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Plans to Turn ‘Politically Binding’ UN Climate Change Accord Into Federal Law
CNS News ^ | September 12, 2014 | Barbara Hollingsworth

Posted on 09/12/2014 7:26:55 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Obama administration officials who say they intend to sign a “politically binding” agreement to drastically reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at the United Nations’ (UN) climate change conference in Paris next year already have a legal strategy to turn any non-binding accord into federal law, warns Christopher Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

Horner told CNSNews.com that the “name and shame” effort is an alternative to a new climate change treaty already being drafted by the UN that would have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate.

“Obama’s statement acknowledges that he cannot get a new climate treaty past China or U.S. voters,” Horner told CNSNews.com.

But he added that environmental activists are already planning to employ the same collusive sue-and-settle strategy they have used in the past to impose draconian energy restrictions on all Americans even though there’s been no global warming for nearly 18 years.

(Source: Lord Christopher Monckton)

’It’s quite clear under Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution that after the president signs it, any binding international law agreement has to be ratified by the Senate,” Horner explained.

But he noted that “activist green groups, in conjunction with the New York attorney general’s office, have already developed plans to use the federal courts to force Americans to drastically reduce their energy consumption whether or not Obama signs a new climate change treaty in Paris next year” to replace the expired Kyoto Protocol.

Horner predicted the White House strategy in a 2009 paper published by the Federalist Society, in which he wrote: “It appears that Kyoto will be the subject of a controversial effort to sharply revise U.S. environmental treaty practice…. waiving the Constitution’s requirement of Senate ratification by reclassifying the product of talks as a congressional-Executive agreement, not a treaty.” (See Kyoto II ...Emerging Strategy.pdf)

”You can’t just dismiss this if you know what they’re trying to do,” Horner said, pointing to a copy of a court pleading drafted by environmental activists that he received from the New York attorney general’s office under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request two years ago .

The draft lawsuit argues that the federal government should be required to honor its international commitments even if they are not ratified by the Senate.

The strategy was confirmed in June by Yvo De Boer, the UN’s former climate chief. “If the U.S. feels that ‘internationally legally binding’ has little value, and that the real value lies in legally-binding national commitments, then these regulations can be the way for the U.S. to show leadership,” De Boer said.

“We know where this is going,” Horner told CNSNews.com. “As they intend, it will end up in the courts, not the Senate. The issue would come down to 'How do you implement it?' and that is where stunts like the NY AG's come in. You get a court to turn these gestures into law and/or a friendly administration to roll over and get a court's blessing by settling a ‘sue-and-settle’ case.”

“You can’t trust the courts not to do that, and it will be as good as ratifying” a climate treaty as far as Americans are concerned, added Horner, author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.

The Paris accord will primarily target Western developed nations such as the United States, Horner pointed out. ”The argument is: ‘The atmosphere is a pie, and you’ve already had your slice’.”

“We need another Byrd-Hagel Resolution,” he added, referring to a July 1997 resolution that passed the Senate unanimously. It stated that the United States would not be a signatory to any climate change agreement that did not include developing countries and that would “result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.”

Marlo Lewis, Horner’s colleague at CEI, believes that the strategy will also prevent future presidents and Congresses from rolling back burdensome Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.

“Obama will use the climate action plan initiatives as a basis for demanding similar ‘pledges’ from other nations – but also use the hoped-for agreement to lock in his domestic climate agenda. If he pulls it off, future Congresses and the next president won’t be able to overturn EPA regulations, for example, without violating our Framework Convention ‘pledges’ to the ‘international community’,” Lewis predicts.

The UK’s Lord Christopher Monckton, who has attended all the UN climate change conferences, including the one held in Durban, South Africa in 2011, previously told CNSNews.com that “the next big moment of danger will be in Paris in December of next year.”

That’s because one of the publicly stated outcomes of the Durban conference was “a decision by Parties to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change as soon as possible, and no later than 2015.”

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: climatechange; globalwarming; kyoto; obama
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

UN climate chief: Communism is best to fight global warming

That’s all I need to know, even though I have read countless articles.


21 posted on 09/12/2014 8:12:44 PM PDT by bobo1 (progressives=commies/fascists)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Obama versus America.

Again.


