July 17, 2017
by Anne Schlafly Cori, Chairman of Eagle Forum
The “climate change” agenda pushed by the United Nations is clearly an attack on American workers and jobs and our American standard of living. The Paris Accord is not in American economic interests, plus nothing in that Accord will matter to planet Earth.
President Trump has kept his campaign promise to remove the United States from the United Nations’ Paris Accord. Stopping the U.N. mischief was a high priority for our beloved founder Phyllis Schlafly — so much so that she appointed a chairman to attend nearly every U.N. climate change meeting since 1997 to report to our activists and lead our efforts to oppose the damaging globalist agenda.
The “climate change” treaty was first hatched in 1992 at a U.N. meeting in Rio de Janeiro. In attendance was former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry, who met his future wife during that meeting. With his wife’s funding help, Kerry then began to network with schools and universities to push radical environmental ideas into American education. Secretary Kerry worked especially hard throughout the 2015 U.N. meeting in Paris to subject America to an environmental agenda that centers on the hubris that man somehow has the “power” to change the climate.
The goal of the U.N. Accord is to create a legal framework to avoid “human-caused” global warming, even though the earth has not warmed over the past 19 years. In Kyoto, nations agreed to reduce greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide) by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012, but the United States rightfully never ratified that treaty. The Paris Accord would up the ante to a 32 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030. Their unattainable goal is to try to eliminate the use of all fossil fuels by 2050. Green or renewable energy sources are all less efficient and more expensive than using fossil fuels. The U.S. is now and always will be a fossil fuel-based society.
Today, coal and natural gas generate two-thirds of the electricity used in the United States. Coal generates 7,745-megawatt hours of electricity per worker and natural gas 3,812 MWH per worker. “Green” energy cannot meet all of our energy needs as wind only generates 836 MWH per worker and solar 98 MWH per worker. Producing the same amount of electricity requires 1 coal worker, 2 natural gas workers, 12 wind industry employees, or 79 solar workers. The Paris agreement would punish American productivity, but continue to give China a free pass on carbon emissions.
Eagle Forum has watched nations change their position concerning “climate change” from one of non-interest to their current position of seeing it as a “cash cow” for their economies. The anti-American U.N. meetings have promoted the claim that America is mostly to blame for “climate change” because of our industrial strength, which includes burning of fossil fuels. The true purpose of the U.N.’s “climate change” agenda is to redistribute wealth around the globe.
Radical environmentalists, including former Secretary Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore, have turned the ruse into a platform to enhance their own power and financial wealth. The climate change elites have not changed their own personal energy consumption, but would like to have the power to regulate America’s energy use.
Former President Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” was the trophy he handed to the U.N. in 2015 for the Paris Accord. Obama committed $3 billion of American taxpayer money to a U.N. climate slush fund without any authorization from Congress. That fund just gives away our money to poorer countries allegedly to “mitigate” the effects of climate change.
President Trump should have also withdrawn from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to stop all funding for “climate change”, including the Green Climate Fund. Instead he chose to withdraw according to a 4-year schedule, which legitimizes Obama’s false claim that the U.N. treaty is merely an executive agreement rather than a treaty. We must still watch the U.N. negotiations carefully over the next four years to protect American interests, since the president who is elected in 2020 could reverse Trump’s decision.
America should not be bullied by U.N. “green-niks” who envy our freedoms and successful economy.