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WATCH: Inhofe Sends Regards to UN Rio Conference
Says Obama Absence is Because He is Running as the "Fossil Fuel President" - An Inconvenient Message for His Friends in Rio
Inhofe Sends Regards to UN Rio Conference
Washington, D.C. - Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, sent a video message today for CFACT as part of their coverage of the Rio + 20 Sustainable Development Conference. In the video, Senator Inhofe thanked those who made the long trip to Rio to hold the UN accountable for its radical global warming agenda.
Senator Inhofe's video statement will be featured in Rio at an event hosted by the Brazilian Association for Sustainable Development (ABIDES) on June 20, 2012 at 2 PM at the Pavilhão Temporário. Also speaking at the event: Eng. Everton Carvalho, President of Brazilian Association for Sustainable Development, Journalist Magnus Gudmundsson, Marc Morano, and Lord Christopher Monckton.
In the video, Senator Inhofe noted the glaring absence of those who made the original Rio conference a campaign issue - and highlighted the fact that even President George H. W. Bush went to the first Rio sustainability conference, yet President Obama will not be attending twenty years later. To Senator Inhofe this is no surprise: President Obama can't be seen in Rio while he's pretending to support fossil fuels - he is currently running as the "Fossil Fuel" President, but Senator Inhofe noted that if he is reelected, he has promised to make sure global warming is a top priority for the administration. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said before her trip to Rio in President Obama's stead, the United States has to "work to try to help solve the climate crisis" and "the only way to do that that is known to us is to change the way we use energy."
Senator Inhofe, who has travelled to two UN Climate Conferences, and sent videos to others, said that the fight continues to prevent the UN from achieving its goal of redistributing hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars to other nations and trying to force the United States to make "dramatic and enormously expensive changes" to the lives of every American.
Full Text of Video Remarks
Hello, I am Jim Inhofe, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, top Republican on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and chief critic of the Obama administration's radical far left global warming agenda.
Let me begin by thanking my good friends at CFACT for making the long trip down to Rio for the United Nations Sustainability Conference. No one is better than Marc Morano with ClimateDepot.Com, Lord Moncton, David Rothbard, Craig Rucker and the rest of the CFACT team at exposing the far left environmental agenda. And their efforts this time around are critical, as the UN will discuss how they want hundreds of billions of dollars from US taxpayers to be spread around to other nations.
As Fox News reported back in April, "The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development...is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything-or, as one of the documents puts it, ‘a fundamental shift in the way we think and act.'"
According to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, proposals on how the "challenges can and must be addressed," include:
- More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, in the name of fostering "green infrastructure", "climate adaptation" and other "green economy" measures.
- New carbon taxes for industrialized countries that could cost about $250 billion a year, or 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product, by 2020. Other environmental taxes are mentioned, but not specified.
- Major global social spending programs, including a "social protection floor" and "social safety nets" for the world's most vulnerable social groups for reasons of "equity."
- Even more social benefits for those displaced by the green economy revolution-including those put out of work in undesirable fossil fuel industries. The benefits, called "investments," would include "access to nutritious food, health services, education, training and retraining, and unemployment benefits."
What happened to sovereignty? At least Secretary General Ban Ki-moon admits what they are doing.
With that kind of far-left agenda taking place at the Rio Conference, we need CFACT and others to go down there to keep an eye on these guys - and I appreciate your efforts. I will be keeping up with all your dispatches from Rio.
As you know, I had considered making the trip myself, but realized that no one in Washington even knows that the Conference is taking place! President Obama is avoiding it like the plague, and his allies in Congress haven't made a single speech on the conference. Far left environmental groups have done their best to stay under the radar. It appears that even the liberal establishment in Washington wishes this whole UN Conference would go away. In fact, it appears they want to ditch aggressive real grassroots activism in favor of virtual activism from the comfort and convenience of home. We have come a long way in twenty years.
Of course, things were much, much different at the original Rio Earth Conference in 1992. Do you remember when then-Senator Al Gore, who was running for Vice President, attended? You might be surprised to learn that he was in Rio with Representative Henry Waxman, Hollywood celebrity Woody Harrelson along with a number of environmental groups.
Back in 1992, Al Gore travelled down to Rio for the UN conference and said that he was there to "send a powerful message" and went on to criticize President Bush saying "We want President to speak for the American people at the Earth Summit. We applaud his decision to go to the Earth Summit, but many of us, frankly, are appalled by his energetic efforts to stop progress toward meaningful agreements at the Earth Summit."
Well Mr. Gore, at least he went! What do you have to say about President Obama's absence? Your silence speaks volumes.
The bottom line is simple: President Obama is running for reelection and is too busy trying to tell American voters that he is the new fossil fuels President and that he actually supports the development of oil, gas and coal. I don't think that message would sell too well with his friends in the UN. But just wait until after the election - God forbid if he wins - then, as he has promised, he can get back to making his far left global warming agenda a top priority. Remember, we have already documented that his administration has spent nearly $70 billion dollars of taxpayer money on global warming efforts.
To end, let me say thank you again to CFACT, and everyone else there on the ground, who are there to keep the UN accountable. We need you more than ever and I will be keeping in close communication with you over the week.
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