22 posted on 09/12/2014 8:13:01 PM PDT by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

So basically they are planning on something like what happened to prop 8 in California. Someone sues the government, the government agrees with those suing, no one else has standing to enforce the status quo, we all get screwed.


23 posted on 09/12/2014 8:29:13 PM PDT by HapaxLegamenon
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To: HapaxLegamenon

I’ll bet the ministers I London never thought a tax on tea or paper would cause them to lose a bountiful group of colonies.


24 posted on 09/12/2014 8:31:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (I will raise $2Million USD for Cruz and/or Palin's next run, what will you do?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

A little bit of side question: when did we start using international agreements which require half the House and half the Senate rather than the Constitutionally prescribed use of treaties which require 2/3 of the Senate? I know NAFTA wouldn’t have gotten the 2/3 vote in 1993, but I don’t know enough of its legislative history to know if it was tried as a treaty at first. <p.


25 posted on 09/12/2014 9:21:08 PM PDT by KarlInOhio (The IRS: either criminally irresponsible in backup procedures or criminally responsible of coverup.)
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To: rockinqsranch

In the future all a president has to do is issue an executive order then to void anything this clown has done.


26 posted on 09/13/2014 2:18:37 AM PDT by Plumberman27
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To: Plumberman27

NO. Absolutely NOT. The lawlessness must stop with the demise of this administration in 2017, or before.

Ours IS a nation of laws. Without law this nation cannot survive.

I was saying in my original post the current administration is operating outside the law, therefore the law(s) this administration claim(s) is invalid.

The Presidential Executive Order has been abused, and by several Presidents IMO, therefore the Presidential Executive Order must be clarified to work properly under Constitutional law. That is a task that must be undertaken immediately, if not sooner.


27 posted on 09/13/2014 7:38:41 AM PDT by rockinqsranch ((Dems, Libs, Socialists, call 'em what you will. They ALL have fairies livin' in their trees.))
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

First step to reduce the output would be for the lyin’king to STFU.


28 posted on 09/13/2014 8:42:08 AM PDT by rktman (Ethnicity: Nascarian. Race: Daytonafivehundrian)
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda

Venus doesn’t have an atmosphere like Earth, almost all of the atmosphere of Venus is CO2. On Earth, you are talking a percent of 1 percent. We are going to have a seriously hard time getting CO2 to exceed 1 percent. It’s been recorded way higher in prehistoric times.


29 posted on 09/13/2014 10:18:02 AM PDT by Morpheus2009
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To: HapaxLegamenon

That is perhaps the most underestimated threat out there ruling by the courts in favor of restriction. However, even in real laws, how are you going to prove something a threat when your own predictions and claims don’t hold up?


30 posted on 09/13/2014 10:22:05 AM PDT by Morpheus2009
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To: Morpheus2009
Yes but Venus became a greenhouse planet from water vapor, then CO2 was trapped by it over billions of years, and yes it's absurd to think we can create enough CO2 to change the composition of 5 quadrillion metric tons of atmosphere. When it comes to controlling the atmosphere, plants exceed us by far, it's why if you look at earth from outer space, almost every continent has green on it, that's not green cars or green people, it's plants. And then we have the oceans with algae and other plant life. So for liberals to think people which are like microbes by comparison can overtake the oceans and plants enough to dramatically change the composition of the atmosphere is beyond absurd.


31 posted on 09/13/2014 11:32:06 AM PDT by GrandJediMasterYoda (Hitlery: Incarnation of evil.)
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda

It doesn’t have hardly any water now. Whatever happened on Venus must have broken down the water so that it left the planet or got incorporated into Something else. Either way, CO2 presence in our atmosphere is extremely small. Water also limits warming thanks to its capacity to absorb heat, evaporation, and for solid water to float on top of liquid water.


32 posted on 09/13/2014 12:04:06 PM PDT by Morpheus2009
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda; Morpheus2009; Lurkina.n.Learnin
,,,Venus became a greenhouse planet from water vapor, then CO2 was trapped by it over billions of years, and yes it's absurd to think we can create enough CO2...

Most folks don't realize that air has a hundred times as much water vapor as it does CO2. and yet they all got this big thing about 'carbon footprint'.  I mean, like if someone totally eliminates his carbon footprint and the next guy increases his water footprint by a percent --they cancel out.

33 posted on 09/14/2014 1:33:47 PM PDT by expat_panama
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