Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The United Nations, progenitor of a thousand agencies, has released a report called “MOVING TOWARDS A CLIMATE NEUTRAL UN” regarding its success in reducing its own “carbon footprint” (full version , summary). The Head Prophet of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, has revealed the mysteries to us unwashed masses as follows:
We are making steady progress. In March, the main UN website launched a new section offering a wide range of information on the Organization’s sustainability performance. In April, I opened the new UN building in Nairobi – a beacon of sustainable construction. In May, a new position – UN Senior Advisor on Sustainability – was created to coordinate the Secretariat’s work on climate neutrality. In August, I presented the UN21 Award to the UN Environment Programme and the Department of Field Support for their efforts to green the UN. And in September, senior officials of the inter-agency Environment Management Group approved a Strategic Plan for Sustainability Management in the UN system.
The United Nations system is strongly committed to leading by example and ensuring that our operations are continuously monitored and improved – not just in terms of what we deliver, but also how we deliver.
Figure 1. A sheep contemplates the UN report whilst providing natural fertilizer for the flowers.
That all sounds wonderful … now, let’s parse his claims.
Here are the successes that he highlights:
1. The UN website launched a new section of its website, called “Greening the Blue“. It seems to be dedicated to the proposition that if you can’t do it yourself, you should tell others to do it.
2. A new UN building in Nairobi, Kenya, has 6,000 square feet of solar panels on the roof, and is rated (not measured but rated) at 515 kilowatts of power. No word on the cost, but it looks like a bureaucrat’s palace …
3. They have created a new bureaucratic position, “UN Senior Advisor on Sustainability”, at the usual high rate of pay and perks. This is in addition to their existing positions, such as the “Senior Advisor on Sustainable Development”, and the “Technical Advisor,Population & Sustainable Development”, and the “Advisor on Sustainable Water Development and Management”, and the “Second Committee Advisor on Sustainable Development”, and the “Consultant, Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development”, and …
The Senior Advisor post has been filled by a woman named Julie MacKenzie. Prior to this position, she had been an Environmental Management Coordinator and Climate Neutrality Advisor” for the FAO and an “Adviser” of an unspecified flavor for the UNEP. I cannot find a biography … classic faceless bureaucrat.
4. Mr. Ki-moon handed out a prize to one of the UN programmes for being really really good guys.
5. They put together a “Strategic Plan”, which is no doubt very strategic, and probably chock-full of brilliant plans.
6. He said that the UN is committed to leading by example … do you feel better now?
You may notice that in all of that, Mr. Ki-moon neglected to point out how much the UN has reduced their CO2 emissions …
…
…
… and there is a very good reason for him saying nothing about that:
UN CO2 emissions in 2009: 1.7 million tonnes.
UN CO2 emissions in 2010: 1.8 million tonnes
So if they didn’t reduce their emissions in the slightest, what did they do?
Well, they held a photo competition looking for “images reflecting the theme ‘Visions of a sustainable UN’ “. Here’s the winner:
That works, shut the lid and be done with the UN, sounds eminently sustainable to me …
w.
PS—There was one other achievement noted in their report, viz:
Once again, the UN office at Geneva invited hundreds of sheep to graze the grasslands surrounding the Palais des Nations. The sheep cut the grass in an ecologically sustainable manner whilst providing natural fertilizer for the grass and flowers to grow in spring.
“Whilst”? Who says “whilst” these days? In any case, trust the UN to boast about inventing animal husbandry …
Curiousgeorge says:
April 28, 2012 at 4:25 pm
People should really understand that in the end, when diplomacy and “scientific” arguments and such don’t yield a win, naked force will determine the outcome. To ignore that is to admit defeat.
“Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.” — a quote from the Left’s favorite agrarian reformer, Mao Tse-Tung.
Or, if your sense of PC is too outraged by the old transliteration to concentrate on the aphorism, Mao Zedong…
Sheep grazing in enclosed grounds is standard practice in Switzerland. I remeber the sheep grazing on the grounds of CERN ( a world institute for high energy physics based in Geneva with extensive enclosed land) every spring thirty years ago . They arrived and left by truck of course, unlike the grazing of sheep in the rest of the world who are shepherded to the weeds on the mountains and hills, sometimes interrupting the traffic. I used to think :”how civilized” of the Swiss, now I should think “how sustainable”.
