Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
There’s an article in the latest issue of Science magazine, called “Strengthening the UN Agencies In Order To Protect The Authors’ Paychecks” … just kidding, that would be the title if they enforced the “Truth in Advertising” laws for pseudoscientific papers.
In fact it is called “Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance” (paywalled), apparently named specifically so we won’t be forewarned what it’s about. It is a two page article produced by an entire alphabet of no less than 33 listed authors, from Abbott to Zondervan, supporting my theorem that V ≈ 1 / A^2. (Restated in English, my theorem says that the value V of a scientific article is inversely proportional to the square of the number of authors A … but I digress.)
Figure 1. Are these the kind of men you want to run your global economy and make binding rules governing your everyday actions? Would you buy a used car from either of them? 33 authors say yes …
So what is the huge problem they claim to be curing? First sentence of the article sez:
Science assessments indicate that human activities are moving several of Earth’s sub-systems outside the range of natural variability typical for the previous 500,000 years (1, 2).
Gosh … really? “Science assessments”, that sounds impressive. You mean some scientists have actually falsified the null hypothesis, someone has actually shown that current climate is “outside the range of natural variability” for the last half million years?
Intrigued by claims that someone has completed the daunting task of figuring out how to measure the “variability typical for the previous 500,000 years”, and always willing to learn something new, I turned to references 1 and 2, expecting to find some irrefutable hard-hitting peer-reviewed scientific studies. After all, this is their excuse, the reason for their brilliant plan to redesign the world’s entire economy and governance systems, so it must rest on solid, verifiable science, no?
Well … no. Turns out the references are:
1. W. Steffen et al., Global Change and the Earth System (Springer, New York, 2004).
2. H. J. Schellnhuber et al., Eds., Earth System Analysis for Sustainability (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004).
That’s it? Two books? From 2004? Steffen has a doctorate in Chemical Engineering and is a strong advocate of carbon taxes. Schellnhuber has a doctorate in Theoretical Physics and his advocacy revolves around the fabled climate “tipping points” that are not visible in the past, that never actually seem to materialize in the present, but are gonna happen real soon, any day now, honest they are.
Both are climate activists first, and second, and climate scientists third. This is the rock on which the 33 authors are building the First Church of Ecological Redemption?
Saying we need to rebuild the world based on that kind of “evidence” is a joke. They claim we need to totally reorganize the planet, install trans-national agencies, restructure the economy, and create a global system of UN governance, based on a couple of books by two climate alarmists that when published, sank like stones, and deservedly so.
I must confess, the arrogance and hubris of these charming folks seems to know no bounds.
But let me set aside that hubris, let me ignore the total lack of support for their underlying claim, and look at what they propose to do based on a couple of books that maybe three people have ever read. To spare them further embarrassment, I won’t expose the equally ludicrous “citations” for their individual claims. Here’s what they say we should do, their seven “building blocks” for our glorious future:
First, the environmental agencies and programs of the United Nations must be reformed and/or upgraded.
Upgraded? Because they’ve been so successful to date? For example they say they want to develop the United Nations Environmental Programme into a “strong environmental organization with a sizable role in agenda-setting, norm-development, compliance management, science assessment, and capacity-building.”
Look, 33 author-folk, I do not want the UN to have ANY role in “compliance management”. That’s just another name for UN eco-cops. I don’t want the UN involved in “science assessment”, that’s a recipe for guaranteed disaster, even scientists struggle with that one. I don’t want the UN involved in any way in “Agenda-setting”, or “Norm-development”, no matter who Norm is. I don’t want them in any of this. These are the same folks who brought us the Kyoto Protocol, soaring energy prices, Agenda 21, pensioners shivering through the winter, tropical forests clear-cut for oil plantations, failed carbon cap-and-trade schemes, and the IPCC … and building on that stunning lack of success, they now want to restructure the world? Thanks, I’ll pass.
Second, it is crucial to strengthen the integration of the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainable development, from local to global levels.
What does this mean, “strengthen the integration of the pillars”? How do you “integrate” pillars? This is meaningless bureaucratic bafflegab. I discuss their so-called “pillars of sustainable development” nonsense in my post “Rio+20 meets Agenda 21“.
Third, better integration of sustainability governance requires governments to close remaining regulatory gaps at the global level. One such area is the development and deployment of emerging technologies, such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and geo-engineering. Such emerging technologies promise significant benefits, but also pose major risks for sustainable development. They need an international institutional arrangement—such as one or several multilateral framework conventions—to support forecasting, transparency, and information sharing; further develop technical standards; help clarify the applicability of existing treaties; promote public discussion and input; engage multiple stakeholders in policy dialogues, and ensure that environmental considerations are fully respected.
In other words, they say we need some kind of UN global laws to cover just a few things like nanotech, synthetic biology, and geo-engineering … but don’t be concerned that they are only proposing to regulate so little. They will soon extend the regulations to cover other crucial issues like transparency, ensuring that cropland is used to grow fuel instead of food for the hungry, technical standards, cow flatulence, windmill numbers, and “ensuring that environmental considerations are fully respected”. Gotta get that respect …
Does anyone (other than rent-seekers) actually think that having the UN make global laws, or even global recommendations for laws, is a good idea? Has it worked well in the past? Heck, has it ever worked in the past? Nothing springs to mind … but these 33 authors want to build a world economy and governing system based on a UN system that is riddled with waste, corruption, and theft, has only succeeded fitfully if at all in these realms, has absolutely no checks and balances, and these days is known mostly for three things—corruption, meaningless resolutions, and lifelong sinecures with obscenely bloated salaries for the proponents of “sustainability governance” and the like. Spare me.
Fourth, integration of sustainability policies requires that governments place a stronger emphasis on planetary concerns in economic governance. Environmental goals must be mainstreamed into global trade, investment, and finance regimes so that the activities of global economic institutions do not undermine environmental treaties because of poor policy coherence.
This is more lime-green flavored Koolaid. Nothing is sustainable. Sustainability is a chimera, a will of the wisp, with no agreed-on definition. It is a meaningless feel-good word used to justify whatever projects the authors are pushing this week.
Fifth, we argue for a stronger reliance on qualified majority voting to speed up international norm-setting. Political science research shows that governance systems that rely on majority-based rule are quicker to arrive at far-reaching decisions and that consensus-based systems limit decisions to the preferences of the least ambitious country. Yet at the international level, majority-based decision-making is still rare and needs to be further extended especially when Earth system concerns are at stake. Weighted voting mechanisms can ensure that decisions take all major interests among governments into account without granting veto power to any country.
Oh, yeah, “qualified majority voting”, that sounds like a winner in an organization like the UN, where five years ago or so Libya chaired the UN Human Rights Commission, and then it was Iran as Chair, they’re such experts on Human Rights … care to guess in which direction the “weighting” of the “weighted voting mechanisms” is likely to go? Not in your favor, would be my guess …
Sixth, stronger intergovernmental institutions as outlined here raise important questions of legitimacy and accountability.
