Drew Thornley briefly noted below the Wall Street Journal piece today, “Obama’s Carbon Ultimatum: The coming offer you won’t be able to refuse.” In it, the Journal assails the adamant vow by Sen. Obama’s relevant policy aide, Jason Grumet, that a President Obama would declare an “endangerment” from CO2 under the Clean Air Act – regardless of the well-understood regulatory and economic dangers of trying to use that tool for this job — expressly as a way to make Congress pass a law at least designed to regulate greenhouse gases.

The Journal notes how this implicitly acknowledges the obvious, that George W. Bush is not the reason the U.S. has to date held off committing economic hari-kari over global warming. However, like Congress and everyone else but a select few, the WSJ ignores the fact that Congress could stanch any of the artificial urgency imposed on it by an Obama EPA very, very simply. Then all parties involved could proceed deliberately — which, of course, is the last thing the global-warming agenda could survive.

Consider the real implication of this: as the Journal puts it, “blackmail – or rather, greenmail.” According to the piece, “Mr. Grumet justified it this way: ‘The U.S. has to move quickly domestically . . . We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus.’” (Ellipses in original.)

Whaaaaa? OK, slowly this time. The express goal of “mov[ing] quickly domestically” – in the form of EPA regulation of CO2 from new motor vehicles in the U.S., which everyone knows will trigger a cascade of further GHG regulation – is to “have a meaningful impact in the international discussion.” Unless someone can point to another international instrument hanging around out there, this implicitly means the “Kyoto II” treaty that its enthusiasts claim will be ready for our collective signature next year.

That pact will be negotiated over the course of the next year, for formal agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009. On this, there can be no delay, or so says every cheerleader of the warmist agenda from the EU to the UN.

But a quick review of this promise – which doesn’t have the whiff of being an empty one, but that’s just one man’s opinion — reveals Grumet vowing that “‘in the absence of Congressional action’ 18 months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.” That timeline places the Obama camp at the annual Bonn tinkering session, the first one for the newly agreed Kyoto II.

First — I’m just curious: Does anyone out there really think Obama will not fall over himself to agree to this treaty, in December of next year, simply as one of the most visible symbols to show how he’s just soooo different than that mean George W. Bush? Of course he will agree to it (Senate ratification is another story, as we have already learned.) He may even fly over to do it himself, just as Clinton had Gore fly over to agree to the first one in Kyoto.

And then, some time after acquiescing to a costlier version of what even Bill Clinton realized was a bad deal, he will do something very harmful and clumsy in order to make his mark on the international negotiations. Translation: either Obama’s chief climate policy advisor doesn’t know the first thing about the issue, or, here we go again with the poorly considered and reckless symbolic gestures, but this time scripted well in advance!

First, President Clinton signs the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, saying at the signing ceremony that he disagreed with the pact’s terms but thought by signing it we would then be able to improve them. Yes. That always helps one’s leverage. Then we join the rest of the world agreeing to Kyoto which exempted most of the world, claiming that now we’d work to get the rest of the world on board. The track record of such inanity is bad enough that you’d think we would have heard the end of it by now. Apparently not. What makes these people incapable of understanding that treaties are negotiated before you agree to them?

But it gets worse, because we now must consider the logic behind the express objective. We need to do something that certainly will fall short, over the relevant period of time (Kyoto II is to run to 2020, 2025 at the latest), than they are demanding of us, for the practical purpose of . . . what?

India, China, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and so on all say No and mean No, of this there can be no doubt. So a President Obama, we are told today, will voluntarily unleash EPA to do something very damaging using a law clearly never designed for the task and not fit for purpose, in order to . . . again, what would this act accomplish?

No wonder our antagonists cannot wait to sit across the table from this man without preconditions.