Reports from Bonn's Kyoto Negotiations

from Cathie Adams
President, Texas Eagle Forum

Is the World Ready for the Earth Charter?

July 26, 2001

The UN utilized the unrepresentative "consensus" process to build upon class warfare that they created by convincing "rich" and "poor" nations that "global warming" is fact rather than theory, in order to produce the rules for their wealth redistribution scheme during the meeting in Bonn. The UN is now focused on setting penalties for noncompliance and on international environmental governance embodied in the imminent Earth Charter (www.earthcharter.org).

Maurice Strong is the moving force behind the plan, and is paid $1 per year to reform the UN around the environmental issue. Strong wanted nations to ratify the Earth Charter at the meeting he headed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, but reluctantly said that they were not "ready for it" then. He now believes that nations will be "ready" for the Earth Charter in 2002. Strong has robust support for the design from Klaus Topfer, Executive Director of the UN Environment Program, who recently "cited a need to better define the dimensions of international environmental governance."

Valli Moosa, South Africa's environment and tourism minister, is planning next year's meeting in Johannesburg entitled the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which he says will be an opportunity to "significantly strengthen" the mechanisms of international environmental governance.

Strong, Topfer and Moosa, as well as, conference President Pronk and Executive Secretary Cutajar of The Hague and Bonn meetings have unremittingly worked through the UN to create the rules for the wealth transfer scheme in the Kyoto Protocol. After penalties for noncompliance are added to the treaty at a UN meeting in Marrakech, Morocco this October, the UN plans to consolidate the wealth transfer scheme in Johannesburg next year into what Strong calls, "a people's Earth Charter."

Strong says the people's Earth Charter "will be presented as a statement of basic moral and ethical principles to guide the behavior of people and nations toward one another and the Earth." In the Earth Charter's Principles, Sec. III, 10 a., it promotes "the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations" that Strong says will address motivation by reviewing "the systems of taxes, incentives, penalties, subsidies, etc. through which governments motivate the behavior of individuals and corporations, and to review those, and to revamp them, to provide positive incentives for sustainable behavior" adding that these are "our deepest moral, spiritual and ethical beliefs." (www.confnews.com)

President Bush did the right thing by calling the Kyoto Protocol "fatally flawed," but conference President Pronk continues to try to lure the U.S. claiming that the Bonn agreement will make it easier for them to ratify the protocol at some time in the future. "We are creating here a legal fact, a political fact, and an economic fact," he said, adding that the U.S. cannot ignore such facts.

On the battlefront in Bonn, the American delegation head Paula Dobriansky seemed to reach out to the UN saying that while America "shares a commitment to addressing climate change, it has not yet crafted a new multilateral approach all countries can support." She added, "Make no mistake-an approach that does not accommodate every nation's efforts to pursue sustainable development cannot endureā?¦our objective is to ensure that our new approach provides a long-term solution that is environmentally effective, economically sustainable and fair."

Dobriansky's call for a "new multilateral approachā?¦to pursue sustainable development" describes the UN's 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. If America is to keep any vestige of what our Founding Fathers gave us, a sovereign constitutional republic, then she must clearly oppose not only the Kyoto Protocol in Morocco in October, but also the Earth Charter that is international environmental governance at the UN meeting in South Africa.

America furthermore cannot depend on her allies; they did not stand with her in Bonn, and there is no reason to expect them to at future UN meetings either. The fact that the U.S. pays nearly a quarter of the entire UN budget has not bought any friends at the UN. When the penalties for noncompliance are in place for the newly created wealth transfer scheme within the Kyoto treaty, it remains to be seen whether the U.S. will be able to buy and sell in this new global marketplace as a non-partner. Make no mistake--America's very existence as a sovereign nation could be determined by whether she is forced into the UN's scheme for international environmental governance under the Earth Charter.

*This is the final part of a three-part conclusion on the UN meeting held in Bonn, Germany, 16-27 July 2001.


Global Watermelon Patch

July 25, 2001

The U.S. delegation is attending the UN meeting in Bonn, Germany even though they continue to oppose the Kyoto Protocol that deals with the "global warming" theory. The U.S. position, however, had little impact on the 37 other developed nations that agreed to the new rules during this week's talks.

Conference President Pronk and Executive Secretary Cutajar diligently pursued "consensus." They trolled like master fishermen until both "rich" and "poor" nations took the dangled bait. The "bait" for the 150 "poor" nations is that there is a "global warming" crisis, and that it is caused by the 38 "rich" nations when their industries burn fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases. The UN has convinced them that the "rich" are causing "climate changes" making the "poor" nations even poorer. The UN remedy is to transfer money and technologies from "rich" to "poor" nations.

The "bait" for the "rich" nations is a commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions according to UN rules. In Morocco this October, the UN plans to pursue penalties for noncompliance of the Kyoto treaty.