Yes, they certainly do raise important questions. Unfortunately, these important questions have never been successfully answered. The first question is, why do we need a given UN-based “intergovernmental institution” at all? Second question is, does it do anything but provide a fat salary to pluted bloatocrats? Third question is, how will we kill it when it goes off the rails, as all of these organizations have done in the past? Fourth question, are any of these institutions either legitimate or accountable in the slightest? You know … important questions … but don’t worry, the 33 authors don’t answer them, or even attempt to answer them. For that they’d need maybe 66 authors. They just assume that the very real issues of illegitimacy and un-accountability and widespread corruption and lack of checks and balances, problems that have proven insoluble in the past, don’t really need anything but a few discussions, meetings, and resolutions to fix them right up.
Seventh, equity and fairness must be at the heart of a durable international framework for sustainable development.
I particularly love the seventh “building block” in their seven-point plan. It’s the reason for the whole paper. At the end of the list comes lucky number seven, the real issue, which is “equity and fairness”.
Now, you may not have have guessed this, but “equity and fairness” is the UN secret code for … money.
More money.
Lots of money.
Your money.
Some of which will no doubt eventually flow into the pockets of some of the 33 authors. Some of which will flow to third world despots. And most of which will assuredly line the pockets of unelected bureaucrats.
Perhaps you think I’m wrong about what “equity and fairness” means to the UN? Here’s the rest of the paragraph describing the seventh step, the text that immediately follows the quote above:
Strong financial support of poorer countries remains essential. More substantial financial resources could be made available through novel financial mechanisms, such as global emissions markets or air transportation levies for sustainability purposes.
You see, “equity and fairness” means that the countries like say South Korea or Thailand, that have worked and sweated and sacrificed and saved and built up their economies, need to give their hard-earned money to the other countries that haven’t done that … because that’s fair. And equitable.
Because if we turned off the money tap and said “No thanks, we have all the UN bodies we need, in fact we’re desperately trying to kill some, not make new ones”, the game would be over and the 33 authors of this appeal for money would be out of luck and likely out of a job.
And how fair and equitable would that be, after the authors each worked so hard to provide us with … hang on, let me check … OK, on average each of the 33 authors contributed some 41 words of deathless prose to the document. We certainly wouldn’t want that herculean effort to go unrewarded.
I mean, how fair and equitable would that be, not to mention sustainable, for their checking accounts? How can they integrate the pillars without further funding?
w.
PS—I do love the claim that what we need is “novel financial mechanisms, such as global emissions markets.” I’m not sure where these guys have been living during the past decade. But they must have their heads a long ways up their … ivory towers for them not to have noticed how almost every one of these not-at-all-novel carbon emissions markets has burst into flames and imploded recently. I mean seriously, these 33 author-folk are so out of touch with the real world that they think emissions markets are “novel”. Tragic.
But then failure, even repeated failure, has never been an obstacle to this kind of unsuccessful serial doomcasters. They’ve seen their predictions of catastrophe fail time after time and ignored those failures completely, so why should they not do the same regarding the proven failure of carbon markets?
PPS—Don’t get me wrong. I was green before the color was taken over and corrupted by the “green” organizations. I’m still a conservamentalist. Here’s the truth. The countries of the world need sensible, enforceable environmental regulations, or people just dispose of their industrial waste in the nearest stream or in the atmosphere. We’ve proven that over and over. Basically we’re pigs, and we need to regulate accordingly.
My problem is that the UN is entirely the wrong body to be dealing with these kinds of issues. We’ve also proven that over and over. For evidence regarding the current topic, see inter lots of alia the IPCC, the UNFCCC, Agenda 21, and the unending series of annual extravagant climate parties in sunny tourist destinations thrown at great expense and with little or no return.
The UN has done a few things right in fifty years, but overall it has been an abject failure in most things except for what it was originally set up to do (provide a place for countries to talk about disputes rather than going to war). We need environmental regulations, but we definitely don’t need the UN to point us in the wrong direction.
FURTHER READING: A Miasma of Corruption: The United Nations at 50
One of your longer essays lately Anthony… and worth reading every word. Keep up the good work holding a light out for those that are genuinely looking for reality and and even stronger (dare we say ‘burning’) light for those lost in the darkness of having their heads up their ivory towers.
[Actually I wrote it, and thanks … willis]
The UN has done a few things right in fifty years, but overall it has been an abject failure in most things
except forincluding what it was originally set up to do (provide a place for countries to talk about disputes rather than going to war).Lovely satire, Willis. Especially the bit about Herculean Effort and cost-per-word. You deconstruct their bafflegab in a most delightful way, leaving a wasteland of integrated pillars in your wake. Great stuff.
Willis: I stand in awe of your rant skills. And on the substance of your critique, I could not agree more. I’ve had a few (semi-pro) brushes with UN programs (UNDP, WHO) and they seem to be just as you say. Vast conferences where nothing seems ever to happen but each day there appear on tables for the delegates’ consumption stacks of draft minutes in half a dozen languages, reporting on proposed resolutions to amend sub-sub-sub-paragraph 888.88(a)(12.4)(bis) to reflect the sense of the delegation from East Nowhere. The conferences end with plans for the next one, half a world away, to which thousands will fly at our expense. It is like an inverse rock band on tour; there is no band but there are the groupies, and they migrate around the globe in a permanent haze of words written with other people’s money. As to the real agenda: interesting to see (#7) the call for air travel tariffs. They caught a break with that idea, a few years back, when EU countries imposed a tax on airplane tickets to pay for AIDS research (the Global Fund, I think it’s called). The Fund is now swimming in money and other bureaucrats want to replicate the tax to fund their empires as well. I think (and hope) that game is over; see current resistance of China and others outside EU to new flight tariffs for carbon pollution. But the UN’s appetite for money is bottomless. If they did anything useful with it, I’d be sympathetic. But almost all of it is just wasted, or worse.
Richard Black is also pushing the global governance agenda
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17381730
I’m surprised that they only found 33 authors .(BTW, I only counted 32)
Have we seen any of this crowd before?
F. Biermann,
K. Abbott,
S. Andresen,
K. Bäckstrand,
S. Bernstein,
M. M. Betsill,
H. Bulkeley,
B. Cashore,
J. Clapp,
C. Folke,
A. Gupta,
J. Gupta,
P. M. Haas,
A. Jordan,
N. Kanie,
T. Kluvánková-Oravská,
L. Lebel,
D. Liverman,
J. Meadowcroft,
R. B. Mitchell,
P. Newell,
S. Oberthür,
L. Olsson,
P. Pattberg,
R. Sánchez-Rodríguez,
H. Schroeder,
A. Underdal,
S. Camargo Vieira,
C. Vogel,
O. R. Young,
A. Brock,
R. Zondervan
Any way to see if any of the above are actual, card-carrying Climate Scientists?
