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WEST VIRGINIA RECORD

Thursday, March 28, 2024

A letter to Secretary Kerry

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Sending a letter to a public official is a good way to let him know how you feel. Sending copies of that letter to other officials is a good way to let him know you mean to be taken seriously.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and his Texas counterpart, Ken Paxton, sent such a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, letting him know how they feel about Paris 2015, the week-long United Nations summit on climate change which began Nov. 30.

They made a point of letting Kerry know that copies of the letter had been sent to President Obama, congressional leaders, and key negotiators from the U.N., the European Union, and various foreign countries.

Morrisey and Paxton wrote Kerry that he has “a duty to acknowledge to negotiating nations at Paris 2015 that the centerpiece of the President's domestic CO2 reduction program is being challenged in court by a majority of States and will likely be struck down” and that “any agreement arising from Paris 2015 must be submitted to the United States Senate for ratification under clear constitutional requirements.”

The two AGs argued that Obama's CO2 reduction program is “based on unilateral executive action that is unlikely to be the law for very long. The Power Plan – which was never voted on by Congress – has been under withering scrutiny from both Republicans and Democrats since it was proposed, and the chorus calling for its overturning grows by the day. A bipartisan majority of States,” they noted, “has filed a lawsuit asking the federal court of appeals in Washington, D.C., to put an end to the illegal Power Plan.”

Morrisey and Paxton emphasized that “any agreement arising from Paris 2015 will be legally non-binding unless it is submitted to and ratified by the U.S. Senate” and that any “attempt to ratify a Paris 2015 accord through an executive agreement . . . would be clearly unlawful.”

Read the entire letter yourself on the AG's website. It's a doozy!

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