A President’s Global Warming Treaty Tyranny

Politics_1114_Obama_ClimateChange_480x360In yet another demonstration of contempt for the Constitution, President Obama and his administration are pursuing what the New York Times characterizes as a “sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions” — absent any input from Congress.

The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority approval by the Senate to ratify any legally binding treaty. The Obama administration plans to sidestep that requirement by calling the agreement a “politically binding” deal that would substitute for an actual treaty. It would consist of voluntary pledges, combined with obligations from a 1992 U.N. treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control. That 22-year-old agreement was reached at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The U.S. Senate ratified the agreement on October 7, 1992, and President Bush Sr. signed it six days later, making it legally binding.

The Obama administration contends that simply adding the additional voluntary pledges to the agreement obviates the need for another ratification process. “There’s some legal and political magic to this,” said Jake Schmidt, an expert in global climate negotiations with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leftist advocacy group. “They’re trying to move this as far as possible without having to reach the 67-vote threshold.”

Not magic. Just another attempt by the Obama administration to kick Congress to the curb in pursuit of an agenda that has absolutely no chance of getting majority approval in Congress, much less a two-thirds vote of approval in the Senate. In 1997, the Kyoto climate control treaty was rocketed into oblivion with a 96-0 bipartisan vote. Another effort was undertaken in Copenhagen in 2009, but once again the attempt to forge a legally binding agreement failed. Obama attended that conference, hoping to put America in alignment with the global community, but he did so with no support whatsoever from Republicans, along with opposition from several Democrats representing states that rely heavily on coal power for energy and jobs. Democrats made it clear they wouldn’t accept any treaty or agreement threatening that status quo. In 2010, “cap and trade” legislation failed in the Senate for the same reason.

The Obama administration is undeterred by such inconvenient realities. In June, once again absent any input from Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed regulations aimed at cutting existing greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants 30 percent by 2030. The move has engendered lawsuits in the in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia from at least a dozen coal-reliant states. It has also engendered a warning from North Dakota Democrat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, whose state relies on coal-generated electricity for a whopping 80 percent of its power needs. “When that is done, and the stake is through the heart of coal, they will come for you next,” Heitkamp told representatives from the natural gas industry. She also added a dose of reality to the mix. “In my lifetime we will not transition away from coal,” she contended.

That remains to be seen, given the Obama administration’s penchant for “transitioning” away from the rule of law. Yet even this patchwork quilt of an agreement will suffer the same affliction that bedevils many of the administration’s efforts, as in a disconnect from geopolitical reality. The premise behind this pact is to “name and shame” countries who do not meet their reduction requirements. Thus the administration is relying on the idea that “embarrassed” nations will fall back in line, regardless of the economic consequences for doing so.

It’s not going to happen. As the Washington Times correctly explains, “China and India, each with more than a billion people and swathes of horrific poverty of a sort not seen in the West, have been particularly outspoken in their refusal to agree to any mandatory carbon-emission cuts, which would limit their development and prosperity.”

In addition, the poorer nations of the world are also unlikely to abide by any agreement that does not bind richer nations to a massive wealth transfer aimed at assisting their development of dams and levees to guard against coastal flooding from rising seas, or provide food aid during droughts that are invariably attributed to global warming.

Global warming itself has been subjected to a series of “readjustments” in recent years. In 2009, there was the “Climategate” scandal in which the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit was found to have suppressed data contradicting their assessment of global warming. Last year, a series of leaked emails revealed that scientists working on a U.N. climate change report were struggling to explain why global warming has decreased over the last 15 years, even as greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. That same year, a paper asserting that there was a 97-percent scientific consensus regarding human-caused global warming was revealed to have been doctored by warming alarmists and their media allies. In June, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) quietly reinstated data showing July 1936 as the hottest month on record, after insisting in 2012 that July of that year was the “all-time warmest month on record for the nation in a period of record that dates back to 1895.” And last week in Australia, scientists with the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) were accused of manipulating data to create an artificial warming trend, using a process called “homogenization” that ostensibly corrects anomalies in raw temperature data. The BOM insisted that it was “very unlikely” that such homogenization affected overall outlooks.