I’m getting really tired of the phrase “governance”. It is even showing up in my field of work. Search “IT Governance”. It’s just crazy. These commissars are taking over every aspect of our lives through unelected commissions that regulate more of our lives.
It’s all about ensuring self-perpetuation of comfortable lifestyles, as opposed to doing anything useful, or actually applying any real science.
In this regard, UN agencies are little different from the myriad organisations which make up the ‘climate science’ industry.
F. Biermann, is the director of the Global Governance Project.
http://www.glogov.org/?pageid=24
and many of them including Biermann are part of Earth System Governance, being pushed by Black
http://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/people/scientific-steering-committee
As trashy as that article is, and as much as it decreases the reputation of Science Magazine, don’t underestimate it.
The language sounds eerily similar to the Lisbon Treaty which by whatever methods, they MANAGED TO GET PASSED. This whole deal about the pillars, the bureaucratic speak, etc, all has the same flavor, the same working as the the treaty (which I had the unfortunate fate to read as I unsuccessfully tried to get to be voted down.
They succeeded once, they will try to use the same techniques to try to get to a get this passed by the UN. Don’t underestimate them.
… but these 33 authors want to build a world economy and governing system based on a UN system that is riddled with waste, corruption, and theft, has only succeeded fitfully if at all in these realms, has absolutely no checks and balances, and these days is known mostly for three things—corruption, meaningless resolutions, and lifelong sinecures with obscenely bloated salaries for the proponents of “sustainability governance” and the like.
This has already come to pass across the pond.It is precisely how the EUSSR operates.
IT Governance: http://www.unapcict.org/ecohub/resources/it-governance-capability-laying-the-foundation-for-government-interoperability
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan014279.htm
I would encourage people to resist these efforts to the extent that they can. Even subvert them if you can.
Hilarious and incisive – your gag reflex must have got a yeoman’s workout with the sheer tonnage of vomitous blatherings…
A joy to read – thanks, Willis!
Wells said, Willis.
The concept behind carbon credits was that the UN would issue transnational carbon credits, effectively a currency, and countries would hand over real money to buy them. In the same way any transnational transaction requires a currency exchange.
For the first time, the UN would be able to print its own money, the transnational carbon credit.
You can argue, as I have, that the whole IPCC circus was never about the climate. The climate was merely a means to the end of the UN printing its own money.
‘Saying we need to rebuild the word’ – ?
My favourite word this week is Oxymoron, it just has a ring to it .
[Very good. Thanks, fixed. —w.]
henrythethird says:
March 16, 2012 at 12:45 am
Dang, you’re right … that means that instead of the value V being 0.00092, that the true answer is V = 0.00098, a 6% increase in scientific value.
w.
MangoChutney says:
March 16, 2012 at 12:50 am
Man, that is one Orwellian name …
w.
Andrejs Vanags says:
March 16, 2012 at 12:53 am
Agreed, that’s why I am taking the time to highlight this important issue.
w.
Regarding the chimera of sustainability, whole careers have been built on this and major initiatives within the European Union are being driven forward. One of the leading lights in this is somebody of whom few in the UK have ever heard: Staffan Nilsson[1], president of the EESC, but who can be spotted in the EU limousines by virtue of the emerging Gleick beard. Even allowing for the language barrier, which is exists more between bureaucratic double talk and plain speaking, rather than between differences European languages, his outpourings defy any interpretation other than the demands for ever-increasing taxes to fund ever-increasingly bizarre fuzzy objectives, flying this year under the “sustainability” flag[2, first paragraph especially]. Even Google translate gives up.
[1] Nilsson S: EESC President Home Page http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.president
[2] Nilsson, S: “How sustainable can we get this year?” http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.staffan-nilsson-comment.21711
Great article again Willis, I bet your great at a dinner party with a few drinks inside you or are you more a steak and beer man down the local Hooters (my choice).
And is United Nations an Oxymoron?
An oxymoron (plural oxymorons or oxymora) (from Greek ὀξύμωρον, “sharp dull”) is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. Oxymorons appear in a variety of contexts.
Well it’s not a figure of speech so in that context then no it’s not but in my opinion the only thing united about the United Nations is that they want more of our money.
but of course the best Oxymoron in the world if your based in an office your know this one…….Smart-Casual.
Just thought you people might like to see Mann’s latest effort on Aussie TV last night. Seems he thinks that he and other scientists are intimidated, poor little petal.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3454652.htm
About 20 years ago, an Australian Foreign Minister called Gareth Evans tried to reform UNESCO (UN Educational and Scientific Organisation). Gareth was a very bright and idealistic chap who even managed to get a proper job in the private sector after he retired from politics.
Anyway, he looked upon UNESCO and found that it was riddled with waste and corruption, and had completely lost its way. He used his considerable skills and energy to develop alliances and plans to try to clean it up, worked on it for years, and failed utterly.
Do you know what the biggest problem turned out to be? It was the ‘underdeveloped’ countries that refused to give up their first class airfares and entourages and five star hotels, even for short trips. They were the ones who clung to the systems which facilitated handing out plum jobs, money and favours on any basis other than merit. Every time it was suggested that the lurks and perks be curtailed, they screamed oppression by rich white people of poor them. And they won.
And that, readers, is the UN in a nutshell. It might also interest taxpayers who finance the UN (it generates not a dime of its multi-billion dollar budget from doing anything productive) that UN employees do not pay income tax, no matter where they live. AFAIK, they are the only group of people on the planet with this privilege. So if you have any UN employees in your country, you are not only paying their salaries, you are covering for their unpaid taxes as well.
The UN is like a bloated and insatiable leech on the productive people (mainly in the US) that pay its bills. At least real leeches drop off when they are full. This one, though, will never be satisfied, and will have to be removed by force.
“Nothing is sustainable. Sustainability is a chimera, a will of the wisp, with no agreed-on definition. It is a meaningless feel-good word used to justify whatever projects the authors are pushing this week.”
Nonsense, Willis. That which is profitable is sustainable.
Sorry, I left out ‘Cultural’ in decoding the UNESCO alphabet soup.
Mike McMillan says:
March 16, 2012 at 1:40 am
Sounds like Willis’s First Rule of Village-Level Development, which states “If it doesn’t pay … it doesn’t stay.”
The meaning is that unless someone can either make a living or save money from your brilliant development idea, as soon as you leave the village, the idea will die.
w.
Who can we thank for the UN? Wilson? Was it Wilson? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, since he came up with the “League of Nations” and the UN was formed in 1945 to supposedly quell any possibility of another world war. But no wonder the UN is having problems considering its origin.
I think A. Underdal is Arild Underdal, a political scientist from Oslo who is also associated with the Norwegian AGW-promoting CICERO center:
http://www.sv.uio.no/isv/english/people/aca/stvau1/
I was just posting about Greek government, and they way they selected their officials by lot (actually committees of 10 where today we might have a minister).
