The Senate Must Insist On An Early Vote On The Kyoto Treaty

(Washington, D.C.): These days, it is a commonplace that the Clinton-Gore Administration has
made an art form of the political practice of trying to have it both ways. Even so, the
Administration’s present, cynical contortions on the new Global Climate Change Treaty (GCCT)
are in a class all their own.

Flim-Flam

On the one hand, Messrs. Clinton and Gore would have us believe that the completion of the
Global Warming treaty was a signal accomplishment, a major step toward sparing the world
environmental catastrophe. In particular, Vice President Gore takes credit for having provided
the critical momentum during the negotiations’ endgame that produced this “historic” accord.⁽¹⁾

On the other hand, Messrs. Clinton and Gore tell the Senate that this treaty is not really a treaty
yet. They say that it will not be ready for that institution’s constitutionally- mandated advice and
consent for at least another year. In the meantime, Senators are being told to chill out.

The administration tries to square this circle by arguing that the GCCT is really good as far as it
goes. It just doesn’t go as far as the President and Vice President want — and as far as the Senate
demanded in a 95-0 vote last summer — in imposing economic and other hardships on developing
countries, as well as the developed ones. The party line is that all that will be sorted out at
another conference in Brazil next November (N.B. after the mid-term congressional elections),
trust us. In the meantime, there is no reason, the Clinton team contends, for action by the Senate;
the treaty will not bind the United States until the Senate acts and it is formally ratified.

The truth of the matter is that the administration has no choice but to try to postpone Senate
consideration of the Kyoto treaty: If Senators get their hands on this treaty in its present form, it
will be overwhelmingly rejected.

Why the Senate Must Act Promptly

There are, however, compelling reasons why that must occur — and why Clinton-Gore cannot be
allowed to stonewall the Senate so as to preclude early consideration of the GCCT. These
include the following:

• The Theory of Global Warming Must Not Be Legitimated: By definition, Al Gore’s
  treaty endorses the proposition that the planet is warming. And yet, there is no scientific
  consensus for such a conclusion. 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.

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 the cause is human consumption of fossil fuels. Even though these contentions are
unproven, they are endlessly repeated in the well-honed technique of the “Big Lie.”
Were the treaty to go unchallenged, there is little chance that an informed debate will
occur in the future about whether the hardship and dislocation this treaty will require of
the United States is justified.

• The U.S. Must Not Abet the Spawning of a New Layer of International Bureaucracies:
  Everything else being equal, the Clinton administration will be working over the next year with
  the other signatories to put into place new international bureaucracies intended to implement
  various controversial aspects of the Kyoto treaty. One of these will be responsible for
  dictating, monitoring and presumably enforcing the new energy control regime entailed in the
  GCCT. Another will be needed to perform a global SEC-type function with respect to the
  emissions trading scheme, which is expected to create out of whole cloth a multi-billion dollar
  commodity market.

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 a Washington Times report, the Kyoto accord
would also afford “UN bureaucrats some control over U.S. agriculture and forestry
policies.”

Decisions about who will be entrusted with all these powers — authority that
could, in the wrong hands, prove highly injurious to national wealth and standards
of living — will be made in the months before the Brazil conference.

• The U.S. Must Not Embrace a New ‘Industrial Policy’: 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.⁽²⁾ It also is rife with potential for abuse. Chances are that there will be even more
  politicization of the “science” of global warming as such funds wind up going primarily to
  those who subscribe to the party-line that the planet is heating up to a dangerous degree and
  man is the cause.

While Congress will have some say over the expenditure of these funds, it will be far
easier to contest wasteful and politically motivated initiatives if the pretext for them,
namely the Global Warming treaty, has been rejected.

• The U.S. Must Reject a Dangerous Precedent for U.S. Sovereignty and Security: Last
  but hardly least, the GCCT sets a totally unacceptable precedent that must be repudiated at
  once. According to the Washington Times, in order to get agreement on Al Gore’s treaty, the
  U.S. delegation was obliged to abandon “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.”

The Bottom Line

It is not enough that formal U.S. accession be deferred on a treaty that would so egregiously
subordinate America’s sovereignty and security. The Kyoto treaty must be categorically rejected
— on national security grounds alone, if not on the basis of all the foregoing considerations.

The Senate must do its job. And the Clinton-Gore administration must be compelled to let it do
so, should that prove necessary.

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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 ongoing financial meltdowns of economies throughout Asia that have pursued such
industrial policies are vivid reminders of the folly of this approach.