Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, the rent-seekers, money-hungry NGOs, grifters, post-normal “scientists”, con-men, Eurotrash, Ameritrash, and the usual camp followers are gearing up again for another monumental waste of money. This time, it’s for the upcoming extravagarbonza, the new Rio+20 Climate Carnival.
Figure 1. The logo of the Rio+20 Climate Carnival, featuring someone being drowned in waves of green nonsense.
The meeting features the usual dangerous bafflegab, which conceals wholesale theft under layers of rhetoric like this:
Integrate the three pillars of sustainable development and promote the implementation of Agenda 21 and related outcomes, consistent with the principles of universality, democracy, transparency, cost-effectiveness and accountability, keeping in mind the Rio Principles, in particular common but differentiated responsibilities. SOURCE
As is typical with this kind of mealy-mouthed official doublespeak, we need a translation to see who is getting fleeced, and how.
First, what are the “three pillars of sustainable development”? Turns out, no one knows. One source gives us this:
Figure 2. The “three pillars of sustainable development” … or not.
That all seems good, or at least as though it might possibly be vaguely meaningful … but another source gives us this:
Figure 3. The “three pillars of sustainable development” … or not.
In other words, it’s just feel-good bullpuckey, dressed up to look like something real. “Viable”? “Bearable”? Nonsense. This is post-normal “science” at its most pathetic. At the end of the day, nothing is sustainable, that’s just green-washing.
Next, they say that they want to “promote the implementation of Agenda 21″. Now, “Agenda 21” was what started all of this nonsense. It was adopted at the original Rio Conference in 1992, and is as dangerous now as it was then.
The danger is highlighted by the recent meeting of the UN Chief, Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon, with his UN aides brainstorming about Rio+20. They talk about “moving toward a fairer, greener, and more sustainable globalization”, a very frightening thought. They talk about strengthening the UN “to manage the process of globalization better,” another scary idea. I don’t want globalization of any kind, and if I did, I damn sure don’t want the UN involved in any way.
To return to Agenda 21, let me take up just one tiny portion of the Agenda. (In passing, I doubt that they could have invented a more Orwellian name for this plan to take over the world’s economy than “Agenda 21” … but I digress.) Here is Section 9.8.(d) of Agenda 21:
Cooperate in research to develop methodologies and identify threshold levels of atmospheric pollutants, as well as atmospheric levels of greenhouse gas concentrations, that would cause dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system and the environment as a whole, and the associated rates of change that would not allow ecosystems to adapt naturally;
There are several things of note about this part of Agenda 21. First, in 1992 we didn’t know (and still don’t know now) if GHGs can cause “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system or not. For that matter, we don’t know what “dangerous anthropogenic interference” is when it’s at home. But despite that, the goal was not to find out what the actual effect of GHGs might be.
Rather than figuring out if there was a danger, Agenda 21 instructed people to establish an imaginary level of “dangerous interference”.
The same is true about “rates of change”. We have no evidence that changes in climate can keep ecosystems from “adapt[ing] naturally”. Despite that, we are instructed to determine the levels that do just that, with no hint about what that might be or how to measure it.
Finally, you can see how early this was—GHGs were not listed as a “pollutant”. This is in stark distinction to the EPA’s ruling that CO2 is a pollutant … go figure.
Anyhow, that’s just a little bit of the garbage in Agenda 21. It has already caused huge problems, including the formation of the IPCC and the assumption of GHGs as the main (if not only) driver of global climate change when there is no clear evidence (even today) if that is actually the case—that’s what the debate is about.
To leave Agenda 21 and return to the first bit of translation, they say they want to rip people off “consistent with the principles of universality, democracy, transparency, cost-effectiveness and accountability”. What this means depends on the tide, the phase of the moon, and the desires of the person invoking it. Basically, it means whatever they want it to mean, unless it happens to favor development, business, or human beings, in which case it means the opposite.
Next, they pledge allegiance to the “Rio Principles“. The “Rio Principles” were an unprincipled declaration of how they planned to achieve their global redistribution of wealth. Among the un-principles are the “Precautionary Principle“, along with the usual feel-good clauses and paragraphs about how they planned to spend the money.
