The United States Senate must act urgently to save its treaty approval authority from irreversible damage inflicted by President Obama with the complicity of the United Nations. Congress has already allowed President Obama to get away with putting in force his Iran nuclear deal with no more than a pro forma review. His administration considered it a “political” arrangement, not a treaty. Now the Obama administration has doubled down with the Paris Agreement on climate change, which was negotiated last December and signed by President Obama in April. For domestic consumption, the administration contends that the Paris Agreement on climate change is no more than an “executive agreement,” which does not require Senate concurrence. However, for the purposes of making it legally binding on the United States under international law, the Obama administration has colluded with the United Nations Secretariat to designate the Paris Agreement as a treaty. In fact, in her October 5th press release regarding the latest developments of the agreement, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power referred to the accord as a “treaty” that is on the verge of being enacted. Aside from legally binding requirements to periodically report on each state party’s progress in meeting individual country’s greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments previously submitted in writing to the UN, the Paris Agreement contains provisions that appear to impose additional legally binding financial commitments.
The Paris Agreement on climate change will go into legal effect thirty days after at least 55 countries, whose greenhouse gas emissions represent at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, have presented the legal instruments necessary under their domestic laws to become formal parties. Once the Paris Agreement goes into legal force, a state party can only withdraw upon at least three years notice. With India and the European Union countries added to the United States and China as well as scores of other countries, the thresholds are about to be met – but only if U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are included in calculating the 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions total. In order for the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to be counted, and the U.S. to be bound legally to the Paris Agreement after the thresholds are met, Obama had to find a way around submitting the Paris Agreement to the U.S. Senate for approval while still having it deemed a treaty under international law. His scheme was to enlist the help of the United Nations Secretariat, which has placed a universal climate change agreement at the top of its agenda.
With an eye on the upcoming U.S. presidential election and the possibility that Donald Trump, who opposes the climate agreement, would win, the Obama administration and UN officials worked feverishly to accelerate the member state ratification process necessary to allow the Paris Agreement to go into legal effect. Patricia Espinosa, the UN’s climate chief, said it wouldn’t be “feasible” for Trump to change the terms of the Paris Agreement once it did go into effect. So it was a race against the clock.