An innocent young girl rises from her bed in a dry, barren wasteland and watches as an earthquake violently splits the land around her, while a tornado rips apart a metropolis far in the distance. A tidal wave rushes toward her, and she jumps to a tree branch with no time to spare, avoiding a horrific death. She awakens from her nightmare, screaming in fear, and then solemnly implores the viewer, “Please help the world.” This exploitative video from the environmental left shockingly debuted yesterday at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference and is likely the first of many assaults on the senses employed to gin up support for a global climate treaty that would lead to an even more apocalyptic end for the U.S. economy.
Those disaster-movie-style scare tactics are an act of desperation necessary to sway the public’s wavering opinion on the notion of man-made climate change, particularly in light of the Climategate scandal, which exposed the dirty dealings of global warming “experts” who evidently deleted, doctored and destroyed inconveniently true data that rendered their climate change theories bunk and not beyond question. But where public opinion can’t be manipulated with fear mongering and lies, political victory will be won with the brute force of federal regulation.
Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant under the Clean Air Act, granting itself authority for an enormous, unprecedented regulatory undertaking that would greatly expand the EPA’s power. Because 85 percent of the U.S. economy operates on fossil fuel, the EPA would essentially have the ability to regulate every aspect of life in America – and it would be able to enact draconian climate-change policies without any accountability to American voters.
The EPA’s actions are a regulatory end-run around a politically-unpopular Democratic Senate who may not be able – or willing – to deliver on cap-and-trade climate change legislation. A lack of a mandate from home might have been an embarrassment for President Barack Obama, who otherwise would have arrived next week at Copenhagen empty-handed, unable to tout climate change progress from back in the States. However, as The Wall Street Journal opines this morning:
President Obama isn’t about to let a trifle like democratic consent impede his climate agenda. With cap and trade blown apart in the Senate, the White House has chosen to impose taxes and regulation across the entire economy under clean-air laws that were written decades ago and were never meant to apply to carbon.
The un-democratic EPA ruling drew applause from the powers that be at Copenhagen, who saw the ruling for what it is – a despotic, unilateral decision designed to move a global environmental agenda forward, despite the lack of consent from the governed. An article on the Copenhagen Conference Web site declared, “US body aids Copenhagen conference,” and Yvo de Boer, the head of the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said, “This is very significant in the sense that if (…) the Senate fails to adopt legislation (on emissions), then the administration will have the authority to regulate.”
Senator John Kerry (D-MA), too, applauded the EPA’s power grab and cautioned that the agency’s actions should send a message to Congress that if they don’t act, the President will have the authority to act anyhow, so they better get on board the train before it leaves the station without them. Quoth Kerry:
The message to Congress is crystal clear: get moving. If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration is more than justified to use the EPA to impose new regulations.
Obama the czar-maker becomes the ultimate czar.
The Heritage Foundation is keeping a close eye on the Copenhagen Conference, and two of its experts, Ben Lieberman and Steve Groves, will be among a handful of conservatives on site for the proceedings. They have already authored several articles and videos on the conference, and they will be video blogging from Copenhagen. You can follow them at Heritage’s Copenhagen Consequences Web site.
Quick Hits:
- President Obama’s approval rating hit an all-time low of 47% on Monday, according to a Gallup poll. He enjoyed a brief post-Afghanistan war speech bump in approval, which has since evaporated.
- Columbus, OH, city schools used $145,000 in federal grants to rent marble-clad banquet halls and hotels for a three-day conference to train its teachers; apparently the school district’s 120 buildings weren’t suitable for the occasion.
- If one Obama usurpation of congressional power weren’t for one day enough, here’s another: the President is considering using $200 billion in leftover TARP funds for a new federal jobs program, rather than using the money to pay down the deficit.
- After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) declared that Republicans and Democrats must “start trusting each other,” he compared the GOP’s position on health care to those who opposed the end of slavery.
- Anti-government protests rocked Iran, as tens of thousands of students took to the streets calling “Death to the Dictator” and “Khamenei Knows His Time Is Up.” One student declared, “At the end, this government must go.”
