Law of Sea Treaty A Back Door For Cap And Trade

Conn Carroll had an excellent piece at the Washington Examiner yesterday titled “Obama’s Lame Duck Plan To Pass Cap And Trade.” Carroll makes the case that Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) may use the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) as a back door to implement cap and trade regulations on United States citizens.

Mike Brownfield of The Heritage Foundation (my employer) wrote a short history of LOST the day before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last Wednesday.

Back in 1982, President Ronald Reagan decided not to sign a treaty known as “Law of the Sea” (LOST), a United Nations convention that would raid America’s treasury for billions of dollars, then redistribute that wealth to the rest of the world by an international bureaucracy headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica. But today, the Obama Administration has revived that treaty, and tomorrow Senator John Kerry (D-MA) will hold hearings designed to illustrate its supposed benefits and generate support for its ratification. Without a doubt, Reagan’s decision should stand, and LOST should remain relegated to the trash bin of history.

Carroll opines that the treaty may not be necessary. It may prove to be a back door means by which supporters of Global Warming regulations can have a United Nations sanctioned body impose binding regulations on the United States.

Asked Wednesday if LOST was “a backdoor Kyoto protocol,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton replied: “It contains no obligations to implement any particular climate change policies. It doesn’t require adherence to any specific emission policies, and we would be glad to present for the record a legal analysis to that effect.” This is classic Clinton dissembling. While her statement is technically true, it is also completely non-responsive to the binding arbitration threat LOST poses to the U.S. economy.

If one needs another reason to distrust any organ of the United Nations, one need to look no further than the recent story from the New York Post titled “U.N. endorses Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe as tourism leader.” Who is Robert Mugabe?

He’s been named one of the world’s “worst dictators” for having a questionable human rights record, but that’s not keeping the United Nations from endorsing Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his regime as a “leader for tourism,” according to reports. The surprise honor, while slammed by human rights groups, is also a head scratcher since the 88-year-old despot is banned from even travelling to Europe because of Western sanctions. The U.N. World Tourism Organization endorsed Mugabe along with Zambian President Michael Sata at the African countries’ shared border, where the pair signed an agreement Tuesday to co-host the WTO General Assembly in August 2013.

United Nation’s sanctioned bodies have a long record of atrocious judgement in general and anti-Americanism in particular. How can anyone expect the international bodies created under LOST to do any better? Furthermore, Steve Groves at Heritage worries that LOST would expose the U.S. to baseless Climate Change lawsuits.