["The Precautionary Principle"] has been cited to justify European regulatory practices for many decades, but was embraced by the U.S. environmental movement beginning in the 1990s. The environmentalists see the concept as particularly useful to them because it requires that all allegations that specific activities harm the environment, even if credible evidence to demonstrate such a cause and effect relationship is not fully established scientifically. Lawrence Kogan, chief executive officer of the Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development (ITSSD), a non-profit legal research organization, said the Precautionary Principle is being used by environmental extremists, trans-nationalists, and even foreign countries to diminish America’s military prowess and economic standing. Their efforts amount to a “Green Lawfare” campaign against America, he added. Read more in - Environmentalists launch "Green Lawfare" campaign against U.S. defenses

As debate continues over whether the United States will accede to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), recent developments in Congress and the Executive Branch indicate a quiet but concerted effort to inject UNCLOS environmental principles into U.S. law. Some, including this author, have argued that U.S. accession to UNCLOS would explicitly usher into the U.S. legal system an aggressive version of Europe’s precautionary approach to regulating economic conduct. In advance of accession, though, this “Precautionary Principle” is finding its way into U.S. policy statements and proposed legislation in the more politically palatable and innocuous-sounding, but no less unscientific, form of “ecosystem-based management” (EBM). As this LEGAL BACKGROUNDER will illustrate, application of EBM to use and exploration of the sea, and even land could substantially frustrate critical economic activity such as offshore oil exploration and marine genetic prospecting, while also imperiling U.S. sovereignty.

Read more here:

“ECOSYSTEM-BASED MANAGEMENT”: A STEALTH VEHICLE TO INJECT EURO-STYLE PRECAUTION INTO U.S. REGULATION
http://itssd.org/7-10-09Kogan2_LegalBackgrounder%20(2).pdf

See also:

US UNCLOS Accession NOT Necessary to Secure Vast Majority of U.S. Energy Needs, US Army War College Research Paper Finds; Amendment Preferred
http://itssdjournalunclos-lost.blogspot.com/2009/07/us-unclos-modification-preferable.html

In a new article appearing within the forthcoming issue of the Santa Clara Journal of International Law entitled, What Goes Around, Comes Around: How UNCLOS Ratification Will Herald Europe's Precautionary Principle as US Law, international attorney Lawrence Kogan calls upon all Americans to immediately exercise their constitutionally guaranteed 'right to know'. This article identifies the multiple pathways through which global environmental extremists, US trans-nationalists, and the 111th Congressional supermajority seek to use the highly complex United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as a loading platform from which to import into the American heartland very harmful UN and European-anchored environmental treaty and customary international law rules. "Unless the public demands due process of law from their congressional representatives," emphasized Kogan, "such rules, resembling rogue waves, will collectively override US sovereignty and the supremacy of the US Constitution and its accompanying Bill of Rights".

Read more in:

ITSSD: Americans' Constitutional Rights Will Be Trampled Unless Congress Convenes Public Hearings on the UN Law of the Sea Convention

See also: How UNCLOS Ratification Will Herald Europe's Precautionary Principle as U.S. Law

http://s-espersen.blogspot.com/search/label/EU

Unfortunately, the current EU innovation model is fixated on governmental market control via regulation rather than on market facilitation via economic incentives that ease the burdens and costs of doing business," emphasizes Kogan. "The EU Commission is more obsessed with dictating the rules of the game to ensure 'parity-over-progress' than with providing hi tech European businesses operating in the biotech sectors with the necessary property rights-based enabling environment and economic freedom to grow and prosper. "Consequently," Kogan notes, "EU biotech and pharma companies have increasingly relocated operations to the US."

