Kyoto: the consequences

If the cost of the Kyoto Protocol were nothing more than an increase of $1 per gallon at the gas pumps, and an increase of 75 to 80 percent in household electric bills, America could adjust and eventually assimilate the financial impact. But as the President and environmental gurus like to say, this is simply the first step. Of course, they say it is the first step to solving the global warming problem. It is not. The Protocol does not limit emissions in the developing countries. China will rapidly surpass America's emissions early in the next century. Greenhouse gas emissions will not be slowed by the Protocol; they will simply be shifted from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere.

So will America's jobs, industry, and wealth. The first-step Protocol is designed to start a series of five-year "budget periods" for which the Conference of the Parties is empowered to adjust the emissions limits on developed countries. By limiting America's emissions, the UN effectively limits our energy use. By embracing this Protocol, America is willingly giving up its authority to set its own energy policy. The Gore/Clinton Administration has embraced the Protocol and has the audacity to claim that it is not a surrender of national sovereignty.

Everyone else recognizes the surrender of national sovereignty. Tony Juniper, a spokesman for Greenpeace International was asked specifically how Americans would react to the surrender of national sovereignty required by the Kyoto Protocol. He said most Americans want a strong Protocol and are not concerned about national sovereignty. He noted that we had willingly surrendered national sovereignty by ratifying the World Trade Organization (WTO), the CITES Convention (endangered species), and dozens of other treaties.

The Right Honorable John Gummer, a member of the British Parliament, former Minister of the Environment in Britain's conservative government, and now a delegate to the Conference of the Parties representing the European Union, was asked what his take was on the sovereignty issue. He said: "I've got no take; it's just rubbish. Don't talk to me about America's sovereignty. Your pollution is infringing my sovereignty. This is not America's world. It's our world. America's sovereignty is of no account!"

Jessica Mathews, a close Gore advisor, also recognizes that the Kyoto Protocol will cost another "little chunk" of national sovereignty, but, she says, it is necessary. Michael Jefferson, Secretary of the World Energy Council, says national sovereignty is not as important as international cooperation to solve the world's problems. Moreover, he said that those who are trying to expose the science on this issue are contributing to the downfall of America because technology will bypass America, making U.S. business obsolete.
This is the prevailing attitude throughout Europe, Asia and Japan, and the rest of the world. It is obviously the attitude of the Gore/Clinton Administration as well.

Another consequence of the Kyoto Protocol that is nearly as bad as the surrender of national sovereignty is the deliberate corruption of the scientific process. Science, more than any other institution, should be dedicated to finding the truth. The environmental movement has spawned a new branch of "advocacy science," not dedicated to finding the truth, but dedicated to producing scientific-sounding scenarios to justify behavior modification schemes advanced by the enlightened elite. Nowhere is advocacy science more rampant than in global warming circles.

In a widely quoted Discover magazine article, Stephen Schneider, who just 20 years ago was a prophet of global cooling, now a global warming zealot, tells his colleagues that we must offer up scary scenarios, keep quiet about any doubts that we may have, and each scientist must decide between truth and effectiveness. The Union of "Confused" Scientists, and the Society of Conservation Biologists are at the forefront of advocacy science, not searching for scientific truth, but attempting to provide the appearance of scientific justification for a social modification agenda.

The consequences of the Kyoto Protocol include another giant step toward global governance. The international bureaucracy being constructed by the UN is reaching its tentacles into every facet of American life - hiding behind the scary scenario of planetary impoverishment. Society is being transformed incrementally to conform to the vision of Al Gore's 1992 declaration that societies must be restructured around the central organizing principle of protecting the environment. His book, Earth in the Balance, also called for a globally coordinated plan to completely eliminate the internal combustion engine in 20 to 25 years. The Kyoto Protocol - with its plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels - is, in fact, a globally coordinated plan to eliminate internal combustion engines. It doesn't matter that there is no technology available to replace them. The radical-deep-ecologists believe that they can have government mandate technological change that is "sustainable," by their definition, and if not, people ought to be walking more and riding bicycles anyway.

The consequences of the Kyoto Protocol is a first step for America, not toward the solution of a global warming problem - which does not exist - but a major first step toward a new kind of world. In Gore's new world, bugs and biodiversity are far more important than people; and global governance is far more important than national sovereignty.