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.
Joe Prins says:
June 12, 2012 at 9:48 pm
“Page 269: 24. International Organization for the Protection and Welfare of Squirrels –
IOPWSquirrels”
Their website:
http://www.iopwsquirrels.org/
@NikFromNYC. “Giving women the vote has permanently skewed politics to the idealistic left due to the foolhardy urge to ban abortion by the entire right wing machine, so there’s a whopping 50% of voters whose adult freedom to screw up is threatened enough to cause all of us progressive political disasters as backlashes against such Puritanism.” Nik, you’ve nailed it! Strongly. I can’t emphasize enough how on target your observations are. Keep spreading the word!
I tend to be neutral on the choice issue, but I don’t like the way it is doing exactly what you say… causing leftists to prevail in politics. Sure, as you suggest, the leftists go crazy and women come back reluctantly or even fearfully, to the conservatives. But you probably have it just right. If conservatives win, and the threat to legal abortion ever becomes real, even conservative women will take it upon themselves to vote the leftists back in. And with the changing demographics and new morality, we have the potential for the next leftist wave to usher in a regime that will make O look like a capitalist tycoon.
Ok, I say, go ahead and repeal Roe vs Wade, and let the states decide. But let only women vote on the issue; after all, it is they that are most affected. Let them feel comfortable with the abortion issue, so the leftists don’t rise again to lead us into true communism and redistribution of all property. Don’t think that the constitution will save us.
Philip Peake says:
June 12, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Fortunately, with the world on the edge of financial meltdown these proposals will be heartily laughed at by any responsible government.
Irresponsible governments should expect armed rebellion to make Syria look like a Sunday afternoon picnic.
And other similar comments.
These people want disorder and chaos as crises can be used. Loss of control shows that obviously the current government(s) cannot cope therefore we ‘bureaucrats’ must step in and take power. You will already have seen this kind of statement in the western press about Greece. Both Italy and Greece have had their prime ministers replaced with unelected placemen by similarly unelected Eurocrats in Brussels who fully support Agenda21 and Rio+20. Yes there are riots – and Greece is being reduced to…. the level that Rio+20 NGOs want everyone to be at..
Just because their ideas seem beyond the pale, doesn’t mean they have not well planned their execution.
Curiousgeorge says:
June 12, 2012 at 6:17 pm
@wayne says:
June 12, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Funny how no one calls for an army. Guess men today are just going to stand by and watch it happen to every person who helped build a great world.
*********************************************************************
People who have reasonably comfortable lives, rarely take up arms.
————
Guess you’re right George, blissfully blind.
OK, calm down folks.
I will be shocked if a single thing the UNFCCC is asking for gets approved, and the UNFCCC itself will be just as shocked. They know they won’t get squat on their wish list approved and they don’t care. They care that they get to strut and fret in front of their peers, wail away along with some hand ringing and maybe even some rending of clothes together with lofty feel good speeches. Then at night they will party their faces off, and inject huge amounts of money into the local night club, drug dealer, and brothel businesses.
When it is over they will cry, hug one another, promise to try even harder next time, and then go home. But accomplish anything substantive? Fat chance.
As much as I think the UN provides little of value and does much harm, there is one purpose fo them to still exist. It draws all the looney tunes into one place where it is easy to whatch the whole bunch of them at once and learn if they are getting any actual traction on this bullarky. Abolish the UN and they will scatter to the four winds to turn up who knows where.
These airheads do not live in the real world. I will be writing to my MP. While he is a socialist he is not a communist and this scare him as much as it does me.
*should* scare him…
Sorry!
“Not to be outdone, environmental NGOs are demanding that developed countries cut carbon dioxide emissions by 95% by 2050.”
ROFL. One well placed meteorite, well..
‘The Future We Want’ is nothing less than an extreme left-wing, socialist/communist political manifesto – sure, it uses weasel words like ‘sustainability’ and ‘green economies’ quite liberally throughout to hide it’s real intentions, but even the most cursory reading of this alarming, wretched 288-page propaganda sheet reveals the truth of what climate realist author James Delingpole brilliantly described as ‘the watermelons’ (green on the outside, red on the inside).