ITSSD: Russia Can Secure Greatest Biotech Market Advances Following US, Not EU Innovation Model
http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prnewswire/2008/03/21/prnewswire200803211501PR_NEWS_USPR_DC17365.html (cut and paste link)

Since European precautionary principle proponents advocate that ‘quality of life’ considerations, moral values, and social and environmental group (communal) concerns should serve a predominant role in international policy-making to address future potential public harms, it is incumbent upon all other nations to question the source of these beliefs. They must demand strict transparency and accountability from those who argue in favor of changing the current ‘risk-based’ global paradigm to a new ‘precautionary principle’ hazard-based paradigm, which dictates the extent to which all societies may use and rely upon science in evaluating potential future public dangers. After all, is it not the advocates of precaution who bear the burden of proving to the world that a paradigm shift focusing primarily on the ‘unknowables’ of life is actually necessary? Mustn’t they prove beyond a preponderance of the evidence that this utopian vision can not result in greater harms to global society than those they are intended to eliminate? And, isn’t it they who must demonstrate that the assumptions underlying these beliefs reflect a reasoned rather than a desperate, pessimistic view of reality? [...]

In essence, some sort of blurring or unnatural fusion may have occurred between the multitude of values and phobias long submerged within Europe’s collective psyche and the extreme, almost religious utopian ideologies of post-communist European social and environmental groups. This convolution of European fears, ideals and hypothetical realities has manifested itself in the form of the precautionary principle. If its underpinnings indeed manifest a disease (i.e., "Precautionus Principilitis"), its symptoms and diagnosis would be quite telling: a disorder induced by stress and repressed feelings of inferiority and desperation, marked by extreme luddism, incoherent babbling, disorientation, and a shared form of delusion. But what is worse, instead of suffering this disturbance in private, the European regionalists seek to convert the entire world to their disordered understanding of reality. They are driven to do this, as a means of denying the guilt attendant with the sociopathic manner in which they are manipulating the rest of the world, while injecting their own shortcomings into a world system over which they now claim moral superiority.[...]

Read more in Precautionus Principilitis: A Psychosocial Disorder Causing Luddite Psychobabble by Lawrence A. Kogan and Robert Stein.

U.S. State Department Legal Adviser John B. Bellinger III’s recent letter to the editor (“LOST will benefit U.S.” – Washington Times 10/31/07)[1] reflects but another example of the true battle in which we are all, in one way or another, now engaged - namely, the battle against ignorance, apathy and bad ideas. - The letter to the editor proclaims that US ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) will provide “enormous national security...advantages to the United States, including clear legal rights of navigation for our military through and over the world’s oceans”. Yet it fails to mention the severe economic, legal and security-related costs associated with subjugating the US military’s absolute customary international law right to freedom of navigation to environmental concerns. Much to the contrary, the US military’s right to freedom of navigation has been steadily eroding since the1990’s as the result of the Clinton-Gore administration’s ‘enlightened’ “military operations other than war” policy [2] and the ‘lawfare’ tactics employed by other UNCLOS parties [3] with the help of environmental extremist groups.

Read more in UNCLOS Alchemy by Lawrence Kogan.

Part 1.

I oppose the ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty at this time. The Treaty threatens U.S. sovereignty and gives a U.N.-affiliated organization far too much authority over U.S. interests in international waters. The American people also deserve ironclad assurances that the problems with the treaty highlighted by President Reagan more than two decades ago have been fixed.

- Thus states US presidential candidate Fred Thompson according to Newsmax.com. Other candidates have expressed more interest in the treaty but show similar concern over the increased powers of the UN that a raticification of the treaty will imply.

Fred Thompson website

Fred Thompson: No to Law of the Sea Treaty

Read more in:

The US should reject the UN Law of the Sea Treaty

The ‘LOST 45’ UN Environmental Restrictions on US Sovereignty

‘LOST’ reality

LOST and found

Vetting LOST

Myths and Realities Concerning UN Law of the Sea Treaty*

Visit also The Institute for Trade, Standards & Sustainable Development at www.itssd.org.

See also Accuracy in Medias Cliff Kincaid (oktober 29): Bush's Toilet Bowl Treaty.

