CORCORAN … Paris is voluntary — and dangerous.

As the world struggles through the dense ideological and political pollution spreading around the planet in the wake of the Paris climate agreement, nobody should lose sight of the significant economic dangers now looming over the world economy. Of the many pending causes for alarm and conflict is the potential rise of a new Green Corporatism.

The outpouring of comment and analysis, from politicians, critics and activists, tends to fall into two categories. One is the great volume of self-congratulatory emanations from official political gasworks hailing the agreement as a historic and robust commitment to cut carbon emissions and hold the increase in global temperatures to 2 C. The other reaction, from varying perspectives, is to brand the Paris agreement a toothless, voluntary nontreaty, a fraudulent agreement that sets out global carbon emissions targets based on national domestic goals that have not been established and, even if they were nailed down, are unlikely to achieve the carbon reduction and temperature objectives embedded in the agreement. So who’s right?

John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State: “It has to be voluntary … The result will be a very clear signal to the marketplace of the world that people are moving into low carbon, no carbon, alternative renewable energy. And I think it’s going to create millions of jobs.” James Hansen, former NASA scientists and climate activist: “It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say, ‘ We’ll have a 2 C warming target and try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.” Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Cophenhagen Consensus: “To say that Paris will get us to ‘well below 2 C’ is cynical posturing at best. It relies on wishful thinking …. Until there is a breakthrough that makes green energy competitive on its own merits, massive carbon cuts are extremely unlikely to happen.” All of the above may carry some truth in some sense, depending on how one reads the slippery legal bureaucratese in the 31-page document. The Paris agreement is filled with accommodative UNspeak, loopholes and exit clauses that may or may not hold up through the next few years of national and international squabbling over who is doing — or not doing — whatever it supposedly takes to prevent an assumed-to-be-looming climate disaster.

Some might recall the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the last great international agreement on climate policy. That’s the agreement Canada pulled out of in 2011, four years ago this week, on the justifiable grounds that the cost to Canada would be too great. In doing so, Canada cited Article 27 of the protocol: “At any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this agreement by giving written notification.” The same opt-out clauses appear word-for-word as Article 28 in the Paris accord.

Since there appear to be no penalties attached to not voluntarily complying with the new agreement, perhaps no country will ever need to formally withdraw. If things go badly, the nations can meet again at appointed times and try to keep the carbon control regime afloat over decades.

Although nothing in the Paris agreement is binding, it is certain that most will try to do something, and therein lies the greatest risk to the world economy. Using the Paris document as justification and as some kind of mandate, politicians and green activists will attempt to introduce massive economic interventions in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. Never mind the remoteness of the connection between national carbon emissions and climate, and try to forget that the Paris agreement is an international statist effort to control the planet’s climate (and redistribute wealth and impose sustainable development) by controlling energy use through regulation and via the corporate sector.

Among the features of the Paris talks was the apparent enthusiasm of so many corporate backers and green business leaders — including many Canadians — in support of a major global climate effort. Some complain that the final Paris document makes little mention of a business role. Also, the word “pricing” in relation to carbon is used only once. But there can be little doubt that the Paris agreement cannot be imposed on the Canadian economy with the co- operation of most of the corporate sector.

Green activists and others on the left may temporarily welcome corporations as their comrades-in-arms, but the rest of us should be wary.