UN Again

No matter how hard I ignore them, it seems that the environmentalists and their precious Kyoto Treaty and its successor, the Copenhagen Accord, just won’t go away! Now it appears that the
United Nations is pushing even harder with a new "climate change" plan that envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes. … all under the supervision of that august world body naturally. Those and other results are discussed in a United Nations "information note" on the possible consequences of the measures industrialized nations will have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord (Kyoto Treaty, part 2), after it’s negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming. Yet nobody seems to agree on whether “Global Warming” or “Global Cooling” exists at all, to what degree it may exist, or to possible causes. Adding to the confusion, science has found that all the planets in our solar system are warming to some degree, and the Sun’s magnetic field seems to be doing some strange things as well! I might suggest that Mr. Obama’s government back off in making changes in our nation until we see just what actually is happening, or even if we could really do anything about it!

The UN note is to be distributed at the negotiating session that started on March 29 in Bonn, Germany. This is one of three sessions intended to decide the national commitments involved in this new arrangement. In language that is normal for important U.N. sessions, the negotiators are known as the "Ad Hoc Working Group On Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol." (Even the “spell and grammar check” mode of my computer chokes on that one!) The consequences of their “negotiations” could be nothing less than world-changing, with catastrophic results for the United States population! Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to bother our new regime in the mad dash toward globalism. At present, closing the deal has become the United Nations' highest priority, and the Bonn meeting is a critical step on that path to what the U.N. claims is an "ambitious and effective international response to climate change," The U. N.s goals can be seen at http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/032709_informationnote.pdf . The paper offers little detail about the positive and negative consequences to the industrial nations will most enforce the greenhouse gas reduction targets. Nor does it make any effort to calculate the costs and disruption involved, but makes it very clear that they will impact the entire global economy.

Among the considerations are “the cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions that has been espoused by the Obama administration; "carbon taxes" on imported fuels and energy-intensive goods and industries, including airline transportation; and lower subsidies for those same goods, as well as new or higher subsidies for goods that are considered "environmentally sound." Other considerations are vaguely referred to, including "energy policy reform," which could affect "large-scale transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports." The note claims that such reform could have "positive consequences for alternative transportation providers and producers of alternative fuels." While that could be good news for some people, it’s going to be rough on the folks that work in the oil industry. Actually it’s going to be rough on all of us to one extent or another. “Cap and Trade”, or perhaps more properly called “Cap and Tax” is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth, in a very strange way. It takes from working folks and gives to the rich, just the opposite of what Mr. Obama told us during his campaign. It takes from an industrial America that is already struggling, and gives to rich Wall Street “green” investors who know how to pull political strings. How does that happen? With much higher taxes on energy usage, and on fossil fuels, both imported and domestic. MIT researchers have released their “Assessment of U.S. Cap-and-Trade Proposals,” which shows that the increase would be more than $3,000 a year for each American household. You can also expect to see much of those taxes being turned over to the UN. The note adds that "If they were implemented fairly, such schemes would leave trade and investment patterns unchanged." Nothing is said of course about how such fairness is to be achieved, nor of the consequences if it’s not. The impact, the note states, "would be functionally equivalent to an increased tariff: decreased market share for covered foreign producers."

The UN note informs negotiators that cap-and-trade schemes "may induce some industrial relocation" to "less regulated host countries." While the system urges manufacturers toward less polluting technologies, many of them will simply move to another country that doesn’t have stringent pollution regulations. The note adds that such relocation "would involve negative consequences for the implementing country, which loses employment and investment." But also "would involve indeterminate consequences for the countries that would host the relocated industries." Humm… sounds somewhat like the UN is planning to move your job to Africa, with or without you.

What does this mean for the United States? Pretty much an economic disaster I’m afraid, on top of the one we’re already dealing with! That doesn’t bother the environmentalists who are working so hard towards this “realignment”, it doesn’t seem to bother the democratic regime presently in power, and it certainly doesn’t bother the third world nations who can only profit from all this “change”. In addition to greatly increased taxes, we can expect to see skyrocketing prices for everything energy related or energy dependant. That includes just about everything in our technological world of today. Well… I always wondered about living in a semi-primitive world. The Ladies can look forward to cooking on wood stoves, and using washboards and flat-irons, while the guys can figure on plowing the fields and skidding firewood with a team of horses. Considering that home made candles really don’t produce all that much light, and that kerosene will be outrageously expensive, I guess we can plan on going to bed early as well. A Sunday drive will mean horse and buggy, with ten dollar a gallon gasoline being to expensive to waste in any but emergency conditions.

In a nutshell, the UN plan that Mr. Obama so strongly supports is to force the world’s industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. While this may or may not be a good idea, it will effectively wreck those countries economy and standard of living as industry packs up and goes elsewhere. Just what, pray tell, will the United States do when we find ourselves inundated with another hundred million or so suddenly unemployed citizens!? I’m afraid it’s merely another step to the socialist “nanny state” that the far left is steadily pushing us towards.