Elections Shake Up Climate Policy Picture
Guest essay by H. Sterling Burnett
The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States has left reeling the environmental lobbyists and activists and international leaders committed to reducing fossil fuel use to meet the Paris climate agreement. As the Washington Post noted, “Trump comes into office with a plan to toss out most of what President Obama achieved on energy and the environment.”
Trump, who has called the alleged human-caused climate change catastrophe a “hoax,” vowed to “cancel” the United States’ participation in the Paris climate accord. Trump also has committed to scrapping the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Trump has said he will review and possibly reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) determination carbon dioxide is a pollutant endangering public and environmental health (the “endangerment finding”). Trump can’t undo the endangerment finding with the stroke of a pen, but he is in a position to get that done over time. Reversing the endangerment finding would end the legal justification for a range of climate regulations. In the process, it also would end radical environmental activists’ ability to use the courts to impose climate policies on an unwilling public whose elected representatives have repeatedly rejected climate policies.
Before the election, Trump said he would reverse Obama administration rules imposing undue burdens on businesses. In particular, Trump said he would cut EPA’s budget dramatically, virtually reducing it to an advisory agency, and review all EPA regulations, eliminating many of them because, “Over-regulation presents one of the greatest barriers to entry into markets and one of the greatest costs to businesses that are trying to stay competitive.”
Trump says he wants to open up more federal lands to oil and gas drilling and eliminate regulations that have contributed to the decline of the coal industry.
The Washington Post reported,
“Scott Segal, co-head of government relations at the legal and lobbying firm Bracewell, said in an email a Trump administration would be ‘clearly in favor of enhanced exploration and production of oil and gas as a tenet of energy, economic and national security policy.’”
Environmentalists and some foreign dignitaries fear what Trump’s election means for America’s climate commitments and environmental policies. “We’re feeling angry and sad and contemplative,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, told the Post.
Asked by the Post how “the environmental movement would deal with a President Trump, Bill McKibben, founder of the climate action group 350.org, said in an email
‘[I] don’t really know.’”
The Guardian reports international climate negotiators at the United Nations’ climate talks in Morocco say “it would be a catastrophe if Trump acted on his pledge to withdraw the US from the deal, which took 20 years to negotiate, and to open up public land for coal, oil and gas extraction.”
Speaking to reporters at the Morocco meeting, Ségolène Royale, the French environment minister who helped negotiate the Paris accord, said Trump could not easily withdraw the United States from the treaty.
“The Paris agreement prohibits any exit for a period of three years, plus a year-long notice period, so there will be four stable years.”
On this point Royale is whistling past a graveyard. Trump can end the United States’ participation in the Paris climate agreement either directly or indirectly. Directly, he can “unsign” the agreement. Regardless of the text of the agreement, because it has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate as required by the Constitution, it has no force of law in the United States. And because the treaty sets only voluntary goals with no legal enforcement mechanism, other countries have no legal way of enforcing the agreement’s terms on the United States.
Indirectly, Trump can scuttle the country’s participation by reversing Obama’s climate actions and not replacing them with alternative climate policies. If Trump does this, U.S. participation in the Paris climate agreement dies from neglect.
SOURCES: Climate Change Weekly; Washington Post; and The Guardian
And there is the 40,000,000 USD of the IPCC AR6 budget that will vanish.
What has happened about the $500000000 that the kenyan gave them?
The signing of the Paris climate agreement by President Obama is illegal – and the acceptance by United Nations of that signature is violating the Human Rights.
“Section 2. The President .. shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Sena- tors present concur;”
By the Human Rights United Nation should respect the will of the people of Unites States of America:
“Article 21.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
The constitution is by definition the will of the people.
More than that, United Nations should strive to promote respect for these rights.
“Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.”
Hypocrites!
The real reason the nations of the world must accept the US Constitution is that the USS Gerald Ford is our 11th Nimitz class carrier. Nobody else has one.
Ultima ratio
1. The final argument. This phrase has literal applications, for example, “Your fourth drunk-driving citation is the ultima ratio for suspension of your driver’s license.”
2. The final sanction; the last argument; the last resort; the means last to be resorted to.
Ultima Ratio Regum
The Latin expression ultima ratio regum comes from the Thirty Years War (der Dreißigjährige Krieg, 1618-1648). By order of Cardinal Richelieu the phrase “Ultima ratio regum” (“the last argument of kings”) was cast on French cannons.
