It would be hard to find an American who does not know that Arizona beat the Yankees in the World Series. It would be even harder to find an American who does know that the United Nations is pushing the Kyoto Protocol forward, despite President Bush’s withdrawal from the treaty.
Two-thousand delegates from 165 nations assembled in Marrakech, Morocco, on Oct. 29, for two weeks of intense negotiations to bring the “fatally flawed” treaty into force as international law.
The United States has more than 50 delegates participating in the meetings. They may be there to try to keep the treaty from becoming reality, but there is little evidence of this purpose. They may be there to provide justification for the administration to change its stripes in the future, claiming that the U.S. has been able to correct the flaws, and make the treaty acceptable.
While the outstanding issues cover a wide range of subjects which are extremely complex, there is one fundamental issue that makes the treaty unacceptable: compliance.
The U.S. has already ratified the Convention on Climate Change, which calls for “voluntary” reductions of greenhouse gasses. But since its very first meeting in 1995, the U.N. body charged with implementing the treaty has been working to make the treaty legally binding – enforced by the United Nations.
The Kyoto Protocol, adopted by the U.N., and signed by the United States in 1997, converts the voluntary treaty into the legally-binding international law the treaty’s proponents have lusted after since before the original treaty was drafted.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, Jessica Mathews reported that the original treaty was drafted “in the twinkling of a diplomat’s eye” by non-governmental organizations during a work-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It is no accident that those same NGOs are present in overwhelming numbers at each U.N. meeting to lobby the delegates to move their vision forward.
In Marrakech – as at virtually every other negotiating session – NGO representatives are everywhere. Of the 189 NGOs represented, only six can be identified as non-supporters of the Protocol. They are industry groups that are constant targets for ridicule by the other green extremist organizations. Green NGO extremists equal or outnumber the delegates, and their activity is as well organized and orchestrated as were their protests in Seattle and Genoa.
At the climate change meetings, the Climate Action Network, consisting of dozens of environmental organizations, schedule a variety of demonstrations, conduct one-on-one lobbying, and produce a daily newspaper for the delegates. These NGOs present themselves as representatives of civil society – the public. They proclaim that their views are the views of the world. They have enormous influence on the outcome of the negotiations.
They do not reflect the view of the world. It would be difficult to find one in 10,000 Americans who even know the meeting is taking place, or what the issues are.
These NGOs are present only because the U.N. wants them to be there, and because they are paid to be there. Opposing voices are stifled, if not by denying accreditation, by limiting access, and by the sheer expense of participating. It costs, on average, about $5,000 per person to attend these meetings. There are nearly 2,000 NGO representatives in Marrakech, registered to organizations such as Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
These are three of the same NGOs who benefited from the $808 million in grants from the U.N.’s Global Environment Facility reported in last week’s column.
The World Wildlife Fund is proudly listed as one of the sponsors of the daily newspaper produced for the delegates by the Climate Action Network.
These NGOs claim that the original treaty is a failure because it is voluntary, and insist that the Kyoto Protocol must be legally binding, have compliance penalties and be enforceable by the U.N.
This is precisely the provision that will give the U.N. authority to limit the emission of carbon dioxide in the United States. To limit the exhaust is a backdoor way of limiting input. It is similar to telling a homeowner that he may use as much water as he wishes, but may dispose of no more than five gallons a day through his sewer system.
The governing authority that controls what comes out of the end of the pipe, automatically controls what goes into the pipe.
The United Nations must never be allowed to control what goes into, or what comes out of the energy pipe that fuels our economy and enables our lifestyle.
Kyoto’s proponents are so eager to control the use of fossil fuel energy, that they ignore, or ridicule, the continually unfolding science that demonstrates that the climate change that we are able to observe is well within the range of normal variability.
The ferocious storms that have already hit the Northwest, and the thickening layers of ice in Antarctica, may be a reminder that Jimmy Carter’s new ice age may be closer than Al Gore’s global warming.
