Al Gore’s Climate Treaty — Dead On Arrival

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday’s finale of the Kyoto Conference on Global Climate Change was
proof positive of the adage “You want it bad, you’ll get it bad.” Vice President Al Gore wanted a
treaty so badly that he directed the U.S. delegation not to come home without one. The result
was not just bad, it was appalling — so much so that it appears the treaty will be “dead on
arrival” in the U.S. Senate.

Such an outcome was predictable, and predicted, given the Veep’s public sabotaging of the
American position from the podium at Kyoto and the marathon negotiating sessions that action
precipitated.⁽¹⁾ It is almost inconceivable that anything palatable — to say nothing of something
good for you — can come of a broth produced by so many cooks working virtually around the
clock for three days running.

Based on the information available at this writing, however, the Kyoto Global Climate Change
Treaty (GCCT) would be a disaster for the United States. The following are among the reasons
why.

The Treaty Will Harm National Security

According to the Washington Times, among the concessions the United States made to create Al
Gore’s treaty entailed abandoning “its plan to exempt U.S. military training and overseas
operations from fuel cutbacks that would be needed for the United States to reach its
target.” The Times goes on to report that, “In the draft treaty, only overseas military actions
approved by the United Nations would remain exempt as would training and combat in
international waters.”⁽²⁾ (Emphasis added.)

If this arrangement fits all-too-well with the Clinton Administration’s enthusiasm for one-world
government, it nonetheless amounts to a stupefying subordination of national security and
sovereignty to the dictates of the UN.

Should the United States find itself obliged to fight wars in the future that have not been approved
by the UN and that are inconveniently located in other than international waters, it would appear
that America will either have to violate the treaty or accept even more draconian reductions in its
domestic energy consumption — with even greater adverse effect on the national economy. It is
hard to believe that the United States Senate would be prepared to go along with the imposition
of such a Hobsian choice on the American people.

The Treaty Will Impinge Upon Americans’ Individual Rights, National Sovereignty

In addition to allowing the UN to dictate which wars the United States can fight and — how
prepared it will be to fight them, Al Gore’s treaty will sacrifice American sovereignty and possibly
even the rights of U.S. citizens through a number of other measures.

For example, pursuant to this treaty, the United States as a whole would be required to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by 7% by 2012. Since the Federal Government is only responsible for a
tiny fraction of these emissions⁽³⁾, private citizens and enterprises will be obliged to make up the
overwhelming majority of the obligatory reductions.

It is unclear exactly how the Clinton Administration intends to compel such individuals and
companies to make their share of these reductions. If not by government edicts that deny them
the use, for instance, of minivans and sports utility vehicles or emissions-intensive manufacturing
techniques,⁽⁴⁾ then it will have to be accomplished through increased energy taxes. Whichever
approach is used, though, the question must be asked: How will penalties be apportioned if the
Nation as a whole fails to meet its mandatory reductions obligations? The answer, if also unclear,
surely translates into an infringement on Americans’ quality of life and economic freedoms — if
not their civil liberties, as well.

Al Gore’s treaty also imposes upon national decision-making the edicts of new international
bureaucracies being created to dictate, monitor and presumably enforce the new energy control
regime called for by the GCCT. The emissions trading scheme — which is expected to create
out of whole cloth a multi-billion dollar commodity market — will have to have some SEC-like
multilateral mechanism to regulate its operations. Who will be entrusted with such power —
power that could, in the wrong hands, prove highly injurious to national wealth and standards of
living?

The treaty also apparently calls for a new multilateral agency that will be responsible for defining
and orchestrating investment strategies concerning new greenhouse gas-reducing technologies.
According to the Washington Times report, it would also afford “UN bureaucrats some control
over U.S. agriculture and forestry policies. Is the United States Senate really ready to subject so
many national decisions to unaccountable international agencies?

The Treaty Will Involve Picking ‘Winners and Losers’

In addition to empowering an international organization with responsibility for directing
substantial American and other resources towards “green” technologies, the Clinton
Administration has indicated its determination to apply classic big-government “industrial
policy” techniques domestically in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through
technological advances. The billions of dollars earmarked for this purpose constitute a statist
approach to picking “winners and losers” — one that is rarely (if ever) as efficient or effective as
market forces.

What is more, as the recent Symposium on Global Warming conducted in New York City by the
William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy established,⁽⁵⁾ it also is rife with
potential for abuse:

“If anything, the ‘science’ of global warming will be even more politicized in the future
as the Clinton Administration and other governments dispense research dollars to
universities and other institutions nominally for the purpose of understanding climate
trends. There is a substantial risk of abuse, however, if such funds are sluiced primarily
to those who subscribe to the party-line on global warming.”