The phrase was adopted in the form of “Ultima ratio regis” for the same purpose which appears on cannon cast for Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, c. 1742.
USS Gerald R. Ford is the lead ship of her class, not a Nimitz-class at all, bigger, faster, more powerful.
And, they are called “Carrier Groups,” not “fleets.”
Just glad they are on our side.
“Walter Sobchak November 12, 2016 at 7:22 pm
The real reason the nations of the world must accept the US Constitution is that the USS Gerald Ford is our 11th Nimitz class carrier. Nobody else has one.”
11 carrier fleets, which include cruisers and submarines IIRC, about 9 other vessels including the carrier and all the aircraft on board, that is a significant war machine.
We could always put climate change to a Vote.
Pick one of the two options:
– Yes, pay more for energy and use less and introduce a Carbon tax of $50/ton; or,
– No, wait until there is more (actually any) real evidence.
Proposition 13 we can call it. It doesn’t matter what the number is, it will fail.
The UN elites thought they were in control. Now they know better.
It’s Trump against the Elites of the whole world.
There is a very simple two part Trump legal solution. Done within one week after inauguration.
For the US, pass by both Repub majority Congress chambers a simple 1 sentence amendment to CAA: for all purposes of this act, CO2 is not a pollutant. Passes Repub majority Senate easily since Harry Reid crammed down a cloture rule revision from 60 to majority in 2013 for all votes except for Supremes. Poof, no EPA Congress delegated power to issue an endangerment finding resulting from Mass. v. EPA, no power to issue CPP based on same. Look at the CAA pollutant existing circular definitions to see why this is easy and sensible and immently lawful. Present law ~ ‘a pollutant that which pollutes’ .CO2 is plant food, unlike SO2, fly ash, or mercury which were clearly intended. Simply clarifying Congressional intent. Not legally challengeable.
For COP21, issue an exec order triggering a one year withdrawal from UNFCCC. Was only an ever just an executive agreement, not a US Treaty or Pact. The Paris Agreement is technically a UNFCCC subaccord requiring 3 year opt out notice. Poof, all US Climate entanglements gone in 12 months. And, US must legally defund UNFCCC anyway, since it has admitted Palestine as a voting member contrary to 2009 US funding law.
Easy. And both steps are not legally challengable in US courts thereafter by watermellons.
Sounds like a good plan to me, Rud.
Been refining it. Some helpful knowledgeable critiques over at CE. Now just submitted to Myron Ebell for Trump transition EPA team consideration. Hoped US watermellon lawyers would shoot some possible holes that I could then research and plug legally. So far nothing, so the simple two part proposal seems bulletproof. Lets get on with it.qà
Kudos, Ristvan. A few days ago I wrote that you were man on this kind of matter and you have not disappointed. Getting something concrete into the right hands is outstanding. Thank you very much.
Although the UNFCCC has four modes for the country to confirm its signature to the negotiated text similar to the Paris agreement, Bush Sr. submitted it to the senate for ratification by at least 2/3 of the senate on Sept. 8, 1992 and the senate ratified it on October 7, 1992 (treaty 102-38). It may be difficult for the Pres just to issue an executive order to withdraw from the UNFCCC .
Wrong. ‘Treaty 102-38’ contains a 1 year opt out, so is NOT constitutionally a treaty as defined by Jefferson in 1806 and as thereafter accepted by SCOTUS long since. It is a mere Congressional Pact. And as such, the opt out is exercisable by the sitting president, unilaterally, by long established US Constitutional law. Read up on the details. Larry Tribe taught me this stuff way back when in Harvard 2L Con Law. Same HLS professor whose FoC Brief says CPP is unconstitutional. And he is a flaming liberal whose only higher allegiance is to the Constitution.
Quitting and defunding UNFCCC solves the whole problem. It pulls the rug from under whole anti-constitutional edifice.
That is the central column of this whole mess. Knock that out and the rest will come down quicker than the Solomon Building.
Let me repeat myself. An agreement of any kind with one or more foreign sovereigns, no matter how denominated, is a treaty under the constitution. If the Senate does not ratify it, it has no legal effect on the United States of America at all. It requires no action for the United States to withdraw from it because the United States never entered it. Not now, not ever. The next president need give no notices, nor take any action to withdraw from an agreement with one or more foreign sovereigns that has not been ratified by the Senate, because it does not bind the United States in any way because the United States never entered it.
