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)
Continued... |