In order to spear the "rich" nations, the UN created a bureaucracy called the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was to prove the "global warming" theory as fact. Funded by the World Bank, they worked closely with the well-funded radical environmental groups to play a statistical shell game that is not scientifically valid. (UN Report Blasted by One of Its Own Authors, by Paul Georgia, pgeorgia@cei.org)

In a pincer action, the IPCC worked at the top while the radical environmentalist Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund worked through "civil society." The NGOs blackmailed industries (Global Greens by James Sheehan, www.cei.org) and influenced education bureaucracies to deceptively persuade children with scary scenarios. With the media as a willing accomplice, many have been convinced that burning fossil fuels is causing the globe to warm.

The ruse has worked well. Executive Secretary Cutajar told Bonn reporters that this conference is not only about the protocol, but also about providing help for the developing countries that are not bound by the protocol's emission rules. After "consensus" was reached, Canada pledged $30 million a year, the European Union pledged $410 million a year and Japan committed billions to a Global Environment Facility that will be redistributed to "poor" nations so that they can deal with "global warming."

This redistribution of wealth is a (red) communist tenet wrapped in a green package; some call it the watermelon effect. While the world believes that communism died when the Berlin wall fell, its adherents have simply moved to the environmental realm. Its warriors do not brandish traditional weapons, and battlefronts are not even outdoors; instead, slippery-tongued bureaucrats meet in carpeted meeting halls in order to lure nations to surrender their national sovereignties under the guise of protecting the environment that affects everyone, everywhere and always. The war's objective is to reshape the world for international environmental governance.

The man who started it all, Maurice Strong, told reporters in Bonn that he is worried "about global warming," but the question remains whether he will be allowed to create acid indigestion for the rest of the world. Strong was the acting head of the UN's first foray into the climate change issue in 1972 and again in 1992 which led to the meeting in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 when the "global warming" treaty. In charge of "reforming" the UN, today Strong is in the eye of the "global warming" storm developing international environmental governance.

*Tomorrow we will discuss who, when and where UN member nations will be asked to sign onto Maurice Strong's Earth Charter that would create international environmental governance.


"Consensus" on a Predetermined Outcome

July 24, 2001

Jan Pronk was president of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Conference of the Parties Six (UNFCCC, COP-6) meeting in The Hague last November, but when he failed to reach "consensus," he could not wait until the regularly scheduled meeting in Marrakech, Morocco this October. Hence he arranged a special meeting in Bonn, Germany in order to reach "consensus" among the 178 participating nations.

"Consensus" means that a majority does not oppose a predetermined outcome; it is really not an agreement about anything. At this UN meeting in Bonn, Pronk is again the "consensus" builder or "facilitator." During the "consensus" process, no nation brings its own agenda to the table; they instead try to fend off the most offensive components of "consensus" documents affecting their citizens and economies.

Even though President Bush declared last March that the "global warming" treaty, a.k.a. the Kyoto Protocol , "fatally flawed," he sent a delegation to the meeting in Bonn in order to protect American citizens and interests.

Our non-participation in the negotiations, however, does not deal a fatal blow to the UN's multifaceted and multilateral agenda. The root of the UN's multilateral agenda exposes our flawed human nature. If, for example, you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it. And when people are given the opportunity to increase their personal wealth at someone else's expense, they will do so.

Since 1992, the UN has been exploiting these human flaws using the unrepresentative "consensus" process and applying it to the environmental issue in order to build a multilateral economic infrastructure for the purpose of transferring wealth from "rich" nations to "poor" ones. In Bonn, "facilitator" Pronk forced exhausted delegates to work throughout two grueling days and nights in order to agree to his preset compromises that were mostly holdovers from former President Clinton's appointees in The Hague. The European Union fought the compromises in The Hague, but gave in to them in Bonn, which resulted in jubilation throughout the crammed plenary hall on Monday.

The American delegation did not join in the instantaneous jubilee when "consensus" was reached among the high-ranking delegates, but respectfully looked on as other nations gave three standing ovations to Pronk and Michael Zammit Cutajar, Executive Secretary of the Climate Change Convention Secretariat. There are plenty of reasons for their euphoria beside the fact that they were promised a respite from the punishing "consensus" exercise.

*Tomorrow we will discuss reasons for the euphoria when "consensus" was reached.


The Perfect Storm, Part II

July 20, 2001

When college students from the left and right met in Bonn, Germany this week to debate climate change and "global warming," it was like watching a sequel to the movie called The Perfect Storm.

