However, the climate change lobby is not rolling over and calling it quits; they have too much invested to back away now. A tabulation of funding in 2007 by Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, found that the climate alarmists had received over $50 billion since 1990. That was five years ago; naturally, the price tag has gone up considerably since then.
Most of this enormous funding avalanche came from governments, with the biggest chunk coming from the U.S. federal government. State governments have also been big funders, along with foreign national governments, the European Union, United Nations agencies, the World Bank, the big tax-exempt foundations, and major Wall Street banks and corporations. This money infusion has launched a huge climate industry, with universities, institutions, think tanks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), professors, scientists, researchers, and activists all dependent on maintaining the flow of funds. The major banks and investors that have jumped on board the climate change wagon see a great deal of green to be made from the global sale of carbon credits. Trillions of dollars could change hands, but only if a carbon trading regime is forced on consumers by governments.
Foremost among the groups that have been driving the global warming alarm bandwagon is the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). There are many think tanks affecting national policies, but the CFR, long ranked as the premier brain trust, is still the most influential. The UN Climate Summit in Doha will carry the CFR imprint in many ways, as have virtually all previous global conferences. Representing the U.S. government in Doha is President Obama’s Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern. Stern, who was previously a White House assistant to President Bill Clinton, played a role in U.S. negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. He was selected as Climate Envoy by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Todd Stern is a longtime member of the CFR.
Stern’s boss, Hillary Clinton, has explicitly confirmed what critics of the CFR have often charged: that the Council unofficially runs the U.S. State Department, and has virtually taken control of the entire executive branch of the federal government, regardless of which party may occupy the White House. In a famous speech at the Council on Foreign Relations’ Washington, D.C., office in 2009, Secretary Clinton referred to the CFR’s Pratt House headquarters in New York City as the “mother ship” and said she had been there often. She was glad, she said, that the CFR’s new Washington headquarters is so close to the State Department, making it easier to be “told what we should be doing and how we should think.”
Here is the opening paragraph of her address, after being introduced by CFR President Richard Haass:
Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.
(A video of Secretary Clinton's remarks may be viewed at the bottom of this page.)
CFR “Mother Ship” Guiding U.S. at Doha
So, what is the CFR telling Hillary Clinton and her lieutenants about "what they should be doing and how they should think" at the Doha Summit? We are not privy to any of the private consultations between Pratt House and Foggy Bottom, but there is plenty to go on from the public pronouncements of the CFR’s spokesmen and members.
In “A Transitional Climate Summit in Doha,” a November 28, 2012 CFR “Expert Brief” by Michael A. Levi, director of the council’s Program on Energy Security and Climate Change, we are told that global climate change “threatens intensifying damages primarily in the future but requires strong action to curb emissions now.” Levi warns that there are dire “reputational” consequences for U.S. failure to support a more robust and restrictive climate agenda:
If the United States is isolated in its stance on financial or process issues, then it will suffer internationally. To prevent that, U.S. strategy will need to focus as much on keeping partners like Europe and Japan on a similar page as it does on the substance of any outcome. The United States will also come under fire for failing to cut its emissions sufficiently.
Levi, who is the CFR’s top guru on climate change, is surely aware by now of the overwhelming evidence, including admissions by some of the top alarmists, that there has been no measurable global warming for the past 16 years, all of the media horror stories and Al Gore pronouncements about impending Climate Armageddon notwithstanding. And he must surely be aware that no evidence supports the contention that a government-forced reduction of emissions by the United States would have any impact whatsoever on global temperatures. However, the financial, social, and political costs would be horrendous. As critics point out, it is a prescription for “all pain and no gain” — except for the politically connected, who stand to gain immense wealth and power under the proposed UN global climate regime.
Levi ignores the steadily mounting evidence to promote the CFR’s ongoing globalist line. “International climate diplomacy provides the United States with opportunities to leverage domestic action for greater impact abroad,” says Levi. “But the United States still falls well short of what it must do at home to reduce its emissions to ever lower levels.”