That, I believe, is why Greek education is so good. Not only did everyone in the country want all citizens to have the educational skills necessary to sit on one of these committees … but those taking the decisions were not the privileged ones, but those who had the run of the mill ordinary school. The point is that if you get ordinary people running things, they tend to have very different priorities – and that doesn’t mean worse!
So, what if we replaced the UN with say … 12 randomly selected people
What kind of issues would like focus on? Poverty, probably. Healthcare – definitely. Education – yes. The price of food. Fair access to land & resources. Corruption of officials. The lack of decent drinking water.
About 100,000th on the list would be global warming. Sure, they would all say: “of course it is important how we treat the earth, blah, blah … but then they would say … but what really matters to me (and not some daft UN official) is …”
R Zondervan is Ruben Zondervan, director of the “Earth System Governance Project”: http://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/people/person/ruben-zondervan
On that page you’ll also find the full names of the Science paper. I’ve googled a couple more of the names, and they were all political scientists.
2 pages and 33 authors! Sounds like one of those full page ad efforts. What was the font size?
Countries around the world need to become rich first, only then they can afford to protect their environment. And we can’t make them rich by feeding them money. Money is just oil in wheels of a working economy and they need these wheels, not the oil.
This notion isn’t entirely fair. Sometimes the presence of the individual with he vision makes the difference in making it work. It can well be a brilliant development idea but someone else can’t make it work. The Baltimore Orioles have been terrible since Earl Weaver left. Sometimes it is part idea and part idealist.
UN employees do not pay income tax, no matter where they live.
It’s far worse than that. The UN and all its officials have complete legal immunity everywhere. The UN itself does not have any laws covering what we would call crimes. So, while a diplomat with diplomatic immunity can be prosecuted in his home country for a crime, that’s never the case with the UN. You can’t break laws that don’t exist.
The Convention’s core provision with regard to immunity from jurisdiction is found
in article II, section 2, which runs as follows: “The United Nations, its property and assets
wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy immunity from every form of legal
process except insofar as in any particular case it has expressly waived its immunity.
The raving loons on the left are hell bent on destroying democracy. They are creating their own deity system, the fear of god is replaced with the fear of climate, the world’s first truly left wing religion. Unlike conventional religion where one chooses to practice, the church of climate catastrophe has a no opt out policy, you are a believer whether you believe or not. The religion aims to turn the world into a globalized North Korea, where a massive Politburo exists to bribe and reward like minded scientists and politicians.
norm-development
=====================
Was;nt Norm the fattie in Cheers. Why would they want that kind of development?
They need an international institutional arrangement—such as one or several multilateral framework conventions—to support forecasting, transparency, and information sharing;
==========================
The Marxism of Intellectual Property. The MArxism virus mutates.
Google any one of the full names in with the word ‘sustainability’ and I think you’ll get a hit on the first page, if not the first hit.
Biermann, Frank.,
Kenneth Abbott,
Steinar Andresen,
Karin Bäckstrand,
Steven Bernstein,
Michele M. Betsill,
Harriet Bulkeley,
Benjamin Cashore,
Jennifer Clapp,
Carl Folke,
Aarti Gupta,
Joyeeta Gupta,
Peter M. Haas,
Andrew Jordan,
Norichika Kanie,
Tatiana Kluvánková-Oravská,
Louis Lebel,
Diana Liverman,
James Meadowcroft,
Ronald B. Mitchell,
Peter Newell,
Sebastian Oberthür,
Lennart Olsson,
Philipp Pattberg,
Roberto Sánchez-Rodríguez,
Heike Schroeder,
Arild Underdal,
Susana Camargo Vieira,
Coleen Vogel,
Oran R. Young,
Andrea Brock,
Ruben Zondervan
The UN is a good-old-boys club for the relatives of 1st world politicians and 3rd world dictators.
Wait, where does the 2nd world fit in there? I guess they got folded into the European bureaucratic boondoggle – not sure if that’s “up or down” on the list.
Doesn’t matter, it’s the “league of pleasantly-dressed thugs” anyway.
While the Science article is behind a paywall, readers may be interested in this related interview with the lead author Frank Biermann.
You got that right. Their diplomatic immunity is the stuff of legend in NYC. In years past it would often be in the headlines, these days it barely merits a mention. The outstanding scofflaw parking tickets alone would probably balance the city budget. Of course that is minor compared to the misdemeanors and felonies. Who in their right mind would agree to the concept of diplomatic immunity morphing into criminal immunity?
I want to live to see the day that UN Plaza is leveled and bulldozed into the East River.
US out of the UN
UN out of the US
P.S. Anthony and Mods … WordPress changed something again. Getting various messages like “You must be logged in to comment with that email address.” and “That email address is associated with an existing WordPress.com account, please log in to use it.”, while using the same email address as always. I noticed that Goddard’s site has also been on the fritz. Trying a different email address for now.
Co-author H-J S is from PIK who helped commission a long report from late 2011 “A New Growth Path for Europe”. Here are the opening statements from the executive summary, 2 quotes.
Josef Ackermann: “Make no mistake: a new world order is emerging. The race for leadership has already begun. For the winners, the rewards are clear: Innovation and investment in clean energy technology will stimulate green growth; it will create jobs; it will bring greater energy independence and national security.”
Jean-Claude Trichet: “When the crisis came, the serious limitations of existing economic and financial models immediately became apparent. In the face of the crisis, we felt abandoned by conventional tools. [… } we need to develop complementary tools to improve the robustness of our overall framework [… ] we may need to consider a richer characterization of expectation formation.”
Go get ’em Willis! Huge applause from fellow skeptics and democracy champions over here in the UK. We are also watching carefully the attempts in Australia to silence the global warming truth-tellers and Labour Government critics. All this, plus the EU’s determination to throw good taxpayers money after bad in an attempt to prop up a discredited political European union, orchestrated (of course) by the unelected commissioners of the EC.
The conspiracy of the Left to overthrow democracy and install global government seems to be approaching a critical moment.
For those looking for a clear voice of reason, watch Dan Hannan speaking in Melbourne at the Institute of Public Affairs.
V ≈ 1 / A^2
Nice Eschenbach equation there, Willis!
However I suspect most career scientists will want to go on counting the old way, so that in terms of resumes, a paper with 32 authors has 32 times the resume impact of a single author paper. Even without applying the Eschenbach rule there seems no good reason why a multi-author publication should count for more. One could easily devise a fairer and more meaningful way of dividing the credit while discouraging the proliferation of zombie authors. For example, for a multi-author paper the first-named author could claim, say, 2/3rds of a paper credit, while the other 1/3rd was divided equally between all the other authors.
They could include the name Gore as it would be as plausible a contributer as some of the other ones.
The UN began as an impotent organisation and now it needs a prostatectomy.
