Obama appointee’s affiliations questionable

No, it’s not the president-elect, at least not explicitly. Conservatives are often accused of scaremongering when they claim left-wing environmentalists are actually socialists hiding behind green disguises. But with Carol Browner, incoming President Barack Obama’s freshly appointed assistant to the president for energy and climate change, the so-called White House “Climate Czar,” there is no question about the socialism. Browner is a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which is a formal organ of Socialist International. Oddly enough, the group’s Web site was recently scrubbed to remove Browner’s picture and biography, but her name is still listed next to the photo-biographies of her 14 colleagues on the commission. Socialist International is no group of woolly headed idealists. It is an influential assembly of officials from across the international community whose official Statement of Principles describes an agenda of gaining and exercising government power based on socialist concepts.

Browner’s CSWS is similarly open about the economic costs it is willing to impose across national borders to achieve its environmental utopia. On Sept. 5-6, the commission noted that the costs of its proposals would “range in the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two decades,” and it called for a “redesign of the international rules on intellectual property.” That is international bureaucratese for compelling an inventor to surrender property rights in order to “share” technologies with less-developed countries.

At the Congress of the Socialist International held June 30 to July 2, the CSWS officially resolved that “market solutions alone are insufficient and will not provide the financial support and resources necessary to achieve the required combination of deep emission reduction, adaptation to already changing climate conditions, energy security and equitable and environmentally sound economic development.” Again, that’s bureaucratese. It means that international taxes should be imposed to provide the “resources necessary” to impose what the CSWS repeatedly refers to as a “regime” against “global warming.” By appointing Browner to a White House post, Obama has at the least implicitly endorsed an utterly radical socialist agenda for his administration’s environmental policy. The incoming chief executive thus strengthens critics who contend environmental policies aren’t really about protecting endangered species or preserving virgin lands, but rather expanding government power and limiting individual freedom.