This is a document to send chills through the heart of every freedom-loving individual wherever you are in the world – its Soviet-like overtones scan like a bleak international death sentence for liberty and enterprise, a bullet to the head for human prosperity and the utter abandonment, once and for all, of any chance of genuinely alleviating the problems of world poverty and energy shortages. Condemning future generations all around the globe to a feudal ‘sustainable’ tomorrow, with no energy security, not even the most basic of living standards, no job security, food shortages, colossal tax rises and a raft of undemocratic laws to enable all this nonsense (no doubt on pain of imprisonment via some nebulous ‘World Climate Court’)… It’s enough to make one weep.
And yet here we are, days away from Rio+20 Rally – the scene of the crime about to be committed. Is this to be a ‘Nuremberg moment’? Alarm bells must now surely be ringing across the globe – and if not, why not? This is, after all, in the face of increasing public distrust of the bogus claims of the climate alarmists, going to be ‘the watermelon’s’ last final chance for the ‘big putsch’ to finally get Agenda 21 bound into international law at an executive level, to bypass the democratic process entirely (always their real intention), and to enable the creation of a vast new unelected international bureaucracy (tax-payer funded, of course), to facilitate the kind of global governance the UN has until now only been able to dream about.
Most breath-taking of all will be witnessing the world’s mainstream media report not one solitary word about this whilst simultaneously (and dutifully) parroting all the best, most alarmist and sensational pro-AGW headlines their political masters can script write for their nightly bulletins. Cowards, all. Meanwhile, behind the curtain, the real business of Rio goes on abated and all of our futures hang very much in the balance… Funny how we will never get to vote on a single page of any of it. In the UN’s Brave New Future (the ‘one they want’) that’s how ‘democracy’ will work. Like a meaningless, rather quaint and antiquated notion. Democratic freedom, as nothing more than a beaten-up museum piece.
Felix Dodds’ “Stakeholder Forum” is the biggest pusher of extreme RIO outcomes. Dangerous, unelected charlatans.
BBC’s Richard Black is there – why?
also
Joe Prins says:
June 12, 2012 at 9:48 pm
“Page 269: 24. International Organization for the Protection and Welfare of Squirrels –
IOPWSquirrels”
For squirrels read tree rats. The grey ones anyway. They must be saved! – why?
The European project is displaying why a world government would be a bad thing let alone never work. The UN is turning into a more socialist granny knows best organization with every turn of the planet. America must cut the monies paid to these loonies.
Hillary Clinton is leading US Delegation to this party. Apparently Obama is too busy trying to avoid getting fired in Nov.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/13/us-rio-us-idUSBRE85C0CO20120613
“Reuters Point Carbon) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation of officials to the United Nation’s sustainability conference in Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22, the State Department said Tuesday, signaling a stronger U.S. commitment to the summit.
The announcement comes after U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in April called on U.S. President Barack Obama to attend the conference and to take a more active role in global efforts to curb climate change.
Environmental NGOs had hoped Obama would participate to lend weight to the conference.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson will serve as alternate head of the U.S. delegation with special envoy on climate change Todd Stern as chief negotiator
Over 130 heads of state and government have confirmed their attendance at the Rio+20 summit, which Ban has said will be one of the biggest conferences in U.N. history.
Ban and others believe the outcome of the conference will serve as the building blocks for a future international climate deal.
Rio+20 will aim to agree non-binding sustainable development goals in areas such as food security, water and energy.
However, expectations to the summit are low as many governments have played down potential outcomes of the meeting and are focusing instead on solving economic difficulties.”
You and others seem to be assuming that you will get to vote one way or another on any of this. That isn’t how they operate. They know full well that they could never get this crap past a ballot box. Take a look at this list of those busily implementing Agenda 21, you don’t really think that any of the residents of the ‘members’ listed got to vote do you? Toward the bottom of the list is the UK where the two biggest cities in England appear. Close your eyes now if you are a US resident!
