The intolerability of tolerance
From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Bonn via the SPPI blog
The UN’s international climate conference here in Bonn has decided that the wealthier nations among the 192 States Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change should make plenty of taxpayers’ money available to hold two additional weeks of pre-negotiation negotiations between now and December, when the legally-binding World Government Climate Treaty is to be signed in Cancun, Mexico.
Dr. Yvo de Boer, who will shortly retire as secretary to the Conference of the States Parties to the Convention, told observers here in Bonn yesterday that the extra time was essential so that details which could otherwise wreck the negotiations could be sorted out before Cancun.
There will also be a meeting of Heads of Governments at the Peterberg Hotel, near Bonn, in June. The purpose of that meeting is to allow the UN to identify potentially recalcitrant heads of government and mount a charm offensive in their direction between June and December.
Dr. de Boer said he was not sure that a legally-binding Treaty would be agreed upon at Cancun: he thought a further year might be necessary. He said he hoped the negotiators would take the approach that had worked during the discussions that led to the Kyoto Protocol: they should keep the Treaty short and to the point, establishing general principles and allowing the details to be worked out once the Treaty was in force.
The world-government faction at the UN faces a dilemma. If the bureaucrats push the process too fast, as they did in the run-up to the Copenhagen meeting last December, the train will come off the tracks. However, if they slow things down to allow the caboose to catch up with the locomotive, the passengers may start to notice that the climate is not in fact changing anything like as rapidly as the UN’s climate reports have been predicting.
There is a possibility that the UN may try to surprise everyone by persuading the Heads of Government to reach full agreement on a binding Treaty as early as the Peterberg meeting in June. The priceless advantage of this, from the world-government wannabes’ point of view, is that the Treaty could then be put before the US Senate while President Obama still has a strong majority there.
Everyone here is keenly aware that the Obama experiment has not been seen as successful in the eyes of voters in the US, and that an increase in the Republican presence in both Houses of Congress will, in practice, make acceptance of any climate Treaty – especially one that reactivates the now-ditched world-government proposals of last year’s draft – unlikely.
The US Senate has the power to ratify Treaties, and no Treaty can pass unless it receives 67 of the 100 available votes. This two-thirds majority will be difficult to achieve as things now stand: most serious observers reckon it will be impossible after the US mid-term elections this December, at the same moment as the Cancun climate conference.
For the world-government group among the UN’s bureaucrats and fellow-travelers, therefore, Cancun is too late. And, if Mr. de Boer is right that an agreement will not even be reached there, another year’s delay will make it still more obvious to voters in those countries lucky enough to have universal suffrage that the climate is not behaving as ordered.
In short, the climate train is about to tip into the gulch, and almost everyone here knows it. There are still some true-believers who have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid. One of these came up to the CFACT stand at the conference and conversed with me quite pleasantly until I mentioned that the science behind the IPCC’s documents is collapsing. He instantly changed his demeanor. His smile vanished, and he stumped off in a huff.
There is an interesting difference between the First and Third Worlds in the behavior of the delegates. The delegates from Western countries tend to be far less willing to question the science and economics underpinning the UN’s case for its own glorification, expansion and enrichment, and they tend to be considerably less polite than their counterparts in the Third World.
The African delegates, in particular, exhibit a charming, old-world courtliness that used to be universal in the West and is now loutishly absent. One of them, the Permanent Secretary of the Environment Department in his country, was fascinated to hear that a tiny fraction of the money wasted on the non-problem of “global warming”, if spent on addressing real problems, could help to rid Africa of starvation and disease. He had not previously thought about the opportunity cost of not spending the money thrown away on the climate in a manner that would be more likely to do real good.
CFACT’s policy of diverting some – or preferably all – of the cash now spent on the climate towards spending on real societal and environmental problems, such as deforestation or overfishing, won a number of supporters. Very few of those we have spoken to were wholly against it, and most of those gave indications that they were on the extreme Left politically. For the Left, belief in the wickedness of CO2 and of the filthy capitalists who emit it is at the very center of their credo, and anyone who disagrees with them is treated with contempt.
