From Rio + 20: The future we dread

From CFACT

Marked-up draft of UN Rio+20 agenda reveals shocking “sustainability” wish list.

An American family of four could owe the UN $1,325 per year.

The United Nations plans to make its Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference “the most significant environmental conference in history.” A draft planning and agenda document, “The Future We Want,” marked-up by myriad ultra-liberal NGOs, provides an unvarnished look at what lurks behind Rio+20.

“Americans, their free world partners and people in developing nations who hope to lift themselves out of poverty should be on their guard. Otherwise Rio+20 could easily trap them in a future we dread,” said Craig Rucker, CEO of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, a Washington, DC-based organization that advances the needs of people, while also protecting wildlife and environmental values.

The UN’s international NGO allies want to expand previous calls for a “green economy,” by including new demands for “resource justice” and new mechanisms to ensure “contraction and convergence for over- and under-consumers of natural resources.” People do not need advanced degrees to figure out whose economies and lifestyles the activists intend to “contract,” Rucker commented.

Another agenda item would have the world end “speculation” in energy, raw material and economic markets. However, history has taught that it is extremely difficult even to define “speculation,” and that attempts to control investment, development and resource allocation frequently end in disaster.

The international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also advocate making national environmental policies subject to “international legal frameworks and regulations,” and “strengthening international environmental governance … within the institutional framework of sustainable development.” That would make national sovereignty “the most endangered species in Rio,” CFACT president David Rothbard stated.

The NGOs would place both nature and man in jeopardy, since they call for curbs on “any technologies that might imply a serious risk for the environment or human society, including in particular synthetic biology, geo-engineering, genetic modification, nuclear energy and nanotechnology,” Rothbard observed.

They would curtail the very technologies that allow us to provide for people’s needs in the most efficient, least intrusive manner. Few policies are more counterproductive than forcing people to grow low yield crops that are susceptible to insects and drought, or to rely on inefficient energy technologies, he said.

The document also seeks to impose staggering financial burdens on people in developed nations. It would give the UN 0.7% of a nation’s gross domestic product – some $1,325 per year for an American family of four. A Canadian family would pay $1,211, while their counterparts would be taxed $1,206 in Germany and $1,171 in Japan. Norwegian families would take dubious first place honors, paying a whopping $2,445 every year. Other countries’ obligations, based on World Bank 2010 data, can be found on CFACT.tv.

The NGOs most popular agenda item appears to be increased funding and powers for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which they want to turn into an international version of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “People concerned about the impacts that EPA has had on American energy prices and jobs – for minimal health or environmental benefits – should be especially wary of giving vast new powers and funding to the UNEP, which is completely unelected and unaccountable,” Rucker commented.

On climate and energy, activists claiming to be acting for “indigenous peoples” said the UN should insist that developed countries shift rapidly to low-carbon energy use. Not to be outdone, environmental NGOs are demanding that developed countries cut carbon dioxide emissions by 95% by 2050. That would take the United States back to what it emitted around the time of the Civil War, while accomplishing nothing for the climate.

To pay for this expansive eco-wish list, the United Nations and NGOs also want to give the UN authority to tax every currency conversion and financial transaction, fuel sales and air travel tickets – and seize all funds that currently provide subsidies and tax deductions for fossil fuel and nuclear power. These funds would be in addition to the extensive foreign aid already provided by taxpayers and treasuries of developed nations.

CFACT invites people to examine this remarkable document at CFACT.tv – and determine for themselves how much it actually represents “the future we want.”

The Committee is taking a delegation to Brazil to expose these potentially devastating policy proposals. “We also intend to inject some much needed common sense into the deliberations, and ensure that at least some consideration is given to the needs of real people, especially the world’s poor – and not just to the unreasonable and often outrageous demands of Deep Ecology, anti-development activists,” Rucker said.