A reaction from Pat Michaels follows. From the NYT article: Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.
In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.
“If you want a deal that includes all the major emitters, including the U.S., you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at this time,” said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the Clinton administration who works closely with the Obama White House on international climate change policy.
Lawmakers in both parties on Capitol Hill say there is no chance that the currently gridlocked Senate will ratify a climate change treaty in the near future, especially in a political environment where many Republican lawmakers remain skeptical of the established science of human-caused global warming.
Read full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/us/politics/obama-pursuing-climate-accord-in-lieu-of-treaty.html?_r=0
Former Virgina State Climatologist and Cato Institute Director of the Center for the Study of Science Dr. Pat Michaels reacts:
When it comes to climate change, President Obama surely thinks he is king, subject to absolutely no advice and consent from our elected representatives.
The President clearly believes that a 2007 Supreme Court decision on greenhouse gases empowers him to completely bypass the Senate, including signing on to what is clearly a new United Nations treaty effectively limiting our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, without the necessary two-thirds vote required by the Constitution. And, while the nations of the world will clearly ignore such a treaty, he will impose whatever regulations he sees fit without approval of Congress. Sweeping regulation without legislative representation borders on tyranny, and it is doubtful that what he is proposing will ever stand a court challenge.
“Name and Shame”? Did not work so well with Clinton and Kyoto. So the short answer is – just another impotent ‘feel good’ waste of time by Obama.
Sweeping regulation without legislative representation borders on tyranny
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taxation without representation gave birth to the US. will regulation without legislative representation mark the end?
The warmist mongrel doctors of spin have to call it carbon (could you imagine trying to vilify oxygen?).
Because IF the greater herd of mug sheeple “look up” carbon dioxide in their;
Funk and Wagnall’s OR Woodchuk Manual OR Doctor Nathaniel’s Spaniel Manual OR Coles Funny Picture Book OR Monty Python’s Big Red Papperbok, OR heaven forbid – a Dictionary or Colliers ( you are stupid but your kid doesn’t have to be) Cycopeedy at the local library or bookshop (or just plain Google it) they find out CO2 is actually an odourless, colourless, tasteless, heavier than air gas that is vital to life on earth –
Whilst carbon is (obviously) black, icky and nasty….
There was a time when you had pretensions to being a serious commenter. Too bad you gave up so quickly.
Sorry left off Invisible
The US and EU are in for a nasty surprise. The BRIC nations snubbed Obama in Copenhagen and he had to fly back to Washington early. Reportedly to beat the snow storm, but in reality because of the shellacking he took. He needed to save face.
China has made their strategy plain for all to see. The US (and EU) must pay reparations to the rest of the world for the CO2 they emitted in building their industrial base, BEFORE there can be talk of the rest of the world reducing CO2.
The EPA has backed the US into a corner on this because of their endangerment finding. The US cannot turn around now and say they haven’t harmed the rest of the world.
China on the other hand is painting itself as the savior of the third world, in securing reparations from the US for the many, many years in which the US was by far the largest emitter of CO2.
So, far from Obama looking like a savior, he is walking into a trap of his own making. The US will be on the hook for hundreds of billions in reparations, or there will be no Accord. The Chinese know full well that Obama wants this Accord as his legacy, and they know he will mortgage the US to the hilt to get it.
It will be the US that is shamed into making payments, not the rest of the world. The less developed world will be only too happy to see it happen. What money that actually makes it to the poor will drive industrialization of the third world. the same way the West did it. By burning coal.
We will also burn coal…..if you think ideology will trump economics in the long game you are deluded.
“The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill…”
and well it should.
It would also face strong objections from most of the US population if all of the facts were properly presented in the main stream media too.
Fat chance of that happening.
This is not unconstitutional
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You are confused. The Constitution is not a scientific topic. Whether an action is unconstitutional or not is not for us to determine. That is a matter for the courts.
http://climatejusticecampaign.org/about
Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice
REPARATIONS for CLIMATE DEBT and FINANCE
7 Fight for reparations for climate debt owed by those responsible for climate change
a. Rich, industrialized countries to deliver on their obligations for climate finance for peoples of South countries and other affected communities;
We see this same kind of “name and shame” at state-level politics. Whenever the state wants to implement some sort of device the control over which is at least ostensibly under the control of the respective agencies, there will invariably be the state-sponsored shill at some podium somewhere pounding his shoe and screaming about “those non-compliant so-and-sos over at the _X_Y_Z_ agency.”
