Whether or not Donald Trump was serious when he threatened to “cancel” the United Nations climate agreement negotiated in Paris last year, the White House appears to be taking the threat very seriously. According to media reports and statements by senior Obama “climate” officials, the administration is hard at work “Trump-proofing” the controversial global-warming pact.
Regardless of the efforts, though, a President Trump could easily kill the UN scheme — especially because it is not even legally valid, since Obama has not presented it to the U.S. Senate for ratification as required for all treaties by the U.S. Constitution.
In a series of statements about the Paris Agreement, as the UN climate deal is known, Trump has indicated that, if and when he becomes president, the expensive scheme is toast. In fact, in a speech he gave in late May about energy policy, Trump blasted the “draconian climate rules” and vowed to “cancel” the pseudo-treaty as soon as he takes office.
America should never give “foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use,” the GOP contender declared, promising to eliminate all U.S. taxpayer funding for UN “global warming” schemes. In the past, echoing numerous top scientists, Trump has repeatedly lambasted the increasingly discredited man-made global-warming theory as a “hoax.”
Blasting the EPA’s “totalitarian tactics,” Trump also promised to undo all of the Obama administration’s decrees on the subject — everything from executive orders purporting to regulate the gas of life (CO2) to Obama’s so-called “Clean Power Plan.” Because all of those actions are already unconstitutional and illegal, destroying them would be beyond easy.
As The New American has documented, even when the Democrats controlled Congress it would not approve Obama’s climate agenda, meaning the White House had to impose all of its pledges made to the UN via executive decrees and regulations. That means the entire foundation of the UN’s climate regime is built on lies, fraud, and quicksand, as far as the United States is concerned.
Trump has also taken aim at the primary tools Obama is abusing to impose his unconstitutional “climate” regime on the American people. Earlier this year, for example, the GOP candidate even called for dismantling the increasingly radical EPA, which was created by disgraced President Richard Nixon via executive order.
“Any regulation that’s outdated, unnecessary, bad for workers or contrary to the national interest will be scrapped and scrapped completely,” Trump explained in his energy speech last month. “We’re going to do all this while taking proper regard for rational environmental concerns.” He called the “climate” schemes “death by a 1,000 cuts over regulations.”
Instead of Obama’s “war on energy,” as critics have called it, Trump vowed to do basically the opposite. Among other policies, he promised to reduce restrictions on energy exploration, open more “federal land” up for drilling, and even pursue the Keystone XL pipeline quashed by the Obama administration.
“The government should not pick winners and losers” in energy, he explained, calling for subsidies to cronies under the guise of “green energy” to be scrapped. “We’re going to save that coal industry, believe me, we’re going to save it,” Trump continued in the May 26 speech, vowing to lift draconian federal restrictions and regulations. “Market forces are beautiful.”
Last week, though, Politico ran a factually challenged, deeply misleading article claiming that the Obama administration was “Trump-proofing” the UN climate schemes. In the report, Politico reporter Anne Usher falsely gave the impression that the deal was practically set in stone. “Trump can’t just wave a wand and pull the United States out of the Paris treaty,” she claimed, falsely.
Of course, in the real world, the Paris Agreement is not a treaty, as it has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate, which the Constitution requires for all treaties. Since there is no treaty, there are no legal obligations on the United States. Trump does not even need to wave a hand to stop the illegal acts.
Usher continues by claiming falsely that, “to leave [the UN climate regime] officially would require the United States to first wait three years, and then give a one-year notice — effectively putting a withdrawal beyond the next presidential election.” In the real world, again, that is not true either. The Paris Agreement remains invalid, as it was never ratified.
And even if it had been ratified, America’s Founders and the Supreme Court have always been clear that treaties cannot grant new powers to the federal government beyond those delegated to it in the Constitution. Authority for the regulatory schemes envisioned in the UN deal — federal and global restrictions on energy use, for example — is not granted in the Constitution, and therefore would require a constitutional amendment.