They talk a good ‘democracy’ but that is the very last thing they want. Everything is done by the back door. And don’t believe for one moment that they are just anonymous activists chipping away at your world in the background. Here is a compilation from the recent “planet under pressure’ jamboree. Do watch at least the first minute for an idea of what is taking place (UK centric) behind your back and the kind of people involved.
Some often comment that it all sounds like some paranoid internet conspiracy theory but in reality it is no more a conspiracy than “socialism” is a “conspiracy”. They may not march with red flags singing the “The Internationale” but, just like socialists, they are very real and active at all levels. Rio is their major conference and so is the ideal time to put names to faces.
I don’t have a dog in the political party fights in the US, so this page because I think it useful as it pulls together a lot of the background and what’s happening in fighting it, http://www.m912tc.com/p/sustainable-development-and-global.html
Taking up arms really should be only last resort, fighting it this way also establishes through education, discussion, what the fight is all about. Revolutions in the past comprised mostly of canon fodder ignorant of what was being fought for, there’s no history to remember for the majority..
You Americans don’t for the most part understand what you have in the setting up of your republic, you’d never call it a democracy if you did… You’re the only ones with a still living history of establishing Common Law – use it or lose it.
Oh, and here’s a fine slice of very recent indoctrinaire climate propaganda from the UN, aimed at school children…Have these people no shame at all? WARNING: This movie will seriously ruin your day.
‘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.’
This is a statement I agree with.
It is not, however, a deduction to be made from that that GM crops are necessarily any better.
Some may be, some are not. Other approaches to improve crop yields may be more appropriate.
This debate needs to be resolved by those with no allegiance to either Monsanto or Greenpeace.
Sustainability = rationing.
http://www.carbon-negative.us/soil/TerraPreta.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker
Note in the Terra Preta article what the magic ingredient is – charcoal
Because note this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2009/04/23/tech-090423-biochar-carbon-trading.html
“Ancient fertilizer technique could help poor farmers, store carbon
What is biochar?
Biochar is charcoal made from the partial combustion of organic materials. It contains high levels of organic carbon and enriches soils by adding nutrients such as potassium and calcium and boosting the soil’s ability to retain water and nutrients. It also helps neutralize acidic soils such as those found in the Amazon. The soil becomes a more welcoming environment for fungi and bacteria, which boost the amount of nitrogen and other nutrients available to plants. Carbon in the form of biochar remains stable within the soil for thousands of years. Studies show that the addition of biochar improves crop yields, especially in poor soils”
And the writers interest is in carbon trading the stuff, oh right, in the interests of the poor farmers..
Don’t burn all your charcoal for the barbie, dig some into your soil – on the Terra Preta page there’s a picture of the difference in growth in:
Corn Test Plots
with low-temperature biochar, no charcoal & commercial charcoal
EPRIDA 2005
Low-temperature biochar is, I assume, just the old way of making it, I don’t know how this differs with the results of commercially produced.
A minor quibble: The statement at the beginning
“An American family of four could owe the UN $1,325 per year.”
Should read:
“An American family of four WILL BE REQUIRED TO PAY the UN $1,325 per year.”
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Western taxpayers are getting sick and tired of all the lectures and finger-wagging by the “green” zealots, and there is absolutely no possiblity of any of these proposals being implimented. Rio is just another great junket for the “greens” to take their families/colleagues/mistresses on holiday for a week at taxpayers’ expense and feel good about it because they can pretend to be saving the planet.
WOULD you be surprised to hear that British charities receive more money from the government and the National Lottery than they do from individual donors? More than £12bn a year was transferred from the taxpayer to the third sector at the last count. Much of this was essentially outsourcing. Millions of pounds of foreign aid is channelled through groups like Christian Aid and Oxfam, and many healthcare services, including hospice care and family planning clinics, are provided by grant-maintained charities.
