[StBernard] The New Socialism

[Westley Annis]

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - December 15, 2009

The New Socialism
by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON - In the 1970s and early '80s, having seized 
control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), 
Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling 
off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in 
history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and 
conferences, they began calling for a "New International 
Economic Order." The NIEO's essential demand was simple: 
to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the 
industrialized West to the Third World. 

On what grounds? In the name of equality -- wealth 
redistribution via global socialism -- with a dose of post-
colonial reparations thrown in. 

The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the 
democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World 
kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan 
and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early 
'80s). They put a stake through the enterprise. 

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western 
treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to 
fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the 
gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the 
newest religion: environmentalism. 

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit 
is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of 
billions from the industrial West to the Third World to 
save the planet by, for example, planting green industries 
in the tristes tropiques. 

Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every 
left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial 
guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down 
the industrial democracies in the name of the environment 
thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts 
of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation 
of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to 
human health. 

Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, 
the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No 
institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year 
will fall outside EPA control. This means over a million 
building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses 
and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating 
emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such 
authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue 
Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive 
power over every aspect of economic life. 

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name 
of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the 
prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus 
that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., 
the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes 
the commanding heights of the economy and society. 

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was 
adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: 
metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went 
straight from the memorial service for socialism to the 
altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly 
centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the 
new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, 
however, the alleged justification is not abolishing 
oppression and inequality but saving the planet. 

Not everyone is pleased with the coming New Carbon-Free 
International Order. When the Obama administration 
signaled (in a gesture to Copenhagen) a U.S. commitment 
to major cuts in carbon emissions, Democratic Sen. Jim 
Webb wrote the president protesting that he lacks the 
authority to do so unilaterally. That requires 
congressional concurrence by legislation or treaty. 

With the Senate blocking President Obama's cap-and-trade 
carbon legislation, the EPA coup d'etat served as the 
administration's loud response to Webb: The hell we can't. 
With this EPA "endangerment" finding, we can do as we wish 
with carbon. Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or 
the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, 
no trade. 

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon 
chastity. There's the matter of constitutional decency. If 
you want to revolutionize society -- as will drastic carbon 
regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 
percent carbon-based -- you do it through Congress reflect-
ing popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA 
bureaucrats. 

Congress should not just resist this executive overreach-
ing, but trump it: Amend existing clean air laws and 
restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA 
control and reserving that power for Congress and future 
legislation. 

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn't lurking 
in CIA cloak. He's knocking on your door, smiling under 
an EPA cap.