Flying deep under Washington’s radar is an upcoming (December) global climate change conference in Copenhagen, the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
“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.
We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven’t heard about it, that’s because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media.
Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—a rough draft of what could be signed come December.
So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational “government” on a scale the world has never before seen.
The “scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention” that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a “government.” The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.
Don’t worry if you were unable to attend last night’s conference on global climate change held at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can watch the newly released 22-minute documentary entitled “Climate Chains” as well as the 95 minute speech given by Lord Christopher Monckton after the movie.
Most media coverage of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), focuses on the bill’s cap-and-trade program and the free rationing coupons (emission allowances) that the bill’s co-sponsors, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), had to hand out to utilities and other interests to secure their support for the legislation.
But the cap-and-trade program occupies only one of four of the bill’s main sections (â€titlesâ€). Other titles contain a host of mandates and “incentives†(carrots and sticks) to reshape energy and transportation markets.
Anyone concerned about the environment and seeking the best solutions for how to protect it will find The Really Inconvenient Truths, by Iain Murray, to be a valuable, fact-filled resource that is both informative and entertaining.
By Alex Newman
A man named Benjamin Cone from North Carolina bought land with no trees and allowed the forest to grow back on it. Once the forest returned, a protected woodpecker moved in, prompting the government, under rules of the Endangered Species Act, to prohibit any meaningful use of a large portion of his land — he was denied the right to any logging, driving the value of his property down from $1.7 million to about $260,000. The new feathered resident and the accompanying plunge in his land’s value caused a reasonable response: the owner decided to clear-cut the rest of the forest to avoid losing it to the woodpeckers and their bureaucratic allies.
Throughout the United States, landowners have become so fearful of losing the right to manage or sell their land if a protected species decides to make its home on the land that the Endangered Species Act has been sarcastically termed the “Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up Act.” Instead of doing everything possible to attract and safeguard endangered species, landowners often manage their properties to avoid inhabitation — and secretly kill the species if they do show up.
One inescapable conclusion that a logical person would reach after reading The Really Inconvenient Truths by Iain Murray is that the quasi-religious, big-government, environmentalist movement creates disincentives for people to take care of the planet — and actually prevents proper care of the planet.
The book makes a compelling case against the liberal approach to preserving the Earth and its resources, arguing that government controls usually have unintended consequences that prove far worse than the problems they were originally intended to fix. To make his case, Murray explains some of the tragic effects that liberal policies have produced.
Murray starts by debunking myths about the pesticide known as DDT, which became the newly burgeoning environmentalist movement’s target after the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962. He calls it “one of the founding texts of liberal environmentalism.” Then he writes: “It is also a shoddy bit of scholarship that may be responsible for millions of deaths.” After thoroughly disproving Carson’s “science,” Murray provides ample evidence that the ill-conceived war waged against this chemical really did contribute to millions of deaths in Africa by depriving the continent of the ability to control and eliminate malaria-carrying mosquitoes. There are over 500 million cases of the disease each year, and it is the primary cause of death among pregnant women and children under five in countries like Zambia. He also contends that they don’t admit their mistake because going back and acknowledging it now would devastate the global movement Carson helped spawn.
Murray goes on to highlight the array of problems that have resulted from “ethanol mandates” in a chapter subtitled “Save the Planet, Starve the World.” Government subsidies that were provided for ethanol — brought about by political pressure from the environmental lobby — made this dubious fuel economically viable despite evidence that shows its inefficiency. Even worse, now that so much corn is being used in its production, food prices are soaring, negatively affecting the poor above all. Murray also draws a link between the mandates and further destruction of the environment caused by the increasing demand for corn which requires more acres to be planted. And to make a long story short, ethanol will not save the Earth from the dreaded greenhouse gases even under the best circumstances. In addition to creating a similar level of the gases to traditional fuels, the clear-cutting of land resulting from the increased demand means fewer trees to process carbon dioxide into oxygen.
In another disaster caused by governments subsidizing certain sectors of the economy, Murray discusses the overfishing that has almost wiped out certain fish stocks. He claims that without the massive government subsidies, the overfishing wouldn’t have even been economically viable. There are so few fish left among certain species that it wouldn’t have been profitable to fish for them, allowing the fish time to recover if fishing fleets were not subsidized.