Countering such realities requires a certain level of hysteria. The so-called paper of record was more than up to the task. “The strategy comes as scientists warn that the earth is already experiencing the first signs of human-caused global warming — more severe drought and stronger wildfires, rising sea levels and more devastating storms — and the United Nations heads toward what many say is the body’s last chance to avert more catastrophic results in the coming century,” the New York Times reports.

A U.N. report to be released in early November is equally dire, noting that the world is on the cusp of “irreversible change” due to global warming.

Hence the “last chance” efforts continue. Last year, dozens of countries reached a deal in Warsaw that allow them to make “contributions” to reducing global warming, as opposed to “commitments” for doing so. Thus countries like China and India won more lenient guidelines for reducing emissions than desired by the United States and Europe. This deal was seen as a springboard for the upcoming one, to be hammered out next year in Paris, following a December meeting in Lima, Peru to draft the agreement.

Republicans have little use for a pact that ignores the rule of law and tramples the concept of national sovereignty in the process. “Unfortunately, this would be just another of many examples of the Obama administration’s tendency to abide by laws that it likes and to disregard laws it doesn’t like–and to ignore the elected representatives of the people when they don’t agree,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in a statement.

When there’s a planet to save—and an American economy to ruin in the process—such “banal” considerations must be cast aside. Obama and his administration are determined to fulfill his promise of “skyrocketing” electricity prices, along with his one to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” Delivering the nation into the clutches of UN bureaucrats, while kicking Congress and the Constitution to the curb, is the latest effort to fulfill that agenda. It won’t be the last.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Subscribe to Frontpage’s TV show, The Glazov Gang, and LIKE it on Facebook.

  • AbsolutelyRight

    The next Republican President will be very busy unwinding all of Obama’s lawlessness, but it can and will be done..not only for Climate Fraud but for the other cr@p. Progressives are no-d@mn good.

    • sendtheclunkerbacktochicago

      This NEVER happens, when have you heard of a NEXT President undoing what the previous President did via Executive Order. It doesn’t happen with Republicans but it may happen when a Democrat moves into the WH after a Republican President. Republicans act like little children who have been scolded by their Democrat buddies.

      • AbsolutelyRight

        You would generally be right… but this shameless overreaching idiot Obama has changed everything. When has a President been sued by the opposing party for exceeding his authority? Never – until a no-good lawless despot like this guy.

        • William James Ward

          The reaction is always to only pull back half way,
          eventually like herd cattle we are all back in the
          corral…………………William

      • William James Ward

        Two sides of the same counterfeit coin………….William

  • ObamaYoMoma

    without the consent of Congress.

    What is the consent of Congress? It’s the consent of the will of the people. Can we say bye, bye to our Republican form of government, our Constitution, and our democracy. We now have an imperial President who has matriculated into a Marxist dictator drunk with power. Meanwhile, I’m sure the illustrious Republican leadership in Congress will look the other way because they fear being labeled racist.

    • sendtheclunkerbacktochicago

      This is why Obama needs to be arrested for all of his FRAUDULENT activity leading up to and including his first term fraud. He must be stopped before he does something REALLY dangerous.

  • KlugerRD

    He is doing this in a desperate attempt to divert attention from ISIS and a war we are in and he does not want to fight. Obama has been and still is a clear and present danger to the security and welfare of this country.

  • http://www.clarespark.com/ Clare Spark

    And reactionary Hollywood lefties are in sync with the red-green agenda, smearing all who disagree with their definitions of the Republican Party. See http://clarespark.com/2014/08/27/the-imagination-going-dark/. “The Imagination going dark.”

  • nimbii

    Again, here’s Obama’s CFR and NWO underwriters using group-think techniques to force Agenda 21 down our throats.

  • Richard Fontaine

    Impeach this tyrant.