Finally, in a wonderful understatement, they back the idea of “common but differentiated responsibilities.” This is UN-speak at its finest. The “differentiated responsibilities” part means “the poorest in the rich countries have the responsibility of providing the money to pay to the richest in the poor countries, whose responsibility is to spend it on Mercedes sedans for Government Ministers.” Seriously. That’s what “common but differentiated responsibilities” means, except the part about the Mercedes, I added that because it’s the inevitable outcome.
So yes, no surprise, they have learned absolutely nothing in the last 20 years. How could they, when 20 years ago they claimed they already understood it all? They are doubling down on their stupidity, planning to restructure the global economy and have the industrialized world pay the whole tab. I mean, somebody has to line the pockets of the NGOs and the third-world despots, and who better than … you?
I’m not sure how we can fight this, but fight it we must. I see they are planning to use “social media” to try to whip up the faithful, so we can expect lots of that, fluff on Facebook and the like. In any case, Rio+20 is the usual, and still very dangerous, conflux of the useful idiots, greedy activists, pimps, prostitutes, and pseudo-scientists who have caused so much damage in the past.
Head them off at the pass, harass their flanks, destroy their supply-wagons, cut them off from their water supply, I don’t know what … but this madness has to stop. You cannot redistribute your way to wealth, and as Margaret Thatcher is rumored to have remarked, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
A word to the wise … it’s your money that they are planning to run out of, in the process of propping up some of the planet’s most despotic regimes in the name of “combatting climate change” …
Regards to all, keep fighting the good fight,
w.
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Thatcher also said something interesting that’s applicable to all this, in response to a statement from someone allegedly concerned about income inequality, or gap. The left doesn’t care if the poor get poorer as long as the rich get less rich. Another excellent observation.
The more I see the more I realize that Orwell was A raging optimist.
The future we don’t want, indeed.
Very well written, Willis.
RTF
Eurotrash? Please clean up your rants a bit next time, nobody likes the un or the eu except those who get their money from them but there is no need to call people eurotrash.
[Reply: Corrected to add “Ameritrash”. It refers to a totalitarian subset, not to the entire population of either the EU or the U.S. ~dbs, mod.]
It is interesting how the tidal wave engulfing the person has a green leaf for a crest.
RTF
Let’s not “Sugar Coat” Willis. No need to go soft on these idiots.
Seriously, somebody needs to find a way for you to get on TV. I believe you could do more over the course of a few weeks invited on several networks to deflate what the greens are doing than anyone I know.
Here’s to hoping that happens!!!!!!!!!
Yes, Agenda 21 is the Governments + UN, multilaterals + NGOs version of Kyoto Protocol (mainly governments), more climate rent-seeking and robbery.
I question very much whether in this age of austerity, anyone will be paying any notice (let alone any money) to this wonderland of financial largesse dispensed by the wise and highly qualified to us mere mortals.
In the absence of any actual climate crisis, any manufactured crisis involving low levels of Toxin X and trace amounts of Contaminant Y will produce an Outline for Action Z involving more taxes misappropriated from real needs of poor people to alleviate the anxieties of the middle-classes will do.
Run! It’s a veritable tsunami of stupid.
RTF
Willis Eschenbach for President!
Whether you “want globalization of any kind” or not is irrelevant; it’s an unstoppable force (you will be assimilated). The challenge is to inspire a reverence for individual rights and freedoms globally instead of those ideals being crushed here and universally around the world under the weight of “collective rights” at the expense of the individual.
the word “eurotrash” is 100% right. Most of the Greenery has central European origins, form the late 80’s and early 90’s. The original Rio show was EU organized, along EU ideology, and an EU masterplan. Where “EU” of course is a euphemism for Central EU. If you look at the organizational chart of most Green NGO’s you will find Central Europe control (even though some names are English… all you have to do is look at their CV’s)
There has been initial early support form the US and the UK for Rio-1993, but each for transient political reasons.
Hot on the heels of Gleick’s Flake-Gate comes the RIo +20. The carnival of the cretins continues. I’m worried about a scarcity of pop-corn! Good stuff. Keep an eye on the proceedings.
