President Obama's mission to save the planet from global warming could end up trampling on the U.S. Constitution, critics say.
When Obama arrives in Copenhagen Friday, he is hoping to cut a deal on a new global-warming agreement. Even though the conference is not likely to produce a legally binding deal, critics say if the president signs an international climate treaty pledging reductions in carbon emissions, he will violate the Constitution.
"President Obama cannot bind the American people to job killing international agreements on climate change without the advice and consent of the United States Senate," former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote Wednesday at the conservative Web site Human Events.
The Constitution states that the president cannot sign treaties without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate.
But with climate change legislation stuck in the Senate after the House passed its version earlier this year, the White House is flirting with the possibility of taking action without Congress.
Evidence that the talks at the U.N.'s climate conference in Copenhagen are not going well continued to mount overnight. The Danish head of the conference resigned, allowing the country's PM to take the helm for overnight sessions.
The sessions were deadlocked.
Meanwhile, outside Danish police continued to put the "cop" in COP15, surrounding protesters, attacking a truck used as a base and wielding teargas and batons (video). 250 were arrested. Nearly 1,000 peaceful protesters were arrested late last week.
In what appears to be a separate incident, 100 protesters attempting to intervene in the deadlocked negotiations were detained.
Inside the talks, the points of contention reveal the absurdity of narrow political debate about the survival of the world as we know it: Developing countries, which models show will face the brunt of flooding and droughts, want an agreement that will hold the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius—about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, while industrialized countries want to give the green light to a 2-degree increase. (Who gave them the authority to do so remains unclear.)
The U.S., meanwhile, is seeking to gut its obligations by changing the word "shall" in a phrase indicating emissions to reductions to "should." (There are a lot of things one should do that one has absolutely no intention of doing.)
One bright spot: Negotiators are apparently close to a deal to reimburse forested countries for preserving their forests, an essential component in staving off catastrophic climate change because trees absorb atmospheric CO2.
This deal, said Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund, "is likely to be the most concrete thing that comes out of Copenhagen."
A petition demanding an end to police violence in Copenhagen (started by a local activist who is seen getting hit in the CNN video) is available here.
UPDATE: There will be a protest at the Danish Consulate (California at Market) objecting to police violence in Copenhagen this Saturday, December 19, at 4:30 p.m.
The victim of a well-executed hoax at the Copenhagen climate conference on Monday, the Canadian government was hit by a leak of the truth Tuesday as the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. exposed a plan by the government to abandon its own greenhouse reduction goals.
A key part of the plan is to allow projected growth in greenhouse gas emissions from the huge oil sands project in northern Alberta to increase 165 percent by 2020. The government would ask industry to cut the growth of pollution -- not the quantity of emissions - by just 10 percent.
The Alberta tar sands are the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions.
On Monday, pranksters from a group called the Yes Men sent out a fake news release in which Canada was committing itself to a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
The hoax, with an equally clever followup release and a video, caused a near-meltdown by the government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
In Copenhagen a Harper aide, Dimitri Soutas, denounced "childish pranks."
He got into a heated, televised exchange with Quebec environmentalist Steven Guilbeault, after sending an e-mail to reporters saying that Guilbeault may have been responsible for the hoax.
Guilbeault was been a thorn in the side of the government - as has Quebec Premier Jean Charest - for criticizing the Harper government for its modest emission reduction targets and attempts to wall off the Alberta oil sands.
"I had nothing to do with this and I demand an apology," Guilbeault said in an e-mail. The prominent Quebec environmentalist said a better way for Soudas to use his time would be "to advise the Canadian government to change its deeply flawed position on climate."
A few hours after the hoax, however, CBC's "The National" revealed an internal draft proposal prepared for submission to Harper's cabinet. The proposal suggests that the government is scaling back on its already-modest goals.
"The proposal raises questions about how the (government) could cut overall greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 - a target they insist they can reach - while weakening the targets in the oil and gas sector," the CBC reported.
The proposal suggests that the oil and gas industry will have to cut emissions by only one third of what was proposed in the Harper government's 2007 green plan, called Turning the Corner.
The hoax has been big news in Copenhagen.
"Canada is 'red-faced'," headlined the Globe and Mail. "Copenhagen spoof shames Canada!" wrote The Guardian. "Hoax slices through Canadian spin on warming," headlined the Toronto Star.
The Yes Men, a group headed by two U.S. professors, executed a spoof on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce earlier this year.
Claiming to be the Chamber, it called a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to announce that the Chamber had reversed its opposition to climate change legislation.
The hoax even led to an incident late Monday between Canadian cabinet minister Jim Prentice and U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu.
Chu declined to pose for a picture with his Canadian counterpart. But Prentice's chief of staff begged the Americans to relent, prompting a question of why the photo was so important.
The Canadian aide replied that "we were carpetbagged this morning by (the Yes Men pranksters) with a false press release. I gotta change the story."
Indigenous Peoples of Canada March on Canadian Embassy in Copenhagen to Protest Tar Sands
Oil-sands-web
<span style="font-weight: bold">Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the United States, and most of it comes from the Alberta tar sands. Described as the world’s biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions</span>, the tar sands have drawn widespread protest and civil disobedience from environmentalists. On Tuesday, as climate delegates met across town at the Bella Center, a protest led by indigenous peoples of Canada was held outside the Canadian embassy. read da resst
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