Britsh Government has worked with charities to provide public services since the welfare state was created and there is no compelling reason for it to stop now. However, in the last 15 years, the relationship has become murkier. Governments, from the European Commission down to local authorities, have been funding overtly political organisations on a large scale. Did you know, for example, that dozens of environmental pressure groups, including Friends of the Earth, are largely funded by the EU? Is it transparently clear that many of the charities who lobby for various taxes and prohibitions are being paid by government departments for “advocacy” and “policy development”?
Count China out of Rio. This is just one example of why the whole Rio junket is a complete waste:
CHINA yesterday threatened to impound European planes if its own aircraft are seized, in the latest tit-for-tat over the EU’s unpopular carbon emission tax. Chinese airlines, at the behest of Beijing, have refused to hand over data on their carbon emissions by Europe’s 31 March deadline, and now authorities have warned they could hold up European flights if the EU tries to punish them for the breach.
EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard has said the carriers have until the end of this week to submit their data or face enforcement action such as fines or impounding aircraft. “Chinese airlines are unanimous on this. We won’t provide the data,” said Wei Zhenzhong, secretary general of the China Air Transport Association, on the sidelines of an International Air Transport Association (IATA) meeting in Beijing.
Wei said China “would try to avoid any trade war”, but is prepared to retaliate if its state carriers – Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines – are penalised. The country has already delayed an estimated $14bn of plane orders in protest at the carbon scheme, prompting airlines of all stripes to ask Europe to delay the introduction of the cap-and-trade programme.
China has been the most vociferous critic of the plans to tax polluting carriers, but the US, India and Russia have also hit out at Europe’s plans.
The EU set out in 2009 a scheme to force the aviation sector to monitor and pay tax on carbon emissions by 2012. Firms would be able to trade surplus emissions allowances from 2013 under the current schedule. But at a time when airlines around the world are battling with soaring fuel costs and dwindling traffic growth, China has asked Europe to push back the start date by a year. The EU has said it is prepared to withdraw the plan if other countries can come up a suitable global alternative. “It’s not about the money. It’s an issue of sovereignty,” said Paul Steele, IATA’s director of aviation environment.
.
On the comment above that this is coming regardless of treaties, yes, bringing it in through education initiatives is already scheduled for a July UN meeting. Believe it or not I have the agenda from tracking things you have likely never heard of.
Consistent with a 2003 UNESCO Roundtable Statement on using accreditation worldwide to enforce the desired political vision for education. To “adapt to a world whose societies are undergoing profound social and economic transformation.” Yes, that would be pushed by UN agencies and Agenda 21 and the OECD and World Bank and various unaccountable NGOs and so-called charitable foundations.
In the future “a quality education . . . should equip all people, women and men, to be fully participating members of their own communities and also citizens of the world.”
Oh good. Of course that would be the transformed and managed reinvisioned world.
The bureaucrats will not get what they want but they can take most of us and everything that makes an economy work for the masses and gut it. At our expense.
“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.”
The key will be- who gets to decide. And you can bet that future Solyndras will get approved, and it will not be a big deal when they leave toxic waste behind, but projects by others will face close scrutiny that consumes copious amounts of time and money, thus sapping innovation.
A worthy mission. Keep in mind that “common sense” is not all that common. GK
It gets worse.
Hillary Clinton to head US delegation to UN earth summit
By Ben Geman – 06/12/12 06:23 PM ET
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/232399-hillary-clinton-to-head-us-delegation-to-un-earth-summit#disqus_thread
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead the U.S. delegation at the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (dubbed Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the State Department announced Tuesday.
Also in the U.S. delegation for the big June 20-22 summit: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Todd Stern, who is the State Department’s special envoy for climate change.
Stern, who has seen his share of diplomatic battles over climate change, will serve as chief U.S. negotiator. While the conference is certainly getting high-level attention, environmental groups had wanted President Obama to lead the U.S. team.