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Climate treaty deserves skepticism By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on Oct. 29, 2009, in the Connersville News-Examiner. An old friend of mine from my Air Force days sent me a message a few days back asking if I had heard anything about the proposed Copenhagen climate treaty. In fact, I was somewhat aware of the international treaty being drafted as a replacement for the failed Kyoto Protocol.
Monckton, who was a key figure in the legal challenge to keep Al Gore’s science fantasy “An Inconvenient Truth” out of British schools and has challenged Gore to debate global warming on numerous occasions, has spent recent weeks touring the United States and Canada warning of the dangers hidden in the proposed treaty. He claimed that the treaty would create a world government designed to end national sovereignty, restrict the economies of developed nations and require technology to be transferred to developing nations. I have heard the “one world government” and “new world order” theories many times from many sources, much of the time amounting to poorly-constructed conspiracy theories. While I believe it is true there are those among us who would like to establish a global government that would cut the United States down to size, I have my doubts as to how easily that could happen. Our world simply has too many disparate cultures with social and linguistic barriers that would significantly hinder the integration of all nations under one banner. Even with that in mind, I dug up a rough draft copy of the proposed treaty to see for myself. In its many pages, the treaty does call for an international regime to implement and oversee the provisions of the agreement. While many may see that as alarming, I found it was the other provisions that caused me greater concern — specifically, technology transfer. The treaty makes a clear distinction between developing and developed nations, calling for developed nations to be subject to deeper cuts in so-called greenhouse gas emissions. Developing nations — such as China and India, which are home to nearly half the world’s population — would not only get a reprieve from emissions cuts, they would be the beneficiaries of our technology. Treaty negotiators seem to be operating on the principle that granting advanced technology to developing nations would help those nations reach developed status sooner, bringing them into the emissions-cutting regime. This treaty would involve itself in the global marketplace in a very insidious way. With the United Nations determining that certain countries deserved technology grants while more prosperous nations are forced to go without, costs for certain products and services would rise as the developed nations find these items more difficult to produce under the new restrictions. But the treaty is dangerous on a more profound level. While the governments of many developing nations may gladly sign on to the agreement envisioning handouts from the West, their people may see this as something else — Western imperialism. Peoples who have spent decades if not centuries creating their own unique cultural identities may resent world powers telling them they have to give up their cheap cars, wood-burning stoves and console televisions because it’s meant to save the planet — and moreover, for their own good. In much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the more advanced cultures of the world attempted to colonize the less developed lands to create vast empires and ostensibly improve the lives of the people they sought to rule. Britain and France both acquired large holdings but never truly subdued the people, which eventually gave rise to rebellion and rejection of Western ways, such as can be seen in India, Pakistan, Vietnam and much of Africa. In the United States, boarding schools were established for Native American children in order to stamp out the millennia-old native culture and better integrate them into American society. Australia attempted something similar with the Aborigines, and now both nations are struggling to make amends. While the outward purpose of the treaty is aimed at combating climate change, its provisions may impact world affairs on a level a global climate change regime cannot handle. Global warming is hardly settled science. Mean temperatures have been dropping since 1998, and already this fall we have seen record cold temperatures and early first snowfalls across the nation. Yet, the global warming faithful attempt to spin the mounting evidence against man-made causes. We hear from the faithful we need to drastically reduce our standard of living because the cars we drive, the food we eat and even our Google searches are going to melt the prehistoric polar ice caps. On Oct. 23, the Associated Press reported that only 57 percent of Americans now believe in global warming, down 20 percentage points from 2006. As a result, the onerous cap-and-trade bill passed by the House earlier this year is foundering in the Senate, its passage very uncertain. The global warming debate may be far from over, but treaties designed to mitigate could be much more damaging. • Guilmette is managing editor of the News-Examiner. He may be contacted at mguilmette@newsexaminer.com. |
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Copyright © 2009, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
In his message, he said he searched the Internet to find material to refute the claims made by man-made global warming skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton, but his searches only raised his concerns about the plan.
