AIP column: The cap-and-trade 3-card Monty

HondaV65 on October 16, 2009 at 5:41 PM

I agree without reservations. I regard any such act as a ‘deal breaker’ with all the consequences that will follow.

Let me add this, a comment left by Monckton of Brenchley on the WUWT thread concerning this article.

I’ll let him speak for himself:

I am most grateful to Anthony Watts for having had the courage to reproduce the closing words of my recent speech to 1000 kind citizens of Minnesota, and to the many commentators whose discussion of the constitutional implications of the draft Treaty of Copenhagen has been illuminating. I had not intended to give offence by in any way exaggerating either the content or the import of the draft Treaty, which I hope my critics will read with care. The draft envisions “government” as the first purpose of the vast and many-tentacled institutional framework that is to be established; redistribution of wealth by way of reparation in respect of “climate debt” as the second purpose; and enforcement as the third purpose.

It is important to understand that the magnitude of what is proposed goes well beyond any pre-existing international treaty. The new entity will not be a mere bureaucracy like the UN: it will be a “government”, with multiple direct rights of intervention in the economic and environmental affairs of all those states parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that are unwise enough to accede to it.

I have had some experience in the drafting and negotiating of international treaties. This one, as at present drafted, is exceptional. Whether it is ratified by a two-thirds majority in the Senate (which I think unlikely), or enacted into domestic law by a simple majority of both Houses (in which event, at least, it is in principle repealable), it will – for the first time – give an external entity the direct and widespread right to intervene in the conduct of the US economy and the management of the US environment, on an unprecedented scale and to an unprecedented degree.

Finally, I note that several commentators have taken me to task for deigning to reply to a questioner who asked whether a Copenhagen Treaty signed by President Obama would remain valid if he were later discovered not to have been born in the United States. I replied – surely sensibly enough – that I knew of one judge who was not sure about the President’s place of birth, but that – even if he were not entitled to sign the Treaty (a question on which I expressed no view, for it is not a matter for me) if the Treaty had been ratified by the Senate or otherwise enacted into domestic law it might still be unimpugnable.

Precisely because the ambit[ion] and scope of the Treaty is so very wide, and precisely because its terms would take precedence over the terms of your Constitution (as Article VI, combined with the Vienna Convention on International Treaties, makes clear), Anthony Watts was quite right to make the current draft available to his readers, and also to pick up my recent speech pointing out its dangers to your democratic and independent way of life. I am most grateful to him for drawing this matter to the attention of his rapidly-growing worldwide audience. – Monckton of Brenchley

CPT. Charles on October 16, 2009 at 11:40 PM