"We Can Do It"

[Calabrio]

We Can Do It
Ban Ki-moon
NY Times
published: October 25, 2009

Every day, the critical December summit in Copenhagen grows closer. All agree that climate change is an existential threat to humankind. Yet agreement on what to do still eludes us.

How can this be? The issues are complex, affecting everything from national economies to individual lifestyles. They involve political trade-offs and commitments of resources no leader can undertake lightly. We could see all that at recent climate negotiations in Bangkok. Where we needed progress, we saw gridlock.

Yet the elements of a deal are on the table. All we require to put them in place is political will. We need to step back from narrow national interest and engage in frank and constructive discussion in a spirit of global common cause.

In this, we can be optimistic. Meeting in London earlier this week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the leaders of 17 major economies (responsible for some 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions) that success in Copenhagen is within reach—if they themselves engage, and especially if they themselves go to Copenhagen to push an agenda for change.

U.S. leadership is crucial. That is why I am encouraged by the spirit of compromise shown in the bipartisan initiative announced last week by John Kerry and Lindsey Graham. Here was a pair of U.S. senators — one Republican, the other Democratic — coming together to bridge their parties’ differences to address climate change in a spirit of genuine give-and-take.

We cannot afford another period where the United States stands on the sidelines. An engaged United States can lead the world to seal a deal to combat climate change in Copenhagen. An indecisive or insufficiently engaged United States will cause unnecessary — and ultimately unaffordable — delay in concrete strategies and policies to beat this looming challenge.

Leaders across the globe are increasingly showing the engagement and leadership we need. Last month, President Barack Obama joined more than 100 others at a climate change summit at U.N. headquarters in New York — sending a clear message of solidarity and commitment. So did the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea, all of whom pledged to promote the development of clean energy technologies and ensure that Copenhagen is a success.

Japan’s prime minister promised a 25 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020, laying down a marker for other industrialized nations. The European Union, too, has pledged to make a 30 percent reduction as part of a global agreement. Norway has announced its readiness for a 40 percent cut in emissions. Brazil has unveiled plans to substantially cut emissions from deforestation. India and China are implanting programs to curb emissions as well.

Looking forward to Copenhagen, I have four benchmarks for success:

Every country must do its utmost to reduce emissions from all major sources, including from deforestation and emissions from shipping and aviation. Developed countries must strengthen their mid-term mitigation targets, which are currently nowhere close to the cuts that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says are needed. Developing countries must slow the rise in their emissions and accelerate green growth as part of their strategies to reduce poverty.

A successful deal must strengthen the world’s ability to cope with an already changing climate. In particular, it must provide comprehensive support to those who bear the heaviest climate impacts. Support for adaptation is not only an ethical imperative; it is a smart investment in a more stable, secure world.

A deal needs to be backed by money and the means to deliver it. Developing countries need funding and technology so they can move more quickly toward green growth. The solutions we discuss cannot be realized without substantial additional financing, including through carbon markets and private investment.

A deal must include an equitable global governance structure. All countries must have a voice in how resources are deployed and managed. That is how trust will be built.

Can we seal a comprehensive, equitable and ambitious deal in Copenhagen that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global temperature rise to a scientifically safe level? Can we catalyze clean energy growth? Can we help to protect the most vulnerable nations from the effects of climate change? Can we expect the United States to play a leading role?

The best answer to all these questions was given last week by Senators Kerry and Graham: “Yes, we can.”

Ban Ki-moon is secretary general of the United Nations.

 

[Calabrio]

YouTube - Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty?

 

[Calabrio]

Has Anyone Read the Copenhagen Agreement?
U.N. plans for a new 'government' are scary.
By JANET ALBRECHTSEN
Wall Street Journal

We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven't heard about it, that's because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media.

Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—a rough draft of what could be signed come December.

So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational "government" on a scale the world has never before seen.

The "scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention" that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a "government." The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

The reason for the power grab is clear enough: Clause after complicated clause of the draft treaty requires developed countries to pay an "adaptation debt" to developing countries to supposedly support climate change mitigation. Clause 33 on page 39 says that "by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be [at least $67 billion] or [in the range of $70 billion to $140 billion per year]."

And how will developed countries be slugged to provide for this financial flow to the developing world? The draft text sets out various alternatives, including option seven on page 135, which provides for "a [global] levy of 2 per cent on international financial market [monetary] transactions to Annex I Parties." Annex 1 countries are industrialized countries, which include among others the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.

To be sure, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a U.N. body responsible for implementing treaty obligations. But the difference is that this treaty appears to have been subject to unusual attempts to conceal its convoluted contents. And apart from the difficulty of trying to decipher the U.N. verbiage, there are plenty of draft clauses described as "alternatives" and "options" that should raise the ire of free and democratic countries concerned about preserving their sovereignty.

