit from wealth distribution. Then, as now, everyone else—most importantly the U.S. and China—have ZERO interest in sharing trillions of dollars of sacrifice for uncertain gains. As it is and always will be.

Maybe the money’s good, but, in terms of achievement, this climate diplomacy gig is a dead end.

*N.B. I strongly doubt whether these European nations will meet the lofty goals they set for themselves. There, I see a situation akin to that which is going on in our California, whereby green grandstanding politicians has led to the writing of several climate checks that simply will not be cashed. Here’s my detailed take on where the Europeans are headed.