“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
                                                               - Albert Einstein

It’s time for the American people to get something straight – despite the fear mongering rhetoric currently spewing forth from ultra-right Obama haters, the U.S. President is not headed to Copenhagen in December to sign a treaty that will become law that obviates The Constitution and places U.S. Democracy at the mercy of emerging third world nations. Nor could he, even if that were his intent.

The Kyoto Protocol to prevent climate changes and global warming, which former president George W. Bush refused to sign, runs out in 2012. To help keep the nations of the world committed to continuing at least their current minimal efforts to reduce global warming, there is an urgent need for a new climate protocol. At the conference in Copenhagen, the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC ) will meet for the last time before the Kyoto climate agreement expires. Therefore, this Climate Conference is essential to the health of the world’s climate. The UNFCCC is pushing hard to make the meeting in Copenhagen a success, with the target objective being a Copenhagen Protocol that will commit governments to continue working to prevent global warming and climate changes.

Although the final wording of the Protocol has not yet been agreed to by the UNFCCC members, right wing extremists have already seized upon Obama’s intent to go to Copenhagen and participate in negotiating this international treaty as another opportunity to label him a Marxist, a socialist, a communist and any number of other denigrating titles. The airwaves are now replete with a myriad of accusations from the Right that Obama intends to sign the Copenhagen Protocol as the next step in his long-term plan to end Democracy in the United States.

In pushing their agenda of fear, the Right has engaged the services of several highly visible personalities, among them the U.K.’s Lord Christopher Monckton who these extremists believe lends credence to their cause simply because he was once the science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Monckton appeared at the Minnesota Freemarket Institute Conference two weeks ago and told the audience the purpose of the treaty is to (1) create a world government to which the U.S. would be subservient and (2) transfer the wealth from countries of the West to third world countries.

Monckton went on to state, “They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything.”

The position of Lord Monckton and his supporters is that there is no credible evidence of any significant anthropomorphic climate change. Their view? Man has not contributed to the melting of the polar ice cap; humans are not responsible for the hole in the ozone layer; etc, etc,…ad nausium. One of their number, Senator Daniel Inhofe (R-OK) returned to his favorite “global warming is just a bunch of baloney” routine on the floor of the Senate just last week and stated the Earth’s natural warming cycle ended nine years ago. This despite the fact that 2005 was the hottest year on record and Inhofe’s dangerous nonsense has been thoroughly debunked by many reputable scientists.

But, facts of Global Warming aside, the efforts of Lord Monckton and other right wing bullies amount to no more than a major effort to generate fear in the citizens of the United States. They have no basis in fact for even suspecting that Obama is a Marxist, a socialist or a communist, nor do they have their facts straight when they state the Copenhagen Protocol would establish a world government and shred The Constitution (or what’s left of it after Bush and Cheney finished wiping their bloody hands on it).

Even assuming the worst case, namely, that the Copenhagen Protocol turns out to be what the Right fears it will be; and assuming that Obama should, indeed, sign the treaty - that does not make it U.S. law. Under The Constitution (Article II, Section 2, Paragraph 2) the President: “…shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” This provision prohibits the President alone from committing the United States to an agreement with other nations. In other words, no matter what Obama might sign, 67 Senators must approve the document or it is not ratified.

Furthermore, Obama took the oath required by Article II, Section 1, paragraph 7, of The Constitution, to “…preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” To enter into a treaty that would relegate The Constitution to the trash bin would be nothing short of treason. And since he taught Constitutional Law, it is reasonable to presume that Obama is fully aware of his responsibilities. What is appalling is that the voices on the Right are not equally well informed.

The bottom line is that ever since Obama’s election, the Right has been in a panic over a new era of cultural and demographic change. As sociologist Daniel Bell states, “What the Right as a whole fears is the erosion of its own social position, the collapse of its power, the increasing incomprehensibility of a world — now overwhelmingly technical and complex — that has changed so drastically within a lifetime.”

They need to realize the only certainty in Life is Change.