There have been some comic moments, though. At Dr. de Boer’s meeting with observers at the Bonn conference, two messily-dressed ladies of uncertain age, with untidy hairdos and a hectoring, bossy manner, asked why it was that “those climate skeptics” had been given the best display booth in the conference center, right next door to the entrance to the conference hall.
Mr. de Boer, far more urbane at this conference than he had been at Bali, Poznan, or Copenhagen, purred that any recognized non-government organization, whatever its views, was welcome to attend UN conferences, and neither he nor his staff had given any thought at all to the question which NGO should occupy which display stand. The two ladies quivered with displeasure at this answer. To them, tolerance was intolerable.
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“Presidents may not take sovereignty seriously, but the Senate – in all its gridlock – typically does. It’s by design – the Constitution sets the bar high for this, and for good reason!”
Yabut if the Senate doesn’t ratify it they’ll just turn up the screws at the EPA. Voila, no treaty required!!!
Harry Lu (20:31:16) :
Why would the IPCC want to form a world government?
I think you are relying on half truths Harry, or half lies. The IPCC has it written in what they continue to try to get passed by vote of Nations present at their conferences. They still have not gotten it passed. But a worldwide governance is part of what they want.
Harry Lu:
This man is loosing control of his supposed intelligence. Why would the IPCC want to form a world government?
Maybe for the same reasons they wanted to perpetrate a CO2CAGW climate hoax upon the whole world? Just because you’re not one of them, Harry, since when did people interested in world domination cease to exist?
“Harry Lu (20:31:16) :
[…]
This man is loosing control of his supposed intelligence. Why would the IPCC want to form a world government?”
You should read “The First Global Revolution” by The Club Of Rome (1991); this would answer your questions. It’s not a conspiracy; it happens in the open – Conspiracies are defined by their secrecy.
There’s a new documentary coming out tomorrow by Jason Bermas called “Invisible Empire: a new world order defined”
I think it might be a decent film, and it might get some people’s head out of the sand. How anyone can deny the existence of a desire for a world government by the ruling elite when they themselves are the ones saying it publicly, is beyond belief. Ignorance is bliss huh.
Thank you to all the contributors, and especially Anthony for producing this excellent article.!
I suspect Peter of Sydney is correct. Powerful political forces seem to be using Climate Change as the ultimate fear weapon to get a world government for the peace needed to ensure that we don’t see World War 3 in the forceable future.
This was ramed home to me in the Orkney Islands, UK recently. At the end of WW2, the admiral of the German fleet scuttled all of his surrendered fleet as he had no desire for his ships to be used against Germany in the next war, which he believed was inevitable I’m reliably told.
I admire Christopher Monckton, and the good work that he does. I suspect that fewer people would listen to his explanations on climate change without his title being promoted. As an Aussie, where we don’t use that system of community standing, I believe it has a place in the England of his birth.
I would continue to refer to the title if I was in his position.
@SSam (22:39:34) :
Cancun? CANCUN?
Fiji, Copenhagen, and now CANCUN???
Not just a vacation party, they’ll also be able to do a bit of Xmas shopping on their expenses. I wonder if the Cancun hookers will match their Copenhagen colleagues’ kind offer?
I guess they will at least be able to point out to all the delegates how much warmer it is than when they last met, so global warming MUST be happening.
Worse than we thought!
Meanwhile, has anyone heard what’s happened to the ‘alternative’ Climate Summit in Bolivia that Chavez promised? Did we miss it?
Dang! That could have been another block of airmiles!
Harry Lu (20:39:04) :
There are a significant number of people who claim to be non-voting members of the House of Lords. If what you claim (that you received a response) is true, either the representative who replied is in error, your question was poorly (or deliberately) structured as to create confusion, or all these people are misinformed or lying.
