Rio+20 meets Agenda 21

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.