From the “Earth System Governance” website:
“The assessment underlying this article has been mandated by the organizers of the huge science conference “Planet under Pressure”, to be held 26-29 March 2012 in London, with several thousand scientists participating. It is also a key contribution of the science community to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (“Rio+20”).”
Just look at the list of freeloaders and incompetents addressing this massive boondoggle. I suspect you will find many of the “qualified majority” who expect to be voting in international decision-making.
Blade says:
March 16, 2012 at 3:32 am
Glasshouses and stones, Blade!
Check how much the US Embassy owes London in Congestion Charges. It was over £5m a year ago and is increasing with penalty interest every day. Why should I subsidise the US to clog up the roads I want to use???
Willis, as I am sure you are aware, you are just wasting your breath (or ink, or keyboard life). The flimsiness of their arguments is irrelevant, they are just convincing themselves – not difficult since they are convinced already – the opinion of anyone else is not going to be listened to. As far as I can see, ‘global governance’ can only mean world dictatorship, how can anything global possibly be democratic? The closest we get is that the organisations with executive power are appointed by elected governments; or at least governments, some of which are elected. Even then it seems that democracy is increasingly being restricted to choices that are no choice at all. Currently in the UK we have a coalition government that is what should be an unworkable combination of Conservative and Liberal Democrat. They make still lots of noise that give the impression that they are diametrically opposed to each others views, but the process of joint ‘governance’ seems to proceed suspiciously smoothly. I think that ‘liberal elites’ around the world have much more in common with each other than any do with the people they supposedly represent, why would they want the latter to have any say in the business of ‘global governance?’
Hubris from the Dutch Free University: Fundamental change environmental policies necessary
http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2668/Buitenland/article/detail/3226086/2012/03/16/VU-Fundamentele-verandering-milieubeleid-nodig.dhtml
Please translate Dutch – English in Google Translate
Whenever I see the word “Anthropocene” (especially in the title of a “scientific” paper), I reach for my revolver … or would do, if the UK Gov hadn’t effectively disarmed its citizenry. Thanks as ever, Willis, for a very readable article about something that really needs reading about.
I’d take issue with “Third question is, how will we kill it when it goes off the rails”, though. I see the question as “how do we kill all this UN “global governance” BS before it’s put anywhere near the rails” …
The ring manager gingerly steps over some of the 33 broken and bloodied bodies strewn hither and yon about the ring to raise his arm and award Willis the WorldWide HeavyWeight SmackDown Belt proclaiming him the new World Champion!
First Church of Ecological Redemption
Very good 🙂
Well, even though this multi-authored paper is very brief, from what I’ve read, it is definitely consistent with the output of High Level, Low Level – and all levels in between – papers and positions being promulgated by the UN en route to Rio+20:
A profusion of panels and pronouncements en route to Rio+20
Here are some highlights from the High Level:
For those who may not be familiar with UN-speak, “civil society” = NGOs, the “accreditation” of which within the UN sphere has increased phenomenally within the last 20 years. In fact, the numbers are such that they yield a … wait for it … hockey stick:
Introducing … the UN’s jolly green sustainable hockey stick
Not to mention that Pachauri’s July 2009 “vision” for AR5 – which, if he has his way, will result in “sustainable development” pervading the reports of all three WGs – and of course his recent designation as one of “three of the world’s most prominent sustainability leaders”::
Sustainia mania … it’s the latest and greatest from the UN’s PR factory.
sustainability governance
That’s rationing for you proles.
defUNd
We used to call people who wanted to rule the world lunatics, megalomaniacs, Bonapartists, now we call them “scientists”.
Methinks 1984 should be re-read by everyone.
Your leader loves you…
Ode to the IPCC:
“The thing to remember when traveling is that the trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. The Dutchman was hard…he was stone. His brain was eroded granite where the few ideas he had carved their deep ruts of opinion. There was no way for another idea to seep in, no place for imagination, no place for dreams, none for compassion or mercy or even fear.”
Louis L’Amour in ‘Ride the Dark Trail’
“You know … important questions … but don’t worry, the 33 authors don’t answer them, or even attempt to answer them. For that they’d need maybe 66 authors.”
The answer is always to double it. Regardless of whether it’s money or authors. We need to take heed and be mindful of who has the next opportunity to solve our problems for us.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Willis, writing at Anthony’s, worth reading, as always.
I am reminded of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a UN created document I have never read, that for the most part no one I know ever mentions, at least in the company I keep, nor even by my own country men/women, except perhaps on rare occasions when someone mentions that if you read the document in Cuba, you could get thrown in jail.
Throw a bunch of bureaucrats together one day, scramble to jumble a bunch of UN parables together in the allotted amount of time, and sign off on it. Voila, Declaration of Human Rights, Copenhagen accord, Kyoto, Sustainable drivel…
Sorry, reading UN created content scrambles my brain cells. I had better read my Quantum Mechanics book for a while.
I will vote for any president, Communist, Fascist, even Democrat, that promises to pull the US out of the UN and kick it’s nasty, whoreish edifice out of the US of A.
The people that run the UN are inevitably from countires that can’t even run themselves.. or a even a villiage.. much less the world.
Ghana, Egypt, Peru, Burma… one Nazi.
Kofi Annan was no more than an African Warlord with a nice smile and an expensive suit.
At least the current fellow is from a modern democracy.. by the good graces of the USA/UK/ANZAC I might note.
A good and timely essay, Willis, of the kind that needs to appear on frequent basis here. Gives me the opportunity to repeat my rant that attacking the pseudoscience of warmism is only one part (the smaller one too) of the battle, dealing with the endgame bit, the money and power-grabs, the other. We need the reminder, ad nauseum, that the IPCC is a UN organization and that there are thousands of shadowy and unrepresentative NGOs and environmental groups who are intimately involved with it. This is the under-exploited and highly vulknerable Warmies’ Achilles’ Heel; their involvement in and profit from that creeping fascism with the green smiley face. It needs to be exposed and underlined in every climate debate, as bamboozling and scaring the public with what to most people is technical gobledeygook is easier than scrambling to explain why they need to take over our governments, economies and private lives. End of mini-rant.
Incidentally, twenty years ago such an article would have raised a storm of indignant protestations and accusations of paranoia and conspiracy mongering by normal, smart people jumping to the defense of the UN. Not no more. Now many would say you’re going too easy on the buggers.
Pedantry time:
“…tropical forests clear-cut for oil plantations,” (bio-fuel plantations?)
“Second question is, does it do anything but provide a fat salary to pluted bloatocrats?” (“pluted” is not in the Urban Dictionary, therefore it cannot exist. I like it, though, and think it should be a word.)
The UN is well on its way to making itself into the global Unaccountable Nomenklatura. The Oil for Food scandal was just a blip compared to the systemic misdirection of resources and monies which has become the UN raison d’etre (along with maximizing and permanently embedding its authority).
It can’t be reformed. Once the process is this far along, it’s impossible to go back to being just half pregnant.