Now our country will be called non-compliant by the UN, and invariably the press will describe it as “American corporations violating international law with their assault on the environment.”
:
I think this whole episode has shown critical weaknesses in the US system. The president is improperly given powers to regulate, which opens up the possibility of despotism. Too much power lies in a single pair of hands. The power needs to be shifted back to the parliament, with the president only given the power to sign into law. The legislature should be able to replace the president at will on a simple majority no confidence vote. Such a move would make the president much more subservient to the people, with less inclination to veto the will of the people (through it’s parliament). In fact it may well be a good thing to strip the president of the power to veto altogether, like say the Governor General here in Australia.
The parliamemt represents the people, the president does NOT! At best he represents about half of them.
In my (outsider) opinion, the states should through a change to the constitution strip the president of the power of regulation, and place the public service under control of the parliament rather than the president as in westminster democracies. The public service must be in the service of the people, not a single person. The USA also needs a way to dissolve parliament on deadlocks that defund the government so that the people can elect a functional government. There seems to be too many ways to deadlock the US government.
I think to some extent you have been fortunate before now, but this recent period has shown the weaknesses in the system, a system that seemingly cannot deal with a wayward executive branch.
Your understanding of the US government is flawed.
The President does not have a Constitutional power to regulate. What regulatory power he has was (unconstitutionally) abdicated by Congress and left intact by a littany of nonsensical Supreme Court decisions. The system is troubled not by what you claim, rather, several decades of mounting encroachment by big government activists and partisan SCOTUS members that do indeed wear their party politics on their coat sleeves.
Covering up the holes that allowed this progression is possible, but not easy given the large swath of the US population that has been indoctrinated into the pro big government mindset. Once it all comes crashing down, however, maybe they’ll stop listening to Hollywood celebrities and pay attention to reality.
Mark
While I have never lived in the US (or under the US Constitution) I am a UK lawyer interested and familiar with the Constitution at least on an academic plane – and of course George Washington himself accepted that the Constitution was not “free from imperfections”.
As I see it, the current President is surely entitled to make whatever Executive Orders he considers fit within the powers delegated to him by Congress (also approved by SCOTUS if it decides to hear any ensuing federal case on appeal) – but all that is necessary is to have patience, and to wait until a new President is elected when (s)he can make new Executive Orders perhaps augmenting or simply reversing the former ones. In short, governance by Executive Order is only temporary – it takes congressional legislation, signed into law by the President, to have permanent legal effect.
Do I have this correctly?
Mostly. However, congress, even in unanimity, cannot delegate any powers granted to it by the Constitution, to the president. Yet it still tries. As another poster indicated, it is not that the actions are unconstitutional, it is that no one will challenge them.
President Obama has never understood the power of the office he holds, and he does more than squander it. He is breaking it, as surely as trying to slice through granite with a sword will break the sword.
He’ll have set the Progressive movement back twenty years by the time his term is done. I think we owe him some debt of gratitude for that.
Obama will get more of what he wants from the RINO’s of the New GOP Senate then he is getting currently. In the same way the waning GWBush years really were the “good old days” for the American left.
What’s clarifying is the split in the skeptic community, the “it’s about science” comfort zone is again disrupted by reality. It’s a massive exposure of course for the babbling left-wing academic community who try to maintain their illusions about being “scientists” with a compliant media utility. Still, skeptics need to clean their house at a moment like this.
Even if it’s a non-binding thing, etc. etc., I worry that having beaten this path it will become well traveled and ultimately do real de facto harm, circumvent the constitution and make the ‘Houses’ less relevant. Where are the guts in Congress and the Senate? Shouldn’t this guy be impeached. I wasn’t as exercised about the peccadilloes of Clinton as many, but sidelining Congress and the Senate in such matters as this won’t wash off with Tide (I won’t leave a link!).
The math., right now, says the Rs will win the Senate:
Careful what you wish for, the optics will change at once and the skeletons like John McCain and Lindsey Graham pop out of the closet ready to cut Cap and Tax deals and whatever else to appear to be “doing something”. It also helps Hillary or something even worse in 16′.
