Joins Call on Congress to Halt Trump II Unilateral Withdrawal from Framework Convention
We are pleased to report here that Dr. James E. Hansen has signed our citizens’ petition to Congress to Remain-In the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
For a sampling of prominent signatories, including scientists, scholars, and citizen activists, see here.
Dr. Hansen’s action is significant for a number of reasons, including that it harkens to his work in the late 1980s when, as a NASA scientist, he called public and government attention to the enveloping threat of dangerous climate change. Re-reading his testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee of June 23, 1988, I am struck by its fundamentally cautious and conservative nature, wherein he concluded:
(1) the [E]arth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements, (2) the global warming is now sufficiently large that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect, and (3) in our computer climate simulations the greenhouse effect now is already large enough to begin to affect the probability of occurrence of extreme events such as summer heat waves. . . .
Dr. Hansen is preparing his own fuller accounting of that period of early government decision-making — and at Climate Uncensured, his burgeoning Substack collection, the reader can find parts of his forthcoming work Sophie’s Planet.
Recognizing my own bias here, since I have long served as his legal and policy adviser, I think the public record is already quite clear: were it not for Dr. Hansen’s efforts, and those of his colleagues within and outside the government, President George H. W. Bush might not have felt sufficiently emboldened, by 1992, to have:
- signed the Framework Convention (June 12, 1992, at the Rio Earth Summit),
- submitted it to the U.S. Senate for deliberation (September 8, 1992),
- received the Senate’s advice and consent pursuant to a unanimous “division vote” (October 7, 1992), and
- signed “the instrument of ratification,” formally entering the nation into the Treaty (October 13, 1992).
As we have observed in this space before, by his ratification-signing statement President George H. W. Bush deemed the Framework Convention “the first step in crucial long-term international efforts to address climate change,” one that is “comprehensive in scope and action-oriented.”
But now, in a highly destructive move, the Trump II Administration has embarked on a pellmell drive to unravel that international effort to address climate change. How so? By renouncing it, by defunding it, by terminating our participation in its key implementing measures (including the Paris Agreement to the UNFCCC), and finally, by attempting to unilaterally withdraw from the underlying Framework Convention — a duly approved Treaty that, under the Constitution, is the Supreme Law of the Land. (Constitution, Art. VI.)
Congress also has a signal constitutional role in Treaty formation, as we have observed here before. Moreover, the primary role of Congress is especially clear in matters touching on the regulation of commerce (Art. 1, §8, cl 3) including international commerce. The production, processing, distribution (including importation and exportation), and use of fossil fuels in energy systems is plainly a major aspect of domestic and international commerce.
In turn, the battle against dangerous climate change can not be won without the imposition of tight restrictions on fossil fuels, including some combination of price signals and regulatory restraints with respect to the major lifecycle components of coal, oil and natural gas.
Dr. Hansen has said as much, of course, and with crystal clarity, on numerous occasions since his 1988 Senate testimony. Interestingly, though, in that specific testimony, he did not expressly pursue the connection between his direct subject matter there — that is, the greenhouse effect and the discernment of a global warming signal — and the principal source of the added greenhouse emissions, namely fossil fuel production and utilization.
Nonetheless, the connection was already, back then, crystal clear. Witness the New York Times’ front-page report on the hearing. Entitled “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,” it also carried an important subtitle: “Sharp Cut in Burning of Fossil Fuels is Urged to Battle Shift in Climate.”
It was in order to undertake in earnest, and lead that battle that President George H. W. Bush and virtually the entire Senate sought, in 1992, to ensure that the United States would become “the first industrialized nation (and the fourth overall) to ratify [that] historic treaty.”
Accordingly, it is our turn, now, to join with Dr. Hansen and other leaders in defending the Treaty.
Congress must take steps to ensure that the United States does not become the first to exit the Framework Convention, in light of its clarion call to every nation to combat dangerous climate change.