Murray also delves into the causes of the historic fire at Yellowstone National Park in 1988. Apparently environmentalists were determined to prevent any harm to forests, so at their behest, government managers suppressed fires for decades, and the forest developed into a sort of tinder box, growing thick underbrush that normally would have been kept in check by natural fires or private interests. When the policy was suddenly changed, again at the behest of environmentalists, to allow “natural” fires, over a million acres were burned and smoke reached as far as the East Coast. He then shows how and why loggers and other private owners with a vested interest in the property manage forests far better than government.
“Just about everywhere one looks, the principles of collectivization and green environmentalism stand in the way of sound management of the resource,” he contends, before explaining the “Tragedy of the Commons” — that is, the lands or resources that supposedly belong to everyone, but where no one has property rights and therefore no one has the authority and responsibility for protecting those environmental assets.
Increased government control and regulation of the environment leads almost inevitably to tragedy of the commons. One of the most tragic examples of government-caused environmental destruction discussed in the book is the death of the Aral Sea. Al Gore claimed that the sea dried up because of global warming, but “in truth, it’s the bitter fruit of central planning and totalitarianism.” According to Murray and his sources, the Soviet bureaucracy decided to grow massive amounts of cotton in the region, irrigating the land around the Aral Sea until its feeder rivers ran dry and eventually destroyed the sea and the industries and populations that depended on it. The problem continues to this day, with the dictator of Uzbekistan imposing target production rates for cotton on his subjects, primarily to enrich himself and his cronies. The people of the region are told that it’s for the benefit of “the state.” It is an environmental catastrophe that has led to the death of the sea and is also causing the destruction of the farmland and the poverty of the people.
Murray acknowledges that not all environmental catastrophes are caused by liberal environmentalists, even conceding that some are caused by short-sighted businesses. But, short-sighted businesses can be held accountable in court when they, for example, pollute another’s property.
The book also hits hard at the motivations and character of the leaders of the environmental movement and its followers. “It is my contention that, just as environmentalism has replaced Marxism as the central economic theory of the Far Left, so too has environmentalism begun to replace liberal Christianity as the Left’s motivating religious force,” Murray writes. In what would be humorous if it weren’t so serious, he claims that with Al Gore, “The Goracle,” at the top of the hierarchy, many of his “flock” follow him on faith and defend outrageous claims without even so much as questioning what is said, with some going as far as worshipping nature or the Earth while maintaining an “anti-human” crusade.
Murray provides so much documented proof of Gore’s lies that the idea of somebody taking him seriously almost seems ludicrous. But according to the book, Gore is still the “undisputed global head of the environmental movement,” which speaks volumes about the movement itself. And while many of his followers may be genuinely concerned about the planet, Murray states: “As with Marxist economics, the new environment-centered economics is a mere justification for a rejection of the free enterprise system.”
Wonder why Russia has Europe over a barrel? Ask German EnvironmentalistsÂ
By William Yeatman
It is said that Vladimir Lenin once called Soviet sympathizers in Western countries “useful idiots†for unwittingly advancing the cause of revolutionary Russia. Were the Bolshevik leader alive today, he might apply the same label to German environmentalists, whose influence over their country’s energy policy has been an inadvertent, but essential factor in Moscow’s post-Cold War rise.
Two decades of stringent environmental regulations have made Germany, Europe’s largest economy, increasingly dependent on natural gas from Russia, the world’s largest exporter. Of course, economic leverage translates seamlessly into political power, and Russia’s sway over German foreign policy has been conspicuous as the recent imbroglio in Georgia has continued to play out.
In fact, Germany has the means to power its economy without Russian natural gas, so energy dependence is unnecessary. For starters, it is home to the largest reserves of coal in Europe. But thanks to the European Union’s marquee climate-change mitigation policy—the continent-wide Emission Trading Scheme—the economics of power production have shifted decidedly against coal because its combustion releases the most greenhouse gases of any conventional fuel source.
Given that coal is currently taboo, Germany could meet its energy needs by expanding the use of nuclear energy, which emits no carbon dioxide when used to generate electricity. Yet the environmental movement in Germany opposes nuclear energy because its waste is difficult and dangerous to store. In 2000, environmentalists won passage of the Nuclear Exit Law, which commits German utilities to phasing out nuclear power by 2020.