The extremist environmental group Greenpeace brought 25 students to Bonn to plead with the members of the United Nations to move ahead without the U.S. in developing a carbon trading system, because they believe passionately that the globe is warming and that burning fossil fuels is the cause. Many of the same students were in The Hague last November where they learned that their rowdiness on American campuses would not be tolerated at UN meetings. And they learned that while their demands for "renewable" energies at their universities were appeased, they needed different tactics if they wanted to influence national leaders from 188 nations. That is why they challenged students on the other side of the "global warming" issue, Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), to a debate. The 25 CFACT students paid their own expenses to learn the science of the "global warming" theory. They had two incentives for coming to Bonn. They wanted to support President Bush's position on the Kyoto "global warming" treaty and they wanted to learn what their teachers had neglected to teach them. Since they knew that they had to learn how to reasonably present the other side, the debate with Greenpeace gave them an opportunity to practice what they had just learned.

Greenpeace in a press advisory entitled, "American Student Representatives Challenge Bush's Crusaders to Debate," exposed the political and partisanship tenor of their side. Their opening statement claimed that polls show that citizens of the world want action now and that ministers need to commit themselves to ratify the protocol now. After expressing their "feelings" about climate change, the Greenpeace students called President Bush's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol a "moral failure" alleging that its implementation would have no negative impact on America's economy. As for the science of "global warming," a Harvard environmental student refuted scientific data stating, "Science is not a certain business," clearly drawing the line between the two sides. Robert Watson, head of the World Bank's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who is most responsible for sounding the alarm about "global warming" at the UN, looked on approvingly.

Taught by Dr. Fred Singer, a climate scientist and outspoken opponent of the "global warming" theory being taught as fact, the CFACT students focused on the scientific and economic facts. The students warned that even if the Kyoto Protocol were implemented, it would have almost no effect on climate change even though it would devastate the American economy. They cited the sun as the main weather factor, a scientific position presented in a new book, Klima Facten written by Ulrich Berner and published in March 2001 by a German federal institution. The author has been highly criticized by German politicians because he wants to de-politicize science, an affront to politicians who want to use "global warming" for globalization and are willing to hold science hostage. The students also questioned the wisdom of yielding individual and national sovereignty to the UN when the earth's temperatures taken from two satellites measuring 60,000 times a day for the past 30 years show no "global warming" except a slight temporary increase during El Nino.

The debate did not change students' minds, but it did cause at least one Greenpeace student to start "thinking" rather than "feeling" about "global warming." The student approached me after the debate to tell me that she was an American patriot even though she believed in "global warming." She said she did not identify with the Greenpeace chant: "Ho, ho, hey, hey, down with the USA," but defended it regardless claiming that they meant it only toward the U.S. position on the Kyoto Protocol. America will one day win this debate if "thinking" overcomes "feeling" about "global warming."


Soaring Eagles Meet "Chicken Little" in Bonn, Germany

July 17, 2001

BONN GERMANY - Eagle Forum Collegian leader Kristina Twitty works every day with college students from across America, but this is the first time she has traveled to a United Nations conference with 35 students. Along with Eagles Elizabeth Price and Adam Batman, Kristina is a strategic leader helping students learn to intellectually respond to the "global warming" indoctrination in which the "theory" is presented as "fact." "Global warming" is the key to the Kyoto Protocol (treaty) being discussed at this conference.

Assigned to red, white and blue teams, the student working trip began in Washington, D.C. with two intensive days of learning climate change science. Scientists in London, England and Brussels, Belgium also briefed them before they arrived in Bonn.

The students came to show enthusiastic support for President Bush's position on the "global warming" theory; and when they return home, they want to help other Americans sort out fact and theory in hopes of halting the indoctrination on school campuses. Let me tell you some of their stories.

Texas A&M students Jack Long and Tyler Dunman said they were taught about "global warming" in Texas public schools as well as by a geology professor at Texas A&M. While common sense told them that their teachers were presenting scientific theory as scientific fact, it was not until this trip that they learned how to effectively respond. Before this time, they did what they had to do to pass their classes: regurgitate theory as fact. But when they saw President Bush ridiculed for stating that the Kyoto Protocol was fatally flawed, they decided to take action by paying their own travel expenses to Germany.

They said they learned that in order to meet the commitment made by the Clinton/Gore administration in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, which is to reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions by 7% below 1990 levels by 2010, it would require that the U.S. cut oil consumption twice the amount of the oil shortage of the 1970s. Put another way, it would require that America cut its entire transportation or industrial sector, an obvious attempt to tie the U.S. economy down on the tracks of an oncoming train.

University of Minnesota student Tyler Richter's calculus curriculum was rife with environmental extremism stating that, "It's no accident that America's black and Latino communities are surrounded by toxic waste sites." He was taught that global recycling meant that Starbuck's paper coffee cup insulators were not environmentally friendly, and his freshman English composition class required that he consider the theme of environmental English.

University of Florida student Reagan Daniel said her school requires an environmental colloquium coarse aimed at involving all students in ecological literacy and "global warming." She added that a goal of the university is to integrate environmental colloquium into all courses.

