World leaders continue to wrangle off stage in the lead up to Copenhagen for the Climate Change Summit (COP15), December 7-9.

A dismal pre-summit gathering just concluded in Barcelona was given a quick spray of gloss before its reports were released to the media. "What we will need after Copenhagen is a little time," declared Yvo de Boer, director of the United Nations climate change office.

The treaty will require more than time. A major consensus on the principles for plunder has yet to be hammered into shape. The sticking point for the climate treaty is who will pick up the estimated $100 billion U.S. tab just for the next few years? When the G-20 finance ministers met in September, the German minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, admitted that their working agreement was tossed because “emerging nations” refused to contribute. “Basically a group of emerging nations made it clear that they were unwilling to invest their own funds in the fight against climate change,” said Mr. Schaeuble.

Alongside the newspeak of “climate justice” there is “climate debt,” a multi-trillion dollar transfer of wealth from productive nations to UN authorities whose task it is to distribute the plunder. One need only recall the United Nation’s sordid grab of millions during the Oil-for-Food scam to have second thoughts about the United Nation’s ability to administer trillions of dollars. That is one “morality debt” the United Nations has yet to pay.

Proponents of the treaty, led by the United Nations, heave heavy claims for “climate justice” and “climate debt” into the debate. (Shall we expect the meaning of justice to be plundered for any number of grievances such as “housing justice” or “water justice,” or even a “computer justice”? Yes, already such UN are underway.) But a sober analysis reveals no scientific consensus exists that the planet is in peril from CO2 emissions—so-called “greenhouse gasses.” Hundreds of eminent scientists and climatologists have debunked the claims put forth by Al Gore and his merry band. Yet, millions of private and public dollars are poured into “climate justice” promotions in order to froth up the masses.

People the world over are urged to “demand” justice, but none so much as those citizens who live in what remains of free nations. Hapless citizens are prodded into a guilty fervor to pay a “climate debt” as expiation for the sins of consumerism. Are we soon to see demands for “housing justice”? The remedy proposed is the largest transfer of wealth and freedom the world has ever seen.

Who is to administer the plundered wealth of the productive nations? The draft treaty proposes a governing body with sweeping powers to monitor, tax and enforce the demands of the treaty. Enforcement requires force. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon wrote of the Copenhagen Summit and its new governing entity in the October 25 issue of the New York Times. His phrase was “an equitable global governance structure.” How much sovereignty is forfeited to this “governing structure”? Who determines what is “equitable”? What world “force” will be used to ensure that non-compliant nations submit?

The fizzled preparatory meetings are a major opportunity for those who still believe in freedom and sovereignty. It affords thinking leaders time to make the better case for care of the environment based on science, not totalitarian ideology. What is sorely needed at this juncture is a return to intellectual integrity. That is, science should not be kept hostage to the will of globalist politicians.

A little known history of the entire climate control movement is that it is an outgrowth of billionaire Maurice Strong’s push to institute a global mandate for his program of “Sustainable Development.” Mr. Strong, architect of the UN’s Agenda 21 and the UN’s Environmental Program (1972), urged world leaders to find a common enemy that all mankind could recognize (climate peril, sustainability*) in order to form a world governing body that would structure man’s common future.

Among other initiatives derived from Agenda 21 is the Earth Charter. This charter is a deliberate secular substitution for the Ten Commandments. To reinforce the “new commandments,” the earth charter is enclosed in an “ark of hope” built to house the earth’s commandments, as well as the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. In 2003, the ark of hope, carried on four poles (as was the Jewish Ark of the Covenant), was received by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in a grand ceremony. A new-ageism has been cultivated in recognition of the public need for some sense of transcendence to give meaning to their sacrifices in favor of “earthology.”

Where the masses might be persuaded to submit to a soft totalitarianism as their contribution to save the planet, self-styled “citizens of the world” yearn for a harmonized world devoid of political differences. Richard Haas, current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as special advisor to Colin Powell, exemplifies a growing cadre of intellectuals who believe the time has come for an end to state sovereignty. Mr. Haas wrote:

"State sovereignty must be altered in globalized era…Moreover, states must be prepared to cede some sovereignty to world bodies if the international system is to function…Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker.”

The stalled Climate Change Treaty is an open moment for conservative leaders to advance a fresh argument for the relationship between freedom and national sovereignty. At no time in recent history have the distinctions between the structure of submission and the structure of freedom been so clear.