Certainly not better for the poor, who, we have it on good authority, shall always be among us. (Jesus was a pretty good economist, but I believe that He may have gotten that one wrong: Poverty is, in fact, a solvable problem.) Technological and economic regression is almost always borne by those with the least power to forcibly pass along costs to other parties, and that ensures that forgone gains in the quality of material life will burden the poor rather than the well-off, whatever formal agreement is forged in or after Paris. But this exercise in virtue isn’t really about them — the poor and sweaty and miserable Them, who when they are not foundering in picturesque poverty are scheming to (sing along, Senator Sanders!) steal our jobs. No, this is about us rich people in the West, and our endless need for mortification, if not of the flesh then at least of the SUV. We’ve reduced the concept of sin to almost nothing in our shared common life, but the instinct for penance is unabated.