According to the World Conservation Union, the environmental community's goal is to utilize the [UN Law of the Sea Treaty] to employ the 'modern' Precautionary Principle globally to preserve the earth's biodiversity for future generations consistent with the United Nations doctrine of sustainable development.[...] And, this requires the development and promotion of:

..."a global framework or approach, building on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, CMS and other relevant agreements, to facilitate the creation of a global representative system of high seas MPA networks consistent with international law, to ensure its effective management and enforcement, and coordinate and harmonize applicable international agreements, mechanisms and authorities in accordance with modern principles of precautionary, ecosystem-based and integrated management and sound governance as defined in the UN principles; including through: Requesting those countries which have yet to sign or ratify UNCLOS, and other relevant international agreements (e.g. Kyoto Protocol, [...] Convention on Biological Diversity,[...] UN Fish Stocks Agreement)[...] to immediately ratify and implement these agreements"...*

Comments on the UN LAW OF THE SEA TREATY (LOST):

The ‘LOST 45’ UN Environmental Restrictions on US Sovereignty

‘LOST’ reality

LOST and found

Vetting LOST

Myths and Realities Concerning UN Law of the Sea Treaty*

Visit also The Institute for Trade, Standards & Sustainable Development at www.itssd.org.

Danish readers see also: Star Trek og værdikampen.

It is an impressive testament to the abiding affection and political influence of former President Ronald Reagan that the fate of a controversial treaty now before the U.S. Senate may ultimately turn on a single question: What would Reagan do? - As we had the privilege of working closely with President Reagan in connection with the foreign policy, national security and domestic implications of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty or LOST), there is no question about how our 40th president felt about this accord. He so strongly opposed it that he formally refused to sign the treaty. He even sent Donald Rumsfeld as a personal emissary to our key allies around the world to explain his opposition and encourage them to follow suit. All of them did so at the time. - Read more in Another U.N. Power Grab By William P. Clark and Edwin Meese in The Wall Street Journal today.

See also articles:

The ‘LOST 45’ UN Environmental Restrictions on US Sovereignty

‘LOST’ reality

LOST and found

Vetting LOST

Myths and Realities Concerning UN Law of the Sea Treaty by Lawrence Kogan, and the announcement Abuse of constitutional powers.

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278

THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS IS SOON LIKELY TO APPROVE, WITHOUT ADEQUATE PUBLIC DEBATE, RATIFICATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS LAW OF THE SEA CONVENTION (UNCLOS), THE LARGEST AND MOST COMPREHENSIVE INTERNATIONAL REGULATORY TREATY EVER CONCEIVED BY MANKIND.

THE UNCLOS WILL PROVIDE THE UNITED NATIONS AND FUTURE U.S. GOVERNMENTS WITH LEGAL JUSTIFICATION TO INVEST THEMSELVES WITH EXPANSIVE NEW POWERS TO IMPOSE COSTLY AND BURDENSOME NON-SCIENCE AND NON-ECONOMICS-BASED EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS (HIDDEN TAXES) UPON ALL AMERICANS THAT WILL SEVERELY IMPAIR THE USE & VALUE OF THEIR PRIVATE PROPERTY.

WHAT HAVE YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES BEEN DOING TO ENSURE THAT YOUR CONSTITUTIONALLY-GUARANTEED PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS, AMERICA’S NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND AMERICA’S MILITARY CAPABILITY TO DEFEND ITSELF WILL BE PROTECTED, AND NOT DELEGATED TO AN INTERNATIONAL UNELECTED INSTITUTION IN WHICH THE U.S. HAS ONLY ONE VOTE?

The prior message was a public service announcement from the Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development. The Institute for Trade, Standards, and Sustainable Development is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan educational organization, based in Princeton, NJ, USA. Its charitable mission is to promote a positive paradigm of sustainable development consistent with private property, free market and WTO rules. The ITSSD examines evolving international law and policy as it relates to trade, science, technology and sustainable economic freedom and development around the world. ITSSD research is accessible on its website at: http://www.itssd.org and on its blog, the ITSSD Journal, at: http://www.itssd.blogspot.com .