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.
Harold Pierce Jr says:
June 19, 2012 at 3:07 am
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.
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Better add the World Trade Organization. It is the strong arm of the UN. And do not forget NAFTA.
quidsapio says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:45 am
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.
You obviously have not ‘been sick in’ the UK recently. see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2161292/NHS-care-Lack-compassion-overworked-staff-costing-patients-lives.html
Quidsapio,
“But what’s wrong with universal health care?”
What is wrong is that this “blueprint” advocates universal healthcare (plus guaranteed state allowances for every child, guaranteed state support for the unemployed and underemployed, and basic universal pensions and universal social security) AND they intend to achieve this by an economic system “with little or no resource extraction or economic growth to support it. In other words, it guarantees sustained injustice and redistribution of increasing scarcity.”
Indeed, anyone who was serious in building universal everycare, would go for massive development of the cheapest sources of energy. They are therefore frauds or economic illiterates. Neither type of individual is one I would like to see ruling over me.
Move within the circles for which film and gallery openings and ballet after- parties and such are de rigueur. Hang out in trendy places where the hip and the cool and the elite gather to discuss the things they discuss and impress each other with all of the latest buzzwords.
Ask the simplest of questions… “what does sustainability mean?” … “so, mandatory means- sending men with guns?”… persist as they mumble nonsense.
Watch their faces redden
Become the target of vitriolic tirades, even assaults, from those who view themselves as oh, so above it all.
Get yourself dis- invited from such gatherings and even people’s homes- told never to return.
The Red Queen will have her heads.
Goldie says:
June 19, 2012 at 1:06 am
…….
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.
Which of course is the intent – its an easier way than outright war as you can have people inside the states of the G20 eagerly cooperating to hasten their country’s demise
LazyTeenager,
“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”
Do you actually have a point to make, or are you just having a troll?
The wealth we should start with on redistribution is the UN funding. Let’s do that and check in 5 years how it helped.
quidsapio says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:45 am
“But what’s wrong with universal health care?”
The problem is always cost control. In order to control costs certain protocols have to be instituted. These protocols are devised, set and administered by non medical people. You end up having someone other than you and your doctor making decisions of what medical procedures can be used to take care of the issue and when they are applicable.
The people who propose these measures are losers.
Their slogan is: If you can’t join capitalism, beat it (to death).
Destroying is all they know.
Take a short trip to a total nanny state, North Korea. They control everything you do, everything you eat, and everything you think because if you dare think differently, you and your parents and your children and your children’s children will be sent to a special camp. Some of the ones we know of from satellite photos, camp defectors, and survivors are Camp 14, Camp 15, Camp 18, and Camp 22. In the nanny state, the religion is the state. The God is not a deity but the dear leader. The guards in the special camps treat the residents of the special camps without mercy because if they don’t, then they and their family to the third generation will be a resident in the camp too. The only ones who live well are the privileged few.
The only way to control the lives of humans to the degree they want is by inhumane treatment. And you can bet your last dollar that the special ones, like Al Gore, won’t have to make sacrifices. The people who plan these utopias always plan how they want others to live, not how they want themselves to live. And so, because by design the creators of utopia are insulated from the troubles of the real life people live, life is really a dystopia.
Also, please provide references for these quotes.
Thanks for the guest post Anthony.
The 21st century could move us to a time of plenty, a cornucopia, with opportunuities yet undreamt of. Why are these 18 people trying to crush us back to the caves?
Deja vu – at the end of Jimmy (‘Malaise Forever’) Carter’s presidency, he commissioned a study from top economists, scientists and ‘futurologists’ which predicted that the future would be dire unless we all hunkered down and sacrificed. Any parallels?
It’s worth re-reading (“The Global 2000 Report to the President”, ISBN 0 14 02.2441 6) for a laugh at their Malthusian predictions, especially the chapter on climate change which has 5 scenarios starting with ‘major global cooling’.
Green activists at Rio are trying to increase the already exorbitant taxes on our fossil fuels by starting an #endfossilfuelsubsidies “Twitterstorm”
http://endfossilfuelsubsidies.org/twitterstorm/
There are, of course no subsidies on fossil fuels in most countries. Greens use “subsidy” as a misnomer for any tax relief granted to business.
Since this is the very week that the “father” of the environmental movement James Lovelock described most green activism as “meaningless green drivel”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161379/This-meaningless-green-drivel-environment-guru-Scientists-U-turn-doomsday-claim.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
If you’re active on twitter, and come across #endfossilfuelsubsidies or any other irritating green nonsense – why not reply #meaninglessgreendrivel
Let’s have a sceptical “Twitterstorm”
As usual you’ve got your parties backwards. It was your boy Bush Senior who enthusiastically brought us into this evil nonsense in 1992. Obama doesn’t have the guts to fully secede, but he’s dragging his feet as much as he can. The Greenies are NOT happy with Obama.
Peter Miller
You hit the nail on the head, this is just failed communism with a new lamb skin wrapped around the wolf. Exactly the ism that our Julia Gillard stood for in her university years. Makes you wonder where we are being dragged, the ideal of communism with some fancy icing trimmed with progressive frosting.
Seems that as the rediculous CAGW lazy teenager world of deception disguised as science, get laid to rest, the real agenda emerges, The good thing for Lazy teenagers is that under that system they “think” they will get it all without raising a finger or the slightest sweat to be the rulers of the future.