Dave Kralik and David Robinson chimed in about the indoctrination on their respective campuses adding that most students are unquestioningly accepting the theory as fact. It seems that "global warming" enthusiasts are willing to use any means to scare people into believing that they must drastically scale back their standard of living. And you probably thought that Chicken Little's mantra that "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" was only a children's story. On school campuses and at the UN however, it is fact.


United Nations Flexes Its Tentacles

July 16, 2001

BONN GERMANY - The weather was supposed to be sunny when I arrived in Bonn, Germany for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Sixth Conference of the Parties, Part II, but instead it was raining. Forecasts for the next day called for rain, but it was dry. It seems that the UN's premise that "science" can accurately predict the weather and control climate change is completely false. If indeed the UN claims such "science" exists, then in keeping with the UN's Kyoto Protocol, member nations should make the UN pay citizens of the world for wrong weather forecasts.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol being discussed in Bonn is built upon this false premise that the weather is predictable and the climate can be changed. The treaty places blame on the United States and 37 other developed nations for causing climate change and demands that we pay Third World nations for damages.

The truth is that the weather is unpredictable and man cannot control the climate. The UN points to greenhouse gases as causing climate change, but the same gases have been elevated by multiples during the earth's history and no one was to blame. Why then is the UN making such a claim and setting up a treaty that would force "rich" nations to pay "poor" nations? I believe the answer is that "global warming" is a hoax being used to get UN tentacles deeper into every American's wallet.

The UN created the "global warming" mantra in the 1990s when scientists just a few years earlier were convinced that the earth was cooling and that there was no stopping it. I have observed the UN development of the Kyoto Protocol that has surely transformed climate change science into political science having nothing to do with the weather or the climate, but everything to do with redistributing American money around the globe.

In 1997, I watched 40,000 politicians and their bureaucratic appointees in Kyoto, Japan discuss the changing weather and create a treaty that was to deal with "global warming." America's point of view was stated in a U.S. Senate resolution unanimously passed before the Kyoto process began. The Senate said it would not ratify any treaty that would negatively impact America's economy or would exempt some nations. Nonetheless, then Vice President Al Gore flew to Kyoto to direct the American negotiators to "be flexible" which meant to tell the world that the U.S. would commit to the UN to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mostly carbon dioxide, 97% of which is water vapor) by 7% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. In violation of the Senate resolution, 150 UN member nations were exempted and its implementation would devastate America's economy. Even so, scientists report that the Kyoto treaty's impact on the climate would be negligible.

In 1998, the UN's "global warming" mantra continued in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The thrust of that two-week conference was to teach the Third World how the Kyoto Protocol could benefit them at the expense of the Americans. While I have seen communist dictator Fidel Castro repeatedly treated as a hero at UN meetings, it was scary to witness the anti-American sentiment fomented by the UN, regardless the fact that we pay nearly a quarter of its bloated budget. American taxpayers are breathing life into the UN that embraces the communist ideology of wealth redistribution.

The 1999 mega summit in Bonn, Germany proposed the infrastructure for a "climate stock exchange." I saw Third World politicians, now totally convinced that the U.S. owed them, become excited at the thought of using the bogus "global warming crisis" to rob every American. They were convinced that their nations were poor because the "rich" nations had stolen their wealth, and that this treaty would cure their poverty. The industrialized nations would be forced to either "buy" the right to produce energy from the "poor" nations or to "pay" for energy producing infrastructure within the "poor" nations. It would naturally entice industries from the 38 "rich" nations to move to the "poor" nations exempted from the Kyoto treaty's oppressive energy restrictions.

As Americans waited for the 2000 presidential election results, the UN met in The Hague, Netherlands to develop the economic equalization structure for the Kyoto Protocol. The Clinton appointees could not reach accord with the globocrats because it would certainly doom America's economy. They desperately tried to create a greenhouse gas trading system that would take into account the oxygen producing forests and agricultural riches that America enjoys, but the European Union nixed the offer. That is why the UN has called this special "Part II" meeting in Bonn.

Failure to reach consensus by the Clinton appointees in The Hague was handwriting on the wall to the new President Bush. When he spoke frankly about the unworkable treaty, he shook the hope of ill-gotten gain clung to by the "global warming" enthusiasts. The media has portrayed his remarks as anti-environmental even though this treaty has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with the economies of the world. The fact that America's air and water are cleaner than in most other parts of the world is routinely disregarded.

The "poor" nations met over the weekend before the opening plenary because they are not about to give up their "global warming" scheme without a fight, which is probably why UN security is tighter than it was during the 1999 conference in Bonn. As the UN sets out to salvage this illegitimate scheme, the global octopus is certain to have as many ideas as it has tentacles. I'll be watching, and plan to let you know what I learn during the next two weeks.

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