Reposted from comments on the new Urban Future thread here
Originally from the blog Fightin’ Words
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Above: Obama’s last visit to Copenhagen didn’t work out so well for the USA.
The Minnesota Free Market Institute hosted an event at Bethel University in St. Paul on Wednesday evening. Keynote speaker Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave a scathing and lengthy presentation, complete with detailed charts, graphs, facts, and figures which culminated in the utter decimation of both the pop culture concept of global warming and the credible threat of any significant anthropomorphic climate change.
A detailed summary of Monckton’s presentation will be available here once compiled. However, a segment of his remarks justify immediate publication. If credible, the concern Monckton speaks to may well prove the single most important issue facing the American nation, bigger than health care, bigger than cap and trade, and worth every citizen’s focused attention.
Here were Monckton’s closing remarks, as dictated from my audio recording:
At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.
I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.
How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.
[laughter]
And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, if your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution (sic), and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.
So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.
But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty. For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to [help] it.
So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:
Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Lord Monckton received a standing ovation and took a series of questions from members of the audience. Among those questions were these relevent to the forthcoming Copenhagen treaty:
Question: The current administration and the Democratic majority in Congress has shown little regard for the will of the people. They’re trying to pass a serious government agenda, and serious taxation and burdens on future generations. And there seems to be little to stop them. How do you propose we stop Obama from doing this, because I see no way to stop him from signing anything in Copenhagen. I believe that’s his agenda and he’ll do it.
I don’t minimize the difficulty. But on this subject – I don’t really do politics, because it’s not right. In the end, your politics is for you. The correct procedure is for you to get onto your representatives, both in the US Senate where the bill has yet to go through (you can try and stop that) and in [the House], and get them to demand their right of audience (which they all have) with the president and tell him about this treaty. There are many very powerful people in this room, wealthy people, influential people. Get onto the media, tell them about this treaty. If they go to www.wattsupwiththat.com, they will find (if they look carefully enough) a copy of that treaty, because I arranged for it to be posted there not so long ago. Let them read it, and let the press tell the people that their democracy is about to be taken away for no good purpose, at least [with] no scientific basis [in reference to climate change]. Tell the press to say this. Tell the press to say that, even if there is a problem [with climate change], you don’t want your democracy taken away. It really is as simple as that.
[Update: this section on a question from an attendee to the presentation has been removed from this WUWT article because even though Monckton clearly refuted it, it is turning into a debate over presidential eligibility that I don’t want at WUWT. If you want to see it and discuss it. Do it at the original blog entry Fightin’ Words – Anthony]
Regardless of whether global warming is taking place or caused to any degree by human activity, we do not want a global government empowered to tax Americans without elected representation or anything analogous to constitutional protections. The Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves if they knew their progeny allowed a foreign power such authority, effectively undoing their every effort in an act of Anti-American Revolution. If that is our imminent course, we need to put all else on hold and focus on stopping it. If American sovereignty is ceded, all other debate is irrelevant.
Edited to add @ 8:31 am:
Skimming through the treaty, I came across verification of Monckton’s assessment of the new entity’s purpose:
38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:
World Government (heading added)
a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.
To Redistribute Wealth (heading added)
b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts [read: the “climate debt” Monckton refers to], including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, © a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.
With Enforcement Authority (heading added)
c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; © a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange [read; enforcement].
UPDATE: Thanks to WUWT reader “Michael” who post the URL on another unrelated thread, we now have video of Lord Monckton’s presentation:
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Lord Monckton obviously knows the US Constitution better than we (and very probably he) know the English Constitution (just read the original blog, look for the number 67).
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1892368,00.html
Who needs congress to act on CO2? EPA has already declared CO2 a pollutant, which means the Clean Air Act applies. Obama can sign the treaty, and the EPA can immediately start penalizing (read taxing) various CO2 “polluters”.
I’m sorry, but when I read about doubts about the legitimacy of the President and stuff about Hawaii, I switched off. Monckton might or might not be wrong. His analysis might be correct. All I read is the right wing equivalent of 9//11 truthers. I read WUWT pretty well every day, but I won’t if it becomes an outpost of wingnuts.
Well, all I have to say is that Alex Jones got it right in his film “The Obama Deception” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw
Ps. Obama works for Wall Street – not Main Street…
I’ve heard in the news that his birth was announced in a Hawaii newspaper. So far as I am concerned, he’s legit until compelling proof otherwise. And no, I didn’t vote for him, and he’s worse than I expected.
