Having been bamboozled into passing a mere bill to thwart the Iran deal, rather than treating the agreement as a treaty, the Republican-controlled Congress is on the verge of being taken to the cleaners again. This time, President Obama is maneuvering to authorize U.S. participation in a United Nations climate change treaty through an executive agreement. The treaty is expected to come out of the December meeting in Paris of parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Rather than submit the agreement to the Senate as an Article II Treaty, it is anticipated that the Obama administration will simply accept the treaty on the basis of what it claims to be “existing” presidential authority.
The agreement could establish or propose legally binding limits on carbon emissions, crippling what’s left of our industrial economy, along with new legally binding financial commitments that could run into the trillions of dollars to be “redistributed” from the U.S. and other “rich” nations. Obama has told the U.N. that the United States will meet a pledge of 26 to 28 percent emissions reduction by 2025.
Eleven top Senate Republicans, led by Senator James Inhofe (OK), had asked for “robust and transparent communication between the Executive and Legislative branches, particularly with respect to the Senate and its Constitutional advise and consent responsibilities.” But such requests are typically treated with disdain by the administration, which is determined to get its way no matter what Congress believes.
In order to provide a basis of some kind for Obama to take this questionable approach, our media trumpeted the “news” that July 2015 was supposedly the warmest month on record for the earth dating back to January 1880—with humans the culprits, of course. The source of this sensational claim was the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
