From 1750 AD? UN Calculates 300-year “Climate Debt” for United States

The New American – by William F. Jasper

Just in case you missed it, the kleptocrats who populate the United Nations have big “climate justice” plans for you. On February 13, as you were preparing for a Valentine’s Day date with your sweetheart or getting ready for the Presidents’ Day weekend, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Geneva, Switzerland, released its long-awaited “negotiation text.” That is the agreement that will take center stage in Paris at the UN’s global climate summit of world leaders during November and December.  

Completely unreported in the world’s “mainstream” press coverage of the release is this astonishing development: The would-be Global-warming Police at the United Nations have pulled off a time-warp coup in their newly issued climate agreement text that tops even many of their other better-known loony, dangerous, and destructive proposals. The militant neo-Luddites at the UNFCCC have pulled an incredible switcheroo in the timetable of their “historic” text. Hidden away on page 85 of the 86-page document, we find this gem:

In reviewing and revising Annex I to the Convention, the total amount of greenhouse gases, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent, emitted by a Party to the Convention since 1750 A.D. shall be added and divided by the current population of that Party. Based on the thus obtained per capita greenhouse gas emissions and population size of each Party to the Convention, the average global per capita emissions of greenhouse gases shall be used to evaluate the status of the greenhouse gas emissions of a Party to the Convention.

Hmm. The text continues: “Each Party to the Convention whose per capita greenhouse gas emissions exceed the global average per capita greenhouse gas emissions” shall be listed as an “Annex I” nation, which means its citizens will be assigned a 300-year “carbon debt” for the period 1750-2050. And called on to pay it.  We’re not talking mere hundreds of billions of dollars here. As we have reported previously, various UN proposals have demanded tens of trillions of dollars as “climate reparations.”

1750 A.D.? “Where did that come from?” you ask. “We’re accustomed to ludicrousness from the UN, but isn’t this a new level of asininity?” Well, yes and no. The Kyoto Protocol and all other previous climate agreements have used 1990 as the starting year for calculating reductions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). To be sure, the 1990 start date is itself very arbitrary and meaningless, especially since, as numerous eminent scientists have explained, in the total calculus of all things affecting the climate on our planet, manmade GHGs amount to little more than a butterfly sneeze in a hurricane. But why 1750? Why go back more than 250 years and choose a date that even precedes the famous attack of 1779, in which the eponymous weaver Ned Ludd smashed some knitting frames, thus establishing his folkloric status as the anti-technology hero.

The significance of the insertion of  “1750 A.D.” may not be readily apparent to most Americans, but you can be sure that the radical activists inside the UN and the militant environmental NGOs are, no doubt, glee-struck over this triumph. Why? Well, for a number of years now, the really radical voices in the anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) alarmist choir have been saying that we must calculate the rise in CO₂ and GHGs from pre-industrial times, from 1750. (James Hansen, the militant greenie who ran the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies from 1981 to 2013 as if it were his private AGW alarmist podium, is one of the more famous proponents of this thesis.) You see, “Annex I Parties” refers to the evil developed countries — most especially the United States, but also Canada, Japan, most of Europe, Australia — that have produced most of the CO₂/GHGs since 1750. Ergo, the Annex I Partiesowe a huge “carbon debt” to the rest of the world (Annex II Parties), and must pony up hundreds of billions (many UN proposals call for trillions) of dollars for “climate justice,” “climate equity,” “climate adaptation,” “climate mitigation,” etc. (See here and here.)

Evil Evo’s “Cochabamba” Contribution
The  addition of “1750 A.D.” to the UN negotiating text came about courtesy of the Marxist regime of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, a close comrade of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and an ardent admirer of Communist China’s founder/mass-murderer Mao Tse-tung. In April 2010, Comrade Morales convened the “World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth” in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which drew thousands of true believer Red-Green activists from across the planet. The outcome of that confab, the “Cochabamba Statement,” calls for “the equitable allocation [of] atmospheric space between developed countries and developing countries during the period 1750 to 2050 based on the principles of equity and historical responsibility, and the needs of developing countries in order to achieve their economic and social development and poverty.”

Like the Cochabamba Statement, the UN’s latest negotiating text states (repeatedly) that the new global “decarbonization” program will be carried out “in accordance with common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”

Which is, simply, the UN’s way of channeling Karl Marx’s famous dictum, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” into global policy for effecting the confiscation and transfer of gigantic portions of the planet’s wealth.

But we’ve barely started; there’s much, much more. Also virtually unreported is this little nugget from page 80 of the negotiating text, which says that the agreement: “Establishes the International Climate Justice Tribunal in order to oversee, control and sanction the fulfillment of and compliance with obligations of Annex I and Annex II Parties under this agreement and Convention.” A global Climate Justice Tribunal! This too, is a gift from Evo Morales’ Cochabamba palaver. Any guesses as to who might be appointed to wear the black (or green) robes on its bench? Al Gore, James Hansen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand?

Then there’s this, also from page 80: “In order to ensure compliance for developed countries and facilitate developing countries in their implementation,” a Compliance Committee will be created. And, the text informs us, “The Compliance Committee shall have two branches, namely an enforcement branch and a facilitative branch.”

Well, at least the kleptocrats, dictators, and mass-murderers that populate the UN are not overstepping their expertise; they do, after all, know a thing or two about abusing power for enforcement, facilitation, control, sanction, and compliance in the name of “justice” and “equity.”

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/20160-from-1750-ad-un-calculates-300-year-climate-debt-for-u-s