Legal Path to Government of Earth for the U.S.A.
August 18, 2024
by William P. Meyers

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United Nations Treaty Path

This essay assumes that we are looking for a way to set up a global EPA (Environmental Protections Agency). We need global EPA because many nation's efforts to protect the environment have been insufficient or ineffective. As a result the earth has sunk into a Slow Motion Apocalypse that brings escalating environmental impacts including global warming, ecosystem collapses, deadly heat waves, increasing storm intensities, drought and famine. See also The Earth Needs a Global Environmental Protection Agency.

There are many potential pathways to this goal, and many potential points of failure. Here I will look at how the United States might join a global EPA through changes at the United Nations. It is possible the U.N. might evolve into an effective governor of a global EPA. It is also possible that the U.S. Senate would ratify an international treaty establishing a government of earth. A third path might be to amend the U.S. Constitution, which was not deemed necessary when the U.S. joined the United Nations.

Whether the current United Nations constitutes a government is open to question. It is usually called, more generically, an international organization. It was created following the failure of the earlier League of Nations. During World War II the term United Nations became a term for the group of imperial powers (British Empire, American Empire, French Empire, Soviet Empire, plus China and lesser allies) who aimed to win that war. At the Dunbarton Oaks Conference in 1944 the Americans, Soviets, British and Chinese agreed to form an international organization to replace the League of Nations. [Which the U.S. had refused to join, by a vote of the U.S. Senate, 49 to 35, failing to reach the 2/3 threshold, on March 19, 1920.] That agreement was amended in 1945 at the San Francisco Conference, which included representatives of 50 nations. The result was the United Nations Charter.

The Charter is a long document, like a constitution, giving the United Nations a structure and mission, but a very limited set of powers. The real power resides in the permanent members of the Security Council: the U.S.A., China, United Kingdom, France and U.S.S.R. (now the Russian federation). But even that real power is often negative: these nations have the right to veto any proposed U.N. action. So for the most part the United Nations has been a discussion group. Its main purpose, to keep the peace, has not worked out well. Upholding human rights has been a goal, but often with no way to enforce the desired outcome. Wars have continued. Possibly some wars have been averted that might have taken place had the U.N. not existed.

Did the U.N. Charter become part of the U.S. Constitution? No. Each nation had to ratify the Charter. In the U.S., that meant approval by the U.S. Senate under the treaty provision of the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 2):

"He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur;" Here He is the president, which in the case of the U.N. treaty was Harry Truman.

On July 28, 1945 the United States Senate ratified the Charter of the United Nations by a vote of 89 to 2. [See https://www.congress.gov/79/crecb/1945/07/28/GPO-CRECB-1945-pt6-21-1.pdf Pages 8142-8190.] It is worth quoting the words of Senator Robert F. Wagner, as they may apply as much today to the concept of national sovereignty and the need for an international EPA as they did then to the cause of peace. "Mr. President, I favor the ratification of the United Nations Charter. . . Mankind craves peace and tranquillity, the reign of law and justice in international conduct . . . What are the obstacles to success? It is not the unwillingness of the plain people anywhere. It is not their resistance which might cause us to fail as we failed once before. The obstacles have existed rather in the voluntary subservience of many of our statesmen to the slavery of words. They have been fettered by words like "sovereignty." They have been shackled by phrases like "liberty of action." They would hesitate to enter the Garden of Eden, until they knew the name of every tree that grew therein. And, as usual, there are those who have the uncanny capacity to find in our Constitution the letter that killeth instead of the spirit that giveth light."

Further, Wagner said "The twentieth century cries out for a newer and richer concept of the place of a nation in the family of nations. We must reach for practical devices that balance obligations with power, that place justice above self-will, and that replace isolationism with responsibility."

How much power can the Federal government give up to an international Environmental Protection Agency, simply by signing and ratifying a treaty? A two thirds vote of the Senate is a high bar, but the bar for passing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is higher still. I believe that the U.S. can delegate any subset of its power, but it cannot agree to an treaty that contradicts the Constitution. The U.S. has already signed several international agreements, including some aimed at protecting aspects of the environment. The problem is doing this piecemeal, and that the U.S. signing does not obligate others to sign. The U.S. has refused to sign some agreements proposed by the international community or U.N. Even for the agreements the U.S. has signed, compliance has been voluntary, as it is for other nations. The failure of the system, in the best known recent example, is the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement by the Donald Trump administration. That agreement was supposed to be legally binding, but there is no mechanism to enforce compliance, even if the U.S. enters it again.

Because of the disproportionate power of the fossil fuel industry, and other polluters, in the United States, I would like our nation to be subject to international supervision respecting the environment. Of course the U.S., like all nations, would have input into decision making. The fossil fuel industry is global, and has global power. Preventing that industry from exercising any power over a global EPA is important. In a democracy that might be done by mobilizing environmentally minded voters. In a dictatorship it would require convincing the dictator that it is time to cooperate with other nations. More specifically, I believe a 100% tax on the profits of fossil fuel producers, with those taxes used to fund the global EPA and preparations for long-term effects like sea-level rise, would be a good start.

So, we need the U.N. to propose a treaty giving it the power to establish a global EPA with sufficient power to enforce reasonably strict global environmental laws. We need to start preparing to get the U.S. Senate to agree to that treaty. Or we could pressure the Senate to work with the President to write the treaty, and then work to get the U.N. to adopt it and encourage its members to ratify it.

Easily said in three sentences, but it will likely take all the good people of the world demanding it, to see it done.

For the U.N. to evolve into an effective Government of Earth there will need to be pressure from the people of earth. Just knowing the world's environment is trending to disaster is not enough. Governments, including the U.N., are characterized by inertia. They need to be pushed to do what is right. They are often captured by groups of people with narrow self-interests. Nations that can push the U.N. from within need to be identified. Nations that are used to bossing other nations around need to be pushed at from the lower levels of their political systems.

The other possible means of establishing a global EPA is revolution from below. I see that as messy and less likely to succeed than following the legal pathway outlined above. Please share these ideas as broadly as possible.

Please share these ideas as broadly as possible.