” and there is a very good reason for him saying nothing about that:
UN CO2 emissions in 2009: 1.7 million tonnes.
UN CO2 emissions in 2010: 1.8 million tonnes”
Yeah. They are supposed to lead by example since they’re the promoter of Agenda 21 sustainable living, etc. When do we see all UN buildings outfitted with their wonderful GW/CC Gaia saving Solar panels and wind powered generators.
Plus they’d be driving around in Toyota Prius’s as their UN fleet vehicles. Don’t know how they go off the beaten track in parts of Africa carrying aid supplies. 🙂
Not a lot of “cultural diversity” displayed in that photo. Or are all Caucasians subject to recycling at the whim of the UN?
My younger leisure days was spent designing and flying model aircraft, and this gives one a good sense of flight control. The wing provides the lift, all of the lift, the tail and tailplane provide stability and control in flight in forward flight. Testing a craft full of radio gear meant holding each wingtip with outstretched hands, sliding a fingertip until the maximum curvature of the upper surface was reached (the point of maximum lift) and then adjusting the cargo until a level parallel to the ground is reached.
In real aircraft, any departure from this principle would result in inefficient flying, increased drag and higher fuel cost.
Sorry, can’t think of a sheep comment, leave it to the NZers.
Sadly, I do not think the USA could get out of the UN now. With our debt to China, dependence on imports from many nations and oil from the Mideast, etc., if we tried to get out of the UN,these and other countries would wage political and economic war on the USA. With $15 trillion debt as of now, we are not in a good position do do anything.
dp says:
April 28, 2012 at 11:01 am
The tailplane of a typically configured aircraft creates aerodynamic force that pushes downward, not upward, to provide flight stability.
Any negative lift generated by the stabilizers is miniscule compared to the weight of the empennage itself, the sole function of which is to serve as a counterbalance to the massive weight of the ego contained in the cockpit.
That only applies to fixed-wing aircraft, of course…
“We’re gonna need a bigger bin”
Jeff Alberts says:
April 28, 2012 at 7:13 pm
“My wife says “acrosst”, but she’s from New Jersey.”
Now that is really funny!
I made this commnet in “Global Warming: Science or Politics?” but seems to fit here also.
(Mods, is copying old comments frowned upon? If so, I apologize.)
Gunga Din says:
April 28, 2012 at 10:22 am
Have you ever read “Animal Farm”? It was written as an allegory of what happened with the communist revolution. There’s an animated version that you can find online. The animated version has the animals rise up again at the end. That doesn’t happen in the book.
I think it is also an allegory for any kind of class warfare. “The rich” versus “the poor”. Some of “the poor” want to be “the rich”. They would take what “the rich” have for themselves and make “the rich” into “the poor”. All that has changed is the names of who is “the rich” and who is “the poor”. The same goes power. Some aren’t satisfied having power and authority, over their own lives. They want to have power and authority over others. Some of those will use any means to achieve that goal.
The “environment” has, for this lady (and the UN), become Napoleon’s (from Animal Farm) windmill. It doesn’t matter whether or not we’re really changing the weather as long as it can be used to further the cause.
Gunga Din says:
April 28, 2012 at 12:32 pm
The danger is that this clause of the US Contitution will be used to force us to obey some BS the UN comes up with.”all Treaties made”. We need to quit the UN. What have they really done for us?
Wow! The Supremacy Clause in the US constitution in effect says that a treaty could be made by the US which would invalidate the rights granted the citizens by the constitution.
The US constitution is not a guarantee of citizens rights. These rights are subordinate to .”all Treaties made”, and the courts are duty bound to interpret the laws in this fashion.
Alberta Slim says:
April 28, 2012 at 10:53 am
This is about Maurice Strong who started the whole thing about CAGW.
This article shows $$ links between Strong, Gore, Obama, Goldman Sachs, the Joyce foundation and CAGW.
http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/Columnists/A_Time_For_Choosing/BARACK_OBAMA_AL_GORE_GOLDMAN_SACHS_AND_THE_GREATEST_SWINDLE_IN_HUMAN_HISTORY/29819
“Whilst”? Who says “whilst” these days?
Millions and millions of Brits – often using “while” to connote something like “at the same time as”, and “whilst”, something perhaps nearer to “although”. So they might say: “While I was doing that, I was also watching the television”, but then again, “Whilst I accept what you are saying, nonetheless it’s no excuse for your behaviour”.
