The UN Rio+20 agenda means less freedom, happiness, true justice and human rights progress
Guest post by Paul Driessen and Duggan Flanakin
Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his Administration would “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” He gave a clue to exactly what he had in mind when he told now-congressional candidate Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher: “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Not necessarily – especially when activists, regulators, politicians and ruling elites do all they can to ensure there is less and less wealth to spread around.
Just this week, the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives released a new report to the United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit on Sustainable Development. The executive summary of No Future Without Justice begins with the heading, “The World Is in Need of Fundamental Change.” The document then offers “solutions,” which include “universal fiscal equalization” and a “massive and absolute decoupling of well-being from resource extraction and consumption.”
The 18-member Group includes no Americans – but condemns the US and other governments for their dedication to economic growth, rather than wealth redistribution, and demands that governments play a key role in promoting “sustainability” and welfare. They insist that all governments provide universal access to public health care, guaranteed state allowances for every child, guaranteed state support for the unemployed and underemployed, and basic universal pensions and universal social security.
It is, in short, the total nanny state – but with little or no resource extraction or economic growth to support it. In other words, it guarantees sustained injustice and redistribution of increasing scarcity.
The Group admits that human civilization “will still need some form of growth in large parts of the world, to expand the frontiers of maximum available resources for poor countries.” However, the massive investments needed to shift to a totally renewable energy and resource-based economy will require “massive de-growth (shrinkage) of products, sectors and activities that do not pass the sustainability test” – as devised by them, affiliated organizations and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Key financial support for the push toward “sustainability” includes a “greener” and “more progressive” tax system featuring a financial transaction tax, abolition of subsidies for all but renewable energy, cutting military spending while dramatically increasing “stimulus” spending, a compensation scheme to pay off “climate debts” to poor countries supposedly impacted by hydrocarbon-driven climate change, a new regulatory framework for financial markets, a financial product safety commission, and still more regulations for hedge funds and private equity funds. The Group also demands public control of financial rating agencies and a government takeover of international accounting standards.
To ensure that “sustainable development” permeates every aspect of society, the Group proposes a new “Sherpa” for Sustainability (with cabinet rank), a parliamentary committee on policy coherence for sustainability, a UN Sustainability Council, a Universal Periodic Review on Sustainability, and an Ombudsman for Intergenerational Justice and Future Generations. It also proposes an International Panel on Sustainability that builds on the “success” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Of course, guiding all this would be the world’s premiere political body and bastion of freedom, fairness, democracy and human rights – the UN General Assembly.
To guide this “fundamental” shift toward the sustainability paradigm, the Group laid down eight principles – the key being the “precautionary principle,” which forbids any activity that might involve risk or “do harm.” Its own sustainability prescriptions are, of course, exempted from any reviews under the precautionary principle.
The objective, they state, is to build economies that drastically limit carbon emissions, energy consumption, primary resource extraction, waste generation, and air and water pollution. Society must also stop the asserted and computer-modeled loss of species and ruination of ecosystems.
All this naturally will require mandatory changes in consumption patterns and lifestyles (at least for the common folk), and the recognition that work (unlike capital) is not a production factor. Indeed, says the Group, work is not even a commodity. Moreover, only “decent” work qualifies under the sustainability paradigm. (While “decent work” is never defined, it presumably includes backbreaking sunup-to-sundown labor at subsistence farming, which under the Group’s agenda would be called “traditional” or “organic” farming and would not be replaced by modern mechanized agriculture.)
What is the source of all of this gobbledygook? Agenda 21, the centerpiece of the original Rio Earth Summit – which is being perpetuated, refined and redefined at parallel proceedings in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, while the main sustainability discussions are ongoing in Rio de Janeiro.
Agenda 21 states, for example, that “achieving the goals of environmental quality and sustainable development will require … changes in consumption patterns.” This too would be achieved under UN auspices because, as Earth Summit creator Maurice Strong has explained, the days of national sovereignty are over, and the world needs to embrace a system of wealth transfer to ensure environmental security.