The Treaty Propounds a ‘Big Lie’

Perhaps as insidious as any of the individual liabilities of the Al Gore’s treaty is the fact that, by
definition, it legitimates the theory that the planet is warming. And yet, there is no scientific
consensus for such a conclusion.⁽⁶⁾ If anything, the evidence from the most accurate measuring
devices — earth-monitoring satellites and weather balloons — indicate that the earth has not
warmed appreciably over the past forty years, despite increases in greenhouse gas emissions.⁽⁷⁾

Yet, the public is being fed a steady diet of assertions to the effect that the planet is warming
catastrophically and that the scientific community agrees nearly unanimously that it is being
caused by human consumption of fossil fuels. Even though these contentions are unproven — and
their proponents demonstrate little willingness to debate the bases for them with knowledgeable
critics — they are endlessly repeated in the well-honed technique of the “Big Lie.“⁽⁸⁾

Just how much of a lie the Global Warming agenda entails was documented today by syndicated
columnist George Will. In a powerful essay entitled “More Government by Therapy” which
appeared in the Washington Post, Mr. Will cites a statement by made by some nine years ago by
Timothy Wirth, the Clinton Administration’s outgoing Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs
and a key architect of U.S. policy on the Kyoto treaty: “Even if the theory of global warming is
wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we
will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental
policy.” To which the columnist responds acerbically, “Which is why global warming and global
cooling hypotheses have been fungible as rationales for arguing that government must revise
American consumption and industrial practices.”

The Bottom Line

The costs associated with Al Gore’s treaty — in terms of national security, individual rights and
national sovereignty, and the health of the American economy — are wholly unjustified by the
scientific evidence available at present. In the absence of a compelling scientific case, it
would be recklessly irresponsible for the United States to be bound by such a treaty and it
seems exceedingly unlikely that the Senate will agree to its ratification.

Knowing that, the Clinton Administration has signaled that it does not intend to submit the GCCT
until after the November 1998 meeting in Brazil at which further discussions about restricting
greenhouse gas emissions in developing nations are supposed to occur. (Surely it is coincidental
that this timing also means that it would be deferred until after the 1998 mid-term U.S. elections
where it could prove a serious liability to Democratic candidates!)

Such a prospect gives fresh urgency to a danger highlighted in the course of the Casey Institute
Symposium:

“Several participants expressed concern…that the President might try to finesse
the Senate, denying it the role of check-and-balance on executive action
contemplated by the Framers. As one put it: ‘…The proposals [President Clinton]
made last month can largely be implemented by executive actions without submitting a
treaty for ratification. For instance, the President can raise fuel efficiency standards by
executive order. Other parts of his package will require only piecemeal congressional
approval.'”

It is, therefore, enormously important that Senator Larry Craig of Idaho — an influential
member of the Republican caucus and former chairman of its Steering Committee — declared
yesterday that: “We’re going to ask the President and the Vice President to…bring [the
Kyoto treaty] to the Senate very, very promptly….” The stakes are sufficiently great that if
the Administration does not voluntarily agree to this request, it must be compelled to do so.

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1. See the Casey Institute’s Perspective entitled Watch Your Wallet: Al Gore’s ‘Flexibility’
Bodes Ill For U.S. Interests At Kyoto — And Beyond (No. 97-C 189, 8 December 1997)

2. The reported language also raises the question as to whether a country can emit as much
greenhouse gas it wishes in the course of “training and combat in international waters” (and,
presumably, international airspace)? Such a proposition seems unlikely to pass muster with the
environmental zealots whose antipathy toward the U.S. military rivals their hostility toward the
modern economies that produce greenhouse gases. It must be asked, moreover, what would the
implications of this treaty be for the readiness of those American armed forces whose missions
are, of necessity, ground-based or that involve ground-attack or air superiority over contested real
estate?

3. As noted in a Casey Institute Perspective entitled Effects of Clinton’s Global Warming
Treaty on U.S. Security Gives New Meaning to the Term ‘Environmental Impact’ (No. 97-C
149, 6 October 1997), a recent Defense Department analysis found that the Federal Government
consumes 1.4% of the Nation’s fossil fuels. 73% of that amount is consumed by the Pentagon,
with fully 58% of that total being utilized by the combat arms.

4. The deferral to at least November 1996 of any corresponding constraints upon developing
nations — one of the most wildly controversial concessions made by the U.S. delegation in order
to achieve the treaty demanded by Vice President Gore — ensures that at least some such
manufacturing concerns will relocate from the United States to countries unburdened by
greenhouse emissions constraints. Naturally, this will only compound the other, unwarranted
economic costs of the GCCT.

5. See Casey Institute Symposium on Global Warming Suggests Case For — And Costs Of —
Kyoto Treaty Are Unsustainable (No. 97-R 188, 5 December 1997).

6. A participant in the Casey Institute Symposium on Global Warming reported that:

“The myth that scientists have reached a consensus was largely created by a joint letter
circulated by an environmental pressure group, Ozone Action. Over twenty-six
hundred alleged scientific experts on global warming have signed this letter. It is
quoted and referred to endlessly as putting an end to the debate. Citizens for a Sound
Economy recently… concluded that fewer than ten percent had any expertise at all in
any scientific discipline related to climate science.”

7. As one participant in the Casey Institute Symposium observed: “The satellite data — which are
the only good global data we have — actually show a cooling of the climate in the last 20 years,
which completely contradicts the theory and computer models. So the basic question really is
‘Who should we believe? Should we believe in observations or should we believe in computer
models? That becomes a matter of personal choice and philosophy. I will tell you that I believe in
observations.”

8. Adolf Hitler coined this term when, on the eve of his staging a “Polish” attack on Germany that
would serve as the pretext for his invasion of Poland, he declared: “The great masses of the
people…will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one.”