American readers might dismiss the Lisbon Treaty as a minor European constitutional exercise, and debates over the make-up of the European Presidency and Commission as a provincial squabble over seating arrangements. They would be mistaken to do so: As we end what the European Council President Herman van Rompuy describes as "the first year of global governance," Lisbon illustrates the dangers posed by what could be an even greater international commitment to sovereignty pooling, the proposed Copenhagen Agreement.
The UN's Climate Change Conference began in Copenhagen this morning and will run until 18 December. It has been described as "the last chance to save the planet," while other activists claim it comes too late to prevent catastrophic environmental damage, but may play a part in limiting the disaster.
This morning we reported that over fifty newspapers carried the same editorial on their front pages, warning of the threat. The editorial, drafted by Britain's Guardian, will have reminded readers of the sort of "People of Earth, your attention please" announcements that alien invaders broadcast across hijacked television networks when they are about to destroy the planet.
Some aren't so sure. Guido Fawkes quotes writer Tariq Ali, who said "Copenhagen may be the last chance to get Communist ideals back onto the world stage."
Communist societies were not known for their environmentalism. Some of the most polluted places on the planet were in the Soviet bloc. So in what conceivable way could the Climate Change Conference be designed to promote Communist principles?
Christopher Monkcton has a few ideas on that issue. In a talk delivered to the Minnesota Free Market Institute in October, he argued that following the collapse of Communism, far-left activists infiltrated the environmental movement. Having pushed climate change to the top of the international priorities list, they are setting about building a consensus which will force western nations to transfer sovereignty and wealth to the developing world - weakening the rich world in the process. To ensure nations play by the rules, an international body would be created to enforce this transfer of sovereignty and wealth.
Once again, the United States plays the role of the villain. In the Cold War, the US stifled the natural instincts of workers to unite against the wicked capitalist classes and create an earthly paradise; now, in the Warming War, America stands opposed to a new consensus which represents earth's only hope of avoiding a fiery inferno.
Monkton points to an article in the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change's "Negotiating Text" as evidence of this New World Order. Here's the offending excerpt (Annex I, part 38):
The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three
basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization
of which will include the following:
(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on
adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds
and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will
operate as such, as appropriate.
(b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund
including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to
address loss and damage from climate change impacts, including insurance,
rehabilitation and compensatory components, (c) a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation
window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest
incentives relating to REDD actions.
(c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for
adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; (c) a short-term technology
action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on
adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting
and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and
verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of
technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The
secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for
information exchange.
Monkcton points to the repeated references to "government" in these passages as evidence that the US is to be incorporated under a greater law, in the same way Britain's law is subject to (and emanates from) the Lisbon Treaty. Interpretation depends on ones definition of government, which can mean the rulers, as well as the means by which a system is administered. Administration would be a less controversial choice of word, particularly given European Council President Herman van Rompuy's declaration last week that we have now entered a new age of global governance.
It is less easy to explain away the compensation and enforcement elements in the text, which refer to transfers of powers and money from rich to poor countries. A global government with fund-raising powers dedicated to the redistribution of wealth, enforced by a similarly international body.
Even less easy to explain what isn't in the text, but which is explicit from an examination of the make-up of the NGOs and pressure groups calling for more power at Copenhagen: Those green NGOs, which as Christopher Monkton says have moved on from saving the whale to excoriating western governments, business and consumers for their wasteful ways.
They are joined by famously left-leaning and even anti-American newspapers speaking with one Orwellian voice; the threat of apocalypse and chaos should their calls for revolutionary change be ignored.
No wonder alarm bells are ringing across America, and not only in the Appalachian lairs of anarcho-libertarian survivalists. Republican and centrist senators are wary of signing any deal that might consign large swathes of American industry to the dustbowl, particularly if competing manufacturers get away with less. In the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, few representatives are prepared to order the transfer yet more cash to the developing world. On a more rarified, constitutional level, Americans are directly opposed to subjecting their constitution to foreign laws: Post-constitutional Europeans would be hugely surprised by the number of US citizens who are well-versed in their constitutional rights and the limits on their executive office's power.
Tricky thing, sovereignty.
Should President Barack Obama agree to the terms of any agreement out of Copenhagen, and persuade the US Senate to approve its measures, Americans will find their world changing very quickly.
British voters have been taken aback by the speed with which Europe decided its first High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy and the President of the European Council after the Czech President signed the Lisbon Treaty. Plans for European policy in everything from sports to an EU-wide tax became active almost immediately the treaty came into force last week. Plans for an EU seat at the UN were announced. Britain quickly found itself on the receiving end of a hostile takeover of the City of London by French-backed European Commissioners, as well as being excluded from talks on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy thanks to Lisbon.
Why the haste? Advocates of integration spoke of the threat of European obsolescence in the face of Chinese and American domination. If we don't pool our sovereignty, it will soon be the G2. Never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, new economic regulation was drafted following the financial crisis: The City of London is already sounding its unease about powers hurried handed to Brussels, and as even more are demanded.
Expect similar haste in enacting any Copenhagen Agreement.
One could argue that all this would be fine if the threat were real and present. Except that it is becoming increasingly difficult to persuade people that climate change is a real threat and that human activity is a factor. Britons appear evenly split on whether climate change is man-made; Americans are even more sceptical. The leaking of the "Climategate" emails provoked even greater suspicion of the "official" version of climate science; the shameful attempts by some politicians and the media to shift the story from the content of the emails to the mysterious means by which they were acquired stirs yet more doubts. The EU Referendum Blog compared public interest in Climategate and the coverage it and other stories received in the mainstream press: The results are telling.
The public doubts the science. Few of us are climate experts, so we are expected to take the word of scientists on trust. They tell us the science is settled; their private conversations suggest it is anything but. There remain numerous plausible voices - call them courageous visionaries or maverick lunatics if you prefer - who continue to cast doubt on the settled science.
Every year or so, the media produces a new horror with which to scare us, be it Bird Flu, the Millennium Bug, Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease or the threat of a rerun of the Great Depression. The public could be forgiven for thinking that Climate Change is another case of Chicken Licken warning the sky is about to fall in.
The public doubts the motives. The people who stand to gain power through any such enterprise, though not all nostalgic for Communist ideals like Tariq Ali, do not inspire confidence. The spectre of global government and international taxes ushering in a new age of austerity for the west, all under the watchful eye of a media speaking with one voice, is chilling.
British experience of European Union membership demonstrates that international bodies have a corrosive effect on democracy and even the most ancient national institutions. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard today made a case that the Lisbon Treaty tramples on England's Magna Carta. (More on this tomorrow)
A single European market was desirable. But building a European single market did not require the creation of a powerful European Parliament, never mind a constitutional treaty, a European flag, anthems, foreign corps or military. We were not warned that national referenda would be over-ruled by Brussels. We signed up for the market, but got ever-closer-union.
Likewise, if elected governments consent that climate change must be fought, fighting climate change needs international agreement, not international government. Americans must be wary of what is smuggled in with any treaties they sign.
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