Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Note: This column is co-authored by Duggan
Flanakin.
The Future We Want
outlined a “common vision” for planetary “sustainable development,” as
proclaimed by the “Organizing Partners of the Major Group of NGOs,” to guide
the taxpayer-funded Rio+20 summit that ended last week in disarray and
acrimony.
The activist organizations that cobbled the document
together filled it with hundreds of platitudes and pseudo-solutions to global
warming cataclysms, newly reconstituted as threats to resource depletion and
biodiversity – and presented as standards and mandates for countries,
communities and corporations.
The terms “sustainable development,” “sustainable” and
“sustainability” appeared in the original text an astounding 390 times. Like
“abracadabra,” these nebulous concepts were supposed to transform the world
into a Garden of Eden global community, under United Nations auspices, that
will use less, pollute less, and save species and planet from their worst
enemy: humans.
To glean the document essence, however, readers only
needed to understand two concepts: control and money – to impose the future the
activists wanted.
The NGOs and UN called for “donations” from formerly rich
European Union and Annex II (Kyoto Protocol) countries, at 0.7% of their gross
national product per year. With the combined GNP of the contributing nations
totaling about $45 trillion in 2010, the transfers would total $315 billion per
year, or $3.2 trillion per decade.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton had
previously committed the United States to provide $105 billion annually, based
on our $15 trillion GNP (and strained line of credit). With US per capita GNP
pegged at $47,340 – each American family of four would pay $1,325 a year. That
may seem like chump change compared to TARP, Obamacare or the Obama Stimulus.
But over a decade US citizens would involuntarily shell out well over a
trillion dollars to UN sustainability schemes.
The UN claims it has already received more than $500
billion in pledges from governments and companies, to reduce fossil fuel use,
increase renewable energy generation in poor countries, promote bicycle use in
Holland, teach sustainability in universities, conserve water – and somehow
still reduce global poverty. Time will tell how many are worth the paper they
were printed on
To oversee this unprecedented wealth transfer to UN
bureaucrats and NGO activists, The Future We Want architects sought to
establish “an intergovernmental process” to assess financial needs, consider
the effectiveness, consistency and “synergies” of existing instruments and
frameworks, evaluate additional initiatives, and prepare reports on financing
strategies. This grand scheme would be implemented by an intergovernmental
committee of 30 “experts,” who will be accountable to – no one, actually,
except perhaps the Secretary General of the esteemed United Nations.
The document reassured readers that “aid architecture has
significantly changed in the current decade,” and “fighting corruption and
illicit financial flows [has become] a priority.” Diogenes would search in vain
for evidence of this.
Indeed, the very idea of still more aid must be
questioned. “Has more than US$1 trillion in development assistance over the
last several decades made African people better off?” Zambia-born economist
Dambisa Moyo asks in her book, Dead Aid. “No,” she answers emphatically. What’s
needed are investment, development, less regulatory red tape, and an unleashing
of entrepreneurial instincts.
Nevertheless, the UN is determined to plow ahead,
claiming that somehow, this time, they will get it right. Surely, the prospect
of promoting sustainability and saving the planet and its species will convert
scurrilous dictators, Western politicians and their cronies into honest leaders
who would never divert eco-funding to political friends, Swiss bank accounts or
crony-capitalist wind and solar projects.
With Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue bathed
in green light (to symbolize ecology – or was it money?) and the National
Religious Partnership for the Environment proselytizing throughout the event,
surely miscreants would sin no more.
Meanwhile, Statement 61 (of 283!) helpfully pronounced
that “urgent action on unsustainable patterns of production and consumption ...
remains fundamental in addressing environmental sustainability” ... and each
country should “consider the implementation of green economy policies in the
context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.”
In essence, the Rio+20 message was, “You got a problem?
The UN team has an app for that!”
From poverty eradication to food security, nutrition and
“sustainable agriculture,” to water and sanitation, to energy, sustainable
tourism and transport, and sustainable cities and “human settlements,” the
Future We Want “framework for action and follow-up” had it covered! Of course,
there were caveats.
Everyone has a right to safe, sufficient, nutritious food
– but biotechnology, chemical fertilizers, insecticides and modern mechanized
farming are unsustainable. Electricity is vital, but the 1.4 billion now
without lights or refrigeration must be content with “green energy.” Health “is
a precondition for, an outcome of, and an indicator of, all three dimensions of
sustainable development,” but no DDT allowed.
The authors also promised “full and productive
employment, decent work for all, and social protections” for workers, to clean
up the oceans, stop illegal mining and fishing, and ensure that only
“sustainable forest management” prevails (the cut-no-trees kind that produces
uncontrollable wildfires).
The Future We Want also lauded women, the scientific and
technological community, indigenous peoples, young people, workers, trade
unions, small-scale farmers, NGOs and “civil society” – while placing new
burdens on the corporations that will be expected to generate trillions to prop
up these efforts.
The document also included multiple proposals for
technology transfers – but deleted all references to protecting patents and
intellectual property rights. It also excised language “respecting the right to
freedom of association and assembly, in accordance with our obligations under
international law.”
Thankfully – despite attendance by 45,000 delegates from
180 nations – the Rio+20 summit became just another gabfest, the mandates
became even more ill-defined “goals” and “recommendations,” and the world
dodged another Kyoto-style bullet.
The activists and bureaucrats will doubtless be back, in
a couple more years, in an exotic new locale, with new plans for saving the
planet from scary new catastrophes.
However, poor countries are slowly catching on that these
UN events are little more than neo-colonialist, eco-imperialist schemes to
control and restrict economic development – and poor families are beginning to
realize they won’t get a dime from these sustainability pledges or derive any
tangible benefits from the green schemes.
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