“Adolfo Giurfa (11:38:02) :
To taste a good coffee it must be, at least, a “spresso” or a “cafecinho”, seated in a table and served by a waiter.”
You should watch NCIS (episode in Africa; they import US coffee), go to Brazil (where the people drink it standing (the drinker, not the coffee)), or drink traditional American coffee while eating your steak. McCoffee is progress.
I have a question. Hypothetical at this point. Suppose Monktons prediction comes to pass with all the accompanying dire consequences of global governance, taxation, etc. What, exactly, will anyone do about it besides whine a lot? Is there a willingness to go to war (civil or otherwise) in response to those consequences? Which country, or citizenry, would be willing to “go the distance” to assert their National interests?
Keep in mind Russia’s recent reiteration of their “Preemptive” Nuclear strike doctrine, the current dispute over Arctic resources, etc.
all of those who rely on a written constituion – take head of what has happened in the UK where our WRITTEN constitiution (yes we have/had one) has been ignored and broken by succesive governments.
http://www.magnacartaplus.org/1689-rights/
for the document on which the US constitution is based & which has no more ability to constrain governments than a piece of wet paper.
Do NOT rely on a written constitution; but instead on some of the rights you still have.
The UK government has ILLEGALLY :
given away sovereignty (EU treaties)
abolished the right of Habeus Corpus (replaced by the OPTIONAL human rights act)
and generally allowed our guarented freedoms and rights to be trampled on; including the right not to be fined except through a court of law.
WAKE UP – bits of paper are as useful in stopping governments as hockey sticks are proving AGW
In the case of the UNCRC, most countries have in fact adopted it, including Iran. Iran signed on with reservations, understandings and declarations (RUDs) which exempted them from following it in cases where it conflicted with their legal system and traditions.
We always must keep in mind that Iran and China do not have the ACLU, nor courts jammed with judicial activists who legislate from the bench. But we do. The expense and devastation of legal action based on treaties is I think a chilling thought.
Again: “We dare not ratify this treaty under the guise that we may do as we wish afterwards. Our national respect for the rule of law, as well as our Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, requires us to view the treaty as a material part of the supreme law of the land.”
Regarding Article 6, second paragraph of the US Constitution, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” While this is typically interpreted to mean that a treaty can, with 2/3 vote, be made part of the Supreme Law of the Land, it still cannot be above the Constitution or above the powers of the Supreme Court.
That being said, if the treaty of Copenhagen is ratified, that places a foreign power in a position to declare binding law (in the form of the treaty) on the US Citizenry as long as there are no Constitutional objections by the SC. All in all, it’s a slippery and dangerous precedent and I think that there are plenty of reasons to be concerned, Lord Monctons hyperbole notwithstanding.
Obama will sign this. While he dosen’t have the Constitutional power to commit the United States to something such as this, he will sign it, and it will be a battle in Congress. But while we are on the subject of the Constitution, look at how it has been ripped apart by previous administrations, and the one thing that comes to mind is the Federal Reserve.
Look at how it was created, right under the people’s noses, and Congress WILLINGLY gave away it’s power to coin currency and to keep our economy secure, only to give it away to a secretive cabal of bankers. The Federal Reserve has created a debtor nation, and for that matter a debtor world. Your taxes don’t go to pay for programs, they go to pay the ever mounting debt that the Fed creates.
The WTO, NAFTA, and a handful of other globalist organizations have been ratified by the U.S. government, and these international organizations supercede our own constitution. It does not matter whether you have a Republican or Democrat in office, the globalist agenda stays the same and still proceeds.
And as for the person who commented earlier that Obama can be voted out and the next president can reverse the treaty with an Excutive Order, well, the powers granted to the president by the Constitution are very limited. Executive Orders by definiton are a way for the president to supercede the regular course of government, and for the most part, are unconstitutional.
One president comes to mind who tried an Excutive Order to undo a globalist organization, and his name was John F. Kennedy. With Executive Order 11110, Kennedy arrested the power from the Fed giving the power back to Congress, and he was assassinated just a short while later. Mark my words, this treaty will be signed, and if it fails in Congress, if it ever goes to Congress, the world power elite will another way to establish world government.
