Forget the dire economic consequences of a Copenhagen climate change treaty for a second and think about the fraud involved.
Carbon Trading Fraud
Take the European Union, for instance, which implemented a carbon trading scheme analogous to a cap and trade system. And it has been fraught with fraud. French officials are investigating a $230 million carbon trading fraud scheme and this is only the tip of the iceberg in what is a startling revelation and huge blow to the climate talks in Copenhagen:
Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement arm against organized crime, announced on Wednesday that carbon-trading fraud has cost the bloc’s governments $7.4 billion in lost tax revenue over the last 18 months.
“We have an ongoing investigation,’’ said Soren Pedersen, Europol’s chief spokesman, in a telephone interview on Thursday from The Hague. “We’re afraid the fraud is not completely finished yet, unfortunately. But it’s positive to see that actions are being taken and we hope soon it will disappear.”
These Enronesque situations will inevitably occur in the United States, guaranteeing that emissions will not be reduced, but what it will do is invite more burdensome regulations that thwart economic activity, adding on to the economic pain of higher energy prices as a result of carbon caps. It allows for corporations to manipulate a system at the expense of the consumer and the taxpayer while giving the market economy a bad name. This is not a market economy; it’s fraud and deceit that results from politicians trying to create their own desirable system.
Moreover, since the United States is largely blamed for “causing the climate catastrophe”, other countries will be monitoring the U.S. while they fall short of their own emissions targets and other treaty requirements.
Global Warming’s Robin Hood
Sadly, that’s not the only scandal at Copenhagen. The way things are going between developed nations and developing nations at Copenhagen, one would think that Robin Hood was the secretary-general of the United Nations, not Ban Ki Moon. One of the underlying themes has been to take from the rich and give to the poor…to fight climate change, of course. George Soros said $100 billion in funds from developed countries to developing ones “could just turn this conference from failure to success.”
Or it could add to the fraud of the climate change debate. Why wouldn’t leaders of developing countries play the global warming blame game if they can secure billions of dollars?
Scandalous Science
Then there’s the scandal behind the whole reason for cap and trade and climate treaties: the scientific consensus. Climategate revealed conspiracy, exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction and manipulation of data, and attempts to freeze out dissenting scientists from publishing their work in reputable journals.
Although proponents of cap and trade, Environmental Protection Agency regulations and/or climate treaties argue that now is the time for urgency, the reality is just the opposite is true. Now, more than ever, is the time to pull back the reigns on expensive global warming regulations.
President Obama headed overseas to collect his Nobel Peace Prize and make his pitch for collective action on climate change. Of course, if our president commits us to any binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, our jobs will be heading overseas too.
The Senate’s 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution warned not to enter into any global warming treaty, at the time the Kyoto Protocol, which leaves out developing nations or hurts the American economy. Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO) is taking Byrd-Hagel one step further by introducing House Resolution 945, which says the U.S. should not be a part of any treaty that would infringe upon our national sovereignty and hurt our economy. Specifically, the resolution says:
(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol or other agreement regarding the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009 or thereafter, which would–
(A) result in significant harm to the economy of the United States; or
(B) compromise American sovereignty by requiring the United States to submit to decisions of international inspection, compliance, and enforcement mechanisms; and
(2) the United States should demand in any such discussions or negotiations that any protocol or agreement must not mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the United States and other Annex I Developed Country Parties without binding, verifiable, and enforceable commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period.
When President Obama returns from Copenhagen, let’s hope he brings American sovereignty with him. For more on the economic consequences of a climate treaty, read Ben Lieberman’s “What Americans Need to Know” and for more on the threat a climate change treaty poses on our nation’s sovereignty, read Steve Groves’ paper, “The Kyoto II Climate Change Treaty.”