Capish.
IAAL.
thanks Walt, you can repeat yourself all you like but I find Ristcan’s informed and educated comments carry a lot more weight than your “capish”, Capish?
One good thing about the U.S. Constitution is it is written in a manner than anyone, even if they are not a lawyer, can understand. American citizens don’t have to consult a lawyer to know their rights. All they have to do is read and understand the words of the U.S. Constitution, and when they do, they have just as much of a right to comment on it as anyone else.
Didn’t you mean “is NOT a treaty”?
I agree with you Walter. Unfortunately, we live in a time when half (or now slightly more than half, depending on how John Roberts is feeling) believes that the written words of the Constitution are just advice, not law.
EPA: I agree with Ristvan’s approach, but I hope on this topic, Trump will continue to be outrageous and just cancel the endangerment finding as being outside the scope of the CAA. Let the green blob lawsuits fly and make the eco-loon NGOs play defense. Ristvan’s advice for formally withdrawing from the UNFCCC should proceed in Congress as a concurrent activity. NGOs will shift into fighting the Administration so their proselytizing activity will be curtailed. In the process, they will come across as the same petulant, immature bullies as we’re seeing at anti-Trump rallies.
Federal Bureaucracy: I hope Trump will go further, issuing new executive orders, effective immediately, forbidding Federal bureaucrats from attending any UNFCCC meetings, including COP meetings except as private citizens on their own time and their own dime. No travel budgets or reimbursements for expenses to any Federal employee. If this were extended to apply to all UN meetings, that would be okay with me.
Military: Trump should order an immediate cancellation of all CO2 based military directives, and any prior directive that suggests America’s enemy is the climate or fossil fuels. He should instruct all the branches to buy the fuel they need for the lowest available price and divorce the military from any ethanol or cellulosic ethanol requirements. Fuel efficiency requirements for any vehicle purchase contracts should be reviewed by military experts and those requirements cancelled if they don’t make financial sense. Trump should just make the case that the military should be aiming for maximum performance from it’s fixed budget. No one can rationally argue against that and the military will love him for this.
Federal Grants: I don’t know how the NIH and NSF are structured, and how much power he has to reach down and influence individual grants, but he should try to get the worst ones cancelled. Failing that, he could try to pass some new rules, creating a review of the grant decisions, and requiring true accountability and scientific rigor, with forfeiture penalties. Scientific rigor includes vigorous falsification, cessation of all correlation = causation assumptions, double blind analysis when expert opinion is called for, full replication requirements, including complete and open data archival, and finally, free public availability for all articles and publications under Federal grant. No private funding can be mixed in if it subverts any of these goals, and NO results may be submitted to “pay-to-read” publications. If that leads to a lack of peer reviewers, then some new way to solicit reviewers will need to be built into the grant proposals with modest stipends perhaps as a way to encourage participation (reducing the amount that goes to the actual researchers). Without meeting these needs, then no grant. And if grants are made and later found not to be in compliance, grants must be returned with interest and penalty, and the guilty parties (including approving universities) made ineligible for future grants. These changes would put the kibosh on a lot of scientific sounding crapola.
DOE grants: These should all just be cancelled immediately. The failures are just too obnoxious and toxic. Any money not disbursed is withheld. Crony capitalism at its worst.
Wind and solar subsidies: Work with Paul Ryan to rewrite the tax code to cancel all subsidies as soon as possible. Make wind and solar compete directly with fossil fuels. Business expenses are NOT subsidies in these new rules. Costs of build-out of infrastructure and maintenance for widely dispersed sources may not be not finessed but must be calculated and added to the cost of wind and solar.
IPCC accuracy evaluation: Create a blue ribbon panel to study how the IPCC has actually performed, from the beginning. This includes looking at the summaries and results of all the working groups; what were the true impacts vs IPCC predictions, costs in economic, environmental (including bird and bat death) impacts, super storms, polar bears, direct economic performance to ratepayers, economic impacts to industry and commercial interests, and future risks to grid security. This panel will not include NGO activists or UN/Leftist/Democrat party toadies, but will state the case for all others as to how the IPCC’s “projections” have actually played out.