The CFR’s Levi was also a lead voice in the “extreme weather” catastrophe choir claiming that the deaths and damage from Tropical Storm Sandy could be laid at the feet of human-caused global warming. In a November 5 column, “Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change: Three Things to Know,” Levi hymned a predictable refrain. "Increased human emissions of greenhouse gases are leading to more risk of dangerous weather extremes," he said. “Reducing this risk requires cutting U.S. and global greenhouse gas emissions.”
Levi and the CFR ignore completely the numerous climate experts, including many well-known alarmists who point out that not only did Sandy and other recent “extreme weather” have nothing to do with global warming, but that contrary to many recent media stories, there is no evidence of any increase in recent decades in either the number or magnitude of hurricanes and other extreme weather incidents.
Unburdened by any adherence to science and facts, the CFR pushes its same one-world agenda. “In Sandy’s aftermath,” says the CFR, we should work for “increasing global cooperation” on climate change. “At the international level, the United States should similarly seize on opportunities to work collaboratively with other countries on climate change challenges,” says Levi. Translated from global-speak: Exploit every possible tragedy and weather anomaly as an opportunity to establish, empower, and enrich the UN and related global institutions.
Do we exaggerate? You be the judge. In a July 5, 2012 CFR Issue Brief entitled, “The Global Climate Change Regime,” we are warned that “Climate change is one of the most significant threats facing the world today.” Anthropogenic global warming (AGW), says the CFR, threatens us all with “widespread disasters in the form of rising sea levels, violent and volatile weather patterns, desertification, famine, water shortages, and other secondary effects including conflict.”
If the United States is isolated in its stance on financial or process issues, then it will suffer internationally. To prevent that, U.S. strategy will need to focus as much on keeping partners like Europe and Japan on a similar page as it does on the substance of any outcome. The United States will also come under fire for failing to cut its emissions sufficiently.
Levi, who is the CFR’s top guru on climate change, is surely aware by now of the overwhelming evidence, including admissions by some of the top alarmists, that there has been no measurable global warming for the past 16 years, all of the media horror stories and Al Gore pronouncements about impending Climate Armageddon notwithstanding. And he must surely be aware that no evidence supports the contention that a government-forced reduction of emissions by the United States would have any impact whatsoever on global temperatures. However, the financial, social, and political costs would be horrendous. As critics point out, it is a prescription for “all pain and no gain” — except for the politically connected, who stand to gain immense wealth and power under the proposed UN global climate regime.
Levi ignores the steadily mounting evidence to promote the CFR’s ongoing globalist line. “International climate diplomacy provides the United States with opportunities to leverage domestic action for greater impact abroad,” says Levi. “But the United States still falls well short of what it must do at home to reduce its emissions to ever lower levels.”
The CFR’s Levi was also a lead voice in the “extreme weather” catastrophe choir claiming that the deaths and damage from Tropical Storm Sandy could be laid at the feet of human-caused global warming. In a November 5 column, “Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change: Three Things to Know,” Levi hymned a predictable refrain. "Increased human emissions of greenhouse gases are leading to more risk of dangerous weather extremes," he said. “Reducing this risk requires cutting U.S. and global greenhouse gas emissions.”
Levi and the CFR ignore completely the numerous climate experts, including many well-known alarmists who point out that not only did Sandy and other recent “extreme weather” have nothing to do with global warming, but that contrary to many recent media stories, there is no evidence of any increase in recent decades in either the number or magnitude of hurricanes and other extreme weather incidents.
Unburdened by any adherence to science and facts, the CFR pushes its same one-world agenda. “In Sandy’s aftermath,” says the CFR, we should work for “increasing global cooperation” on climate change. “At the international level, the United States should similarly seize on opportunities to work collaboratively with other countries on climate change challenges,” says Levi. Translated from global-speak: Exploit every possible tragedy and weather anomaly as an opportunity to establish, empower, and enrich the UN and related global institutions.
Do we exaggerate? You be the judge. In a July 5, 2012 CFR Issue Brief entitled, “The Global Climate Change Regime,” we are warned that “Climate change is one of the most significant threats facing the world today.” Anthropogenic global warming (AGW), says the CFR, threatens us all with “widespread disasters in the form of rising sea levels, violent and volatile weather patterns, desertification, famine, water shortages, and other secondary effects including conflict.”
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