Lord Monckton himself only became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government when a friend found an obscure U.N. Web site and searched through several layers of hyperlinks before discovering a document that isn't even called the draft "treaty." Instead, it's labelled a "Note by the Secretariat."

Interviewed by broadcaster Alan Jones on Sydney radio Monday, Lord Monckton said "this is the first time I've ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a 'government.' But it's the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening." He added: "The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start—that's even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do."

Critics have admonished Lord Monckton for his colorful language. He has certainly been vigorous. In his exposé of the draft Copenhagen treaty in St. Paul, he warned Americans that "in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever." Yet his critics fail to deal with the substance of what he says.

Ask yourself this question: Given that our political leaders spend hundreds of hours talking about climate change and the need for a global consensus in Copenhagen, why have none of them talked openly about the details of this draft climate-change treaty? After all, the final treaty will bind signatories for years to come. What exactly are they hiding? Thanks to Lord Monckton we now know something of their plans.

Janos Pasztor, director of the Secretary-General's Climate Change Support Team, told reporters in New York Monday that with the U.S. Congress yet to pass a climate-change bill, a global climate-change treaty is now an unlikely outcome in Copenhagen. Let's hope he is right. And thank you, America.

Ms. Albrechtsen is a columnist for the Australian.

 

[Calabrio]

Op-Ed Contributors
Restore the Senate’s Treaty Power
By JOHN R. BOLTON and JOHN YOO
NY Times
Published: January 4, 2009

THE Constitution’s Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama’s administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.

Like past presidents, Mr. Obama will likely be tempted to avoid the requirement that treaties must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The usual methods around this constitutional constraint are executive agreements or a majority vote in the House and Senate to pass a treaty as a simple law (known as a Congressional-executive agreement).

Executive agreements have an acknowledged but limited place in our foreign affairs. Congressional-executive agreements are far more troubling. They have evoked scathing attacks by constitutional experts and have been strongly resisted in the Senate, at least so far.

The framers of the Constitution designed the treaty process with a bias against “entangling alliances,” as Thomas Jefferson described them in his first inaugural address. They designated the Senate as the body responsible to protect the interests of the states from being bargained away by the president in deals with foreign nations. The framers required a supermajority to ensure that treaties would reflect a broad consensus and careful, mature decision-making.

America needs to maintain its sovereignty and autonomy, not to subordinate its policies, foreign or domestic, to international control. On a broad variety of issues — many of which sound more like domestic rather than foreign policy — the re-emergence of the benignly labeled “global governance” movement is well under way in the Obama transition.

Candidate Obama promised to “re-engage” and “work constructively within” the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Will the new president pass a new Kyoto climate accord through Congress by sidestepping the constitutional requirement to persuade two-thirds of the Senate?

Draconian restrictions on energy use would follow. A majority of the Congress would be much easier for Mr. Obama to get than a supermajority of the Senate. A scholar at the Brookings Institution has already proposed that a new president overcome objections to this environmentalists’ holy grail by evading the Treaty Clause.

President George W. Bush resisted many efforts at global governance. But his administration still sometimes fell into the temptation to flout the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

In 2002, the administration considered submitting the Treaty of Moscow, a nuclear arms reduction agreement, for majority approval of Congress. Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who was then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, privately made clear that he would vigorously oppose such an attempt to evade the Senate’s constitutional prerogatives. The administration agreed to submit the agreement as a treaty, and the Moscow agreement cleared the Senate.

We hope the new vice president will not reverse his commitment to the Senate’s constitutional authority. But an administration determined to tie one hand behind America’s back might use Congressional-executive agreements to push the nation all too easily into quixotic and impractical global governance regimes.

President Bill Clinton signed Kyoto, but the Senate in effect rejected it. He also signed the Rome Treaty of 1998 that established an International Criminal Court, which would subject American soldiers and officials to unaccountable international prosecutors and judges for alleged war crimes (including, potentially, the undefined crime of “aggression”). Mr. Clinton did not even send this agreement to the Senate. Mr. Bush “unsigned” it. Mr. Obama might re-sign it and seek approval by only a majority of both houses of Congress.

Other international regimes might restrict America’s freedom of action to defend itself. In 1999, the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would have undermined America’s ability to verify the reliability and effectiveness of its nuclear deterrent. Mr. Obama has said he supports ratification. The historical precedents are that major arms control agreements must receive the approval of two-thirds of the Senate.

President Bush, like President Clinton, did not sign a global agreement that would ban antipersonnel land mines, on the grounds that they are a key component of the American defense of South Korea. But his administration has pressed for ratification of the treaty on the law of the sea, which would subject disputes over the free passage of American naval vessels to the jurisdiction of an international maritime court — which the Senate has so far refused to ratify.

