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Obama’s Unlawful Climate Change Moves

The availability of energy is the key ingredient in the world’s economy.  Control it, and everything else falls into place.

This reality has been the essence of why there has such been such an intense drive on the part of those who have sought to push for more centralized control of the economy using the excuse of climate change as a rationale.

The obstacle in the path of the White House, which has ardently sought to “fundamentally change” America’s economy in part using global warming as an excuse (from essentially capitalist to something more akin to the democratic socialism of Europe) has been the lack of support by the public or the Congress.  A yougov poll found only 9.2% consider global warming as their biggest concern, and, notes the Daily Caller, a Fox News poll found only 3% of U.S. residents cite that issue as a top concern.

Pursuing a radical change in energy production is a tough sell, since it lacks public or Congressional support.  Even the courts have stepped in, blocking Mr. Obama’s unlawful attempt to impose power plant regulations.

Despite the Constitutional and legal obstacles, the Environmental Protection Agency, under the direction of the Obama White House, has engaged in numerous maneuvers to evade appropriate and mandatory procedures.  A December 2015 Government Accountability Office Report found, for example, that:

“The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated publicity or propaganda and anti-lobbying provisions contained in appropriations acts with its use of certain social media platforms in association with its “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rulemaking in fiscal years 2014 and 2015. Specifically, EPA violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition though its use of a platform known as Thunderclap that allows a single message to be shared across multiple Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts at the same time. EPA engaged in covert propaganda when the agency did not identify EPA’s role as the creator of the Thunderclap message to the target audience…EPA also violated anti-lobbying provisions though its hyperlinks to certain external Web pages in an EPA blog post. Both of the external Web pages led to appeals to the public to contact Congress in support of the WOTUS rule, which taken in context, constituted appeals to contact Congress in opposition to pending legislation. EPA associated itself with these messages through its decision to include the hyperlinks in its blog post.”

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The most significant attempt to impose alterations on the national economy based on climate change concerns has been the Paris Agreement. (For a review of the Paris accords, see the New York Analysis of Policy & Government article here) The far-reaching impact and enormous cost of its provisions clearly rise to the level of a major international treaty.  However, since treaties must be approved by the Senate, the White House has attempted to label the treaty as an “Agreement.”

Mr. Obama can choose to call the treaty any number of terms, but it does not exempt him from compliance with Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution. In accordance with the Constitution, the Senate has responsibility for advice and consent to ratification of treaties with other nations that have been negotiated and agreed to by the Executive Branch.

The President… shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur….”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute  notes:

“President Obama claims the recently adopted Paris Agreement on climate change is not a treaty but rather an executive agreement…Why is he doing this? Because if he were to follow the constitutional treaty-making process, and submit the agreement to the Senate for its advice and consent, the treaty would be dead on arrival.In fact, the Paris Agreement is a treaty. That is the only reasonable conclusion based on U.S. historic practice, the Agreement’s potential costs and risks, its prescriptiveness and ‘ambition’ compared to predecessor climate treaties, and international protocol, including recent instructions from the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat to the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Obama claims the Paris Agreement is not a treaty because America’s emission-reduction commitments under it are ‘non-binding.’ That is a non sequitur. Our emission-reduction commitments under the Senate-ratified UNFCCC are also non-binding, yet no one disputes that the UNFCCC is a treaty.”