President Obama, who wants to emphasize science, has chosen Carol Browner for his “Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change,” a new post being dubbed the “Climate Czar.” Browner’s recent career will be of interest to Americans struggling with a weak economy and cold weather.

Browner is not a climate scientist but an attorney and bureaucrat who ran the EPA during both terms of the Clinton Administration, so she does not exactly represent “change.” She also put in a stint with the Socialist International, “the worldwide organization of social democratic, socialist and labour parties.”

The 170 members include such national socialist parties as the Democratic Socialists of America, Canada’s New Democratic Party, Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front, the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, the Radical Social Democratic Party of Chile and many others. The organization is based in London and its emblem is a clenched fist holding a rose.

The Socialist International is not particularly fond of the United States, denouncing America’s “neo-liberal market ideology.” The Socialist International would prefer “global governance,” ostensibly by wise international socialists such as themselves, as a way to address both economic inequities and the issue of climate change.

The Socialist International deploys a Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which wants “global governance” and whose solution for climate change calls for so-called rich countries to reduce consumption. Browner was one of 14 leaders of this commission. According to a report in the Washington Times last June 30, she was slated to speak on “How do we strengthen the multilateral architecture for a sustainable future?”

The Obama transition team knew about Browner’s stint with the Socialist International, according to the Washington Times report, but recommended her anyway. Conveniently, Browner’s post does not require confirmation. One can only conclude that the Obama administration agrees with Browner’s Socialist International approach, at some odds with the facts

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the subject of climate change is not a bastion of certainty. Also in dispute is the purported causation by human activity, particularly the kind the Socialist International and Browner want to curtail.

“Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science,” explained Dr. Will Happer, professor of physics at Princeton and former director of energy research at the Department of Energy.

Those fears, unfortunately, are the basis for the regulatory, anti-enterprise and anti-U.S. approach championed by the Socialist International and Browner. She may be called the Climate Czar, but she is better understood as a representative of watermelon environmentalism: green outside, red inside. Watermelon environmentalism can’t do the planet or the U.S. economy any good, but is shaping up as a trend for the next few years at least.