President Barack Obama is singing high praise for the worldwide climate deal brokered in Paris this past week.

No surprise there, right? The president believes, as many of us out here do — me included — that human activity has contributed to the worsening of our worldwide environment.

However, you know what? I’m not going to debate that point. Skeptics of the climate change crisis have their minds made up; those of us on the other side have made up our minds, too.

So, we’ll go on with the rest of the discussion.

The agreement calls for reducing carbon emissions, those pollutants that come from fossil fuels. They increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and create a gradual warming of the atmosphere.

Beyond that, though, why is it a bad thing — as some interested parties contend — to cut those fossil fuel emissions.

This deal, they say, is “no better” than the Kyoto Protocol worked out during the Clinton administration in 1997. It never was ratified by Congress. President George W. Bush, Bill Clinton’s successor, said the agreement would cost American jobs and would give emerging powers — such as China and India — a free pass.

I keep coming back to the notion, though, that reductions in these emissions — which are indisputably harmful to Earth’s ecosystem — will produce a net positive impact on the future of the planet.

We can conserve those fossil fuels, which are a finite resource. We can invest in alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar and — yes! — nuclear power.

As Politico reports as well, there was some water down of the language in the agreement, which initially stipulated that developed nations “shall” cut those greenhouse gases; Secretary of State John Kerry got the conferees to change that language to “should” with the hope it would stand a better chance of being ratified by the Republican-controlled Congress.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/paris-climate-talks-tic-toc-216721

Shall or should? Whatever.

The goal remains the same: to reduce greenhouse gases that harm the only planet we have.

How can that be a bad thing?