A Global Tax? UN Debates Requiring Members to Report ‘GHG’ Emissions

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Cathie Adams, Texas Eagle Forum President

Cathie Adams, Texas Eagle Forum President

Such data is a pre­lude to imple­ment­ing a mas­sive redis­tri­b­u­tion of glob­al wealth.

Will the Unit­ed Nations wield its unproven claim that green­house gas emis­sions cause cli­mate change to require each of its 193 mem­ber nations to mea­sure and report GHG emis­sions — a pre­req­ui­site for a glob­al car­bon tax?

Does it real­ly mat­ter whether next year’s meet­ing in Paris pro­duces a treaty, or a “soft law” doc­u­ment, or both?

Todd Stern, head of the Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tion at the UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change meet­ing in Lima, Peru, said the U.S. is “per­fect­ly hap­py to have an assess­ment process.” He said this would pro­duce “clear and under­stand­able” Intend­ed Nation­al­ly Deter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (IND­Cs) “so that every­body knows what oth­ers are doing.”

Stern added that all Amer­i­can actions are to “trans­form our econ­o­my.”

Mea­sur­ing and report­ing GHG emis­sions would indeed trans­form our econ­o­my by pro­vid­ing the UN with the cri­te­ria need­ed to cre­ate a car­bon tax­ing scheme. They intend to use this to amass tril­lions of dol­lars to redis­trib­ute around the globe. After all, a car­bon tax was a rec­om­men­da­tion to UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki-moon from the High-Lev­el Advi­so­ry Group on Cli­mate Change Financ­ing.

The UN wants a car­bon tax to imple­ment sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, which is envi­ron­men­tal, social, and eco­nom­ic equi­ty, or “jus­tice.” Social jus­tice, climate/environmental jus­tice, and eco­nom­ic jus­tice are allur­ing terms that promise absolute equi­ty to the masses.

Polit­i­cal­ly speak­ing, this is Marx­ist. And it would kill the geese that lay gold­en eggs, decon­struct­ing nation­al economies by phas­ing out the use of all fos­sil fuels by 2050 at the lat­est — a pro­vi­sion cur­rent­ly in the Lima draft.

The UN’s non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions refuse to acknowl­edge that the Earth has not warmed since 1998 as they relent­less­ly rab­ble-rouse for glob­al gov­er­nance. The NGOs expect the IND­Cs to do more than mit­i­gate GHG emis­sions — they are call­ing for “ade­quate and fair con­tri­bu­tions with a sci­ence-based equi­ty review.”

The key word is “equi­ty”: they com­plain that nations have only giv­en about $10 bil­lion to the Green Cli­mate Fund estab­lished by the UNFCCC in 2009 to redis­trib­ute $100 bil­lion annu­al­ly by 2020 from rich to poor nations. This is sup­posed to increase to $500 bil­lion annu­al­ly by 2050.

The NGOs also refuse to acknowl­edge that ener­gy sources like wind and solar are whol­ly inad­e­quate replace­ments for fos­sil fuels that cre­ate abun­dant, clean ener­gy so that all peo­ple can attain a healthy stan­dard of living.

Amer­i­cans start­ed down this road in 1992 at the Earth Sum­mit in Rio de Janeiro. Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush signed both the “soft law” doc­u­ment called Agen­da 21 and the UNFCCC treaty that was rat­i­fied by the Sen­ate the same year.

It may be deja vu in Paris if the UN pro­duces not only a new treaty, but also a “soft law” doc­u­ment. The dan­ger of “soft law” doc­u­ments is that they do not require con­gres­sion­al approval. Agen­da 21 was imple­ment­ed by Clinton’s 1993 exec­u­tive order that cre­at­ed the “President’s Coun­cil on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment”; today it con­tin­ues to wreak hav­oc on com­mu­ni­ties across America.

Stern explained: “Some agree­ments do and some agree­ments don’t [require con­gres­sion­al approval]. … So it’s going to depend entire­ly on how this agree­ment is writ­ten, how it is framed, what is or isn’t legal­ly bind­ing and so on. … We don’t know yet.”

As the UNFCCC con­cludes its work in Lima on Decem­ber 12, we will learn whether the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion com­mits to mea­sur­ing and report­ing GHG emis­sions, the nec­es­sary mea­sure­ments to cre­ate a car­bon-tax­ing scheme. At next year’s meet­ing in Paris, we will learn whether the UNFCCC will pro­duce either a treaty or a “soft law” doc­u­ment, or both, and we will under­stand the immea­sur­able impact of both on our liberties.
Cathie Adams is the Pres­i­dent of Texas Eagle Forum, and for­mer Chair­man of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas.