(Analyst's note: Does anyone else find this troubling?)
Amid an international climate-change scandal involving hacked e-mails just days before a major U.N. climate summit of world leaders, it is instructive to profile top White House officials who are drafting President Obama's climate policy.
Some of the officials include known supporters of socialism who have advocated using environmental activism to spread America's wealth.
'Climate czar' Carol Browner
Carol Browner's official title is assistant to the president for energy and climate change. She formerly served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency administrator during the Clinton administration and was Florida secretary of the environment.
 Carol Browner |
Browner was a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society at Socialist International, a group that Discover the Networks reports is the "umbrella for 170 'social democratic, socialist and labor parties' in 55 countries."
The Washington Times explained Browner's group called for "global governance" and asserts rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.
A Washington Examiner editorial in January noted that both Browner's picture and biography had been removed from Socialist International's site but that her name was still listed next to the photo-biographies of her 14 colleagues on the commission.
The New Zeal blog previously documented Browner worked in the 1970s for Citizen Action, founded by Steve Max and Heather Booth, both extremists from the Students for a Democratic Society from which the Weathermen terrorist group later splintered. Both later affiliated with Democratic Socialists of America.
Browner also worked for the Center for American Progress, funded by philanthropist George Soros.
'Regulatory czar' Cass Sunstein
According to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, global climate change is primarily the fault of U.S. environmental behavior and can, therefore, be used as a mechanism to redistribute the country's wealth.
 Cass Sunstein |
The Obama czar penned a 2007 University of Chicago Law School paper – obtained and reviewed by WND – in which he debated whether America should pay "justice" to the world by entering into a compensation agreement that would be a net financial loss for the U.S.
Sunstein leans on the side of such an agreement, particularly a worldwide carbon tax that would heavily tariff the U.S.
A prominent theme throughout Sunstein's 39-page paper, "Climate Change Justice," maintains U.S. wealth should be redistributed to poorer nations. He uses terms such as "distributive justice" several times. The paper was written with fellow attorney Eric A. Posner
"It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid," wrote Sunstein.
He posited: "We agree that if the United States does spend a great deal on emissions reductions as part of an international agreement, and if the agreement does give particular help to disadvantaged people, considerations of distributive justice support its action, even if better redistributive mechanisms are imaginable.
"If the United States agrees to participate in a climate change agreement on terms that are not in the nation's interest, but that help the world as a whole, there would be no reason for complaint, certainly if such participation is more helpful to poor nations than conventional foreign-aid alternatives," he wrote.
Sunstein maintains: "If we care about social welfare, we should approve of a situation in which a wealthy nation is willing to engage in a degree of self-sacrifice when the world benefits more than that nation loses."
The argument bears striking resemblance to comments made by Obama's former environmental adviser, Van Jones. WND reported Jones used a major environmental convention earlier this year to argue for spreading America's wealth.
During Jones' keynote speech at Power Shift '09, available on YouTube, Jones used terms such as "eco-apartheid" and "green for some," and preached about spreading the wealth while promoting a call to "change the whole system."
Jones resigned in September after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
However, WND broke the story this week that Jones serves on the advisory board of an independent environmental organization actively working with the White House.
Sunstein, meanwhile, has promoted both communism and socialism, WND previously reported.
In his 2004 book "The Second Bill of Rights," Sunstein used the precedent of the Great Depression to point out that historic economic crises "provided the most promising conditions for the emergence of socialism in the U.S."
"With a little nudge or a slight change in emphasis, our culture could have gone, and could still go, in many different directions," wrote Sunstein in his book, which was reviewed by WND.
In Sunstein's book, the Obama appointee openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism.
"During the Cold War, the debate about [social welfare] guarantees took the form of pervasive disagreement between the United States and its communist adversaries. Americans emphasized the importance of civil and political liberties, above all free speech and freedom of religion, while communist nations stressed the right to a job, health care and a social minimum."
Continued Sunstein: "I think this debate was unhelpful; it is most plausible to see the two sets of rights as mutually reinforcing, not antagonistic."
'Science czar' John Holdren
Holdren is assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and co-chairman of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
He has been a longtime climate-change alarmist who has advocated ideas such as enforcing limits to world population growth.
 John Holdren |
Holdren's name was in the e-mails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University in the U.K., which show that some climate researchers declined to share their data with fellow scientists, conspired to rig data and sought to keep researchers with dissenting views from publishing in leading scientific journals.
FrontPageMag.com noted Holdren has endorsed "surrender of sovereignty" to "a comprehensive Planetary Regime" that would control all the world's resources, direct global redistribution of wealth, oversee the "de-development" of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits.
Holdren collaborated with conspiracy theorist Paul Ehrlich, author of "The Population Bomb" in which it was proclaimed: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
WND previously reported Holdren also predicted 1 billion people will die in "carbon-dioxide induced famines" in a coming new ice age by 2020.
Holdren based his prediction on a theory that human emissions of carbon dioxide would produce a climate catastrophe causing global cooling, with a consequent reduction in agricultural production resulting in widespread disaster, WND's Jerome Corsi noted.
But Holdren also argued "global warming" might cancel global cooling. In their 1970s textbook "Ecoscience: Population, Resources and Environment," last revised in 1977, Holdren, together with co-authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich, argued on page 687 that "a man-made warming trend might cancel out a natural cooling trend."
