Obama’s “climate change” pledges to the United Nations to slash emissions of carbon dioxide as part of a planetary global-warming regime are probably illegal and can be quashed by Congress. That is the warning Republican lawmakers offered the UN and foreign governments after the administration announced its unconstitutional plans this week.
The White House has been making grandiose promises to the UN and its largely autocratic member regimes — billions of dollars for a UN climate fund, taking an ax to U.S. energy production to cut CO2 output, imposing a UN climate regime on America without the constitutionally required ratification by the Senate, and much more. Republican lawmakers, though, citing America’s constitutional system of government and congressional authority, are urging foreign powers to “proceed with caution” before entering into any purportedly “binding” deals with Obama that will not be upheld.
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Among those issuing stern warnings to UN member regimes was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.; shown). “Even if the job-killing and likely illegal Clean Power Plan were fully implemented, the United States could not meet the targets laid out in this proposed new plan,” McConnell said in a statement, drawing outrage from Obama officials determined to bypass the American people’s elected representatives and foist the UN climate schemes on America by decree. “Considering that two-thirds of the U.S. federal government hasn’t even signed off on the Clean Power Plan and 13 states have already pledged to fight it, our international partners should proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal.” In the statement released by McConnell’s office, Obama’s “Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC)” to the UN was also described as “unworkable.”
Separately, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment Committee and perhaps the leading climate realist in Congress, lambasted Obama’s UN pledges and vowed to crush them. “The Obama administration’s pledge to the United Nations today will not see the light of day with the 114th Congress,” he said in a statement. In an op-ed published on April 1, the senator, who often refers to the anthropogenic (man-made) global-warming theory as a “hoax,” also attacked the motivation behind Obama’s pledges to the UN. The promises Obama will not be able to keep show that the administration is determined to “use every tool it can identify, manipulate, or invent to advance its goal of overhauling our nation’s economy in the name of climate change,” Inhofe said, blasting various executive decrees and regulations being foisted on the American people under the guise of stopping warming.
Predictably, far-left voices and Obama apparatchiks within and outside of government were fuming about the resistance from the American people and their elected representatives. Radical Sierra Club boss John Coequyt, for example, claimed lawmakers representing their constituents and threatening to possibly uphold the Constitution they swore an oath to defend were somehow “undermining American leadership in the face of international crises.” Obama’s chief “climate change negotiator” Todd Stern went even further, dismissing Congress and the Constitution by reportedly telling foreign rulers that “undoing the kind of regulation we are putting in place is very tough to do.” In reality, of course, Congress could refuse to provide funding for any of the “regulation” being lawlessly imposed by the administration, or it could even defund entire agencies involved — hardly a “tough” task by any measure.
The stream of climate “pledges” to the UN, coming from Obama as well as governments and dictatorships around the world, is supposed to jump start negotiations ahead of a global “climate” summit in Paris. The UN, Obama, various foreign powers, and the establishment-backed “environmentalist” movement all hope the upcoming UN gathering will produce a planetary regime purportedly aimed at stopping alleged man-made global warming — despite the fact that there has been no warming in almost two decades in defiance of UN predictions, according to the satellite temperature record. With a draconian global climate agreement in mind, and without any semblance of congressional or constitutional authority to do so, on March 31 the Obama administration publicly unveiled what it said would be the U.S. government’s “target”: reduce the American people’s CO2 emissions “by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, and … make best efforts to reduce by 28%.” The economic cost of such a plot — especially to the poor — would be gargantuan.
“Today’s action by the United States [Obama administration] further demonstrates real momentum on the road to reaching a successful climate agreement this December in Paris and shows President Obama is committed to leading on the international stage,” said a White House “Fact Sheet” about the pledges posted online that was packed with ludicrous descriptions of the essential-to-life gas CO2 as “pollution.” “The U.S. target will roughly double the pace of carbon pollution reduction in the United States from 1.2 percent per year on average during the 2005-2020 period to 2.3-2.8 percent per year on average between 2020 and 2025. This ambitious target is grounded in intensive analysis of cost-effective carbon pollution reductions achievable under existing law [sic] and will keep the United States on the pathway to achieve deep economy-wide reductions of 80 percent or more by 2050.”
