By Jennifer Haberkorn

Amid the growing fight over the accuracy of climate data, President Obama is seeking to have the federal government put its imprimatur on the science by calling for the creation of a new federal office to study and report on global warming.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Service office would help federal agencies and businesses prepare for and cope with global changes, similar to how industries have used data from the 140-year-old National Weather Service to create new technologies and provide services.

“This service will be a vital part of our growing body of knowledge on climate change, and will be held to the highest standards of scientific integrity and transparency,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

The NOAA Climate Service office, which requires requires congressional committee approval, has been under development for years and is not designed to stem controversies over the accuracy of climate data, according to NOAA officials. It will cull existing data and programs from various Commerce offices under one roof.

But the proposed office does fall in line with the administration’s effort to act on climate change in Congress and on the world stage. In Congress, the push for capping emissions of carbon dioxide, which some scientists say is causing global warming, has stalled in the Senate.

World leaders, spurred by Mr. Obama, failed to craft a cohesive response to climate changes at the United Nations’ Copenhagen conference in December. They did come up with a non-binding deal that leaders called a “first step” to stemming greenhouse gas emissions.

Developing countries such as China have resisted efforts to cap their emissions as their industries grow more quickly and emit more than developed countries such as the United States.

Mr. Locke said changes to the Earth’s temperatures threaten to melt polar ice caps, raise sea levels, threaten farmers’ crops and change weather patterns. Last month, the National Climatic Data Center reported that the decade that ended in 2009 was the warmest on record worldwide, surpassing the 1990s. Many scientists believe human activity has played a substantial role in the changes.

But others question the legitimacy of that research. The United Nations’ climate talks were overshadowed by the revelation of documents that purportedly showed several prominent researchers selected data that supported their theory that humans caused climate change.

Read the rest of this article at Washington Times.

By Jonathan Leake

The chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Rajendra Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion’s share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.

It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus. The revelation comes just a week after The Sunday Times highlighted serious scientific flaws in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on the likely impacts of global warming.

The IPCC had warned that climate change was likely to melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 - an idea considered ludicrous by most glaciologists. Last week a humbled IPCC retracted that claim and corrected its report.
Since then, however, The Sunday Times has discovered that the same bogus claim has been cited in grant applications for TERI.

One of them, announced earlier this month just before the scandal broke, resulted in a £310,000 grant from Carnegie.

Read the rest of this story at the Sunday Times.

By Aaron Kline

By Edward Felker

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food.

The latest Agriculture Department economic-impact study of the climate bill, which passed the House this summer, found that the legislation would profit farmers in the long term. But those profits would come mostly from higher crop prices as a result of the legislation’s incentives to plant more forests and thus reduce the amount of land devoted to food-producing agriculture.

According to the economic model used by the department and the Environmental Protection Agency, the legislation would give landowners incentives to convert up to 59 million acres of farmland into forests over the next 40 years. The reason: Trees clean the air of heat-trapping gases better than farming does.

Mr. Vilsack, in a little-noticed statement issued with the report earlier this month, said the department’s forecasts “have caused considerable concern” among farmers and ranchers.

Read the rest of this story at Washington Times.

Alan Carlin

Alan Carlin — the EPA scientist whose skeptical report was hushed — thinks Obama and the EPA just placed a terrible bet with the politically motivated CO2 endangerment finding.  Carlin has carried out or supervised economic and scientific research on public policy issues for over 40 years — first at The RAND Corporation, and since 1971 at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

By Alan Carlin

On Monday, the EPA announced its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. One can infer from the timing of the announcement that the administration may have taken this action at this time in order to bring something to the table at the Copenhagen COP15 meeting.

From a scientific viewpoint, it was an odd time to do so — given that the very recent Climategate disclosures would presumably have taken some time to digest and analyze for their possible effects on vital conclusions. So the timing may have been based more on the political, rather than the scientific, factors involved.

But from a larger viewpoint, the U.S. president who was going to find a way to resolve partisan bickering in Washington has now embarked on a major escalation of the conflict — by using the power he holds over executive branch agencies to fight his enemies in Congress over the issue of global warming.

Although the EPA has always been, organizationally, an arm of the administration in power, until this administration the EPA has generally been able to maintain the appearance (if not the reality) of being science-based.

That is now much harder to maintain.

Originally, the rumor was that the purpose of the endangerment finding would be to pressure Congress into approving a cap and trade bill. Now, it appears fairly clear that the administration will not be able to gather the needed votes in the Senate to pass the bill — at least this year, and probably even next year, either with or without an endangerment finding. So there would seem to be little reason to push the endangerment finding now — unless they intended to use it as the basis for negotiating at COP15.

