The United Nations' Copenhagen Climate Change Conference starts next week and experts say the outcome of the meetings could mean the beginning of the end of U.S. sovereignty.
The countries gathered will attempt to form a strategy to fight global warming that includes:
• Greenhouse gas emission targets
• Money sent to "developing" countries to aid in making them "eco-friendly"
• Cutting-edge green technology sent to those countries at no charge
If President Obama signs the treaty, some say an international board would have the authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions and demand billions of dollars in payment for the scheme. Any international agreement reached, would dictate policy on global warming for decades.
Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, said the effects of such a treaty would be destructive.
"The purpose of this conference in Copenhagen is to get the United States and other countries, to sign a binding treaty that will limit how much energy our economy, our nation can emit," he said, "and that would have devastating consequences for our country."
There's no doubt the U.S. will have a say in the final document, President Obama is expected to make an appearance at the event, but the big question is whether he will sign such a controversial document.
Brett D. Schaefer, the Jay Kingham Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the U.N. and the Search for Alternatives, said there are ways to participate without becoming a world puppet.
"Instead of letting the U.N. funnel negotiations toward an unrealistic agreement that encourages noncompliance," he said in an article for The Heritage Foundation, "the U.S. and other nations expected to shoulder the burden should work outside of the U.N. to hash out a realistic, effective strategy by which they are prepared to abide."
The treaty would have a devastating impact on U.S. families.
"It's dangerous for the economic well-being of our country," Phillips said. "It's dangerous for average Americans like you and me, who will have to pay higher utility bills and higher gasoline prices. It will threaten jobs, and it's really based on a genuinely radical ideology that does not have the support of science."
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