Climate Chains and Lord Christopher Monckton
http://www.globalclimatescam.com/?p=552
Lord Christopher Monckton Speaking at Bethel University
I am most grateful to Anthony Watts for having had the courage to reproduce the closing words of my recent speech to 1000 kind citizens of Minnesota, and to the many commentators whose discussion of the constitutional implications of the draft Treaty of Copenhagen has been illuminating. I had not intended to give offence by in any way exaggerating either the content or the import of the draft Treaty, which I hope my critics will read with care. The draft envisions “government” as the first purpose of the vast and many-tentacled institutional framework that is to be established; redistribution of wealth by way of reparation in respect of “climate debt” as the second purpose; and enforcement as the third purpose.
It is important to understand that the magnitude of what is proposed goes well beyond any pre-existing international treaty. The new entity will not be a mere bureaucracy like the UN: it will be a “government”, with multiple direct rights of intervention in the economic and environmental affairs of all those states parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that are unwise enough to accede to it.
I have had some experience in the drafting and negotiating of international treaties. This one, as at present drafted, is exceptional. Whether it is ratified by a two-thirds majority in the Senate (which I think unlikely), or enacted into domestic law by a simple majority of both Houses (in which event, at least, it is in principle repealable), it will – for the first time – give an external entity the direct and widespread right to intervene in the conduct of the US economy and the management of the US environment, on an unprecedented scale and to an unprecedented degree.
Finally, I note that several commentators have taken me to task for deigning to reply to a questioner who asked whether a Copenhagen Treaty signed by President Obama would remain valid if he were later discovered not to have been born in the United States. I replied – surely sensibly enough – that I knew of one judge who was not sure about the President’s place of birth, but that – even if he were not entitled to sign the Treaty (a question on which I expressed no view, for it is not a matter for me) if the Treaty had been ratified by the Senate or otherwise enacted into domestic law it might still be unimpugnable.
Precisely because the ambit and scope of the Treaty is so very wide, and precisely because its terms would take precedence over the terms of your Constitution (as Article VI, combined with the Vienna Convention on International Treaties, makes clear), Anthony Watts was quite right to make the current draft available to his readers, and also to pick up my recent speech pointing out its dangers to your democratic and independent way of life. I am most grateful to him for drawing this matter to the attention of his rapidly-growing worldwide audience. – Monckton of Brenchley
Monckton of Brenchley (I’m sorry, I don’t know the correct form of address)
Whether or not the Vienna Convention obligates the US to have the US Constitution overriden is likely to be irrelevant, as it is likely the US Senate does not have the right via treaty or international convention for the assignation of those rights. Overriding the Constitution requires a constitutional amendment whatever the wording of the treaties signed. This would have to be dragged through the courts and whether or not a court case gets any traction would likely depend on who is raising the issue, but I think more of US sovereignty rights may be protected than many fear.
“Keynote speaker Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher”
[snip, take your tone elsewhere]
Regards
Andy
While we’re talking about challenging undemocratic institutions (rife with drugs, cronyism, totalitarianism and corruption)
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/10/16/czech-support-for-klaus-at-65/
Lord Christopher Monckton Speaking at Bethel University
Monckton of Brenchley (13:33:36) :
Thanks for your work on this issue and thanks again to Anthony for having the courage to post a political piece on his site. Without your speech I wouldn’t have been aware of the scale of what’s happening at Copenhagen. I have now read the treaty and it is every bit of what you said and MUCH worse than I had thought.
I doubt those who have posted critical comments here have read the proposal or in some cases have the wherewithal to understand it. In at least one case above, a commenter (who I will not identify) used your name as an excuse to pretend not to understand the words in front of their eyes.
As one who reads blogs often, I would request that you take additional care in reporting skeptical science as minor differences are being used for discrediting the body of your efforts. There is a good deal of bad skeptical science out there, and it dilutes the main message in that the intended outcome of AGW is legislative.
In the meantime, thank you for your service to our country and really the world. This was a useful and important speech which sure caught my attention.
I just got a call from my college son and have to get him – but this is important, too…ours is a participatory government where all laws and rights are the ultimate responsibility of each individual (not collective) through a variety of inputs.
The U.S.A. is being challenged today to a degree not often experienced, but not entirely unique. The Land of Laws must take each legal writ endorsed as seriously as any and take appropriate action regarding it, most effectively prior to it’s authorization – hence the “free press”, in this case mostly the internet.
Please, learn, debate – then contact your representatives until you know they comprehend your opinion and consequences. If you are not pleased with the representative’s responses – become, yourself, a public servant.
I am pleased that Monckton and others are concerned with our status. More perspectives should help us establish our own, and he has experiences.