Two pages or two hundred… it doesn’t matter. Every one of the 33 (32?) authors have by now updates their CVs/resumes and in a few years will receive widespread accolades for the groundbreaking tripe, ah, I mean “research” that they described in their paper.
Publish or perish baby!
Great rant Willis.
I may be paranoid, but I foresee a global communism coming with the UN as our leader. Look at the language:
The words “international” and “financial” are in the seventh building block. That means a global economy. How well has combined economies worked out for the EU? Also in the seventh building block is this sentence that stands out to me: “Strong financial support of poorer countries remains essential.” I seriously doubt the authors mean that richer countries will build factories and schools in poorer countries. Nor do I believe the authors mean that richer countries should improve the infrastructure of poorer countries so they have plenty of potable water and food. I believe they mean redistribution of wealth, with some of the wealth going to the UN of course. Redistribution of wealth is communism.
Murray Grainger says:
March 16, 2012 at 3:51 am
Blade says:
March 16, 2012 at 3:32 am
Glasshouses and stones, Blade!
Check how much the US Embassy owes London in Congestion Charges. It was over £5m a year ago and is increasing with penalty interest every day. Why should I subsidise the US to clog up the roads I want to use???
==============================
What is a “congestion charge???
[a sum of money paid daily by drivers of vehicles wishing to enter London central. It is called a congestion charge as it discourages vehicles from congesting central London . . kbmod]
Would it be interesting to trace how scientists have become so heavily invested in socialist, Marxist, communist, Fascist, Stalinist, Marxist and other left-wing ideas? Would the topic of the evolution of left-wing ideas in contemporary Western scientists be a good topic for a Master’s thesis?
In the not-too-distant past, scientists and college professors were classical-liberals. They championed individual rights, personal freedom and limited, non-intrusive government. In WW2, our war efforts were widely supported by scientists and academics, but even then, pacifism, socialism and communism had strong support in the same community.
So you need [snip – sorry this comment will take the discussion into territory off limits by policy here and many other blogs. Most comments that begin with “So, ” are generally snark. – Anthony]
The UN was the brain child of FDR and Churchill to fight the Axis, originally called the Atlantic Charter of nations pledged to defeat them. Originally it was simply an organization to promote collective security since the “balance of power” method of peace… when it goes wrong or is left in the hands of incompetents, leads to catastrophies like World War I, and weak Collective Security, like the League of Nations is useless when staffed with feckless leaders like the Western Europeans of the 20s and 30s. Of course the UN was bound to fail simply because the Soviet Union was given veto power (and intially 3 votes as I recall to equal the strength of the Western Allies – GB, US, France) and effecively killed every attempt at collective securiy except the Korean War which only passed because the USSR was boycotting the UN for not recognizing Communist China rather than Nationalist China (Taiwan) as the fifth security council member (ironically the Korean War was started basically at the bidding and support of the USSR and of course later intevention by China).
China was an ally against the Japanese, whom they had been invaded by in 1931 and 1937 and fought a brutal war against,,, as bad if not worse in the level of carnage and barbarity of the Nazi-Soviet War. The Nationalist Chineese led by Chaing Kai Shiek actively fought the Japanese while the Communist under Mao, quite frankly did very little to combat the Japanese and were basically reserving their strength for the post WWII Civil War which they won in 1947-49. That’s the simple version… much disputed by lefitist Communist sympathizers, but true. Anyhow Taiwan was replaced by “Red China’ on the Security Council in 1971 and the UN has been even more evil, not worthless, flat out evil in it’s refusal to intervene where most desparately needed.
dayam! you’re in top form today, Willis!
that one slid down smooooth.
arafat and mandela are nobel prize winners like gore and obama.
awards like that are reserved for the most destructive parasites on earth.
if it’s got the Nobel label, think of a big bowl of clostridium.
Well, for that comparison to be true I would need to have been complaining about outstanding fines from a British embassy in NYC, right?
Honestly. I never heard of this issue in London at all, but it shouldn’t surprise you that I probably agree with you instead of our professional bureaucrats. Surely they can simply relocate the thing, err, after a study is commissioned and another hundred bureaucrats process the red tape. 🙂
To be sure, we are still talking about apples and oranges a bit, as an embassy is by tradition considered soil of the nations’ representatives it houses [ummm, I see that Wikipedia disputes this, says it’s merely immunity. Whatever.]. But most importantly it is obviously a reciprocating agreement with equal numbers of embassies located in the opposite nation. This distinction is significant because I believe the UN Headquarters is singularly unique with it’s presence here in the colonies. If the UN Plaza were demolished with the occupiers perhaps sent to Switzerland it still wouldn’t affect the worldwide embassy system as they are 100% mutually exclusive with and predate the UN.
From Murray Grainger on March 16, 2012 at 3:51 am:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge
That’s the crux of the disagreement, tax or toll. We Americans are disagreeing with our own federal government as they arbitrarily try to raise revenues with “fees” as opposed to taxes which are approved by Congress. So I’m not sympathetic towards the London “toll”.
The whining about the “current lack of an international legal framework for the assessment and collection of traffic fines” is humorous. Who among us wishes to be harassed by a debt collector insisting we settle with them for a traffic fine issued by the Nigerian Ministry of Transportation, which has been ordered to be paid by their Ministry of Justice, and we have no recourse for disputing it as we missed the deadlines for challenging the ticket and appealing the subsequent conviction, which we would have had to do in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja? And you had better pay it now before a court in your own country, due to the UN treaty, orders your vehicle to be seized and auctioned to settle your internationally-binding legal obligation.
Jim Turner says:
March 16, 2012 at 4:00 am
I am aware of no such thing. My words have effect, and I have seen the effect that they have.
If you want to sit around cursing the darkness, that is your privilege and your affair.
Me, I’ll start a fire, even if it’s just a little tiny campfire. Maybe it will grow into a blaze, maybe not … but no way I’m gonna sit in the dark. Not my style at all.
Thanks,
w.
It would be useful to see a list of those things the UN has got right.
As UK Skeptic says, the EU is a colossal disaster at every level and the EU is the UN’s mini-me.
The kind of “Rorsach” writing they use is very familiar. Here in Africa it is used a lot and so can mean whatever one subjectively wants it to mean.
The UN and almost all of its NGO’s are bad things. Very bad things.
I think you could argue that preserving South Korea was a success. There are seeds to future failure in the solution; calling it a “Police Action” instead of a war, arriving at a truce with no formal end to the war. Yeah, not a perfect solution. But I think we can agree that at least South Korea has been a net positive contributor to the world.
Since, Kofi has been unable to stop Syria from killing its own people it is better he turn to taking things that do not belong to him like my (re the wests) freedom, my money, and my kids future.
