Final Report from the Buenos Aires Meeting

By Cathie Adams
December 17, 2004

The U.S. and Australia, "should not be allowed to dominate any discussions about 'what comes next [a global trading regime for greenhouse gases].' Until they take serious steps, they should instead be treated as outsiders to the multi-lateral process–isolated…." That gauntlet was placed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a radical green United Nations (U.N.) non-governmental organization (NGO), in a position paper before the UNFCCC-COP 10 (U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change-Conference of the Parties #10) meeting began in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on December 6.

The U.N. meeting has concluded and the WWF did not succeed in isolating the U.S. delegation; instead, the U.S. retained its full right to negotiate as members of the UNFCCC, even though it is not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, the global warming treaty. Throughout the conference, the U.S. delegation was undeterred from their mission, which was to hold firm to President Bush's resolve that the treaty is a political agreement rather than a treaty based on sound science.

The hostile rhetoric toward industrialized nations, particularly toward Americans, is common at every U.N. meeting I have attended since 1995 and particularly since the creation of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. That treaty claims to save the earth from catastrophic weather changes, but in reality is a scheme to redistribute wealth from 30 industrialized countries to more than 150 developing countries.

The U.S. has done nothing to deserve the rhetoric. It is a result of the U.N.'s scheme to convince developing nations that the American standard of living, which is largely dependent upon burning fossil fuels, will cause climactic changes that will tremendously harm their social and economic well being. In other words, the U.N. is using the treaty to incite Marxist class warfare.

Concerning actions prescribed within the Kyoto Protocol, Americans are investing more resources in the development of energy efficient technologies than the rest of the world combined, and we are mitigating greenhouse gases that MAY cause global warming by 18% by 2012–all without harming our economy.

Paula Dobriansky, head of the American delegation in Buenos Aires, did not return the unrelenting negative salvos. Instead, she called for "prosperity for all" and laid out a number of U.S. foreign policies that make it clear that the U.S. is already doing much of what the U.N. claims only the Kyoto Protocol can do.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, already has programs in over 50 countries, including Mexico and Canada. In addition, U.S. Aid for International Development (USAID) is already helping nations that suffer natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. Nonetheless, U.N. bureaucrats want American taxpayers to dole out more dollars for a new Adaptation Fund to target the same needs. The difference between the two funds is that USAID is owned and controlled by the U.S., while the Adaptation Fund would be owned and controlled by the U.N..

It is one thing to suffer at the hands of U.N. apparatchiks, but it is treasonous for members of the U.S. Congress to side with the radical elements within the U.N. system. Following the "oil-for-food" debacle in Iraq, every American, and certainly members of the U.S. Congress, should be convinced that Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the U.N. are irreversibly corrupt. Yet liberal Democrat Congressmen Henry Waxman, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Jesse Jackson, Jr., former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and twenty-one others signed a letter addressed to President Bush calling for binding emissions limits and immediate mandatory reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, which are emitted when fossil fuels are burned.

Ohio Congressman Kucinich was in Buenos Aires to represent their extremist views. During a press conference, he said that in the "interconnected and interdependent" world, the U.S. has a responsibility to lead the way for the "global village." Claiming that the "U.S. has lost its way in some matters," he warned that, "This issue will challenge the legitimacy of the nation state." When asked whether he was concerned that U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) might negatively impact U.S. trade if indeed the WTO becomes the arbiter of the Kyoto Protocol, he responded that he lobbied the WTO in Seattle to do just that. Regretfully, Kucinich seems to have no understanding of the U.S. Constitution or concern for national sovereignty.

On hand to support American views and thinking were Republican Senators Larry Craig and Craig Thomas, and Congressman Joe Barton. In a press statement, Texas Congressman Barton said that, "We must not sacrifice individual liberty and economic opportunity through failed command and control policies imposed by the convention [UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol]." Congressman Barton is correct, but $7 billion a year from U.S. taxpayers to the U.N. legitimizes and advances its radical global warming agenda, which is to establish "global governance" to redistribute wealth around the globe.

The U.N.'s push for global government is spelled out in publications at every U.N. meeting. According to Miguel Grinberg in El Diario, the Buenos Aires convention's main newspaper, "Humankind is between the 'apocalypse and recreation' and the key to the future of human civilization on Earth is the need to turn the United Nations into a forum for invention and cooperative development." And if U.N. member states do not go peaceably into the global government morass, the NGOs will expand their crusade against the industrialized world to the courts.

There are now ten climate change lawsuits around the world filed in seven countries. One case against the U.S. EPA aims to force regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The NGOs are elated by the "increasing range of legal theories" that have been used by 14 U.S. states, five U.S. cities, American Samoa and 29 NGOs because they claim that "legal relevance of climate change has now been accepted by U.S. and Australian judges where decisions leading to more coal mining and electricity transmission were found to be illegal."

A California appeals judge has already decided that the "global environmental impact is threatened by a federal statutory wrong." Furthermore, the first civil law action was brought in July by eight U.S. states, New York City and NGOs against the five main U.S. power companies, arguing for a court order to compel them to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the six gases the U.N. claims causes global warming.

The U.S. delegation in Buenos Aires upheld their commitment to a clean environment and good government. Americans must stand with them to support individual freedoms that are based upon sound science and a free market economy. Furthermore, we must stand against supremacist judges who create law rather than interpret it and who use non-ratified global treaties to decide our futures.