Jerry Brown Leaves Terrorism at Home to Fight it in Paris

California Gov. Jerry Brown has now left California, still reeling from the San Bernardino terror attack, and has joined the United Nations in Paris to battle what President Barack Obama and others regard as possibly the real cause of terrorism: global climate change.

At a dinner Saturday evening at the U.S. embassy in Paris, Ambassador Jane Hartley honored Jerry Brown and his political allies for having “chosen to act before it’s too late” in the battle against global climate change as the most important national security issue of our time.

Hartley reminded revelers that the Obama Administration’s Department of Defense 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review argued the projected effects of climate change “…are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions–conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.”

The Ambassador also toasted Secretary of State John Kerry for his November policy remarks where he stated that “the impacts of climate change can exacerbate resource competition, threaten livelihoods, and increase the risk of instability and conflict,” creating a breeding grounds for violent extremism that supports the rise of terrorist groups like ISIL, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, al-Qaida, and other sects.

Repositioning climate change as a national security issue convenient served as a distraction from focusing on the actual terrorist risks at home.

Up until now, fighting climate change has been a huge financial positive for Gov. Brown and other liberal politicians by providing justification to raise energy taxes to create more union jobs and provide more subsidies to corporate cronies.

But over the next few days, the 100 least-developed countries will demand that developed countries start honoring their 2009 pledge at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen to make entitlement payments of $100 billion per year to the United Nations Green Climate Fund by 2020 to subsidize the least developed countries climate change initiatives.

Unlike American bilateral foreign aid, which usually includes rigid strings attached to create rich subsidies for politically favored U.S. corporate food and military equipment interests, the Green Climate Fund will be governed by a board composed of an equal number of members from developed countries paying the entitlement cash and the least developed countries receiving the bulk of the cash entitlements.

Curiously, Brown and others seem to have little desire to pay for the cost of turning the Third World into a green paradise. The developing countries only committed in 2012 to make $17 billion in annual entitlement transfer payments to the fund.

The Sacramento Bee reports that Brown is not eager to follow the example of the Canadian province of Quebec, which gave a small amount to the fund:

“I doubt that would commend itself to our legislative folks,” Brown said in an interview last week, when asked about the possibility of the state giving financial aid to developing nations. “But certainly if somebody wants to talk about that, I wouldn’t stop them. But we’re pretty challenged right now – all these pent up demands for various things.”

Last month, Senate Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, also reacted coolly to the idea.

“We’re a sub-national,” he said. “We’re not a federal government.”

In Paris, he United States and European Community are demanding that the final draft of the Paris Climate Change agreement require the 77 developing countries to contribute cash as well.

But in a strongly-worded joint statement on December 3, the “Group of 77″ developing nations, which includes China and India, said they were deeply concerned with “attempts to introduce economic conditions” into the deal that would require them to help fund the 2009 promise.

With the U.S. and EU essentially reneging on the other $83 billion in annual entitlement payments, it will be interesting to see if Gov. Brown volunteers California taxpayers to pay for Green Climate Fund entitlements in the fight against terrorism.