Wilis,
Thanks for responding to my comments, I did not intend to suggest that there is no point speaking out – far from it – but rather that articles such as the one you point out are intended to be believed by the believers, as such your criticism will have no impact on the authors and their like. Outside of that circle, it is of course necessary that rational criticism continues. However, edifices like the EU and UN are contrived so as to insulate them from democratic control as much as possible – it seems to be one of the few things that they are good at. I have watched the EU aggrandizing itself around me for years with no say in the matter. Even those politicians that ‘talk tough’ on the subject seem to do surprisingly little when actually given the chance. In the long run though, reality must win and the EU and the CAGW bandwagons will collapse under their own idiocy; it just seems that the human race only ever does things the hard way.
Willis:
Your V=1/A^2 theorem brings to mind one of my favorite theories, the (1/2)A theory (think about it for a second, say it aloud if necessary). I think both are fully applicalble here.
DEEBEE says:
March 16, 2012 at 2:46 am
norm-development
=====================
Was;nt Norm the fattie in Cheers. Why would they want that kind of development?
Hey now! There’s no need to drag George into this sorry spectacle!
From TomB on March 16, 2012 at 10:06 am:
Yes, an American success. I think we can all agree what would have happened if the protection of South Korea had been left in the blue-helmeted UN security forces “capable hands”, with the additional effects of their demonstrated “tender mercies”.
One of the few things anyone ever mentions is that UNICEF thing 30-40 years ago. But even that is faint praise because it was our kids doing all the legwork walking house-to-house with those little orange boxes and the bringing them to schools to be forwarded to the UN. So we paid there too, in donations and by supplying the infrastructure to handle the money. We also paid for the lion share of the UN building and their annual operating budget and of course the blood shed on the battlefield.
International tomfoolery is always going to cost the USA taxpayers lots of money for fancy utopian photo-ops. We’re pretty much doing the same all over again with the ISS (International Space Station).
Such ideas, at best, should be a checkoff on the tax returns.
I wish we would just get the hell out of the UN which is an impotent organization that is dominated by anti-American third-world countries who’s only purpose to to mug developed Western countries.
You are mostly correct Willis but I would pick a nit with you on your statement:
“I’m still a conservamentalist. Here’s the truth. The countries of the world need sensible, enforceable environmental regulations, or people just dispose of their industrial waste in the nearest stream or in the atmosphere.”
At least here in the USA we had criminal trespass laws, stemming from English Common Law, long before the EPA. Soil your own bed but if one itty bitty molecule made it into the water/soil/air on my side of the property law I can go after you (I saw it in action when the first Chemical company I worked for got nailed but good before EPA.)
The big problem was not the lack of a law but the collusion between the big polluting corporations and the USA government where we were told “Pollution is the price of progress” whenever a citizen tried to go after the biggies. Unfortunately that has not changed. In another blog one of the commenter’s brother works for the EPA. The brother was told point blank to leave Exxon etc alone and go after the Mom & Pop businesses. It really popped the poor guy’s idealism.
A sterling example of this type of favoritism at work is the USDA/FDA cover-up for the big corporations who run the WTO; SHIELDING THE GIANTS vs how the little guy is handled: USDA shut kid’s rabbit business, fines up to $4 million
As Dr David Evans pointed out in hisarticle it is the “…the regulating class [who] is using bogus claims about climate change to entrench and extend their economic privileges and political control….” That is our real problem. So protect the environment by all means, I am 100% behind that, but lets kill the rent seeking bureaucracy or at least bring it back under the control of the ordinary people instead of allowing it to become a weapon used against them by the multinational corporations.
A bit more to add to Willis’ article as background:
This Climategate e-mail on Global Governance & Sustainable Development (B1) (code phrase for Agenda 21) shows another connection.
Here is more on the (B1) scenario IPCC Emissions Scenarios
Here is who Ged Davis in the e-mail is ( A Shell Oil executive and scenario writer with IPCC/Un connection)
What a shock. UN bloatocrats see a need to give more power to the UN.
Every day I find more places to save US federal expenditures without cutting anything really important.
Great article. Paul Theroux has a book called “Dark Star
Safari” where he talks of his trip from Cairo to Capetown
and talks of many UN failures. Many NGO’s are just ego
trips that do more harm than good. Sending used clothing
there has destroyed the indigenous clothing industry.etc. etc.
Pull My Finger says:
March 16, 2012 at 9:00 am
References please? I’ve heard this exactly the other way around. See Barbara Tuchman’s biography of Joe Stilwell in China (see here ).
There are many instances recounted where Stilwell had set up a battle only to find the Nationalist troops had orders from Chaing Kai-Shek to allow the Japanese an easy escape route. There were also conversations between Stilwell and Chaing Kai-Shek recounted in which Chaing said the Japanese were not important — “defense in depth” (i.e., just keep retreating beyond their reach) was the right strategy, but stockpiling weapons to find “the bandits” (Communists) was the more important goal.
Tuchman may be wrong, but the picture presented is clearly one of Stilwell’s frustration that Chaing simply would not fight the Japanese and undercut him whenever he tried.
Alan Watt says:
March 16, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Chinese generals aren’t stupid. Both sides knew that the one thing that they could not recover from was losing too many men. And both sides knew that the real battle was not going to be against the Japanese, but against each other after WWII ended.
So both Mao and Chang were very, very loath to commit their troops to battle against the Japanese, and very reasonably so. They only did it when they absolutely had to. They both knew that WWII was not going to be decided in China, but that after the war ended, the fate of China would certainly be decided in China … and it was.
w.
Alan Watt says:
March 16, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Let me know when you do find something “really important” in Federal expenditures … I know its there somewhere, I know there is real and valuable stuff the Feds do … I just haven’t seen much of it in a while.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 16, 2012 at 3:26 pm
…..Let me know when you do find something “really important” in Federal expenditures … I know its there somewhere, I know there is real and valuable stuff the Feds do … I just haven’t seen much of it in a while.
________________________
Willis, How about 25 years of repealing idiotic laws and hunting down and punishing graft….
Received this message visiting the site from your link:
Old link?
.
Willis-
Great rant! Thanks to crowd sourcing we now know that the 32 or 33 authors are all associated with the Earth System Governance Project and know where they live (on the web). A visit to their website:
http://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/
is very instructive.
This paper and others, with more to come, are all a run-up to RIO+20.
When traced back to their origin, they spring from the “The United Nations University.” which advertises itself as the “academic arm of the United Nations” Their website is:
http://unu.edu/
Again, worth a visit.
I won’t be reading the article behind the paywall. I’ve give up reading Science Fiction for Lent.
“Figure 1. Are these the kind of men you want to run your global economy………”
Isn’t one of those men dead?
Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance
Can’t find it un-paywalled, but it seems to be part of a series. These people have an entire organization. Pub list:
http://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/publications
There’s a predecessor from 2010, Navigating the anthropocene: the Earth System Governance Project strategy paper (pdf from arizona.edu), published in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.
So we need these jokers to dream up new institutions, organizations, and mechanisms to govern humans (and thus their relationship to Mama Gaia)?