If Mr. Obama were to submit either of these agreements for approval by a simple majority of the House and Senate, his actions would pose a serious challenge to American principles of law and democratic governance. Global governance schemes delegate power to independent international organizations to make and enforce laws that would apply domestically, by international bureaucrats who are unaccountable to Congress, the president, American public opinion or the democratic process.

It is true that some multinational economic agreements, like Bretton Woods, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the North American Free Trade Agreement, went into effect after approval by majorities of Congress rather than two-thirds of the Senate. But international agreements that go beyond the rules of international trade and finance — that involve significant national-security commitments, or that purport to delegate lawmaking and enforcement functions to international organizations, or that could fundamentally alter the American constitutional system of individual rights — should receive the intense scrutiny of the treaty process, regardless of their policy merits.

By insisting on the proper constitutional process for treaty-making, Republicans can join Mr. Obama in advancing a bipartisan foreign policy. They can also help strike the proper balance between the legislative and executive branches that so many have called for in recent years.

John R. Bolton, the ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option.” John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003, is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

 

[Calabrio]

Politifact has chimed in on this discussion.
For the record, Politifact is the project of the St. Petersburg Times newspaper. This is a distinctly left leaning organization. So despite the repeated claims that it's neutral and non-partisan, you need to read everything from that webpage with some skepticism- anything that requires their analysis. So draw your own conclusion.

British climate-change skeptic says Copenhagen treaty threatens "democracy," "freedom"
Pants on Fire!

Christopher Monckton — a British hereditary peer and high-profile skeptic of both global warming and international agreements — caused a stir on Oct. 14, 2009, with a forceful denunciation of the upcoming international talks on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark, scheduled for Dec. 7-18, 2009.

In a speech in St. Paul, Minn., Monckton called the pending agreement a "dreadful treaty" and said, among other things, that the parties "are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He's going to sign. He'll sign anything."

Monckton continued, "So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever — and neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect would have any power whatsoever to take it back again. That is how serious it is."

For this item, we'll put aside the debate on whether it is wise to institute policies, such as emissions cuts, to curb climate change — the "prosperity" portion of Monckton's comment. Instead, we'll stick to analyzing Monckton's claim that an agreement coming out of the Copenhagen talks would, one, sign away American sovereignty and, two, be irreversible.

Let's start with some background. The Copenhagen meeting, which President Barack Obama is expected to attend, is part of an ongoing process sponsored by a United Nations body called the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its goal is to secure international cooperation to curb the emission of gases that scientists blame for raising global temperatures, a development that could harm the environment.

The first — and crucially important — point to make is that there is no "treaty" yet. The most recent iteration is a 180-page document, posted publicly in September, called the "reordering and consolidation of text in the revised negotiating text." If you think that title sounds clunky, just check out the document itself: Rendered in impenetrable diplo-speak, the document offers an almost stream-of-consciousness array of alternate options, blanks to be filled in and bracketed phrases. Supporters and critics alike agree that the final text, if one emerges, will be radically shorter and clearer.

In other words, it's impossible to draw conclusions about what international leaders will be asked to sign based on the current draft.

A second point worth noting is that, due to wide differences of opinion among the 192 participating nations, the Copenhagen conference looks increasingly unlikely to produce anything ready to sign.

“There isn’t sufficient time to get the whole thing done,” Yvo De Boer, the Dutch diplomat who oversees the negotiations, said in mid October, according to the New York Times. “But I hope it will go well beyond simply a declaration of principles. The form I would like it to take is the groundwork for a ratifiable agreement next year.”

What we learn from these two points is that the substance of the agreement remains distinctly up in the air, and that Obama is unlikely to be asked to sign anything at the conference beyond a nonbinding statement of interim steps or a promise to meet again — if that.

Now we'll look at Monckton's argument that the Copenhagen talks could eventually produce something that eats away at American sovereignty.

Experts in international law acknowledge that, with the final draft unresolved, anything is possible. But they added that numerous safeguards would help prevent U.S. sovereignty from being yielded.

— Signing a treaty doesn't mean that its provisions become binding. Instead, it simply means that you intend to become a party to the treaty by seeking domestic approval, using whatever procedures are in effect in your country. In the United States, that means taking the treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent on ratification.

For instance, the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change — the predecessor to the agreement being negotiated in Copenhagen — but never ratified it due to opposition in the Senate. As a result, the United States was never subject to any of the protocol's rules.

— The Senate would have to approve any binding agreement with a 67-vote supermajority. This means that a treaty only becomes binding after a supermajority of democratically elected senators, plus the president, consent. So if the United States decides to give up some of its sovereignty in the matter of carbon emissions, it will only do so after a significant amount of political consent is given. As a practical matter, the high Senate threshold for ratifying a treaty, set by the Constitution, effectively requires broad support from lawmakers in both parties, something the Kyoto Protocol did not have. (Even after ratification, the treaty may not become binding until a certain number of nations have ratified it, depending how the treaty language is written; this could further delay or even derail the process.)