Late last year, Obama inked a pseudo-treaty with the communist dictator ruling mainland China outlining similar pledges, purportedly on behalf of the whole nation. The U.S. Senate was never consulted for ratification, making Obama’s pledges worthless, according to legal experts and lawmakers. Unelected “President” Xi Jinping, meanwhile, whose regime has boasted of the CO2 reductions from its forced abortion-using “one child policy,” agreed that Beijing would force the Chinese to stop increasing CO2 emissions by around 2030. Few serious analysts expect the dictatorship to comply anyway, contributing to the global ridicule that surrounded Obama following his “executive agreement.” Obama also promised $3 billion to a dictator-controlled UN climate fund before promptly being rebuked by Republican U.S. lawmakers, who said they would block taxpayer funding for the pledge in the appropriations process.
More than a few separate unconstitutional executive “climate” actions by Obama are in lawmakers’ crosshairs, too. McConnell has already urged states to defy the Obama EPA’s anti-carbon decrees, and Sen. Inhofe has been threatening to defund myriad White House climate schemes.
Other elements of the White House announcement about Obama’s latest climate edicts that sparked concern include a bizarre provision about “harmonizing” policies between the U.S. government and the notoriously corrupt Mexican government. “Mexico announced that it would peak its overall net greenhouse gases by 2026, backed by strong unconditional policies and a new bilateral task force to drive climate policy harmonization with the United States,” the White House “Fact Sheet” declared without further explanation. The statement also boasted of the administration’s lawless power grabs to cut “carbon pollution” such as decrees on “energy efficiency,” squandering taxpayer funds on wasteful “green” energy schemes like bankrupt crony firm Solyndra, and more.
Of course, the members of Congress taking aim at the administration’s “climate” machinations are on solid ground — in terms of science, the Constitution, and representing the views of their constituents. A recent Pew poll, for example, revealed that just 40 percent of Americans believe the increasingly discredited anthropogenic global-warming theory. That probably has something to do with the fact that virtually every falsifiable prediction by climate alarmists — both the cooling and warming varieties — has proven to be wildly inaccurate.
There has been no warming in two decades, sea-ice levels are at record highs, extreme weather has not increased, and if anything, experts say a natural period of prolonged cooling is more likely than warming. The notion of CO2 as “pollution” has also been widely ridiculed as absurd. Every human exhales CO2, plants need it to live, crops grow better with higher concentrations, and human emissions of the essential gas represent a mere fraction of one percent of all the “greenhouse gases” present naturally in the atmosphere. Experts say the Earth currently has far less than the optimal levels of CO2 anyway.
As their theory implodes on the world stage, warming theorists have become increasingly hysterical and unhinged, with more than a few calling for “deniers” to be re-educated, imprisoned, or even executed. Top climate experts, though, have also become more aggressive in standing up for science and evidence. Former NASA senior climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer, for example, citing the deadly effects of the policies they are promoting, lambasted vicious alarmists as “global warming Nazis.” Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, meanwhile, has been ridiculing alarmists for behaving like a “cult” as their theory falls apart. Ironically, disgraced UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change boss Rajendra Pachauri, who resigned last month amid a sexual abuse scandal, confirmed that his mission to purportedly save the Earth was actually his “religion” — something climate realists have been arguing for years and that puts U.S. taxpayer funding for the schemes in violation of the First Amendment.
The global movement to impose a devastating UN climate regime on humanity knows that Paris may be their last chance. What remains to be seen now, though, is whether Republican lawmakers are serious about reining in Obama’s lawless climate antics — or whether they are planning to surrender in yet another battle that they could easily win. For the sake of liberty, prosperity, science, the poor around the world, and the U.S. Constitution, Americans should work hard to ensure that Congress stands its ground. With Obama behaving more and more like his Third World counterparts around the world in the UN, it is more important than ever for the American people’s elected representatives to put their foot down and restore legitimate governance.
Photo of Sen. Mitch McConnell: AP Images
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected].
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