I believe that up till now, public perception has been largely driven by appeals to authority to busy, disinterested, low-information voters and people, combined with a conspiracy of leftist media, NGO activists and public educators, which includes operant brainwashing and the actual enlisting of children to co-opt their parents into NGO activism. Many people had no reason, other than the diffuse fear of future rate hikes, to doubt authority or reject the lie that CO2 is proven as the major driver of climate change. We need to reverse that. We need to change the direction of the flow of propaganda, and make climate alarmism a toxic political position for all Democratic politicians.
Ristvan, I am no legal expert . At he time I wondered what gave Reid the authority to change that Senate voting situation? Can you explain that to us please? Was that even constitutional?. At the time Reid manipulate this but now I wonder if he might have predicted then that Clinton was going to follow Obama but I wonder that now with Trump in place it won’t bite him ( and the Dems) right back in the rear end. Thanks I am looking forward to your comment ( as I always do btw)
As an ordered body, the Senate makes its own rules of procedure.
Asybot, Article 1 section 5.2 of the Comstitution expressly provides that the House and Senate shall make their own rules. When Dems had slim majority control of Senate and Republicans were filibustering to block Obama legislation and judicial appointments, Reid got Dem majority to ram throughnthe cloture change to simple majority from 60 for legislation and judges. Excluded Supremes and certain other personnel appointments.
Now is there a similar way, using the Exceptions process mentioned in Section 2 of Article III of the Constitution, to have the Congress remove certain issues (e.g., marriage and abortion) from Supreme Court jurisdiction so they would revert to the States?
I have hope. I voted Trump because of all the R’s running, I thought he would not back down and just go along to get along. It wasn’t going to help to win with a bipartisan R. Look at the legacy of George Bush. Nice guy but …..
When it comes to liberals and socialists, if you give an inch, they ask for a foot…if you give them a foot, they want a yard ..if you give them a yard, they will demand a mile !!
2008: Middle Class Family
“Ma, Dad, OB’s just been elected.”
“I know son, we’ll lose the home since we’ll be out of work the next 8 years.
2016: Environmental Elite Family
“Mother, Father, DT’s just been elected.”
“I know precious, we’ll lose the D.C. and Malibu mansions since the lobbying firm’s shutting down.”
“But don’t worry precious, that thing about moving to Canada was just a joke.”
…Umm, did you mean BO…Barrack Obama ?
The losers of the last two presidential elections didn’t protest their loss, they had to go back to work.
That’s funny, steve.
Working people don’t have the time to riot. Nor the inclination, under normal circumstances.
‘Working people don’t have the time to riot. Nor the inclination, under normal circumstances.”
Unless they are named Clive Bundy, along with his supporters.
“Unless they are named Clive Bundy, along with his supporters.”
The radical Right has a dozen radicals making a little noise out in the middle of nowhere. How does that compare to mass anarchy in major U.S. cities spawned by the radical Left?
The Bundy’s are a fringe group on the far Right. The radical Leftists disrupting U.S. cities are the mainstream of the Democrat Party.
Let’s hope the anti Trump riots continue
The longer they go on the less conciliatory Trump becomes
“Let’s hope the anti Trump riots continue”
Let’s hope this violence and mayhem spawned by the Radical Left wakes average people up to just how radical, and dangerous the radical Left really is. Do people want to be associated with the kind of hate groups we see marching on our streets? I doubt the majority would.
We are now seeing the true, ugly face of the Radical Left. Let’s hope that imagine sinks into the American public’s minds, and they reject these maniacs as representing anything other than craziness and destruction.
How will Bill of 350.org cope?
Buy a bigger handkerchief, Bill !!
“It may be difficult for the Pres just to issue an executive order to withdraw from the UNFCCC.”
I believe all that is needed to exit from a Treaty is an executive order. If not, how have we exited the many treaties that we have signed in the past? Some were replaced by another treaty but others were not.
If a treaty hasn’t been ratified by the Senate, it is just an executive action. That means it only takes another executive action to undo it.
The EPA was so shaken by Trump’s election, they encouraged employees to take sick leave and go home. I wondered at first if they required their “essential” employees to stay and work. But then it occurred to me that there are no essential employees at the EPA. We would benefit more from having them stay home than having them come in to work to dream up more costly regulations that depress our economy. The fact that they were so distraught by Trump’s election tells you all you need to know about how partisan the EPA has become.