In short, “sustainable development” is a system that requires a redefinition of business activity, away from the pursuit of personal profit – and of government activity, away from the pursuit of individual happiness and justice – and toward the pursuit of societal good, as defined by activists and the UN.
Simply put, as Brian Sussman points out in his new book, Eco-Tyranny, the ultimate goal of those who endorse the sustainability paradigm is to expunge “the most precious” rights expressed in the American Declaration of Independence: “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”
The Agenda 21 and sustainability paradigm also rejects and undermines Adam Smith’s belief that mankind’s natural tendency toward self-interest, profit and self-improvement results in greater prosperity, opportunity, health, welfare and justice for all.
Most of all, the UN/Maurice Strong/ Civil Society Reflection Group vision is merely the latest embodiment of Plato’s Republic. Under Plato’s thesis, an educated, elite, but benevolent and mythical, ruling class acts on the belief that its self-appointed philosopher kings have all the right answers, and do not require the Consent of the Governed. The rest of humanity must fall into lockstep or face the consequences; however the results will be exemplary.
Unfortunately, as Alexander Hamilton observed, men are not angels. Moreover, it defies experience and common sense to suppose that the elitist UN, UNEP and environmental activist community will ever display wisdom detached from ardent ideology – or benevolence toward the humans they seek to govern.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org and www.CFACT.tv) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death. Duggan Flanakin is director of research and international programs for CFACT.
Are these wankers mad? Silly me.
Reminds me of a story I recently heard from a student who when asked by the head of charity who they expected to give to charities responded – ” well gen x are too greedy and wealthy people are too busy hoarding money so that leaves gen ys and baby boomers”, in other words students and retirees. In reality the people who gave most were gen x and wealthy people (funnily enough).
Here’s the thing – most people in developed countries are working to get paid whatever their employer is willing to pay them. The employers sell the widgets or whatever that the employees make for whatever people are prepared to pay for them.
Any concerted attempt at fiscal equalization would remove fiscal incentive from this system to the extent that the ability to generate wealth to pass on to third world countries would be lost. In truth, people in third world countries would be no better off if the entire GDP of the G 20 were moved to them today – they have no means of using those funds for ongoing wealth creation and it would simply bankrupt the G20.
“When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Au contraire. When you take the wealth from those who created it and give it to the hoi polloi, they either piss it up against the wall or squander it on trinkets from China. The only beneficiaries are brewery owners and Chinese manufacturers and manufacturing workers. On the other hand, if you leave it with the wealth creators, guess what? They use it to create more wealth, in the process creating more jobs (real jobs, not green ones or government sector rule policing and paper shuffling).
The 18-member Group includes no Americans – but condemns the US and other governments for their dedication to economic growth, rather than wealth redistribution, and demands that governments play a key role in promoting “sustainability” and welfare.
Translation for the politically-impaired: “Creating wealth is bad. Redistributing wealth is good.”
And redistributing wealth is good because it’s easier for the middlemen — the NGO group functionaries self-appointing as such — to skim money in transit. And when all the wealth is redistributed, everyone will be equally poor, except, of course, for the middlemen…
Pol Pot gone global? Because believe me, the Rio aganed and Agenda 21 embody the philosophy of the Khmer Rouge. The killing fields are not far away…
These people in their tight little world obviously see “1984” as a blueprint, not a warning. Unbelievable!
This is just another ‘-ism’, there is lots of them which sound great to the simple minded and those who seek to exploit/rule them, e.g: communism, socialism, islamic fundamentalism, fascism, etc.
They all sound great in theory and they all have the same common denominators: they don’t work, they destroy prosperity and wealth, they require the end of freedom and choice in order to function, they are intolerant of all criticism and they are all ruled by a self-imposed ‘enlightened elite’,
In essence, all ‘-isms’ are cults, just like the CAGW cult.
I would love to use this material in my local battles, but can’t without solid evidence to defend the claims – please provide links to the source document(s) for the many quotes above.
Thanks
JK
Are we able to find out who these 18 people are ?
