FOMENTING PARANOIA FOR RATINGS

Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention before, but it seems to me that Fox News has been making an extra effort lately to attract the paranoid, black-helicopter strain of right-winger. Fox's new star is, of course the utterly unhinged conspiracy-monger Glenn Beck; Fox's White House correspondent, Major Garrett, asked a question Tuesday at the Obama press conference about a fictitious plan to replace the dollar with a "global currency"; and now there's this at the Fox News site:

U.N. 'Climate Change' Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes -- all under the supervision of the world body....

Holy crap! This is what right-wingers have been fearing for sixty years -- a takeover of the global economy by the One Worlders of the United Nations!

Except it isn't.

One problem is with that word "envisions." If you're a right-wing paranoid, it suggests a sinister plan; in fact, as the linked report (PDF) makes clear, the "envisioning" is just a process of weighing the pluses and minuses of any action taken to mitigate climate change -- and the report is listing these possible consequences so the various nations can talk about them.

From the report, which is the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (click to enlarge):



Omigod! It's "a description of a possible approach to group actions"! Hitler talked like this!

And here's a bit of a chart from the report. This is what the climate-change group "envisions" (again, click to enlarge):



This isn't fascist -- it's deliberative. It's talk leading up to a mutually agreed-upon treaty, fer crissake. And as for the bit about all this being (gasp!) "under the supervision of the world body," this is from the UNFCCC page at the Australian government's Web site:

How does the UNFCCC operate?

Decisions under the UNFCCC are made on the basis of consensus according to current operating practice. This means that, rather than voting, Parties aim to reach agreement through discussion and negotiation. The main negotiating forum is sessions of the Conference of the Parties (COP), which typically take place at ministerial level.

Parties also negotiate in the two subsidiary bodies of the UNFCCC, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI). Other matters, such as the development of technical guidelines for implementing COP decisions, are dealt with at UNFCCC workshops....

Discussion! Negotiation! Workshops! At the ministerial level!

Pure CommunoFascoAlinskyACORNism, I tell ya.