President Obama Goes Around Senate on Climate Change

Breitbart cited Christopher Horner's statement on President Obama's promise with China to cut emissions.

Obama knows that two-thirds of the Senate under the U.S. Constitution’s Article II, Section 2 is never going to approve the type of fossil fuel constraints required under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol or the proposed protocols for the United Nations’ climate change conference in Paris next year. In order to accomplish his goals, the President has shifted his Administration’s strategy by introducing a series of “soft” commitments, according to Christopher Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Horner calls this strategy “name and shame.” By injecting a sense of momentum into the global climate negotiations, some nations will be intimidated into adopting the type of “ambitious actions” that are being drafted for the Paris conference by UN planners.

“Obama’s statement acknowledges that he cannot get a new climate treaty past China or U.S. voters,” Horner told CNSNews.com. But the numbers the President “promised” to China were already embedded into his Administration’s EPA rules to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions proposed in September. When these informal commitments are deemed to reach a certain level of recognition by other nations for “object and purpose,” they may become a legal basis for “customary international law.”