Unfortunately, as Alexander Hamilton observed, men are not angels. Moreover, it defies experience and common sense to suppose that the elitist UN, UNEP and environmental activist community will ever display wisdom detached from ardent ideology – or benevolence toward the humans they seek to govern.
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Yep!
So which masters are Paul and Duggan beholden to? And then we can ask the question whether those masters “will ever display wisdom detached from ardent ideology”.
Were they mad, they’d be easier to derail. No, it’s worse, much worse than mad – it’s utterly terrible and it’s a steady, calculating, profoundly compromising, Orwellian ‘Doublethink’ expansion of the ‘Ministry-of-We-Know-Best. For example:
‘A crucial advance has been the United Nations’ quiet adoption in April of a framework of agreed concepts and definitions for green accounting that can be applied in any country. It took two decades to develop but stops short of valuing complex ecosystems. “The accounting is not pie in the sky anymore,” said economist Peter Bartelmus, who led the original U.N. effort.’
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/06/17/accounting-for-natural-wealth-gains-world-traction/#ixzz1yEHqPBOZ
‘Sustainable Justice’ is the ultimate denial of a dynamic, unequal, aspiring humanity. It is impossible to envisage a static, utopian world of this nature. It can only lead to the rebellious assertion of individual rights, national identity and freedom.
This is the EU writ in blood.
Great post!
Thank you for inviting a guest. We need more people to take a strong stand against using our world’s scarce resources against us.
Wayne
Sorry, I can’t agree that a certain amount of wealth redistribution would be a bad thing – though I don’t think there’s much danger of it actually happening. I think the idea Obama is interested in spreading the riches around is laughable. He serves the interest of the tiny minority of super-rich as most world leaders do and always have done.He’s just mouthing platitudes and making promises he has no intention of keeping – which is his hallmark in everything.
But what’s wrong with universal health care? I’ve lived in the US and the UK and I know which one I’d prefer to get sick in. It doesn’t have to mean a “nanny state” and when people talk like that they’re being as irrational as any Warmist.
Reblogged this on thewordpressghost and commented:
WOW!
Watts brings us a great blog, this time it was written by two guest bloggers.
They pulled key phrases out of the UN Rio+20 meeting agenda.
And it is scary.
In a nutshell, we are told that the first world must be shrunk. Then the first world must be heavily taxed to subsidize the growth of the third world.
Scary stuff.
I hope you enjoy it.
Ghost.
lazyteenager sez….
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And I have to wonder: were there actually people who cried ‘power to the people!’, right before Che put a bullet into the back of their head?
I guess that one just got answered…
Define ‘sustainable development’.
The idea that you live without actually depleting any resource is impossible. We are able to live to our standards because of technological development over the years since the 1700’s and the industrial revolution. Resource use has changed. Imagine owning a personal computer based on 1950’s technology. No I can’t either as it would be as big as your house and still have a few kilobytes of memory and a speed of seconds rather than the microseconds now. Technology has not only reduced sizes but vastly improved performance and capabilities.
Technology will enable us to manufacture motor fuel from methane, which we can do now but there is no real incentive at the moment to do so. It is also vital to remember that improved development reduces child mortality rates, reduces birth rates through improved health care, hygiene and total living standards but it takes energy to do this and it is the environmentalists and conservationists who are starving the third world of this vital resource in the name of saving the planet.
Utter Stupidity.
I suggest that national petitions be started in Canada and the US that mandate withdrawal from the UN. Then we can kick the leeches out of NYC and send them packing to Europe.
The Europeans have always resented the American because we have no proper breeding, never went to finishing school, ain’t got manners and culture. We just the new kids on the block in a very old neighborhood!
quidsapio says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:45 am
“But what’s wrong with universal health care? I’ve lived in the US and the UK and I know which one I’d prefer to get sick in. It doesn’t have to mean a “nanny state” and when people talk like that they’re being as irrational as any Warmist.”