The first step would be to show your question and response you received, as that would be much less effort than asking the House or all the claimants. Can we see?
From what I have seen Monckton is a fine target for these accusations, being so out- (and well) spoken. While there is a misinformation campaign as regards to him and others (like McIntyre) as can be seen from the exact same phrases (belying original thought) being repeated all over the web, I have never seen him caught out by a single question (including this one) that he could not answer very credibly and with authority.
And Wiki may be just a tad biased, have you been sleeping?
Peter of Sydney, sadly you are most probably correct.
Whilst I admire Monckton, I do think he goes over the top on this world government conspiracy which I see as nothing more than a load of frightened old women crying wolf.
And the big problem for the hysteria merchants, is that unless you can keep upping the level of threat, unless people actually see that threat happening to them or at least people they know, and unless none of the contrary indicators like cooling weather don’t happen, then people gradually downplay the importance of the hysteria until most of us see it has part of the hysteria background noise of normal life.
And what is more important is that politicians that harp on about things that most people think is entirely irrelevant to them don’t get votes and don’t get elected
The global warming dinosaurs of politics are an endangered species!
Harry somebody says this: ” Why would the IPCC want to form a world government? ” A similar disbelief has been expressed by a number of other of the little darlings whose defining characteristic must be naivety; anyway, start with Section 38 on page 18 of the Framework Covention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] which was the template for the Copenhagen draft treaty proposal which fortunately China, India and the Russians saw through; in effect this section will give the UN financial independence with enormous rights over rent collection from Western nations who will be designated compulsory donors to the 3rd world via Sections 17 and 33 of UNFCCC. For the little darlings who can’t connect the dots: the UN is the world’s largest and most corrupt bureaucracy; any Copenhagen type treaty will give it finacial independence; now, hands up all those who really believe a bureacracy wouldn’t jump at that.
He needs to blink more.
“Peter of Sydney (22:55:24) :
I take the view the evil empire will win. They have the time and the necessary will power to succeed in world domination. The public do not have the time nor the willingness to stop it. Most are too busy with other distractions or are brain dead to be concerned with such matters. I hope I’m wrong but I am convinced that I’m right. Time will tell though.”
I refer you to the lyrics to Muse – The Resistance and Uprising. Sums it up IMO. And most Australians and NZers are more worried about who won the footy/rugby/cricket/netball blah blah blah…
I thought that I might try some constitutional clarification. There are plenty of people in Europe with titles that no longer convey a role in the legislature; sundry Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Barons who spend their time in international organisations or the European Parliament spring to mind. Monckton may well be a British example of the breed.
Britain has no written constitution It is made up, rather, of laws, understandings, and residual royal powers. The ‘House of Lords’–Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament–does not have one class of Lords. There are several. The Bishops of the Church of England, for instance, are the Lords Spiritual. The Law Lords are the senior lawyers. Most Lords are ‘life peers’, who were formerly distinguished in their career, or Party hacks, or former members of the establishment. But 92 are ‘elected’–in the sense that they are the remaining hereditary peers entitled to sit only if the whole group of 91 after a death (changing where necessary) choose to elect one of their number who had a hereditary title.
So–there are a class of people with hereditary titles who cannot sit or vote but who can use the title ‘Lord’ and who have to wait for a Lord or Lady to die and get elected in their place. I assume that Monckton is one of these.
The House of Lords in Britain is much more respected and respectable, and liked, than the rabble in the commons. Bizarrely, because of the Life Peers, it is also more representative…. go figure. That tie of Monckton’s is just silly, by the way, along with the pin–what next, an Uncle Sam costume?
The UN and IPCC are falling apart and these guys know it. A binding agreement ensures money and power will not collapse so easily as it is doing now. Weak economies and taxed to death people are seeing major cuts coming and more taxation and new “green taxes” that IPCC and the gang of thieves have set up with the carbon cap and trade system that is trying to take over by their scare tactics.