When the EPA ordered 40,000 rounds of .40 Smith & Wesson Hydroshock shells, I started getting nervous.
Mission Creep is very real apparently, most especially at the EPA, which should be nothing more than a (small) group of well informed attorneys who’s sole job is to prosecute violations of Congressional Law. They don’t make law at all. This nonsense about “regulation”; Congress is solely charged with making Federal Law and they may not abrogate that responsibility.
The EPA, according to the SCOTUS, a body which is actually supposed to understand US Constitutional Law, now has the ability to make law? How does that work? Are these people scientists? No. They’re lawyers. They wouldn’t know a pollutant from a hedgehog.
The Clean Air Act does not give the EPA license to declare any material/thing/animal/vegetable or mineral they choose a “pollutant” in order to regulate it. The Act needs amendment to make that clear.
Bartleby:
Well said.
Lawyers know nothing except if it has potential to line their pockets.
WHAAAAAAAT! EPA ordering an armory’s-worth of shells???? For what purpose, exactly?
If their Terms of Reference (or whatever) allow them into the arm’s trade, I really wonder if I shd just jump off a bridge before I’m ‘disappeared’ as a denier.
“Denier”!!! … of course … that’s what it’s for … The EPA Plan is to line us up and shoot us as Inconvenient……
Ross – I agree there’s over-reach and maybe it’s based on avarice. Regardless of cause, it needs to be controlled. Apparently the way the Act is written leave the definition of a pollutant to the EPA itself, which gives unchecked authority to regulate anything they choose. I believe that situation needs to be corrected.
It’s very similar to the inter-state commerce clause (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3) that’s been used so successfully to grant authority and control over almost anything that passes state boundaries to the Federal Government.
Bartleby, the Supreme Court doesn’t know a pollutant from a hedgehog either. That’s why they gave authority to the EPA, under current law, to regulate CO2. The current law needs to change to make it clear that the EPA does not have authority from Congress to define what a pollutant is.
40,000 rounds of .40 ammunition is 800 boxes.
A good cop’s shooting practice, should use at least a box or two a month. For 100 employees, that’s 4 to 8 months of practice, shooting fifty to one hundred rounds a month.
The real question is why and what are so many agencies doing building and training armored and deadly SWAT teams.
EPA, FWS, IRS, Department of Education, Department of Energy, etc etc.
It is one thing to have a small force of guards protecting buildings; it is a completely different thing when agencies bust down doors, forcibly arrest citizens and search, (as in rip apart) premises by a force of armed and armored aggressive police.
Gibson guitar manufacturer’s experienced this at the Fish and Wildlife Services hands a few years ago.
Several delinquent educational loan borrowers experienced this at the hands of DOE.
It is time Federal agencies returned to friendly civilized dealings with citizens.
I agree, I don’t understand why the EPA is now an armed force, nor the DOE or any other three letter agency not part of the Department of Justice. It makes no sense to me at all.
Bartleby November 13, 2016 at 9:35 am
Another thing to put on the to do list. Have congress disarm these agencies leaving only the FBI armed.
None of these other agencies are “law enforcement”. Nor should there be a method for them to address courts for search warrants, that is the job of U.S. Marshals, FBI, or local law enforcement.
I have no problem with Isolated Park Rangers or FWL being armed when out in the wilderness, but only for encounters of the hungry kind.
michael
That pretty well sums up my position.
This article is a good overview, but it really is an overview of the obvious. The “Paris Accord” or whatever we’d like to call it has no force of law and if I were President-Elect Trumpf I think I’d simply ignore it. No reason to make enemies needlessly by publicizing the fact you’re going to ignore it. He has four years to re-capture anyone who’s peeved he didn’t make a public spectacle of ignoring the agreement.
Let it die a quiet death, just as the Kyoto Protocol. Everyone is extremely stoked about Trump, but political currency is still currency, and best spent wisely. This is not an issue that needs attention.
No reason to leave any ambiguity. Tell the other parties to the so-called Paris Agreement to stuff it.
OK Walter. Other Parties? Stuff it.
But Walter? I’d like to also make it clear that my opinion also has no force of law, and by telling the “other parties” to “stuff it” all I’ve done is needlessly make enemies. That isn’t the job of a good politician. A good politician lets issues like this one slowly fade into death by attrition.
