In a classic gaffe (accidentally telling the truth), Secretary of State John Kerry admitted in a speech to the COP21 global warming festival in Paris that U.S. CO2 emissions cuts – even to zero – would not solve the imaginary global warming crisis.  Steve Milloy of Junkscience.com and Breitbart calls it “40 seconds that should turn the global warming world upside down.”

Kerry’s exact words:

The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what – that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.

If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions –- remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions -– it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.

Kerry continues to insist that CO2 is a pollutant, a contention that flies in the face of the fact that it is a natural part of the atmosphere, is exhaled by every form of fauna, and promotes agricultural yields.  This contention was accepted by the Supreme Court of the United States in its 2007 Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency decision and reaffirmed in 2014.

Milloy comments that Kerry’s remarks may have legal standing:

In the 2007 Supreme Court decision giving EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases, the Supreme Court was careful to note that, although EPA couldn’t solve the global warming problem all at once or by itself, it was allowed to make incremental progress on the problem. Kerry’s admission shows that the U.S. government knows that such progress is simply not possible.

This admission should find its way into the ongoing litigation of EPA power plant rules and it should blow them up.

Politically, Kerry’s admission means that the very expensive regulations on CO2 emissions that have driven up electric power costs among many other financial penalties are purely symbolic.  And opponents can point to Kerry’s own words.