Since the scare tactics are failing, they have to move fairly quickly or collapse of the IPCC and UN are immenent.
Climate science has become the latest “Oracle of Divination”, the new way for “those who know better” to change the world to suit based on predictions of global gloom and doom, Armageddon unleashed in no uncertain terms as a direct consequence of the sins of men.
Post-modern science IS the new religion, with legions of believers now preaching the Climate Gospel, the scryer’s crystal ball replaced by the new and infinitely more powerful “Silicon Ball”. Today we consider ourselves so knowledgeable, so educated, that certainly we could never fall into the same divination pits our ancestors did. Blinded by this arrogance we again fall into the trance created by the cunning preachings of ever present doomsayers, and willingly surrender our skepticism as we have done time and time again over the short history of mankind.
There’s nothing new under the Sun….. Sigh…
J Suro (03:38:07) :
Today we consider ourselves so knowledgeable, so educated, that certainly we could never fall into the same divination pits our ancestors did.
Our knowledge base is so corrupted that science is a joke. Science has been allowed to exist by religion ONLY up to a point. Science to be made marketable for profit and not knowledge value. Also politics picks and chooses it pet projects that WILL not cause them problems.
Medicine has tons of government money and drug company money so their science and knowledge moved forward fairly quickly into a huge data base of knowledge of our bodies.
What is uncorrupted knowledge and theories and what is good solid science?
How has science moved forward? Peer Review has only ensure the same corrupted science can exist and no new science can come forward as it threatens the protected system they created.
Science magazines and journals, who pays the bills to keep them employed?
Smokey (21:17:50) : citing Hayek
“tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition”
… this just doesn’t seem to go together, does it?
Arrogance is what our species has created.
“Man shall inherit the Earth” Well, Mother Earth was not at these negotiations and she can be a real bitch.
Our species evolved with the Earth evolving. Darwin looked at species evolving and if he had went deeper, would have realized that our planet did the work.
We are the current dominant species but 200,000 years ago, another species was dominant and before that another.
Knowled is only as good as the input data is. If it is corrupted, then you have corrupted science and if this is used and grown then you have more corrupted science and people protection this.
Sorry, that time of month. Bitchfest.
EW (04:23:04),
Should I have adjusted the quote to be politically correct? Tell me, yes or no. It’s tough keeping up with these post normal strictures on language.
@Martin Meenagh (03:29:14)
I agree with what you say about Monckton. But I am more than prepared to tolerate; nay, forgive his idiosyncracies because he is, in my view, an invaluable British eccentic. And, lest he be offended, I mean that in the most positive sense.
Thank God for the eccentics, even those with opinions with which I have to disagree. (For example Tony Benn or Ann Widdecombe. I strongly disagree with both on very many issues but recognise that both have been amongst the few strong contributors to the House of Commons in the last twenty years. On the other hand, the least said about Weggie’s unfortunate son Veggie Benn, the better.)
But In Monckton’s case, I strongly agree with the vast majority of his comments so he is doubly invaluable. I can forgive him his tie just as I forgive Richard Lindzen who (like myself) is sartorially challenged in a different way.
So better idiosyncracy than idiocy, which is what some of our favourite trolls seem to offer.
And incidentally, I am a firm believer that cock up is far more endemic than conspiracy. But just as even a hypochondriac can fall ill, so can a paranoic realise that there are real people out there trying to get him.
Doubtful? Just do a bit of digging on the Web. Start off with a gem:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/20/revealed-the-uk-government-strategy-for-personal-carbon-rations/
And if you can’t believe anyone wants World Governance, check out its prototype, the European Union. See how that works!
@Smokey (04:46:32)
Don’t worry. I guess that EW would read Kálmán’s opera “The Gay Hussars” as a statement about inclusivity.
Who pays for the UN, by the way?
Mostly, WE DO.