Same song, still yet another cover band, didn’t like the original, swapping out the sax for a pan flute hasn’t made it better. Why does my government keep taking my money to buy me tickets to their shows?
whilst reading ‘A Miasma of Corruption: The United Nations at 50’, I’m thinking ‘who are these dictators?’
I’m horrified to learn of the corruption involved, but how to inform others, and how to dismantle ?
I’d like to see wanted posters distributed on social networks. Kony could use some company.
here’s a list dated 2006. http://www.un.org/en/members/
as previously mentioned, their offices, postal addresses, are in New York. that’s convenient.
find, say, the 10 most corrupt individuals/member states. design ‘wanted ‘broke or busted’ posters. including before and after scenarios. e.g. murderer kills villagers for biofuel, is coming for america.
((*a propo news break* George Clooney arrested outside sudanese embassy. ))
we have to ‘audience the target’ – who has most power to implement change ? politicians ? which dictators are most ‘precariously balanced ? public figures ? disgruntled retired UN delegates ? who is most likely to ‘see reason’ ? uni students ? who’s losing most ? how about a union of small banks that face usurption. where are the largest numbers of angry people ? new orleans ? what do the religious people say. I’m thinking ‘one’ has to target crowds.
posters come in many sizes. pamphlets to be distributed, to be read later, A4’s for shopfronts, banners for roof tops, email/web transmission. it’s interesting to view stats, 1 billion people on facebook, how many on twitter? how many read blogsites?
how to dismantle the UN ? it would take a rather sophisticated organisation, operating on basic principles.
In re “Nothing is sustainable” I would suggest one thing that has sustained with incredible resilience over the entire breadth of human history and that is the tyrannical impulse. It isn’t common to all humans, but is always present within a large enough minority, who always pursue it with unflagging dedication, that living under tyranny has been the prevailing state for all but a minuscule fraction of all the humans who have ever lived. On the other end of the scale is the impulse for liberty which is common to a much larger fraction of humanity, with the main difference being in the percentage who are actually willing to put themselves on the line to try to advance it. Among that number are all those old dead white guys, and not a few nonwhite guys and gals. who fought the American Revolution. The Revolution they pulled off is still just about the only real one in all of human history. There have been a great many others but, in the end. they were almost always just coup d’etats, which resulted in the replacement of one set of thuggish overlords by another who fundamentally differed from the first only in their costumes and the language they used to justify their tyranny.
The most daunting task facing our Founders at the end of Revolutionary War was to create a form of governance which would reverse the relationship of the governors and the governed, which would make the rulers subject to those they ruled and do so in a way that could persist through time, They accomplished that task better than anyone ever had before or has since, but, to a man, they cautioned that the price of the Liberty they offered was eternal vigilance against those who would try to deny it. Unfortunately we, who were the main recipients of this greatest gift ever offered to humanity, responded mostly with complacency rather than vigilance. I rate myself more guilty than most in this regard because I recognized most of this as a teenager and when I look back at all that has occurred in my time, without my offering more than a few feeble whimpers of protest, I am filled with overwhelming shame. If I had been willing to express my defense of liberty with anything like the dedication that Obama and his lifelong allies and mentors have demonstrated toward trying to destroy it I could face what is left of my rapidly dwindling lifespan with, if not satisfaction, at least some sense of peace. As it is. as I view each of these fresh attempts to return the world to a 1775 state, I find myself having to struggle mightily to avoid the deepest kind of despair.
If, as now seems increasingly likely, Obama and his ilk are granted four more years to advance their misanthropic agenda, the hill on which our “Shining City” rests will be completely excavated from beneath us, leaving us to to dwell in the muck of subjugation that always has been, and still is for most the world, the common state of humanity.
It was all well covered almost 50 years ago . . None Dare Call it Treason by Robert Stormer
http://www.amazon.com/None-Dare-Call-It-Treason/dp/0899667252/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331973570&sr=1-1
Back in the day it was considered to be just right wing propaganda, today it can be seen just how true it was.
They are following the formula of the European Union, which includes:
1. A full day’s pay for signing in and going home ten minutes later.
2. Unaudited and unauditable accounts for a decade.
3. Imposition of carbon-free energy strategies.
4. Transfer of ‘dirty’ energy jobs from the EU to China and India.
5. Wholescale fraud and corruption concerning ‘green energy’ grants/programmes etc etc, most likely involving organised crime.
6. A refusal to allow sovereign countries to vote on continued membership of this errant organisation.
7. An increasing State Budget at times when all regions are experiencing severe austerity.
The 21st century grand challenge is the battle to overcome unelected tyranny which purports to invoke higher purpose.
I, like most skeptics, have no problem with transnational bodies if they are:
1. Elected.
2. Accountable.
3. Democratic.
4. Financially efficient.
5. Fit for purpose.
6. Created to deal with real problems.
7. Benefit the people, not the officials.
It’s just a shame that, right now, most of them don’t…….
more information about goals and supporters of Schellnhuber’s ideas:
http://www.greattransformation.eu/
In former days he named it “cultural revolution” a term invented by Mao Zedong.
IMHO these people are dangerous.
Great post as usual Willis.
Gail Combs – you are also dead on. Taking back our country means also starting to enforce the commonsense laws originally enacted – protection of water, air, sound from the myriad of contamination sources. None of these are on the NGOs agendas, let alone the UN.
Freedom and Liberty weren’t just slogans for the Founding Fathers, they knew people sometimes do things of which you may disapprove, however they have the right to do them, provided – as Gail said – not one nano-particle, not one ppb of stink producing molecules, not one db of excess sound encroaches on your space. In the same vein, I’m all in favor of farmers suing Monsanto for pollution when the genetically modified pollen from their crops contaminates neighbors fields. This is in marked contrast to what has previously happened – Monsanto sued them for “stealing” their patented genes. But I digress.
Pillars of integrated BS is more like what the UN is promoting.
Sorry Willis, but this time you went way over the top. The picture you show is too scary!
Two Nobel peace prizes at the same time is not for the faint of heart. 😉
_Jim says:
March 16, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Gail Combs says:
March 16, 2012 at 11:57 am
…
Here is who Ged Davis in the e-mail is ( A Shell Oil executive and scenario writer with IPCC/Un connection)
Received this message visiting the site from your link:
An error has occurred.
Page does not exist
Address used: http://www.interacademycouncil.net/default.aspx?id=11935&PrinterFriendly=true
Item id: 11935
Old link?
_____________________________________________
It was OK a few days ago when I checked.
I think the 34th or is it 57 Author is obama, destined to be ruler of the world.
Note that the Peace Prize Committee is an entirely separate body/organization, nothing to do with the Science prizes. Not that they aren’t substantially mis-directed, too. Alfred wanted them to go to high-impact low-consensus science, to keep the pot boiling. They actually go to decades-old confirmed discoveries, now.