A Global Carbon Tax?

Will the United Nations wield its unproven claim that greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change to require each of its 193 member nations to measure and report GHG emissions, a prerequisite for a global carbon tax? Does it really matter whether next year’s meeting in Paris, France, produces a treaty or a “soft law” document or both?

Todd Stern, head of the American delegation at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Lima, Peru, says the U.S. is “perfectly happy to have an assessment process” for “clear and understandable” INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions), “so that everybody knows what others are doing,” adding that all American actions are to “transform our economy.”

Measuring and reporting GHG emissions would indeed “transform our economy” by providing the UN with criteria needed to create a carbon taxing scheme to amass trillions of dollars to redistribute wealth around the globe. After all, a carbon tax was a recommendation to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing.

The UN wants a carbon tax to implement sustainable development, which is environmental, social and economic equity, sometimes called justice. Social justice, climate/environmental justice and economic justice are alluring terms that promise absolute equity to the masses. Politically speaking, it is green on the outside and Marxist red on the inside like a watermelon. And it would literally kill the geese that lay golden eggs by deconstructing national economies by phasing out the use of all fossil fuels by 2050 at the latest, a provision currently in the Lima draft.

The UN’s non-governmental organizations refuse to acknowledge that the earth has not warmed since 1998 as they relentlessly rabble-rouse for global governance/global government. The NGOs expect the INDCs to do more than mitigate GHG emissions, they are calling for “adequate and fair contributions with a science based equity review.”

The key word is “equity” as they complain that nations have only given about $10 billion to the Green Climate Fund established by the UNFCCC in 2009 to redistribute $100 billion annually by 2020 from rich to poor nations and increase to $500 billion annually by 2050.

The NGOs also refuse to acknowledge that renewable energy sources like wind and solar would be equivalent to rubbing two sticks together to start a fire, since they are wholly inadequate replacements for fossil fuels that create abundant, clean energy so that ALL people can attain a healthy standard of living.

Americans started down this road in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro when President George H.W. Bush signed both the “soft law” document called Agenda 21 and the UNFCCC treaty that was ratified by the Senate the same year.

It may be deja vu in Paris that the UN produces not only a new treaty, but also a “soft law” document. The danger of “soft law” documents is that they do NOT require Senate approval. Agenda 21 was implemented by Clinton’s 1993 Executive Order that created the “President’s Council on Sustainable Development” and continues today to wreak havoc in communities across America.

Stern explained that, “Some agreements do and some agreements don’t [require Senate approval].... So it’s going to depend entirely on how this agreement is written, how it is framed, what is or isn’t legally binding and so on.... We don’t know yet.”

As the UNFCCC concludes its work in Lima on December 12, we will be learn whether the Obama administration commits to measuring and reporting GHG emissions, the necessary measurements to create a carbon taxing scheme. At next year’s meeting in Paris, we will learn whether the UNFCCC will produce either or both a treaty and “soft law” document, understanding the immeasurable impact of both on our liberties.