It’s not that frequent, imo, to hear “whilst” used in the first sense, as in the UN quote; it’s possibly more common in the written than the spoken word.
Do the sheep get little blue helmets? Protection from all the climate BS flighing about, you know.
@JamesS who said: “@DBCooper. Your post is a joke, right?”
And what would the joke be? That list is one-third of the “UN openings” in Nairobi posted at http://unjobs.org/duty_stations/nbo for jobs closing in the next two months. It points to an incredibly bloated bureaucracy. I grant you that this is not an official UN list of jobs, but take away all the jobs that are clearly part of the UN and leave the NGOs, World bank, etc. Would Kenya suffer the loss?
No joke. I have worked as a consultant for UNDP in Peru. The people I met were nothing more than paper pushers. Poor ones, at that. But they had a cushy job and that’s all they expected.
To support Craig Goodrich: (Willis and his scornful “who uses whilst any more?”!!)
Lots of Brits! There are still vestiges of the language of Shakespeare around – even if they never made it across the Atlantic.
For those of you who don’t know squat about how conventional aircraft fly and particularly the role of the tailplane (and that appears to be everyone who has commented but me) I suggest reading Wolfgang Langewiesche’s “Stick and Rudder”. Or read the infallible 🙂 Wikipedia article on static stability here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitudinal_static_stability
Len says:
April 28, 2012 at 11:18 pm
Sadly, I do not think the USA could get out of the UN now. With our debt to China, dependence on imports from many nations and oil from the Mideast, etc., if we tried to get out of the UN,these and other countries would wage political and economic war on the USA. With $15 trillion debt as of now, we are not in a good position do do anything.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
I understand what you’re saying, but are we in a good position to continue down this road? “They” won’t be happy until we are subjugate to them, until your paycheck furthers their causes, even more than it does now.
(OK. I know I’m entering “snip” territory.)
I want to live “a quite and peaceable life” as it says in 1 Timothy 2:2. I want to be able to tell you that I believe God raised Christ from the dead and not have you be able to have me thrown in jail. I want you to be able to tell me that you think he was just a nice Jewish boy who went into his father’s business without me being able to have you thrown into jail. In a country like Iran, either statement could get us executed. (End of “snip” territory,)
Do you want the leader of Iran to have a vote in you’re everyday life?
I don’t know the UN’s finances, but I think their schemes would be severlly hampered without $$ from the US. If not, what is our freedom worth? I’m willing to pay for freedom. I’m not willing to pay for a hockey slick.
Its about time that we fold up the UN and send these useless clowns packing.
If we leave the UN it will isolate us from the UN marketplace. That will be driven by CIBA, Russia, and France.
Len and dp,
You have it entirely backward. The U.S. is the world’s marketplace, not the UN. The whole world wants to sell their goods and services in America. We hold the economic cards, not the UN — which is just a parasite on American taxpayers. They hate us, but they take our money. As a taxpayer I demand that we stop all financial asistance to the corrupt UN. If a country needs help, we can help them without the UN middlemen taking their usual fat cut.
ferd berple says:
April 29, 2012 at 5:45 am
“… the rights granted the citizens by the constitution.”
You couldn’t be more wrong about this. The Constitution does not grant any rights to the citizens. The citizens have all the rights. The Constitution sets the limited powers the citizens grant to the government. The 9th and 10th Amendments were written to ensure there could be no misunderstanding about this. Unfortunately after years of indoctrination too many people believe as you, that the government grants rights to people. I fear all hope is lost.
dp says:
April 29, 2012 at 12:24 pm
For those of you who don’t know squat about how conventional aircraft fly and particularly the role of the tailplane (and that appears to be everyone who has commented but me)
I had a hunch you were a starched-wing rather than a fling-wing pilot…
dp says:
April 29, 2012 at 12:24 pm ,
That wiki article said
……. pretty close to what I said. Really, an aircraft should be stable and not pitch in a variety of airspeeds, slow (take-off/landing) or cruise, the craft should be longitudinally stable.
Still couldn’t fit sheep in…..
Sorry I forgot to add a small point on April 28, 2012 at 6:20 am:
The pronunciation of “Ban”, when at the start of a sentence, is very close to “pun” as pronounced by English people. When somewhere in a sentence “Ban” is pronounced as English “bun”.