We can now only hope Trump is a good (talented) politician.
This is what the agreement says for Australia;
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-10/federal-government-to-ratify-paris-climate-change-agreement/8012696
“We believe through the use of technology and research and science and innovation, there will be many opportunities for Australian businesses,” she said.
“The agreement requires nations to submit climate change pledges every five years, although they are not obliged to achieve them.”
So, the agreement is pure bunkum.
..Kind of like saying…”Hey boss, I am going to increase production by 200% next month, so can I have that raise now…Even if I probably have no chance in hell of achieving those goals ?? It’s the thought that counts, right boss ?? LOL
Don’t get too excited. Mitch McConnell has his foot on the brakes.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/11/09/senate-majority-leader-mitch-mcconnell-targets-obamacare-repeal/93559004/
‘But McConnell, who helped engineer enough Republican victories in close Senate races for him to keep his job as majority leader, also cautioned against GOP overreach once the party controls the executive and legislative branches of government come January.
“I don’t think we should act as if we going to be in the majority forever,” McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill. “We’ve been given a temporary lease on power if you will, and I think we need to use it responsibly.”’
[snip we don’t need this junk video here – Marcus, will you PLEASE STOP POSTING JUNK LIKE THIS?? I’m going to have to put you into the troll bin if you don’t. Anthony]
U.S. to push ahead on climate pact before Trump takes over: Kerry
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN138024?client=safari
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/12/exclusive-john-kerrys-state-department-funneled-millions-to-his-daughters-nonprofit/
John I read that and all I could come up with was they had really good teachers , the Clintons. The whole State department needs as big a shake up as the EPA, DOJ, DOE and the list goes on, What a swamp.
“The whole State department needs as big a shake up as the EPA, DOJ, DOE and the list goes on, What a swamp.”
Amen. Trump needs to ferret out all those Leftist Viet Cong, Obama and Clinton have planted in our bureaucracies over the years. They are still going to be there doing their damage, unless Trump takes mitigating actions, like moving them to an area where they can do no harm, if they cannot be fired outright.
No, all Trump has to do is use mild facial expressions and investment planning in the usual wrong direction will end right along with the fragile companies run by connected politicos. In other words the fear is already upon them and finances are frozen up. To think otherwise is extremely naive from a business planning perspective or finance or contracting or partnering. Tesla is toast but their investors don’t know it yet.
Okay differences between the cop21 Paris agreement and a treaty , and when a treaty is a treaty.
This is a treaty old out of date, but between 9 major Powers early in the last Century. Compare how it is written up and how it applies equally to all, with no special exemptions.
It is worth glancing at just to see what real treaty looks like that imposes limitations and reductions.
Oh yes it was ratified by our Senate for better or worst, the Washington Naval Treaty.
As for the present accord which we are discussing don’t even give it the fig leaf of legality inpresenting formal notifications.
Perhaps Mr Trumps best course of action would something as simple as this.
Just point out that the powers entertaining the creation of said agreement knew of our laws, and that we understand that they have tried to circumvent them. Knowing this we conclude that leaders of Nations that we have accepted as friends, have negotiated in bad faith.
michael
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pre-war/1922/nav_lim.html
And we might point out that the United Nations is not a superior court.
First week please
Perhaps Bon Ki Moon, Barak Hussein Obama and his lover John Kerry presumed the legal citizens of the U.S.A. would just “queue up” to the gas furnaces and fling the bodies in willy nilly But NO. Their most cherished dream is dead as it always was, only in their sociopath minds did it flourish.
Do not forget that there are other agreements that have been signed by the Obama Administration that will have to be amended or shelved. Notably, there is a bilateral agreement with China that commits the United States to reduce GHG emissions by 28% by 2025. That is the agreement under which China committed to “peak” its emissions before 2030. If this agreement were honoured, it would mean that, by 2030, Chinese emissions would be two and a half times those of the U.S., according to the International Energy Agency. I believe there is a similar agreement in place with India. The Trump agenda here can include several components: withdrawing from international agreements; terminating funding to the relevant U.N. agencies; stopping payments to the Green Climate Fund; ceasing the immense subsidies to wind, solar and electric vehicle industries; eliminating and/or ceasing to implement EPA regulations with respect to the use of coal in power plants; issuing Presidential Permits for cross-border oil pipelines; reforming EPA; and perhaps giving different instructions to NASA and NOAA. Making it abundantly clear that the U.S. will not impose a national carbon tax perhaps will help to convince other jurisdictions to avoid these, too. Those who favour extensive interventions to reduce emissions through taxes, subsidies and regulation have many allies in the state and municipal governments, so the battle for climate sanity will still go on. However, a Trump Administration can set this whole cause back by a decade, by which time the temperature record may have finally undone it anyway.