British teeth. 9 months waiting time for a hip joint. You sure you want that?
quidsapio, seems like your mind has been subject to a huge amount of redistribution, before you got a chance to use it. Also am sure now it is sustainable. Too iuf you are not a Warmist, I am queasy that you are not on that side, given your irrationality
Sorry US we don’t need you at RIO+20 because the Australian PM G Gillard is going to give a 90minute speach on how to destroy your economy and control your poplution buy hitting them with a $23 ton carbon tax. and let imports of food flood the country and put everybody on the dole
ps that’s what Gillard is doing to Australia bless her
LazyTeenager says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:05 am
“So which masters are Paul and Duggan beholden to? And then we can ask the question whether those masters “will ever display wisdom detached from ardent ideology”.”
Et tu, LazyTeenager? Let me guess. A small cog in the warmist machine; an XBox button pusher.
Sounds a bit like this:
“We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.”
National Socialist professor of biology, Ernst Lehmann.
http://www.theatheistconservative.com/2010/01/22/green-roots-the-origin-of-ecology/
You can always tell if people are in fantasy land when, for example, they don’t want mining, but still use minerals every single day of their lives. It’s pure fantasy.
Let me say a few thoughts on mining, which can cut through some of the ideological BS associated with ‘sustainability’.
—all societies required minerals to function, but minerals degrade and rust, and there is no mine on earth which is individually and indefinitely sustainable, so there is no such thing as perfectly sustainable, individual societies.
-we can’t run out of minerals on a world level (the earth’s crust is too big), but individual areas can run out of minerals, which means that no mineral-producing area is perfectly sustainable, and therefore no society is perfectly sustainable which obtains benefits from them. (This is partly why the Spainish went to the Americas).
-if ore runs out at a particular mine, there is no more (so there is no such thing as permanent employment),
-mineral resources are extremely unevenly distributed, and this single fact means people and societies are never going to achieve total social equality. Geography, in general, is a greater factor than most other things, in limiting social equality. There is no such thing as ‘sustainable justice’.
– miners cant ‘invent’ new sources of minerals just when they want to, so no perpetual motion or perpetual energy (sustainable) machines,
-everybody uses minerals (even the greenest of the greens), but hardly anybody appreciates them, and most arguments against mining are based on values which are usually ideological, not scientific.
-miners can’t arrange the minerals to go where they want them to (so no socialist ordering of resources),
-we don’t know where all the minerals are, so there is a constant need to conduct R and D (practical inventiveness, necessity the mother of invention etc etc), which also means resource nationalism doesn’t work, (same as any other kind of extreme socialism)
-mineral resources don’t follow state/nationalist boundaries (so no rampant nationalism),
-mineral resources can be extemely hard to find, so this generally requires free market forces.
-just another throught, the idea of evolution didn’t come from the socialist bureaucrats (why would it- constant change, variation in populations, uncertainty), it came from the science of geology (uniformitarianism and gradualism applied to biology by C. Darwin and R. Wallace). The science of geology, and mining, has always recognised constant change and natural adaptability, the socialist bureaucrats have rarely recognised it. But because miners are seen as lower in the social stata, nobody has historically ever listened to them, except when their science-geology became fashionable amongst the upper classes in the 19th century Britain, and then look what happened.
-mineral resources aren’t usually classified by governments and greens as ‘natural resources’ even though that is exactly what they are scientifically, because mineral extraction doesn’t sit well with green ideology-its hard work, its hard to find, its unevenly distributed, it requires an open market, it creates rich and poor, minerals can’t be arranged to be somewhere, there is no permanent employment or nanny state, etc etc. (Volcanos are the same in not sitting well with greens-look at the ‘damage’ they do to the environment, all naturally.)
Mineral research and extraction is particularly acute in sorting through some of the ideological BS because the miners have to deal with the practical reailities of life in the ‘environment’, every day of their lives, rather than with some sort of state-funded bureaucratic ideology.
I propose that people who want to stop or reduce resource extraction:
1) stop or reduce their use of minerals (including phones, cutlery, planes etc etc)
2) take out of their salary that proportion which is paid by mining-alot of the greens and bureacrats would then have to immediately reduce their salary, look at how long that idea would last.
Just some thoughts, as I have to deal with this kind of thing often.