Obama's Environmental Agenda

Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton, has been named by Barack Obama to be his Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change. This new and undefined office could give her broad influence over economic policy. That is a frightening prospect, not merely because of her participation in a group with overtly socialist ties, but because of the way hostile foreign powers such as China are manipulating the modern Green movement to serve their own national purposes. Between her two tours of duty in Washington, Browner served on the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which is part of the Socialist International. The Socialist International works closely with the United Nations, and the Commission hopes to influence the UN Climate Change Convention that will meet in Copenhagen in December to draw up a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Until then, the Commission is holding a series of conferences on “global solidarity.” By this, it means re-orienting policy towards helping the developing world at the expense of the Western nations, which the Green movement deems over-developed. Cristina Narbona, Spanish Ambassador to the OECD and former Minister of the Environment, said at the Commission’s September meeting in Stockholm, socialists are “offering a different discourse, shifting the current economic paradigm towards one based on greater equity.” In other words, the Commission proposes a global transfer of wealth from the West to the rest....