All in the same bucket. No Senate approval = can be rescinded by presidential signature. Our law is not kept secret from the rest of the world.
And then just ignoring them, appropriating no money to further those commitments.
“Happy days are here again,
The skies above are clear again,
So let’s sing a song of cheer again,
Our sanity is here again.”
Obama was unable/incapable of passing disasteous laws and treaties through the legeslative process, so he decided to use, “a pen and a phone” to enact 235 Executive Orders and various Executive “agreements” (like the Paris CAGW Fiasco), to “fundamentally transform America”…
The upside is that Trump just needs a pen and a paper shredder to make all those executive decisions disappear for all eternity…
Once Obamacare is repealed, and all those executive orders and agreements are shredded, it’ll almost be like Obama was never president— with the exception of the $10 TRILLION Obama added to the national debt in just 8 years…
As Obama said, “Elections have consequences.”
Yes, they most certainly do,
The moment that the US via Trump makes other NATO members pay their fair share of defense costs, all hell will break loose in Europe. They cannot afford it and don’t want to be left alone. Where to find the money? First thing will be to cut ‘climate costs’. Trump already gave them a perfect excuse for it: the US is no longer in the Paris Agreement. LOL
This will be So Great!
Never was in it to begin with. I wonder if this will UN-trigger the ‘in force’ clause?
“First thing will be to cut ‘climate costs’.”
You so don’t understand the EUSSR. They will steal the funds directly from people’s bank accounts – as they did in Cyprus – before they will deflect their policies of madness and despair by so much as a nanometer. They are mad, mad people.
“The only success I can attribute to Obama is the Ebola situation in Africa. That was handled well.”
Ummm… how about Osama Bin Laden being dead? And secondarily, the global financial crash of 08 not escalating into a global depression? Frankly, if those were the ONLY two things President Obama had done, he’d still get props from me. And I am not a fan, and think he’s dead wrong on the climate front.
But lets’s stop with this divisive politics-mongering, hey? I turn to this site for logic, reason, and healthy scientific debate–not bloviating about politics. The whole rest of the online universe is there for that.
Johna wrote: “Ummm… how about Osama Bin Laden being dead?”
Well, I guess I would give him that one, too. But bin Laden would have been dead no matter who was in Office, once he was found. Unless Joe Biden was president. I believe Joe advised against the raid.
Johna: “And secondarily, the global financial crash of 08 not escalating into a global depression?”
I wouldn’t give him anything on that. I can’t think of anything he did to help the situation other than bailing out the banks which would have happened with or without Obama. Other than that, everything Obama has done has harmed the economy, not helped it.
And BTW, the truth might be divisive sometimes. Should we avoid it because it is?
Lost track of the number of times Osama Oswald died or was ‘killed.’ Whatever the number, The Last Raid, his ‘deep sixing’.and the ‘disappearance’ of the raiders brought this Kabuki serial to a close and the Washington crowd to their feet. Gimmie a break.
If plant food can be designated as a pollutant, then could socialist values be designated as mental illness?
If this report by Michael Brown about college undergraduates is accurate, Trump’s win has left them seriously unhinged.
“A friend of mine in the business world told me that it’s common now for college and university grads to have trouble on their jobs, but not because they lack intelligence or the necessary academic training. Instead, it’s because they can’t take correction, having been shielded from it during much of their upbringing and education. “You may be my boss, but you’re making me feel bad, which makes you a bad person, since I’m a good person and therefore a good employee.”
I may be exaggerating the sentiments, but not by much.
In the end, the problem is not with an age group as much as it is with a mindset, and it is a mindset that simply doesn’t work in real life – unless you want to be playing with Play-Doh to ease your pain when you’re married with kids and grandkids.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2016/11/12/the-coddled-generation-that-wasnt-taught-to-grow-up-n2244704