I was in attendance at The Hague’s conference center on that otherwise typical, northern European day in November 2000 when French President Jacques Chirac opened the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention (“Rio Treaty”) by praising the Kyoto Protocol as “the first component of an authentic global governance.” You could spot the Americans in the room; they were the ones lifting their jaws from the floor.

I was also in the hallway to watch members of the U.S.delegation railing against the notion — some of them anyway, not John Kerry who I saw feverishly scrambling to rescue the deal in the late hours after European hijinks caused the Clinton-Gore team to walk away from the table — most notably to my recollection Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). Sensenbrenner amassed a small gaggle of print reporters for his comments, to which one reporter whose press credential identified him as being associated with the Guardian kept retorting “Bollocks!” to all others in attendance.

The basic point of Cong. Sensenbrenner’s remarks was that the U.S. was uninterested in global governance of this or any other sort.

Well, Jacques Chirac may be lacking in many things, but determination is not one of them. It turns out that he is still riding this hobby horse, calling yet again in February for “establishment of ‘world environmental governance’.”

Although very little could do more to set back the global warming/global governance movement back by a few years that openly asserting their objective, Chirac’s comments have re-ignited the discussion. Last week Italy “call[ed] for an increasingly significant role for the United Nations ‘in the protection of the environment’”, in the name of reforming the UN, of which reform “‘the establishment of a truly effective international environmental governance is a major component’.” The story offers concurrence in this sentiment by one Phil Clapp, late of the National Environmental Trust and now a co-head of the new, super-sized Pew climate pressure group. (Clapp, among others, also remains on record as correctly blaming Europe for Kyoto talks collapsing, a position he, like the establishment media, suddenly abandoned and revised once a foe occupied the White House)

You see, our “global governance” types want to do for the environment what they’ve done for global peace and security. It is at this point that everyone should become very worried, indeed, about global warming, while ever-thankful for Chirac’s rare moments of candor.