Some Major Political Risks

This EPA endangerment approach carries major risks for the administration. The first risk is that the EPA’s apparently politically motivated endangerment finding may be overturned in the now-inevitable court reviews.

The second risk is that when greenhouse gas regulations should be announced — and certainly when they should ever be implemented — the full responsibility will obviously fall onto the administration, rather than being shared between the administration and Congress (which is what would occur if Congress ever adopted a cap and trade bill). If constituents end up being unhappy with the resulting regulations, and particularly the greatly increased energy costs and decreased employment that will result, it will be obvious who was responsible.

And there may well be some very unhappy constituents.

A third risk is that they will not be able to contain the EPA’s actions, since the law clearly specifies that much smaller sources are subject to regulation than they now contemplate, and legal action may force the EPA to regulate smaller sources whether it wants to or not.

Read the rest of this piece at Pajamas Media.

More at PJTV: Whistleblower an Inconvenient Voice in Obama’s EPA)

Deliberately timed to coincide with the start of the United Nations’ climate conference in Copenhagen, the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday declared that carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas that’s essential to life on Earth, poses a threat to human health and welfare. This determination clears the way for the federal government to begin restricting energy production and restructuring the entire American economy.

The EPA cited a 2007 Supreme Court ruling declaring that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act, but the science upon which that ruling was based has now been called into question when emails and internal documents between the UN’s leading climate change scientists were leaked to the public. Contained with in the files was evidence of suppression, manipulation and destruction of climate data. The emails revealed that the entire historical climate record that is the basis for all determinations of climate change is based on inaccurate data and has been manipulated to match a political and economic agenda.

If the EPA acts unilaterally to restrict carbon dioxide emissions, the impact on the economy could be even worse than a cap and trade law enacted by Congress. The reasons for this move by the Obama Administration’s EPA appear to be two-fold: First, to establish authority for President Obama to make enforceable agreements at the UN’s climate conference even in lieu of a treaty or Congressional approval; and Second to give the administration leverage to coerce the Senate into enacting a cap and trade law just to lessen the economic damage that could be wrought by the EPA’s heavy-handed restrictions of CO2.

At this moment, our national economy is under threat by carbon regulation schemes on three fronts: The Copenhagen conference designed to create a world carbon regulatory authority which could undermine our sovereignty; The cap and trade bill that’s been passed by the House of Representatives and now awaits Senate approval; and the Obama Administration’s decision that it can regulate carbon dioxide via the EPA even without approval by Congress.

For a preview of what this could mean to American families, one can look to Germany, where due to restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, electricity costs three-times more than in the US and gasoline is now $8.00 per gallon.

You must make your voice heard loud and clear right now. This is no longer a far-away possibility. It’s happening as you read this. Time’s up.

Take Action: If you don’t think it’s a good idea to dramatically slash domestic energy production at a cost of trillions of dollars and untold American jobs over the politics of a discredited climate scare, pick up your phone and call the White House right now. Tell the Obama Administration you won’t stand for this unparalleled fleecing of the American public. Call (202) 456-1111 to be heard today.

Visit NoCapAndTrade.com for more ways to take action.

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN’s negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol

By John Vidal

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol’s principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks.”

A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:

Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;
• Weaken the UN’s role in handling climate finance;
• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.

“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process,” said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.

Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for Oxfam International, said: “This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting. On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed.”

Hill continued: “It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks.”

Read the rest of this story at the Guardian.

Read the “Danish Text.”

Niger Innis

Highlights social injustice of proposed climate change policies

 

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) announced today that they have joined the No Cap and Trade Coalition in the fight against cap-and-trade legislation and the proposed Copenhagen climate treaty. The coalition is comprised of over 30 state and federal public policy groups and think tanks and maintains a website at www.NoCapAndTrade.com.

Niger Innis, national spokesperson for CORE, will become a spokesperson for the No Cap-and Trade Coalition, helping to spread the message that this dangerous public policy will impede social justice, transfer wealth from the United States to foreign countries and potentially strip the United States of its sovereignty.

“CORE is committed to the coalition’s efforts to stop cap-and-trade as well as the Copenhagen treaty,” said Niger Innis. “This endeavor is a continuation of an almost three year effort that CORE has made in its national energy campaign – CORE believes that access to affordable energy is a civil and human right and will work with the No Cap-and-Trade Coalition to spread this message.”