Rather than coal or nuclear, the environmental movement prefers sustainable sources of power such as wind and solar, and it has convinced the German government to grant generous subsidies to the renewable energy industry. But despite these investments, renewables are still too costly to displace conventional energy sources, which is why wind and solar power account for less than 2 percent of Germany’s primary energy production, according to government figures.
That leaves natural gas, which is cleaner than coal and less expensive than alternative energy. Germany is fortunate to have large deposits of gas—more than 9 trillion cubic feet—most of which is thought to lie beneath the northwestern state of Niedersachsen. Environmental regulations, however, have limited exploration and development in the region.
To meet its demand for energy, Germany turned to Gazprom, a state-owned company that has a legal monopoly on natural gas exports from Russia. Natural gas currently accounts for almost a quarter of all the energy consumed in Germany, including all electricity in homes, gasoline in cars, and coal for industrial boilers. That’s up 40 percent since 1991. And Gazprom now supplies 40 percent of all natural gas consumption in Germany, an increase of 55 percent over the same period.
Currently, almost 40 percent of Germany’s domestic gas consumption comes from Russia. That share is likely to increase with the construction of the Northern Pipeline, a project to be completed in 2010 that would link Russian gas directly to Central European markets.
It’s little wonder, then, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the first major world leader to pay a visit to new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Or that at last spring’s NATO summit in Romania, German diplomats orchestrated the opposition to U.S. President George W. Bush’s plan for expanding the trans-Atlantic military alliance to include Georgia and Ukraine. Before the summit, Russian officials had warned that NATO expansion would cause a “deep crisis,†and provoke a “response†from Russia.
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it’s time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.
What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA’s Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of “99% confidence”).
But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world’s oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that “80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters,” according to a report by NPR’s Richard Harris.
The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere’s coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.
This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.
So let’s stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.
The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification.
The late Natalie Grant Wraga once wrote, “Protection of the environment has become the principal tool for attack against the West and all it stands for. Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist values.”
And who was this person?
Natalie Grant Wraga (who died in 2002 at age 101) was an internationally-recognized expert on the art of disinformation. In her Washington Post obituary, Herbert Romerstein — veteran intelligence expert in the legislative and executive branches of government — described Grant/Wraga as “one of our leading authorities” on Soviet deceit.
In a 1998 article appearing in Investors Business Daily (IBD), reporter John Berlau wrote that some of the most respected scholars on Soviet Intelligence have credited this woman with teaching them how to penetrate desinformatzia, Moscow’s term for its ongoing operation to deceive foreign governments.
John Dziak — onetime senior intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) — is quoted by IBD as saying were it not “for someone like Natalie, we would have had more failures, and the Soviets would have had more successes.”
Which leads us where?
In many of her writings, she dropped her last name and wrote under the byline Natalie Grant. That takes us to the spring 1998 issue of The Register. Therein, Grant identified Green Cross International (GCI) as a Non-Government Organization (NGO) founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last communist dictator of the Soviet Union. The aim of GCI was worldwide enforcement of a rigid environmental agenda.
Concurrent with the advancement of GCI, there was the birth of yet another NGO called the Earth Council, chaired by Maurice Strong, a key environmentalist mover and shaker at the United Nations. According to Wikipedia, Strong — a Canadian — describes himself as “a socialist in ideology and a capitalist in methodology.” The bio also notes that “some consider Strong a frightening power seeker.” And then this: “He shares the views of the most radical environmentalist street protester, but instead of shouting himself hoarse at a police barricade at a global conference, he’s the secretary general inside, wielding the gavel.”
Meanwhile, about a dozen people participated in the organizing meeting of Gorbachev’s GCI, including then-U.S. Rep. James Scheuer (D-N.Y.). The congressman had publicly stated that regardless of whether the allegation of man-made “global warming” was valid or exaggerated, the U.S. should proceed to take the steps required to fight it because those steps supposedly would benefit the planet. (As explained in last week’s column, the Cap and Trade — “Tax and Rob” — legislation aimed at carrying out the radical enviro agenda at a steep cost to American consumers and taxpayers was dropped like a hot potato in the U.S. Senate June 6, lest the great unwashed arise in anger and deliver an unwelcome verdict at the polls. It will be back in 2009. Connecting these dots is relevant. But I digress.)
