Well, similarly, you may by now have heard that Copenhagen is proceeding in even worse than normal fashion, thanks to 45,00 attendees — either Party, Observer or Media — having been accredited. The hall being used holds 15,000. The spillover is not so much from the welfare-seeking countries and their delegates but delegates from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These include mostly green pressure groups but also groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Chamber of Commerce.

So thousands are forced to stand for as long as eight hours waiting to gain access to the convention hall in the freezing and now snowing weather more wintry than Copenhagen is used to (what did you expect, Gore showed up). And a world where some would be more equal than others, particularly our environmentalist betters, is on display, but in an utterly impermissible way.

I have received an email from someone attending the Conference of the Parties (having been to six such absurdities, I actually finally learned a few years ago not to bother). And he informs me that the greens were not having any of this system whereby they lose a lottery and don’t get to be inside hectoring negotiators, or otherwise dealing with things the way everyone else has to.

The Obama administration agreed. My observer source writes:

“Lack of space has led to reduction in number of observers allowed access to Bella Center.

ENGOs complained to US Delegation that not enough of them were allowed in.

US Delegation rides to rescue and supplies 10 “PARTY” badges (not “observer” badges, but “Party” badges) with the understanding that they not abuse them, that is, pretend like they are observer badges (eg, don’t go to delegate meetings or other meetings observers would not normally be allowed in to).

David Doniger [NB: of pressure group Natural Resources Defense Council, a group that used to work closely with Enron to get cap-and-trade, incidentally] is running around with his badge tucked beneath his sweater–a no-no. Badges are supposed to be worn in full view.

Business groups, also with people cooling their heels outside the Bella Center, caught wind of this. Someone approached [US "climate envoy"] Todd Stern. He seemed in the dark.

US delegation said it would provide 10 badges to business groups. (Not sure if they’ve been delivered yet).”

As indicated, in addition to granting the greens disproportionate access and more than had been decided through allocations and actually a recent lottery for Thursday and Friday passes, “Party” badges also allow access to rooms and negotiators that Observer badges do not.

Would it be ok for State Department employees to hand over their identification badges to green lobbyists to wander around the building as if they were employees? Why not? Do take note of the too-close-for-comfort relationship exposed by the impropriety.

Now, about how those cap-and-trade “allowances” are politically allocated…

That of course would have implications for the “global carbon offset market” if Kyoto II ropes us in and finally begins chugging down the tracks, next stop “Oil for Food on Steroids”.

Today’s Open Europe press briefing includes the following item (in bold in original):

A press release from the European police force Europol states that the VAT fraud afflicting the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme in the past 18 months, has resulted in the loss of approximately €5 billion euros for several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities. Europol

It seems so hard to believe that a scheme concocted by Ken Lay and the boys at Enron in the mid-1990s, adopted recently by derivatives-types as their next playground, pushed all along by Goldman Sachs and feverishly demanded by George Soros should have to suffer the indignity of such charges.

The New York Times reports this weekend that:

“SINGAPORE — President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future.”

Read down the article and note the several claims by participants offering the greatest exhibits imaginable at the running absurdity — now in its 18th year! — that is this movable feast of conferences in Rio, Barcelona, Bangkok, Bali, Buenos Aires, Bonn, and next month Copenhagen: We had to declare it a failure in advance in order to ensure its success. Mmm. Yes.

But here’s the far larger point, and Team Tea Party and simpatico coalescences should take note and begin organizing accordingly:

This also makes the Kyoto II, the proposed twenty five-year extension of a five-year plan that was the Kyoto treaty, an inescapable issue for the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections.

The outcome of these elections will surely dictate the outcome of this scheme long-targeted, even by European diplomats’ admission, at the U.S. and exempting the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations including those bit players like China, India, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia, where greenhouse gas emissions actually are growing–rapidly (just in case emissions really were the point, which they are clearly not).

