Fortunately, while all of that asinine chicanery was making headlines, the price of oil maintained its vertical descent into the abyss.
The Staining of the Underwear
CNBC: Aug. 19th, 2014
T. Boone Pickens: "Brent Crude will remain above $100 forever"
We've seen this movie before circa. 1980s and 1990s
Low prices = rampant quota cheating
All oil producing nations depend upon high oil prices to meet their government budgets. Therefore, in the short-term, countries with low variable costs of production (e.g. Middle East) will actually increase production to offset the price decline. Of course, for those sources such as fracking that have high variable costs, they will be forced offline. Longer-term as indicated above, this current price of oil shelves hundreds of billions in future deep oil exploration. In other words, short-term, oil could have a lot further to fall, which is all the more interesting given that the global pseudo-economy is still somewhat intact.
Countries most incentivized to cheat (assuming their variable costs are lower than the current price):
In summary: a plunging cost of oil, bankrupts fracking firms, shelves exploration, and rapidly depletes the cheapest oil reserves. All of which will lead to future emissions reduction. Who needs fake promises from lying game show hosts?