Watch to see which US politicians show up at this. Then vote accordingly. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/24/obama-administration-sees-rio-20-summit-in-june-as-festival-global-greenness/
Read what Lisa Jackson (US EPA head) said about it :
Partial Excerpt
========================================================
Rio +2.0 in Palo Alto: EPA Chief Lisa Jackson Discusses Initiatives that Expand US Environmental Business Markets, Create Jobs and Build Healthier Cities
Release Date: 02/03/2012
Contact Information: Mary Simm, simms.mary@epa.gov
Thank you all so much for joining us here today. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to help kick off this important conference. The people in this room – and the people we work with who are involved in this effort – come from many different countries, many different professions, and many different perspectives. But we are all united by our desire to improve the world we live in – and not only the world we live in, but the world our children and grandchildren will live in as well. That is what brings us together.
The challenge ahead of us is unlike anything we have faced before – as individual nations or as one planet. For the first time in human history, we are beginning to see that everyday activities – the things we buy, the way we keep the lights on, the ways we travel –have an impact on the health of our entire planet. For the first time in human history, more people are living in cities and urban areas than are living in rural areas. And over the next 30 years, most of the anticipated population growth is expected to happen in our cities. And for the first time in human history, we have in our sights the possibility of fostering a truly global middle class, with billions of people enjoying a quality of life and opportunity their parents and grandparents never knew.
As a result of all this, the years ahead will stretch the limits of our energy, our water and our food supplies. We will require not just new power and water sources, but also the infrastructure to deliver reliable energy and clean water to billions more people. We will need affordable housing and adequate transportation for people and products, as well as systems to address concentrated urban waste and pollution in the air and water. And last but certainly not least, it will be essential to generate economic opportunities that ensure widespread global prosperity.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/082D936CAD94347185257999005E8F9D
These “sustainable living” advocates are just useless. Idiots with pretensions of knowledge. What they really want is your plastic bags (an especially loathsome thing to these idiots) and for your life to be as uncomfortable as possible while theirs mysteriously betters at public expense. Fortunately every city and town in America seems infested with some grifters, always husband and wife, that show up at every city council meeting browbeating the politicians into agena compliance.
Pillars? you call them pillars? They look like ellipses to me. I’ll drop a note to Josh, we need a Mad magazine Poiuyt (hey, I remember how to spell it!), otherwise known as the tree pronged blivet. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blivet
[Ellipses provided: . .. … …. ….. …… Robt]
In 1976, as a young man of 24, I attended the World Symposium on Humanity in Vancouver, BC. The keynote speaker was none other than respected futurist Buckminster Fuller. In his address he said he had walked around the symposium for 3 days, listening to people say something to the effect “we have to tear the system down man,” (something I continue to hear 32 years later from well meaning leftists/warmists/globalists everywhere). He sadly shook his head and instructed the audience (and I paraphrase), “The key is not to tear the top down, but, to reach down and pull the bottom up.” In other words, pull everyone out of poverty, despair, filth, homelessness, hunger, thirst, and elevate their standard of living. If you want to help the world, become successful and make a difference. You could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium. He had just smacked a lot of the attendees in the back of their consciousness. I started the applause.
Bucky’s simple “revelation”, above all other points in speeches I have heard over the course of my lifetime, has stuck with me, and I quote it often.
Now, listening to the self-indulgent Agenda 21-ists who have moved into my community, and who come up, nearly daily, with their hair-brained, feel-good, “sustainable” schemes, based primarily on their pessimistic, cup is empty outlook on life, and, who would hypocritically forestall development in the 3rd world to offset their own carbon based lifestyles, while ignoring the plight of those less fortunate than themselves, I think of Bucky and shake my own head. Fortunately it appears the tide (at least here) has just turned the corner in the direction of common sense.
What’s that old saying…oh right…”If you’re not a socialist by the time you’re 18 you have no heart. If you’re still a socialist by the time you’re 30 you have no brain.” Let’s hope the collective world we live in is effectively 29 at the moment and getting smarter.