“The No Cap-and-Trade Coalition is very excited about working with CORE and having Niger Innis as a spokesperson,” said Jeff Davis of Minnesota Majority, the coalition’s organizer. “We believe his message that cap-and-trade schemes will be devastating to all Americans, but with a disproportionate impact on the poor in this country, will resonate with all people, regardless of politics.”

On December 7, 2009, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will begin a conference in Copenhagen, Denmark where President Obama intends to consent to an operational agreement with immediate effect if the proposed treaty can’t be agreed upon. The treaty, or any similar executive agreements, could result in a massive transfer of wealth from the United States to third world countries, tax hikes, price inflation, job losses and more damage to the faltering American economy. A draft of the treaty includes establishing a new world government along with a world energy tax. Were such a treaty ratified, it could be a threat to the sovereignty of the United States.

If domestic cap-and-trade legislation were passed, it could result in a loss of 1.9 million American jobs in 2012 and 2.5 million American jobs by 2025. From 2012-2019, the CBO estimates direct government spending at $822 billion with revenue at $845 billion from taxes on energy producers.

The No Cap-and-Trade Coalition has launched a petition on its website at www.NoCapAndTrade.com and through it, has transmitted over 150,000 citizen messages to the president and Congress in opposition to cap and trade schemes. Member organizations have been independently working in the fight against cap-and-trade and the Copenhagen treaty and some are running advertisements to educate the public.

CORE plans to help the No Cap-and-Trade Coalition work with lawmakers to understand that only through the free-market development of technology and the refinement of conservation endeavors, can the United States achieve a sustainable energy policy for this generation and generations to come.

Visit NoCapAndTrade.com for more information.

By Jeffrey Ball and Charles Forelle

Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant.

An “endangerment” finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions — even if Congress doesn’t pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any global deal inked in the Danish capital, where no binding agreement is expected.

Many business groups are opposed to EPA efforts to curb a gas as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide.

An EPA endangerment finding “could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement. “The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don’t stifle our economic recovery,” he said, noting that the group supports federal legislation.

EPA action won’t do much to combat climate change, and “is certain to come at a huge cost to the economy,” said the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group that stands as a proxy for U.S. industry.

Dan Riedinger, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a power-industry trade group, said the EPA would be less likely than Congress to come up with an “economywide approach” to regulating emissions. The power industry prefers such an approach because it would spread the burden of emission cuts to other industries as well.

Electricity generation, transportation and industry represent the three largest sources of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.

An EPA spokeswoman declined to comment Sunday on when the agency might finalize its proposed endangerment finding. Congressional Republicans have called on the EPA to withdraw it, saying recently disclosed emails written by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia and their peers call into question the scientific rationale for regulation.

The spokeswoman said that the EPA is confident the basis for its decision will be “very strong,” and that when it is published, “we invite the public to review the extensive scientific analysis informing” the decision.

EPA action would give President Barack Obama something to show leaders from other nations when he attends the Copenhagen conference on Dec. 18 and tries to persuade them that the U.S. is serious about cutting its contribution to global greenhouse-gas emissions.

The vast majority of increased greenhouse-gas emissions is expected to come from developing countries such as China and India, not from rich countries like the U.S. But developing countries have made it clear that their willingness to reduce growth in emissions will depend on what rich countries do first. That puts a geopolitical spotlight on the U.S.

At the heart of the fight over whether U.S. emission constraints should come from the EPA or Congress is a high-stakes issue: which industries will have to foot the bill for a climate cleanup. A similar theme will play out in Copenhagen as rich countries wrangle over how much they should have to pay to help the developing world shift to cleaner technologies.

“There is no agreement without money,” says Rosário Bento Pais, a top climate negotiator for the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm. “That is clear.”

An endangerment finding would allow the EPA to use the federal Clean Air Act to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions, which are produced whenever fossil fuel is burned. Under that law, the EPA could require emitters of as little as 250 tons of carbon dioxide per year to install new technology to curb their emissions starting as soon as 2012.

Read the rest of this article at Wall Street Journal.

Also see:

• EPA Ruling Paves Way for Regulation of Carbon
• Copenhagen is About Carbon, Not Climate

By Chris Buckley and Alister Doyle

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday next month’s climate talks in Copenhagen should cut a deal with “immediate operational effect”, even if its original aim of a legally binding pact is not achievable.

Obama was speaking after talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao in which he said the world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters had agreed to take “significant” action to mitigate their output of carbon dioxide.

“Our aim (in Copenhagen) … is not a partial accord or a political declaration but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations and one that has immediate operational effect,” Obama said.