So it is only national administrations who support what the UN is trying to do who allow it to do it.
If the USA declared UDI, by which I mean it pulled its entire budget until such time as the UN made an unmistakeable declaration that no world power will come into being without totally democratic decision-making and accountability, then that would be a start.
It would also be useful for major countries to pull their contributions to IPCC upon pain of total reform and, preferably, being shut down and started anew with an entirely different staffing.
Patrick Davis (20:40:45) :
Stop with that one.
PMs are never elected, except as Members or Parliament MPs), and he was elected as one of those. The voters only elect their local MP, and usually in preference of their party. The party leader, who then becomes PM, is chosen from within the party.
The Labour party, for better or worse (worse, IMO) was elected. The party chooses the leader, not the voters.
Often voters think they ‘choose’ the PM because they choose the MP from the same party. Often they just go on which party leader is taller, or has the best hair (according to Scott Adams). Mostly they are wrong, or course.
The best argument against democracy? A five minute conversation with the ‘average’ voter.
Harry Lu (20:31:16) :
……”Why would the IPCC want to form a world government?”………
Read this please—–These are published quotes.
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.”
Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton, First chairman of IPCC
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
Now on to the Club of Rome.
“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
Alexander King Co-Founder of the Club of Rome, (premier environmental think-tank and consultants to the United Nations) from his 1991 book The First Global Revolution
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Biology and Global Change. Professor Schneider was among the earliest and most vocal proponents of man-made global warming and a lead author of many IPCC reports. He is a member of the Club of Rome.
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation and member of the Club of Rome.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
“[The Earth Summit will play an important role in] reforming and strengthening the United Nations as the centerpiece of the emerging system of democratic global governance.”
“The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.”
Maurice Strong, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Al Gore’s mentor and executive member of the Club of Rome.
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience.”
Al Gore, member of the Club of Rome and set to become the world’s first carbon billionaire. He is also the largest shareholder of Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), which looks set to become the world’s central carbon trading body.
Maurice Strong sits on the board of directors for CCX.
Back before he became U.S. President Obama served on the board of directors for the Joyce Foundation when it gave CCX nearly $1.1 million in two separate grants that were instrumental in developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange, which now calls itself “North America’s only cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.”
Essentially Obama helped fund the profiteers of the carbon taxation program that he then steered steered through Congress.
“The threat of environmental crisis will be the ‘international disaster key’ that will unlock the New World Order.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, Former President of the Soviet Union, member of the Club of Rome
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member, former Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, founder of the Trilateral Commission, executive member of the World Economic Forum and donated the land on which the United Nations stands. Speaking at a U.N. Business Conference, Sept. 14, 1994
“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.
“Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure ‘one world’, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
David Rockefeller, Memoirs, page 405
*Other Club of Rome members include Tony Blair, George Soros Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Javier Solana, Kofi Annan, Bill Gates, The Dalai Lama, Hassan bin Talal, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Gro Harlem Bruntland, Robert Muller, Garret Hardin, King Juan Carlos of Spain and his wife Queen Sophia, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Prince Philippe of Belgium and many more people that include wealthy elites, ‘new age spiritualists’, former or current world political figures and former or current U.N. figures. *
Club of Rome’s Depopulation Agenda:
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point, 1974
“… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.”
Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind, 1976.
“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people…. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”
Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb. Paul Ehrlich is a member of the Club of Rome.
“I believe that human overpopulation is the fundamental problem on Earth Today”
“We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox.”
Dave Foreman, Co-founder of Earth First! and member of the Club of Rome.
“World population needs to be decreased by 50%”
Henry Kissinger, , Former National Security Advisor, Former Secretary of State, chairman of Kissinger Associates, member of the Club of Rome.
“We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, Former President of the Soviet Union, member of the Club of Rome
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor, member of the Club of Rome.
In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.
Jacques Cousteau, French naval officer and explorer. Member of the Club of Rome.
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, member of the Club of Rome.