If these November 2, 2010 elections go better than Team Soros/Obama fear, that will embolden them in the November 8-19 talks. A wipeout ensures the right result. Too busy saving my presidency to spend whatever capital remains to push the whole global governance routine just now.

This means every candidate for every federal office must be pressed to state whether this underlying issue of prophesied yet oddly non-existent catastrophic man-made global warming, on which they bob and weave if they’re not shrieking to the heavens about the horrors, is sufficient grounds for the sort of binding international framework we are to agree to mere weeks later. Those who still won’t answer the question need to go to the back of the line. The American public are with the UK and Norwegian voters, to name two about whom polls were just published revealing majority skepticism, and we don’t believe that, at all. And we’re the ones the deal is supposed to gore (so to speak).

Of course, Bill Owens in NY-23 showed you can vow opposition to, say, the “public option” to gain election and vote the other way within mere hours. But still, this, we’ve gotta ask and this means every candidate, on both sides, what with that Kyotophile McCain thing not having worked out so well and, if it had, we’d already have adopted cap-and-trade and would be facing a “successful” Copenhagen collapse.

Here’s a kicker: that treaty negotiation where it’s to all come together less than one week later happens to be in Mexico City, located in one of said free-rider countries, one which happens to be just to our south and an emotionally charged issue here in the country expected to cede by far the most there. It will serve as an excellent poster child for the dichotomy of obligations that is and, no matter which among the telegraphed stunts they pull to make this less obvious, will be the Kyoto scheme. Optically that should make things very uncomfortable for the Kyotophiles (note of caution to those mobilized principally around the issue of illegal immigration: resist the siren song of supporting the deal in order to keep the workers from our south home, where employment prospects will be much more favorable than here…).

So, 2010 is now on track to be the Kyoto Election. And, so long as we start early reinforcing that point, will be.

James Sensnbrenner (R-WI), Ranking Republican on the House’s Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (really), issued a warning last week about Kyoto II. The proposal is being tugged by that vast majority of the world, rejecting its constraints, but demanding, at present count, $140 billion per year from U.S. taxpayers in atonement for past, present and future damage from weather which our government now says is our fault.  It includes this gem from leading Kyoto free-rider (in perpetuity), major greenhouse gas emitter India:

India’s government says that the West owes billions of dollars to developing nations to compensate for climate change. In its submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Indian government argued that this funding should be a legal obligation that ‘cannot be subject to decisions of developed country governments or legislatures.

Oh, dear. Re-read that demand. Such an entanglement would, of course, be problematic. Barring further surprises from the current Supreme Court, we have to assume it surely would be found unconstitutional. For example, from Jeremy Rabkin’s recent talk to Hillsdale College reprinted in the July/August Imprimis:

The Constitution provides for treaties, and even specifies that treaties will be ‘the supreme Law of the Land’; that is, that they will be binding on the states. But from 1787 on, it has been recognized that for a treaty to be valid, it must be consistent with the Constitution—that the Constitution is a higher authority than treaties. And what is it that allows us to judge whether a treaty is consistent with the Constitution? Alexander Hamilton explained this in a pamphlet early on: ‘A treaty cannot change the frame of the government.’ And he gave a very logical reason: It is the Constitution that authorizes us to make treaties. If a treaty violates the Constitution, it would be like an agent betraying his principal or authority. And as I said, there has been a consensus on this in the past that few ever questioned.

Such notions are, however, considered quaint by many in our current governing class, which Rabkin also touches upon in his piece. But the recent Nobel inanity was surely in part an effort to herd an occasionally reluctant Obama administration back toward the internationalist fold by December, when we are expected to agree to Kyoto II.

As I have written elsewhere, that December deadline will surely slip (even in part possibly to avoid having whatever is done subject to the intense media attention accompanying each year’s talks), and it remains an option to simply declare that this treaty is “not a treaty” in order to avoid the Constitution’s requirement of two-thirds Senate ratification.

All of which says you needd to commit to vigilance on this issue, as batty as it generally comes across. Because the consequences are serious.