Bear with me for a moment, as I explain the Paris climate deal cobbled together by kleptocrats,
dictators, and the Obama administration.
It’s a treaty, committing the world’s governments to decisive action, supposedly
against climate change.
It’s also not a treaty, so that President Obama could bind the United States to it with
the stroke of his pen.
It’s binding on the new president because it’s a treaty, although it’s not.
It is the law of the land, because the U.S. Senate somehow approved it without ever actually
voting on it.
That’s because it’s merely an extension of an old treaty that the Senate ratified
specifically on the ground that it couldn’t be thus extended.
The decisive action promised in the treaty that is not a treaty consists of governments,
most of them run by dictators and thieves, promising, on an honor system, to take steps
of their own choosing, including steps that are impossible, to change future weather patterns,
on penalty of no punishment if they break their word.
But if you’re not for the Paris treaty, well, you just don’t care about the fate
of the planet.
Got it?
OK, here’s some background.
As you may know, experts have sounded the alert about climate change.
In the 1890s, the fear was a new ice age.
In the 1930s, it was warming.
In the early 1960s, it was cooling.
Then in 1969 experts warned the White House about the warming that was going to put New
York and Washington under water by the Year 2000.
In 2008, ABC News had New York under water by 2015.
So, to fight the threat of Global Warming,
politicians and bureaucrats gathered at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.
President Bush, the first one, had run for president promising to “fight the greenhouse
effect with the White House effect”—so he submitted the Rio treaty to the U.S. Senate.
Senators ratified it in October 1992 on a voice vote with no debate.
The treaty wasn’t controversial because it was a treaty to get together and make more
treaties.
It had no effect on its own.
Five years later, when a climate treaty was negotiated at a meeting in Kyoto, Senators
Robert Byrd and Chuck Hagel introduced a resolution that said the Senate would NOT accept any
Global Warming treaty that put all the real burden on so-called developed countries or
that would result in serious economic harm in the U.S.
And, of course, any treaty would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote of Senators,
as is true for ALL treaties.
This Byrd-Hagel resolution was specifically aimed at the Kyoto agreement.
And it passed 95 to nothing.
Flash forward to 2015.
The Obama administration teamed up with the communist Chinese, the worst human rights
violators and the worst environmental criminals in the world, to negotiate a treaty in Paris.
The Chinese agreed to do nothing other than the things they’re already projected to do.
The U.S., on the other hand, would have massive cuts in the emissions that supposedly cause
Global Warming.
The Chinese and the Obama administration pressured
the rest of the world to sign on.
That effort was helped by the promise of $100 billion a year in transfers from the economically
successful countries to the so-called “developing” countries, or, at least, to the ruling classes
in those countries.
Negotiations in Paris were completed on December 12, 2015.
The United Nations Secretary-General announced on October 5, 2016 that the agreement had
met the threshold and would take effect November 4.
Get it?
The treaty had to be okayed before November 8… because that’s when the American people
would have their say, in the election.
Supporters of the treaty declared it to be both “Congress proof” and “Trump-proof.”
If you’ve been listening carefully, you see the problem.
The United States cannot be a party to a treaty unless the Senate votes to approve it, by
a two-thirds vote.
And there’s been no vote.
So…
President Obama simply declared it to be ratified.
Meanwhile, all those other countries that signed on – they get to decide how much
they’re cutting, and unlike us they’re on the honor system to keep their promises.
And if they do follow through, when so-called
energy efficiency measures are included, the cost to the world could be $16.5 trillion
by 2030.
Those numbers represent spending on Global Warming that is greater than the combined
income of the world’s billion poorest people.
To sum up:
This is what passes for logic in the so-called international community: the idea that the
world’s governments will cut off their countries’ access to affordable energy and modern technology
and otherwise impoverish their people.
Racing against the clock—trying to lock down a deal before the American people could
have their say in the 2016 election—the Obama administration, the Chinese, and gaggles
of dictators and kleptocrats delivered unto the world the Paris Climate Treaty, which
luckily for us, also isn’t a treaty.
It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
There are several ways the Trump administration can get out of this mess, including by withdrawing
from that Rio treaty of 1992.
So, we’ll see who has the last laugh.