  • Robert_Fl

    obama is merely a politically correct hood ornament of mediocre intelligence. He is not in charge. His job is to make inane speeches which distract, to appoint those whom he is told to the appropriate positions, and that’s about it. His reward is that he gets to abuse the perks of the office, to party, and to go on lavish vacations while others are destroying our country behind the scenes from within. If he were as smart as his enablers and the media would have us believe, don’t you think (considering his massive ego) that his college transcripts would have been posted on the front pages of the NYT and the Washington Post long ago?

  • William James Ward

    With Coal power brought increasingly low, temperatures will drop and
    there will not be enough affordable electricity for families to keep
    warm. Many elderly will die at home due to Mullah Obama and his
    regime of anti-American jihadists. It is hard to believe Americans
    will go cold and hungry due to political swine in office, America
    will go through it’s own Irish potato famine with millions displaced
    and living in the streets, starvation and want will come back under
    the heel of totalitarian dictatorship. Maybe not today or even
    tomorrow but you will eventually look at and empty plate in a
    cold room……………………….William

  • Pete

    Climate models that over report for 15 consecutive time periods is a biased model. It is a bad model.

    Americana would not know that because she has never taken a course in forecasting. She comes from the slums of academia, which is very, very light in mathematics.

    Resources
    junkscience.com/

    wattsupwiththat.com/

  • Pete

    And all the schmarty pants modelers of the 1990s could not predict the next 3 decades?

    Global Warming ‘Pause’ Could Last For 30 Years

    wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/27/global-warming-pause-could-last-for-30-years/

  • William

    I have a bridge for sale, for anyone who thinks Obama is an environmentalist.

  • Americana

    Oh, I didn’t wave it around as if it’s definitive. I put the link up to see if anyone would select material from the report to discuss. You didn’t. Instead you chose to claim that the third IPCC report is “highly politicized” and that “a small clique of researchers are determined to see their pet ideas enshrined as a “consensus.” These two statements say exactly NOTHING about the science but instead are simply outright propagandistic statements.

    Besides which, there’s a small problem w/your premise. First, any scientist or group of scientists who find data or concepts in the report to be questionable are more than welcome to REFUTE THE MATERIAL SCIENTIFICALLY by studies of their own. Second, there is great personal risk in putting yourself out there as a climatologist or another of the contributing scientists in the climatology-relevant sciences and promulgating one aspect of the GCC science.

    The belief that climate models should be correct in every aspect from the get-go is not only NOT how science modeling works or is meant to work, the fact is scientists learn from the mistakes in their modeling just as they learn from their successful climate modeling. But so far, based on what the scientists have recommended for human-release of aerosols and industrial chemicals into the atmosphere and the waters, science has done a fairly good job of warning us about human interaction w/our environment.

    • JB Ziggy Zoggy

      Actual atmospheric temperature readings disprove the idiotic claims and predicions of the IPCC. At this point in time, only morons still believe the AGW scam.

  • Truth_in_Defense

    Since the 1992 UN treaty was approved and signed by George HW Bush, and is to be used by Obama…we all need to get after both And indeed ALL Bush people but especial GHW Bush…to deny that the original act allows unauthorized constitutional destruction

  • uleaveuswithnoalternative

    The goal is to create a borderless world community with the UN in charge.
    The ability for Obama to create new laws with his “pen and phone” is part of that plan and our Congress and Senate are complicit.

    Please see Joan Veon’s book, “The United Nations – Global Straitjacket”
    It can be read for free at:
    http://bookbay.org/?p=701748

  • DisgustingDemocrats

    That is why they don’t say global warming anymore but climate change instead….They are so fake it is all BS.

  • JB Ziggy Zoggy

    Your elitist pretensions don’t change the fact that your junk science claims have been refuted.

  • aspacia

    Americana, please get off you high horse. My cousin is a professor in both nuclear and chemical science, completed research regarding the quartz under earth’s crust and lectures worldwide.

    Besides I have completed more than 200 hours of graduate studies in English and History disciplines, read Omni, Popular Science etc for fun. Besides many professors are corrupted arrogance and need for grant money and actually know little to nothing about any other discipline.

    You Americana are a pseudo intellectual.