— The Obama administration has publicly pledged that it will not sign an agreement unacceptable to Congress. According to the New York Times, the chief American climate negotiator, Todd Stern, and his deputy, Jonathan Pershing, have both affirmed this position. “We are not going to be part of an agreement we cannot meet,” Pershing said at a recent negotiators’ meeting in Bangkok.

— The negotiators are aware of sovereignty concerns and are weighing options that would limit intrusiveness. Nigel Purvis, a former State Department negotiator under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said that the Copenhagen negotiations "are premised on the idea that each nation would create its own low- carbon economic growth strategy," adding that the degree of international enforcement is very much in play. Most experts, he said, "agree that punitive noncompliance measures are highly unlikely. Thus, the approach is really quite decentralized and respectful of national sovereignty — the opposite of being subject to a command-and-control U.N. agency."

— Even if the United States does eventually cede some sovereignty on climate change, "freedom" and "democracy" are not at stake. John H. Knox, a law professor at Wake Forest University, calls Monckton's notion "silly."

"Any treaty limits the freedom of the parties, of course, just as any contract limits the freedom of its parties," Knox said. "But none of the proposals on the table, and none that could conceivably be suggested, would deny the United States freedom to keep a democratic system of government, and no such agreement could imaginably be signed or ratified by the United States. And no treaty can override the provisions of the U.S. Constitution in any event."

Now, for Monckton's second claim, that "neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect would have any power whatsoever to take it back again."

Our experts say it's nonsense. Either a country can exit a treaty using a procedure described in the treaty itself — usually involving formal notice, a delay and the forefeit of rights to have a further say in implementing or shaping the treaty in question — or it can simply walk away. Doing either would likely entail consequences for the departing country, but they would most likely be "soft" penalties such as loss of international esteem.

"There's nothing in any of the documents for Copenhagen that talk about any greater penalties than those," said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

Of course, other countries could react to a withdrawal by pursuing bilateral or multilateral action, such as a trade embargo or a cutoff of diplomatic contacts. But they could take such actions today, even without a climate change agreement.

"Even if a new climate treaty were ratified and the United States thus became a party to it, the United States could later choose to withdraw from it," Knox said. "Withdrawing from a treaty is perfectly acceptable under international law unless the treaty itself precludes it. Even in that case, the United States could always choose not to comply with the treaty, just as a person can choose to violate a domestic law, with the important difference that the international community does not have a police force standing by to arrest wrongdoing nations. The United States would not suddenly lose its discretion to decide whether to comply with the treaty, in other words."

Steven Groves, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, acknowledges that Monckton's claims are "perhaps overstated a bit." But he argues that being vigilant on the sovereignty consequences of a Copenhagen agreement is still important.

Groves suggests that it's possible to devise an agreement that protects national sovereignty, perhaps by eliminating an international enforcement mechanism and relying instead on self-regulation by member countries. But doing so would mean instituting an agreement without much teeth, because it would require trusting countries with little transparency and a lot of self-interest to evade the rules. On the other hand, implementing a more forceful international oversight regime would likely run into more problems on the sovereignty front.

"For a treaty to be effective in ratcheting down emissions, you would need some sort of enforcement mechanism with real teeth, and that raises legitimate sovereignty concerns," said Ben Lieberman, another Heritage fellow.

Even so, we find Monckton's claims to not only be unsupported but preposterous. First, it's impossible to know what agreement will come out of Copenhagen, and when. Second, the U.S. procedure for ratifying treaties requires consent by a supermajority of the Senate — a steep hurdle. Third, it's hard to envision anything coming out of Copenhagen that would change the United States' bedrock principles of freedom and democracy. And fourth, contrary to what Monckton says, the United States can leave an international agreement. So while it pays to be vigilant about threats to U.S. sovereignty, this one is not the threat that Monckton's rhetoric suggests. So Lord Monckton earns a special ruling — Britches on Fire!

 

[foxpaws]

How about crediting source?

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

More unfounded right-wing whacky paranoia about Obama. :sleep:

Britches on Fire!

:bowrofl:

 

[Calabrio]

How about crediting source?

How about contributing something? The NEA thread is still waiting? And the one where you were asked if you'd oppose any legislation or mandate that was designed to limit specific voices and political opinions from the media never was answered either.... But you did have time to post in this thread. I'll go bump the NEA thread again for you......

But, your comment was correct. The links have rightly been added.

More unfounded right-wing whacky paranoia about Obama.

Specifically what?
Which part was paranoia?

 

[fossten]

How about contributing something?

Yes, fox, now that Cal has contributed source, do you have a comment? Or are you just the self appointed Link Czar?

 

[hrmwrm]

Yes, fox, now that Cal has contributed source, do you have a comment? Or are you just the self appointed Link Czar?

do you have a comment? or are you just going to keep trolling with comments against fox?