Denmark, host of the Dec. 7-18 climate talks, welcomed Obama’s comments and said it expected the United States and all developed nations to promise firm emissions cuts and new cash to help the poor cope with global warming, even if no treaty text could be agreed.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen won backing on Sunday from Obama and other leaders at an Asia-Pacific summit for his scaled-down plan for a politically binding deal, with a legally binding one delayed until 2010.

“The American president endorsed our approach, implying that all developed countries will need to bring strong reduction targets to the negotiating table in Copenhagen,” he told about 40 environment ministers meeting in the Danish capital.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also keen that the momentum for a deal should be maintained.

“We will make very clear that we continue to support ambitious goals for Copenhagen,” she told reporters before a cabinet meeting.

“We must do everything to ensure that we move quickly to get a binding agreement. Even if this can’t be reached in Copenhagen, it can’t be pushed back forever.”

Read the rest of this article at Reuters.

By IBD Editorial Board

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a “climate emergency.” As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the “trigger” placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee.

As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points out, the Kerry-Boxer bill requires the declaration of a “climate emergency” if the concentration of carbon dioxide and other declared greenhouse gases in the atmosphere exceeds 450 parts per million (ppm). It was at about 286 ppm before the Industrial Revolution and now sits at around 368 ppm.

That figure was picked out of a hat because the warm-mongers believe that’s the level at which the polar ice caps will disappear, boats can be moored on the Statue of Liberty’s torch and dead polar bears will wash up on the beaches of Malibu.

The Senate version includes a section that gives the president authority, under this declared “climate emergency,” to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions … to address shortfalls” in achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions.

What the “appropriate actions” might be are not defined and presumably left up to the discretion of the White House. Could the burning of coal be suspended or recreational driving be banned? Sen. David Vitter, R-La., asked the EPA for a definition and received no response.

Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar Chris Horner says “this agenda transparently is not about GHG concentrations, or the climate. It’s about what the provision would bring: almost limitless power over private economic activity and individual liberty for the activist president and, for the reluctant leader, litigious greens and courts” packed by liberal Democrat appointees.

Read the rest of this article at Investors Business Daily.

By Jennifer Dlouhy

A key Senate committee today approved a plan to impose the nation’s first-ever caps on greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, over the objections of panel Republicans who have blocked work on the measure.

The Environment and Public Works Committee voted 11-1 — with seven Republican members skipping the vote — to approve the climate change legislation drafted by Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was the lone Democrat to vote against the measure, primarily because of his objections to the bill’s mandate that by 2020, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions be 20 percent less than they were in 2005. Baucus wants a less-rigorous 2020 emissions cap of 17 percent — with the option of raising it to 20 percent only if other countries impose similar limits.

Although today’s vote advances the Kerry-Boxer bill out of the main panel that has a role in vetting it, that is likely to be the high-water mark for the legislation this year. At least five other committees are expected to weigh in on the issue before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can merge their proposals into a single global warming bill for floor debate.

Under the rosiest of scenarios for bill backers, debate on global warming legislation likely would not begin until next spring. And Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told reporters this week that “some people are talking about not doing it until after the 2010 election.”

Beyond the timing concern, Baucus’ “nay” vote today underscores the challenges facing proponents of capping greenhouse gas emissions. A moderate Democrat whose support is key on any climate bill, Baucus also has a platform to push for changes as chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.

Bill backers also have to find a way to navigate any measure around a host of regional concerns and their advocates on Capitol Hill — including senators worried about the vitality of manufacturing, members from coal-reliant regions and others concerned legislation will encourage U.S. refiners to move operations overseas.

“As a landmark bill moves — not an easy bill, but a landmark bill — at each stage, you have to find a new sweet spot,” Boxer said. “And each stage requires a little bit of a different emphasis. And that is played out as everybody gets involved.”

Kerry is already working separately with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, to write a new bill combining emissions caps with incentives for nuclear power and a plan for new domestic oil and gas drilling.

Boxer pushed the bill out of her environment committee by relying on a rarely used interpretation of panel rules that allow it to be sent to the full Senate even without members of the minority party.

Committee Republicans, led by James Inhofe of Oklahoma, objected to the move they had dubbed the “nuclear option.”

Inhofe said he was “deeply disappointed” by Boxer’s decision to violate the “longstanding precedent of the committee.” “We have not been able to find a time when a bill has been marked up without minority participation,” Inhofe said.

But panel Democrats said it was essential to send a signal to the world that the U.S. is on a path to capping the carbon dioxide and other emissions blamed for global warming before international climate change negotiations next month in Copenhagen.

Read the rest of this story at Houston Chronicle.

By Chuck Norris

Halloween just got scarier — much scarier.

