FrankRep
09-14-2009, 12:13 PM
Obama's Climate Czar Calls for Environmental "Board of Directors" (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5355-obamas-climate-czar-calls-for-environmental-qboard-of-directorsq)
James Heiser | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
14 September 2009
Given the propensity of President Obama’s growing legion of czars to generate gaffs and scandals on an almost daily basis, it is getting harder to be shocked, or even surprised, by the ongoing eruptions of wackiness from the White House. It took roughly three centuries for the czars of Russia to reach the point where Grigori Rasputin could call the shots around the palace of Czar Nicholas II; now it appears to this writer that the script has been flipped: we have at least a dozen and half czars rattling around looking for ways to build on ol’ Grigori’s record of making the man who is ostensibly in charge look ridiculous, as incredulous Americans ask: “Where did Obama find these people?”
Consider today’s example: Todd Stern, the State Department’s climate czar. According to the Media Research Center’s Cybercast News Service (http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=53599):
Todd Stern, now the State Department’s special envoy for climate change, once pushed for the creation of an annual “E8” summit to address environmental issues.
As the administration’s point man [on] climate issues, Stern represents the United States in international environmental negotiations. One of his biggest upcoming negotiations will be the annual United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which will take place in Copenhagen this December.
As CNSNews reported in April (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/47042), delegates to the Copenhagen conference will be negotiating a new global climate change treaty. Stern, a veteran of the Clinton administration, was also the U.S. negotiator at the conference in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 that generated the Kyoto Protocol, which first called for “stabilizing” greenhouse gas emissions.
Stern proposed the formation of the environment-focused E8 — modeled after the “Group of 8” (G8) group of major industrialized democracies — in January of 2007.
As reported previously (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/1815), the upcoming Copenhagen conference is quickly shaping up to be a major offensive by globalists and environmental extremists to reshape the world according to the whims of their ideological delusions. With UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon shrilling warning that we are “heading toward an abyss” and Michael Zammit Cutajar, chairman of the working group drafting the Copenhagen climate pact, saying the document will be so long “no one will read the whole thing," even as he calls on “the big political bosses to tell their guys to 'start moving'," the man who will purportedly speak for the United States at the conference is definitely already “in motion.”
According to CNSNews, Stern made it pretty clear several years ago that he thinks environmental matters are far too important to be left to national governments:
According to Stern, the new E8 would hold annual summits attended by the leaders of the member-states, just like those held by the G8. This would create, in Stern’s words, “an ecological board of directors able to operate outside the bureaucracy and politics of large UN conventions.”
The future climate czar also emphasized the need to put major environmental decisions in the hands of a small group of people rather than a gathering of all nations.
“Just as you can’t run a company through plenary meetings of the shareholders,” he wrote, “you can’t manage crucial global issues that way either."
In fact, perusing Stern’s article (http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2007/01energy_stern.aspx) one finds that the radicalism of the climate czar’s proposed E8 is such that its power would outstrip that of other institutions which are already alarmingly intrusive in the lives of people around the world:
In short, the proposed E8 would be the ‘power behind all the thrones’; whether inside or outside of existing environmental conventions, it would be setting the terms of debate, sort of like a band of Ecological Rosicrucians. All of the pesky problems of allowing national governments — which are arguably accountable to their citizenry — to be meaningfully engaged in environmental decisions would simply be swept aside.
Near the end of the E8 manifesto, Stern and his co-author declare:
There are more benign scenarios, as well as scenarios positing rapid catastrophic change. The key is uncertainty; there is a real but unknowable prospect of serious threat. That alone is warrant for vigorous action, at the very least in the form of prudent contingency planning. Responsible military leaders don't ignore significant risks, even if they are improbable ones; they take anticipatory action to confront and contain them. We as a global community need to do the same thing when it comes to significant environmental risks, and an E8 will enable us to do precisely that.
“Vigorous action” in response to “improbable” scenarios? That’s a formula for disaster. It means, in other words, “we don’t know what is going to happen, therefore we need the power to act as extremely as a small band of men believe is necessary.” The analogy given to how one might respond to a supposed “improbable” military threat makes the Bush doctrine look measured and rational. Could a Stern military doctrine be described as “Nuke first, ask questions later”?
The build-up to Copenhagen promises lots of hot air from an ecological loony fringe which is no longer as funny as it used to be. A bunch of goofballs in zodiacs harassing fishing vessels or living in trees didn’t threaten the global economy. Stern’s vision presents yet another end run around national sovereignty as it seeks to place the power to manipulate the lives of billions of people in the hand of a cabal of the ecologically-illuminated.
