Curbing Global Warming Likened to Declaring War on the U.S.
Iain Murray is not happy about this:
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – in an apparent end run around a Bush administration that has stubbornly resisted addressing global warming – signed a partnership Monday to share technology and scientific research aimed at fighting the effects of worldwide climate change.
So he claims the Constitution said:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power
The relevant passage from Article I, section 10 is:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Did Mr. Murray’s selective editing change the meaning of this passage? Perhaps not if one thinks addressing global warming is a declarative or war on the United States. Such is the nature of the (lack of) understanding our Constitution when one views it from the perspective of the wingnuts at the National Review.
Meanwhile, David Roberts blogs about Congress and global warming catching this:
Former U.S. EPA Administrator Carol Browner predicted in an interview that Congress would act on climate next year if the Supreme Court rules next term that EPA has authority to regulate the most predominant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, under the Clean Air Act. “The last thing Congress wants, Democrat or Republican, is for EPA to set the standards,” Browner said. But Barton sees a Supreme Court ruling spurring lawmakers to move in the opposite direction. “I cannot imagine any objective finding that CO2 is a pollutant,” he said. “If that’s true, God is a polluter.”
Can you just see it now – our Supreme Court ruling that the Federal government has the right to tell God to cease pollution? Scalia would certainly dissent!