Ask the millions of displaced persons and refugee’s who fled that sort of regime, if we should allow that ilk control our lives. LT would be put out to labour camp, quick smart, while the new ruling class takes/steals more of the cake, and the crumbs are offered with the sweepings from their table, in the dirt and dust of history.
Sorry but this is one of the few sites which has even noticed rio20. I aint seen any news about it anywhere which shows hoe little interest there is is AGW except here LOL
When you think about it, another word for “sustainability” is “repression”.
“It is, therefore, a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion. Through Socialism alone will the relations between men in society, and their relations to Nature, become reasonable, orderly, and completely intelligible, leaving no nook or cranny for superstition. The entry of Socialism is, consequently, the exodus of religion.”
from: Socialism and Religion, 1910, The Socialist Party of Great Britain,
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialism-and-religion
Socialism is the belief that we can (and must) live at the expense of others. By its very structure, it violates the Commandments that forbid coveting and theft.
No person who is covetous has any inheritance in the Kingdom of God (Ephesians 5:5) Socialism is antithetical to God.
Spread the wealth around? By what means? In the end, the means always involve coercion and compulsion. Sometimes, it involves bloodshed, terror and the loss of life, like in Cambodia. It also destroys the ability the economy to function.
The economist Ludwig von Mises showed in 1920 [1,2] that since a socialist economy destroys price information via government intrusion, the myriad of participants in the economy are unable to make a fully rational calculation about true profit and loss. Any economic activity that operates at a loss cannot be “sustainable”, a concept the left loves to scold us about, yet cannot really grasp.
Taking another approach, the Nobel economist F.A. Hayek showed that a national economy had such an immense myriad of dynamic economic relationships that no single committee or bureaurcracy, no matter how smart or how well staffed, could possibly know enough to direct prices or production levels. His Nobel Lecture [3] was entitled The Pretence of Knowledge. Hayek had previously used this idea as the basis for a very thorough article [4] on the subject, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”
When these two different withering critiques of socialism are combined, it is easy to see that not only is it dangrously foolish to think that economic decisions can successfully be made by government, but that competing bureaucracies will invariably react to the consequences of intrusions in the marketplace by each other. It would be like trying to control the height of waves on a lake by measuring them from the back of a boat circling in its own wake.
[1] Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises
http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf
[2] Why a Socialist Economy is “Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno
http://mises.org/econcalc/POST.asp
[3] The Pretense of Knowledge http://mises.org/daily/3229
[4] “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review, XXXV, No. 4; September, 1945, pp. 519–30.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=92
Indeed. Time for equality all around. I have always been a lousy runner and basketball player. With a large frame, my marathon weight was about 185. I want all of the lighter guys to have to carry a 80 lb sack of rocks while they run. And it is just “not fair” that somebody gets to be closer to the basket than me who used to be 5′ 11″. I want all basketball players over that height to get part of their leg removed so we can be on a “fair” and level playing field. I may think it is “fair” for me to go to McDonalds to get a burger, but I think the cow is of another opinion on the matter.
And when the Earth decides to again return to snowball status, whose wealth do they then redistribute?
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” It’s been tried before and it FAILS miserably every time.
Who is John Galt?
I am glad CFACT is in Rio but it needs to also have its eyes on the Belmont Forum and the International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme and the entire Future Earth Alliance apparatus planning to go operational in 2013. With ICLEI at the local levels and these initiatives using OPM, the entire UN apparatus plus the World Bank and OECD are planning on a green economy of degrowth and no fossil fuels regardless of what voters want.
And it’s all out of our site for the most part.
Here’s a story I wrote on how the Un’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development is also driving this nightmare of power and unaccountable control over our innermost possessions.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-facts-wont-cooperate-there-is-always-pedagogy/
Their blueprint isn’t Plato it’s Marx.
How do you reconcile the Declaration of Independence preamble “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.” and handicapping children who aren’t born into wealth and priviledge with poor quality education and non-existent health care? I suppose the hoi polloi can pursue happiness – as long as their chance of success is negligible.
The other thing our country was founded upon was an aversion to aristocracy. Encouraging insurmountable differences in the starting points of our nation’s children will only increase the political divisions – until we again reach a point where the wealthy and priviledged are again an aristocracy.
The fundamental human conflict is Autoracy vs Meritocracy. Those of ‘high birth’ have surrounded themselves with ill gotten gain bankers and thieves. They have underpinned this Imperial philosopy with the Malthus-Darwin-Nihilist dogma. Malthus ‘proved’ that populations will always outgrow resources and REQUIRES massive population reductions. Darwin ‘proved’ that only the strongest and most ruthless survive, prosper and reproduce….therefore the most powerful [by any means] should prevail. Nihilism absolves all guilt from these required autocratic actions, as there is NO right or wrong. Plato was WRONG….Malthus has been proven wrong repeatedly. Darwin made very crude observations which could hardly be called a hypothesis. If Darwin had access to the extensive geologic and DNA records of today he would NOT be a Darwinist. It is time for a New Magna Carta and ‘redistribution’ of wealth from the non-achievers of high birth to the re-education of the masses into a more productive and individually invested role in our newly freed human family. Support Universal Freedom !