The main organizing events
Other GCI meetings were to follow, including what Grant called “The Big Event — the Moscow Conference,” in January 1990. Then-Senator Al Gore was among the speakers. Only two years before, he had conducted hearings on Capitol Hill where the “global warming” theory was showcased.
 As the Moscow conference got underway, the Soviet Union was then on its last legs — down, but not yet out, you might say. Gorbachev, still the Soviet leader, voiced his government’s demand that the nations push for a nuclear test ban, an international environmental monitoring system, a covenant to protect “unique environmental zones” (a mindset that has since led to an international fight over UN efforts to disallow snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park on American soil), support for United Nations environmental programs, and a follow-up conference in June 1992 in Brazil.
Grant writes that while Gorbachev was expressing the “views” and “suggestions” of the Soviet Communist Party, those suggestions did not fall on deaf ears. “Before long, the activities of the movement began to reflect the communist ‘recommendations.’”
Now, why all this background?
On May 28, here in Washington, the featured speaker at the annual dinner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) was The Honorable Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic.
Klaus’s book Blue Planet in Green Shackles had just been released. As the Czech head of state put it at the dinner, the purpose of the book was to outline his firm belief that much of organized environmentalism is “an ideology I consider the most dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity in the current era.”
Democrats were eager to end debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security bill, but couldn’t muster the necessary 60 votes for cloture. The Republican-led filibuster was successful in holding off the legislation, at least for this session.
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Senator Coleman reportedly missed the procedural vote that would have ended debate and put the bill up for a vote on the Senate floor.
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Even though the bill has been shelved for this session, supporters of the bill are claiming victory. They say the cloture vote would have been successful if all the bill’s stated supporters had been present to vote.
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But they weren’t.
Growing constituent opposition to the bill, driven by already high energy prices, and fear of greatly exacerbating current economic woes put tremendous pressure on both Democrat and Republican senators to vote against the cap and trade bill. Senators who missed the cloture vote may well have dodged a deadly political bullet.
Cap and trade supporters hope to bring the legislation forward with more support next year.
If this week’s Senate debate on a proposed cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for climate legislation, things are not looking too good for opening night.
The week has been marked by parliamentary maneuvers and bitter accusations over divergent estimates of the bill’s future costs. On Wednesday, a group of GOP senators asked that the clerk of the Senate read the entire 491-page bill aloud, an extremely rare request. That took more than 10 hours.
Although parliamentary maneuvers could still extend the debate into next week, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) faced the prospect of failure in a bid to end debate on amendments to the climate bill this morning. In that event, he was expected to seek withdrawal of the entire measure, to the relief of some Democrats from coal-producing or heavy industrial states.
“We are going to have Democrats voting to end debate on what they call the most important issue facing the planet and Republicans voting to continue debate on it,” said Don Stewart, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Some Democrats were worried yesterday that the GOP might try to block withdrawal of the legislation to prolong a debate that many Democrats think no longer works to their political benefit. Republicans have pounced on the high price of gasoline and have stressed that the climate legislation, by introducing a price on carbon dioxide emissions, would further raise the price of gas along with that of all other fossil fuels.
James M. Inhofe (Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement, “Now Democrats are on record as supporting legislation that would significantly increase prices at the pump and in our homes.”
Rather than bow before this arrogation, let’s take useful steps that aren’t destructive.
By Charles Krauthammer
I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier. I’m a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can’t be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.
Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems — from ocean currents to cloud formation — that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.
Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. “The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity,” warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”
By Chuck Norris
By Marlo Lewis
Wonder why Russia has Europe over a barrel? Ask German Environmentalists 
By Bret Stephens
by Wes Vernon
Democrats were eager to end debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security bill, but couldn’t muster the necessary 60 votes for cloture. The Republican-led filibuster was successful in holding off the legislation, at least for this session.
Rather than bow before this arrogation, let’s take useful steps that aren’t destructive.
Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. “The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity,” warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, “is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”
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