As bad and evil the warming agenda is the skeptics have always been politically clueless in large measures.They’re the kids with ten pens in the front shirt pocket getting their money stolen from them at the cafeteria lunch line. These boards are filled with them and they have dominated the opposition for far too long. Morano and Delingpole are the skeptic advocates that should be supported and the pressure should be on the lame “science” authorities to fess up to their views, since they are accurate.
From one group of skeptics to the other; “We told you so”.
Warmists just aren’t encumbered by real “science” which is only something to be subjected to “word destruction” right out of an Orwellian distopia. The comfy world of spaghetti charts and the world within the error margins should always be secondary. That’s what this headline is telling you, accept it.
Rule #1 It is Bush’s fault.
Rule #2 If you disagree, you are racist.
https://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Senate14.cfm
Scary Barry at it again.
Ah, what a typical NY Times article. Check these words carefully:
‘Lawmakers … on Capitol Hill say there is no chance that the currently gridlocked Senate will ratify a climate change treaty in the near future, especially in a political environment where many Republican lawmakers remain skeptical of the established science of human-caused global warming.’
Last time I checked the Democrats were solidly in control of the Senate. The foregoing paragraph by the paper of record makes it sound like the Republicans are blocking passage. Of course supporters would need 67 votes to ratify a treaty (as well it should be). But, not too many years ago didn’t Obama have a 60 Democrat Senate at his beck and call? Me thinks they could’ve found a few Republicans (John McCain you know who you are) to go along. Is the NY Times unaware of the Byrd/Hagel Sense of the Senate resolution of the late 1990s; a resolution that stated the Senate should not authorize any Kyoto style climate treaties; a resolution that passed the Senate 97-0. I’d say the NY Times is well past its retirement age.
53-45 isn’t really “solidly” in control, and yes, Republicans are the primary roadblock, though Democrats are leery as noted in recent news. There is a good chance that control will flip-flop, too, which I suspect will mean other problems for his excellency.
Mark
This is a very coy move. BRIC might be very eager to sign on because it is based on political pressure rather than legally binding. They don’t give a hoot about peer pressure and any economy that goes along voluntarily will be less competitive economically. This would be especially appealing to China and Russia.
Politics vs. policy. What do you think wins?
Brilliant leaders are able to balance both, you need politics to win elections so you can affect policy. The hacks (Congress and White House) that America has been saddled with for decades now, only know and practice politics and “dealmaking”, they couldn’t manage a a grocery never mind develop coherent national policy.
So now we have a “politically binding” deal vs. a legally binding treaty.
Put in another way, we have a heap big pile of horse manure whose primary purpose is to get the Democratic base to vote.
If they could only sign these treaties during a congressional recess like the now routine process of ramming through appointments. Give them some time to work on the problem, like court packing ideas of FDR.
Other than appeasement and triangulation the “stupid party” doesn’t have a comprehensive green response. While it’s evil Obama’s plan makes tactical sense for the last two years of a GOP Senate.
The Cato Institute? Give me a break. Total BS. As a lawyer this kind of BS disgusts me. The Constitution is quite clear about what it takes to have a treaty and to argue that the president can bind this country to a treaty without the consent of Congress is a total crock. Sometimes you guys are as bad as the alarmists with your alarmism.
My point is that he can’t. Wasn’t that clear enough?
Also, the transparent ruse that it won’t need ratification because this will be a modification of the 1992 Framework Convention is a joke. The Kyoto Protocol was, and it needed ratification, which the Senate chose not to do.
davidgmills,
It’s time for your Prozac.
I was actually encouraged by the response to the NYT article for 2 reasons. One, many of the comments, I’d say about half, were negative, either to Obamas attempted overreach or to the whole concept of catastrophic global warming. Two, the NYT actually printed those comments, which wasn’t common even 5 years ago. The NYT has also recently run an article sympathetic to (if not actually supportive of his positions) John Christy.
If even the ultra-liberal NYT is starting to open up a bit, I see reason for hope.
amos:
I’ve noticed that, too. In numerous national publications like newspapers and magazines, we see that most of the public’s comments are now skeptical of AGW. A few years ago, most were inclined to believe it.
You can only cry “Wolf!!” for so long, before the public gets tired of hearing it. Where is the wolf?
There is no wolf — and there never was.