Copenhage Schmocenhagen

Let me start by saying that I believe we should be good stewards of our planet and do our best to preserve our natural resources. That being said, I am strongly, really strongly, adamantly opposed to signing any legally binding treaty that gives the UN authority over our businesses.

We are a self-governed nation which means that we the people make the decisions on what will and will not happen in our nation. We may elect officials who don't follow-through on our directives, but we at least have the authority to vote the bums out of office. If Obama signs a legally binding treaty in Copenhagen then the UN will be able to impose crippling regulations on our already struggling businesses and we will have no say whatsoever in what happens. We will not be able to vote on what is done, we will not be able to voice our displeasure to the imposers, and most importantly, we will not be able to stop it by exercising our voting rights. We will be under the control of a group of people unanswerable to the people of the United States of America.

Much has been said about American principles, but the most important is that we are a nation governed by the people. Should a legally binding treaty be signed at any time in the future, then we will no longer be in control of our own destiny. This may start with regulations on our businesses, but just imagine what the panel of experts in control of our fate could deem necessary to affect global climate change. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that they could dictate what car we can drive or how many vehicles we can have? Or even how many miles we are allowed to drive in a year? We would be abdicating our sovereignty our our rights to self-govern to a group of people we know nothing about. This absolutely cannot happen.

I read in November 6th article in the Timesonline, a UK organization, that "The Global Humanitarian Forum, based in Geneva, has estimated that more than 300,000 people are killed each year by climate change, nearly all of them in poor countries." How can something like this possibly be quantified? I'd love to see the data on how this number was determined and how the deaths were sourced to climate change. But then again, it's probably been dumped or shredded and the raw data is gone with only the summary remaining.

We do need to be good stewards of our planet, but we absolutely do not need to abdicate our sovereignty in order to do so. Quite frankly, Copenhagen should mean nothing to the American people except as a chewing tobacco.