Is Science apart from Politics? AGW alarmism and history prove not. Have to go – email, tweet, call, fax, drop-in, mail, read/write all media, RUN & VOTE.
I’m very concerned.
Specific examples of Article VI being argued both ways:
“Cities filed countersuits claiming that current military policy violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child’s Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict, which the U.S. ratified in 2002. (This is a separate but related treaty to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the U.S. has not ratified the main CRC.) “When the government enters into an international treaty or protocol, that becomes the law of the United States,” says Yamauchi, also citing Article VI. The cities claim that the U.S. military is in violation of the Protocol’s prohibition on the recruiting of children for military service. Current federal law allows representatives of the armed services to educate high school and college students on military career options, alongside other educational and vocational recruiters at job fairs and the like. To actually enlist, however, one must be 18, or close to 18 with parental consent. This countersuit constitutes the first time since the 2002 ratification of the protocol that the federal government’s compliance with the treaty has been legally questioned.”
“In Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), the state of Missouri challenged the constitutionality of federal interference with the state hunting laws concerning migratory birds. Federal game officials had intervened in Missouri based upon a treaty with Canada. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the treaty, and not Missouri’s state laws on hunting, was supreme. State law—including state hunting laws—must give way to treaties.”
Well I haven’t read all comments but I’m sure I’ve read enough and while WUWT is one of the best blogs when it comes to challenging AGW I think I’ll pass if this is going to set a new trend. Most posters in this thread are a bunch of crackpots who are pretty much just as bad as the AGW scaremongers.
All this treaty apparently aims to “accomplish” is throwing money at those countries who don’t pollute. In essence those countries who aren’t capable of polluting because they aren’t advanced enough. So it’s a way to “enforce” some sort of help towards third world countries. Everybody knows how it works: even if we double the amount in any of the civilised countries we’re still just donating a minor fraction of our wealth and it’s how it’s going to remain. Those people who are leading our countries aren’t interested in donating big loads of money to other countries or at least not just like that. Hell, just like with the other money we donate how do you think they’ll spend it? We give, they spend it on services delivered by us. Out of one pocket and into the other. Who cares?
If they sign this treaty it’ll accomplish nothing and mean nothing. All this talk is pretty hilarious but in all honesty: please stop, I expected people posting here to be a bit more intelligent than that.
So if Obama signs it, and later on we repeal it here, what will the world do to us? Sanction us? They have already taken most of our industry and money.
To tell the truth, we have had more sanctions imposed on us than all the “sanctioned” countries combined.
Obama is already engaging in tyrannical oppression against his own people as he turns off their water and increase pollution in America’s waterways.
http://ecosense9.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/obamas-oligarchical-oppression-no-water-lots-of-pollution/
Dirk M (15:02:45) :
Who cares? If someone stole your wallet, you’d care. If they stole your car, you’d care. If they came and took your house, you’d care.
If they did it legally, you’d be more than just concerned.
Besides, the money they take, the things they deprive you of are not going to deprived people elsewhere.
Haven’t you been paying attention to the scandals of where the Billions in Aid to ‘other less fortunate countries’ has been ending up?
PeterT (01:23:49) :
Blimey!! I don’t think this is a very good look for those good people who want to question the science of AGW, as a matter of fact I don’t want to be associated with someone who is starting to sound like a shrill political conspiratorial nutter, leave that rubbish to the other side and stick with the science.
PeterT (01:34:30) :
And if this is what you are all really about you’ve losy me.
I’m a conservative and as such cherish diversity of opinion and that includes people having leftwing views, they are not evil, if you all think that this is just some evil communist conspiratorial plot you are living in the fifties and sixties, the world has moved on people, if you stick to the science I’m in if you travel the political BS route I’m out as will be many people from all walks of life who come here to get a second opinion on the science debate of AGW.
Gee, peter we all wish we could buy a vowel for you, but you will need to do that for yourself. Why don’t you start by reading the treaty? But oh no you don’t need the facts to make a decision. I don’t want to hear any more about science from you – you can’t be bothered with facts? I seriously doubt you are a conservative, you have opinions without information, that’s the mark of a lib.
It is sad that you are in denial about the fact that a whole lot of communists became environmentalists after the fall of the Soviet Union. “They got keen on green, ’cause big red was dead”.
I don’t think that everybody that is pushing hard for misguided carbon regulation is stupid, I think they have an agenda, regardless of what the science says, they want Government control over the energy sector.