Rt. Rev. James Heiser has served as Pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas, while maintaining his responsibilities as publisher of Repristination Press, which he established in 1993 to publish academic and popular theological books to serve the Lutheran Church. Heiser has also served since 2005 as the Dean of Missions for The Augustana Ministerium and in 2006 was called to serve as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). An advocate of manned space exploration, Heiser serves on the Steering Committee of the Mars Society. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius' Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5355-obamas-climate-czar-calls-for-environmental-qboard-of-directorsq
James Heiser | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
14 September 2009
Given the propensity of President Obama’s growing legion of czars to generate gaffs and scandals on an almost daily basis, it is getting harder to be shocked, or even surprised, by the ongoing eruptions of wackiness from the White House. It took roughly three centuries for the czars of Russia to reach the point where Grigori Rasputin could call the shots around the palace of Czar Nicholas II; now it appears to this writer that the script has been flipped: we have at least a dozen and half czars rattling around looking for ways to build on ol’ Grigori’s record of making the man who is ostensibly in charge look ridiculous, as incredulous Americans ask: “Where did Obama find these people?”
Consider today’s example: Todd Stern, the State Department’s climate czar. According to the Media Research Center’s Cybercast News Service (http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=53599):
Todd Stern, now the State Department’s special envoy for climate change, once pushed for the creation of an annual “E8” summit to address environmental issues.
As the administration’s point man [on] climate issues, Stern represents the United States in international environmental negotiations. One of his biggest upcoming negotiations will be the annual United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which will take place in Copenhagen this December.
As CNSNews reported in April (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/47042), delegates to the Copenhagen conference will be negotiating a new global climate change treaty. Stern, a veteran of the Clinton administration, was also the U.S. negotiator at the conference in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 that generated the Kyoto Protocol, which first called for “stabilizing” greenhouse gas emissions.
Stern proposed the formation of the environment-focused E8 — modeled after the “Group of 8” (G8) group of major industrialized democracies — in January of 2007.
As reported previously (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/1815), the upcoming Copenhagen conference is quickly shaping up to be a major offensive by globalists and environmental extremists to reshape the world according to the whims of their ideological delusions. With UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon shrilling warning that we are “heading toward an abyss” and Michael Zammit Cutajar, chairman of the working group drafting the Copenhagen climate pact, saying the document will be so long “no one will read the whole thing," even as he calls on “the big political bosses to tell their guys to 'start moving'," the man who will purportedly speak for the United States at the conference is definitely already “in motion.”
According to CNSNews, Stern made it pretty clear several years ago that he thinks environmental matters are far too important to be left to national governments:
According to Stern, the new E8 would hold annual summits attended by the leaders of the member-states, just like those held by the G8. This would create, in Stern’s words, “an ecological board of directors able to operate outside the bureaucracy and politics of large UN conventions.”
The future climate czar also emphasized the need to put major environmental decisions in the hands of a small group of people rather than a gathering of all nations.
“Just as you can’t run a company through plenary meetings of the shareholders,” he wrote, “you can’t manage crucial global issues that way either."
In fact, perusing Stern’s article (http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2007/01energy_stern.aspx) one finds that the radicalism of the climate czar’s proposed E8 is such that its power would outstrip that of other institutions which are already alarmingly intrusive in the lives of people around the world:
In short, the proposed E8 would be the ‘power behind all the thrones’; whether inside or outside of existing environmental conventions, it would be setting the terms of debate, sort of like a band of Ecological Rosicrucians. All of the pesky problems of allowing national governments — which are arguably accountable to their citizenry — to be meaningfully engaged in environmental decisions would simply be swept aside.
Near the end of the E8 manifesto, Stern and his co-author declare:
There are more benign scenarios, as well as scenarios positing rapid catastrophic change. The key is uncertainty; there is a real but unknowable prospect of serious threat. That alone is warrant for vigorous action, at the very least in the form of prudent contingency planning. Responsible military leaders don't ignore significant risks, even if they are improbable ones; they take anticipatory action to confront and contain them. We as a global community need to do the same thing when it comes to significant environmental risks, and an E8 will enable us to do precisely that.
“Vigorous action” in response to “improbable” scenarios? That’s a formula for disaster. It means, in other words, “we don’t know what is going to happen, therefore we need the power to act as extremely as a small band of men believe is necessary.” The analogy given to how one might respond to a supposed “improbable” military threat makes the Bush doctrine look measured and rational. Could a Stern military doctrine be described as “Nuke first, ask questions later”?
The build-up to Copenhagen promises lots of hot air from an ecological loony fringe which is no longer as funny as it used to be. A bunch of goofballs in zodiacs harassing fishing vessels or living in trees didn’t threaten the global economy. Stern’s vision presents yet another end run around national sovereignty as it seeks to place the power to manipulate the lives of billions of people in the hand of a cabal of the ecologically-illuminated.
Rt. Rev. James Heiser has served as Pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas, while maintaining his responsibilities as publisher of Repristination Press, which he established in 1993 to publish academic and popular theological books to serve the Lutheran Church. Heiser has also served since 2005 as the Dean of Missions for The Augustana Ministerium and in 2006 was called to serve as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). An advocate of manned space exploration, Heiser serves on the Steering Committee of the Mars Society. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius' Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5355-obamas-climate-czar-calls-for-environmental-qboard-of-directorsq