Flying deep under Washington’s radar is an upcoming (December) global climate change conference in Copenhagen, the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

It all sounds pretty politically benign, doesn’t it? Not according to Christopher Monckton, who was a science policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Monckton spoke to the Minnesota Free Market Institute.

“I have read that treaty,” Monckton said, “and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created. The word ‘government’ actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to Third World countries in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, ‘climate debt’ — because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. And we’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. … And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement. How many of you think that the word ‘election’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘vote’ or ‘ballot’ occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once.”

Monckton then warned that if Obama were to sign the treaty, he would be flushing U.S. sovereignty down the global toilet. He further pointed out that even though ratification of our president’s signature on that treaty would need 67 votes in the Senate, it could pass via a simple majority as an amendment to the cap-and-trade bill.

PolitiFact (as well as many left-leaning blogs) quickly criticized Monckton’s conclusions as conspiratorial and climate-skepticism rhetoric, based upon the notion that the treaty is a draft and not a finalized document. The apologetic of PolitiFact leaves the impression that the current draft is the roughest of cuts, but in reality, it is the result of seven sessions of deliberations and revisions from several subgroups, including representatives from developed and developing countries “with a view to modifying it in the direction of consolidation and convergence.”

As I myself read through the latest draft of the 181-page treaty, I noticed many lines that could warrant Monckton’s and others’ concerns. Phrases such as “creation of new levels of cooperation,” “a shift in global investment patterns,” “adjust global economic growth patterns,” “integrated system of financial and technology transfer mechanisms,” “new agreed post-2012 institutional arrangement and legal framework,” “new institutional arrangement will provide technical and financial support for developing countries,” “global fund,” etc., are messages that make one wonder how far this political body’s arm would reach into our country and force our hands into others.

Then there are red-flag statements such as these:

–”Ensuring that global crises, such as the financial crisis, should not constitute an obstacle to the provision of financial and technical assistance to developing countries in accordance with the Convention.” (Page 11)

–”The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following: …” (Page 18)

–”Particular effort should be taken to enhance cooperation amongst intergovernmental organizations.” (Page 47)

–”A special fund shall be established: (a) For the economic and social consequences of response measures. … (b) To assist countries whose economies are highly dependent on income generated from the production, processing and export, and/or on consumption of fossil fuels.” (Page 138)

Now, if that isn’t one powerful intergovernmental or global-governmental group overseeing and manipulating America’s and others’ economic and political conditions, I don’t know what is.

Read the rest of this column at Townhall.

Interview with Lord Monckton by Minnesota Majority: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

It’s not the growing number of people in poverty who are causing climate change, it’s the rich

By Alex Renton

The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO² every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess. If Britain is to meet the government’s target of an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050, we need to start reversing our rising rate of population growth immediately.

And if that makes sense, why not start cutting population everywhere? Are condoms not the greenest technology of all?

World population is forecast to peak at 9.2bn by 2050. According to a report by the LSE for the Optimum Population Trust, the lobbying body currently asking parents to “Stop at Two”, it would cost $220m to provide the family planning that would reduce the 2050 population by half a billion, preventing the emission of 34 gigatonnes of carbon. Introducing low-carbon technology for the same result would cost more than $1 trillion.

So why does population control hardly feature on the agendas of the UN bodies or of the governments now committed to tackling climate change? And why do the development and environmental groups shy away from it? The Guardian’s George Monbiot dismisses the topic as a distraction, the obsession largely of “post-reproductive, middle-class white men… a group more responsible for environmental destruction than any other class in history”. David King, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, argues: “The only way to tackle climate change is to change the way energy is used by those of us that have already been born.”

It is certainly true that “fewer people equals a greener planet” is simplistic. In 2050, 95% of the extra population will be poor and the poorer you are, the less carbon you emit. By today’s standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis.

As a result, NGOs such as Oxfam, for whom I’ve just written a report on climate change’s impact on humans, insist that dealing with consumption in the rich world is much more important than tackling population growth. According to the International Energy Agency, if the whole world moved over to clean electricity, the CO² savings would offset the emissions of up to 2.8bn poor people, easily accounting for the entire extra population forecast for 2050.

But what if we can’t reform the way we produce and use energy? The most worrying of climate change’s impacts – food and water shortages, forced migration, health epidemics – are exacerbated by population growth. According to two recent polls, nine out of 10 scientists working in climate change don’t believe we will achieve the changes in energy use committed to by the G8 and the EU. If they are right, population is going to start to matter a lot. Don’t we need a fallback plan?

Read the rest of this piece at The Guardian.