Obama Uses Taxpayer Dollars to Buy Popularity for Himself at UN Meeting

President Barack Obama’s legacy to fundamentally transform America was on the global stage the first two weeks of December in Paris, France at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. His weapon was the radical green agenda and American taxpayers were his victims.

Obama’s Clean Power Plan Fits Within the UN Scheme, Opposed by Congress

Obama wants our energy prices to skyrocket. Last August in preparation for the UN meeting, he proposed his Clean Power Plan that mandates a 32% percent reduction by the year 2030 for CO2 “pollution,” and mandates oil and natural gas companies to mitigate 45% of methane emissions by 2025. Both will cause our energy prices to skyrocket. Succinctly stated by Robert E. Murray, chairman and CEO of Murray Energy Corp., “There is no question that President Barack H. Obama, his Democrat supporters and his appointed bureaucrats want to eliminate the use of all fossil fuels.”

The technology for wind and solar, the “green” energy sources, is nowhere near capable of replacing fossil fuels, so the problem is worse than skyrocketing energy prices, it aims to destroy our standard of living.

U.S. Senator Mike Lee has boldly led the fight calling on any new treaty in Paris to be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. In response, lead American negotiator in Paris, Todd Stern, said during the first week of negotiations that the U.S. would support legally-binding accountability, renewal, reporting and review, but not targets, which presented a major disagreement with China.

China and other third world nations want legally-binding targets to force the U.S. to fatally wound her own economy, which was attempted by its predecessor the Kyoto Protocol. Poor nations were exempted from Kyoto; only 37 rich nations were bound by it, which is one reason why the U.S. Senate never ratified it. Stern thinks that by supporting legally-binding accountability, but not targets, he can appease the Chinese, but that’s a pipe dream. Poor nations typically agree to most treaties, then walk away forgetting them altogether. But that’s not the way things are done in the U.S. and the Chinese know that.

Regardless what the new UN treaty requires, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is implementing his Clean Power Plan. About two dozen states have filed lawsuits, but the EPA is pushing ahead on its rules and regulations. Congress is also trying to rein in Obama’s global handouts, but he promises to veto their efforts.

The Clean Power Plan would reduce America’s emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, a non pollutant, by 26%-28% below 2005 levels in 2025, which Obama boasted would bind the next president politically, claiming the next President could not just undo the myriad of EPA rules by fiat, a hubris statement from the most lawless President in U.S. history.

Rich Getting Richer at Taxpayers’ Expense

For seven long years, Obama has stoked the climate change agenda. It is embedded in his one-size-fits-all K-12 Common Core curriculum, aided and abetted by his radical green rich friends including a group of 28 billionaire investors led by Bill Gates, all committed to creating a public-private investment initiative on joint clean energy research and development. Commingling public and private money gives unfair economic advantages to the rich at taxpayers expense.

Money from Gates, et al, flows to radical green groups that creates divisiveness among Americans. In Paris, for example, representatives from Indigenous, Black, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander organizations under the banner “It Takes Roots to Weather the Storm” spoke out against fracking wells, coal power plants, and oil refineries. Considering the high costs for travel, hotels and food in Paris, it was a substantial expense for their benefactors.

Silencing the Opposition

These rebel rousers create animus toward climate realists who believe that climate science is inconclusive, calling them “climate deniers.” And universities seeking government research grants are forced to either fall in line with the inconclusive science and fear tactics of the radical green movement--or lose their jobs.

Secretary of State John Kerry told delegates in Paris that those who question the unscientific “consensus of 97% of all scientists who embrace manmade climate change” and their predictions of catastrophic consequences, also “believe the earth is flat and that there is no gravity.” Kerry added that current climate conditions are “far worse” than ever predicted by scientists 20 years ago, with 500 year storms happening every 25 years “or even sooner.” None of his statements can be validated; he just makes them up.

What Difference Does It Make?

Hypocritically, Kerry admitted, “The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what – that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world. If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions –- remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions -– it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.”

Follow the Money

This Obama-Kerry agenda fits snugly into the stated goal of the UNFCCC’s Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, which is to fundamentally transform the world economy by convincing the world that manmade climate change is caused by greenhouse gasses emitted when fossil fuels are burned. This is why poor nations are demanding that rich nations pay them for damages caused by climate change. The entire purpose of the UNFCCC meetings is to transfer money and technologies from rich nations to poor nations. The ruse has nothing to do with climate, but everything to do with redistributing wealth from rich to poor nations.

Kerry bragged in Paris that the U.S. would double to $800 million per year by 2020 the grant-based public climate finance for poor nations as part of the $100 billion annual commitment to the Green Climate Fund. Congress’ attempt to block another $3 billion he’s promised to the GCF will likely be vetoed. Another $248 million he has directed to LDCs, least developed countries. And another $30 million to support insurance initiatives under the Pacific Catastrophic Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative, expand the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility to cover Central American countries, and to support the African Risk Capacity program. Plus he has promised to share American technologies with vulnerable nations because as Kerry said, “Our aim can be nothing less than a steady transformation of a global economy.”

The private sector is being asked to pay for their “carbon footprints” by financing climate projects. Internationally, private sector finance for climate projects before the Paris meeting was about $650 billion a year. Citigroup recently announced a commitment of over $100 billion a year for the next decade, doubling the amount that they had originally set as their target in 2007. The Bank of America recently committed to 125 billion over the next decade, tripling the target that they set only a few years ago. Goldman Sachs committed to $100 billion over the next decade as well.

Courageous Senators Push Back

U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, Chairman of the Space, Science, and Competitiveness Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, on December 8 held a hearing on "Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth's Climate." In his opening statement Sen. Cruz said, “According to the satellite data, there has been no significant global warming for the past 18 years. Those are the data. The global warming alarmists don’t like these data - they are inconvenient to their narrative. But facts and evidence matter.”

Foreign Relations subcommittee Chairman Senator John Barrasso, M.D. also released a new report called: “Senate Outlook on United States International Strategy on Climate Change in Paris 2015: A New Report on President Obama’s Plan to Bypass Congress and Transfer American Taxpayer Funds Overseas.”

Barrasso concluded that, “The American public doesn’t want these policies. Congress has passed laws to change these policies. The Obama administration just goes on and on and makes its rules that it wants anyway.

“As their elected representatives, Congress must not allow the president to continue to try to buy popularity for himself using Americans’ tax dollars. Congress must not allow the president to use this meeting in Paris to advance his own legacy at the expense of the American people and the American economy.”

Let’s Find Our Voices

Just before the Paris meeting concluded, the UN invited Grammy award-winning artist Sean Paul to sing, “Love Song to the Earth,” to supposedly inspire real action on climate change. In response, climate realists must find their voices in this battle for national sovereignty and our standard of living. A good place to start is to choose to love either the creation or its Creator and be good stewards of the earth.