Curiousgeorge says:
February 26, 2012 at 7:58 am
“Watch to see which US politicians show up at this. Then vote accordingly. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/24/obama-administration-sees-rio-20-summit-in-june-as-festival-global-greenness/”
from the article:
“It would not require a negotiated resolution on behalf of the U.N. community. “ It could be, say, a beverage company that promises to cut water usage over the next ten years.”
Some Russian, Polish and Finnish beverage companies already do that to my knowledge. They use biofuel as a substitute. Their products have an energy content equivalent to about 28% to 56% of the energy content of gasoline.
Club of Rome / Agenda 21 / UN
See what you can dig up willis
The three pillars they really meant are your land, your money, your freedom. The only way out is to remove ourselves from the UN.
There is a good write up of Agenda 21at Jun science site.
EPA’s Jackson is trying to kill any industry in Clingerland and give it to the Chinese..
I’ve enjoyed Willis’ writing on WUWT many times and admire his skill as a writer. In this piece he has touched on what I consider to be the issue that people need to focus on. The issue that people could focus on if they weren’t stupefied by watching sh*te on TV, reading sh*te in newspapers and believing that globalisation is good and the “trickle down” effect is real.
The politicians say: “We need to compete in a global economy”. How many times have we heard that? I would have thought that a country as large as the USA would be able to do quite well on its own – it’s a big place, internal market and all that.
The ultimate aim of globalisation is to create a global ruling elite who control the laws and money of the world, while the rest of humanity is reduced to serf/slave status.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6057734.stm (from 2006)
It’s a race to the bottom for the non-elite 21st century global populace; forget about the middle class – there won’t be one, you’ll have to live like they live in China or India, but those countries won’t be known as such by then – they’ll just be “regions”.
Willis is bang on the money with this post, IMHO.
The UN, like a deadly octopus with its IPCC, Environment Program, WHO, UNHCR, Blue Helmets, etc. tentacles, needs to be stopped. Something that was (if we believe the fable) meant to ensure world peace has turned into a monster. Actually if you research where the UN came from you’ll find MONEY behind it.
I do urge people to research the genesis of the UN and who was behind that; it’s an interesting history, at least. Also, research UN troops and the roasting of children – seriously, just websearch those terms – it’s shocking.
Defund the UN. Retain sovereignty. Say no to the UN, World Bank, IMF, EU. We can all still be friends, without a new world order.
Head them off at the pass, harass their flanks, destroy their supply-wagons, cut them off from their water supply, I don’t know what … but this madness has to stop.
Perhaps assembling lists by country of anyone enjoying the carnival at taxpayer expense. Chiefly politicians and civil servants. I’m sure they would be delighted to publicly justify whatever schemes they had signed us all up to upon their return.
(Judging from the first carnival, mandatory drug testing is probably a good idea too)
MC says:
February 26, 2012 at 7:33 am
Let’s not “Sugar Coat” Willis. No need to go soft on these idiots.
================
Yeah, that’s Willis… Always beating around the bush. Ya never know what he really thinks. (wink)
You need only to go to 8.13 and read from there to see why this whole thing is so dangerous.
Whose laws? By what measure?
“8.13. Laws and regulations suited to country-specific conditions are among the most important instruments for transforming environment and development policies into action, not only through “command and control” methods, but also as a normative framework for economic planning and market instruments. Yet, although the volume of legal texts in this field is steadily increasing, much of the law-making in many countries seems to be ad hoc and piecemeal, or has not been endowed with the necessary institutional machinery and authority for enforcement and timely adjustment.”
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_08.shtml
I still think the Warmists are not that stupid (surely), I still think it’s dressed up Govt policy response to peak oil. In the Daily Telegraph regarding the ‘effect of rising oil prices will dwarf the Greek problem’ comes this. It seems peak oil and Wamist Agenda is a match made in heave and virtually indistinguishable.
‘…..While there’s lots of hype about tar sands and shale fuels, these new technologies often expend more energy than they create, while causing horrendous environmental and water-supply problems. Conventionally-produced crude will remain absolutely critical, and demand for it will spiral, until mankind bans the internal combustion engine, outlaws ammonium-based fertilisers, dismantles the global pharmaceutical industry and learns to live without plastic. I can’t see that happening anytime soon…