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.
I have just changed my homepage from CNN news to Fox news. Why? CNN just announced the following, probably because of the summit happening in Rio. What idiots. My guess is that already planned for and budgeted disaster drills will continue, and sea wall work will go on as scheduled, just under a new name. And hopefully with coinage donated from redistributed wealth programs. CO2 is such a gravy train!
“CNN has teamed up with The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Carbon Disclosure Project to show the risks climate change poses to five major global cities and the steps they are taking to protect them for future generations. “
dcfl51 says:
June 19, 2012 at 4:19 am
I have always thought that socialism is about the re-distribution of the cake and capitalism is about making a bigger cake.
==========
Sustainability means making a cake without using any raw materials or energy. Using local materials and no fossil fuels.
In other words, completely unsustainable. If we tried to feed 7 billion people in this fashion, 6 billion of them would quickly starve. The other 1 billion already live like this – they are the poorest of the poor.
No UN official, no US politician in power today, none of these people are living a sustainable live-style. They shun the very thought of living the life they propose for the rest of us.
This is the thinking that killed millions of Russians, millions of Cambodians, and led to the massive flood of Chinese refuges 20 years ago. The Chinese government woke up and today the Chinese economy is not only sustainable, it is generating a surplus.
This surplus is what generates wealth. Sustainability by its very nature generates no surplus, and thus can only keep people in their place. It can never hope to raise them up. Sustainability is simply a politically correct name for poverty.
When people generate a surplus, and the government keeps the surplus, this is called taxes. When the people keep their surplus, this is called profit. Some hold that profit is a bad thing. That profit should go to the government to benefit all. These people are called government paid workers and officials.
The Medium is the Message: Climatists use of the same tactics they believed were working for them in the past, back in the 20th century; but, these same tactics now mark them as purveyors of half-truths and superstition in the 21st century (at least among the thinking class who value reason and logic over feelings) and now they must think of new ways to keep the hoax alive.
http://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/skepticism-of-climatism-focuses-on-the-lefts-motives/
SocialBlunder says:
June 19, 2012 at 6:48 am
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 people handicapping children in the US public schools are the US public schools. We can see that when the ‘Charter Schools’ receive children the levels of education are far superior. Now why would it be that a ‘socialist’ public school system would disadvantage the poorer children? There is actually a significant amount of health care available cheaply and often free in the USA provided both by private charities (sponsored by the wealthy and privileged that you despise) and also by local and state government. (Google it and see)
The big difference in the USA is that if you work hard and focus because of equality of opportunity you can obtain the rewards of that work. It is the socialists and wealth distributors that would penalize people for working and pass it to those who didn’t feel like getting out of bed. ‘The American Dream’ is an anathema to the socialist.
“universal fiscal equalization” was tried in Canada. It was called “equalization payments”. Tax money was taken from the rich provinces and given to the poor provinces to boost their economies. On paper it sounded like a great idea.
The reality was that it devastated the economies in the poor provinces, by artificially inflating the price of goods and services and making them uncompetitive, and thus unsustainable. Much as we are seeing in the EU today.
Politicians ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences. Yet we know that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Feeding the poor does not end hunger. It creates more hungry people.
Faux Science Slayer says:
June 19, 2012 at 6:53 am
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.
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All societies eventually move to revolution in an attempt to restore equality. Much of the wealth of the world is held by a handful of people. In Canada, 90% of the wealth is held by 11 families and corporations. They set the boom and bust cycles through their investments. They use their insider knowledge to trade ahead of the market to win at a game that is rigged from the start.
The situation is no different in the US. The wealthy created a real estate bubble by pumping money into the real estate market, bundled their liability into derivatives and used the collapse to drain the pension funds of a lifetime. Americans that had worked and saved a lifetime woke up to find they were wiped out.
Bill Tuttle says:
June 19, 2012 at 1:11 am
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.”
As long as it’s not their wealth. They have no interest in producing their own wealth. They only want someone else’s they can take. Caring bunch, eh?
Pamela Gray says:
June 19, 2012 at 6:55 am
“CNN has teamed up with The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Carbon Disclosure Project to show the risks climate change poses to five major global cities and the steps they are taking to protect them for future generations. ”
I wish I could say I really cared about CNN and their involvement with “climate issues” – but alas they are irrelevant to me and my life, and simply aren’t worth my time anymore. However, this may help increase their viewership from 5 to maybe 7 or 8 people…
ROM says:
June 19, 2012 at 4:37 am
It’s good to see people realizing the scam of green economics. The authorities claim they must take over and control vast sectors of the economy to save us. Local people instinctively know they survive when they control their own land and can grow their own food, thus maintaining their own local economy.
The funny part is calling it “green capitalism”. Unfortunately, they don’t understand free market capitalism is freedom. Freedom to purchase what products you want. Freedom to make goods and provide services. Let the best prosper. Let everyone make their own decisions about what is best for them. There is no central planning authority that could possibly take into consideration all of the factors that matter to every individual.
Socialism is the lie that everyone owns everything, when in fact everyone is equally poor (except for a small elite at the top), and getting poorer. Green is just a new shade of red. Power in government is the problem. Power in the hands of the people should be stronger than government. In fact it is, but people have to realize it. WUWT helps energize people and gives them the information they need to recognize the Judas goats and avoid the slaughterhouse.
Uh…no. Public schools are not handicapping underprivileged children. In fact, when compared to underprivileged children in private and charter schools, underprivileged children in public schools outperform their matched peers in reading and math. What private and charter schools do better is preach to the choir. Advantaged children do better in private and charter schools than their public school matched peers.
So why to underprivileged children do better in public schools? Maybe it’s because more public school sourced or coordinated services are available to underprivileged children in public schools than there is in private and charter schools.
Feeding the poor isn’t their intention, and the consequences of their actions are not unintended.
Gail–One of my next topics will be something called Purple America, a supposed character education, values, and social and emotional learning program the NEA has developed for US schools.
Not only do the so-called American values it mandates mirror those global governance values you just described, they also fit what Ayn Rand called state mandated altruism to a tee.
Which also dovetails with an obligation to be sustainable. Especially if the poor student knows little history or economics or real science and math and the logic and abstract thinking they foster.
A world where people mostly feel and believe and expect to be taken care of makes us all sitting ducks.
Tim Jackson’s Prosperity without Growth world will quickly become No Prosperity, No Growth. Insufficient Wealth Generation to sustain those currently alive.
What a silly, murderous way to try to finally make Malthus prescient.
I seemed to have flubbed my attempt to embed links, so here are the correct links
Pascal Lamy launches new LSE programme: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2001/pascal_lamy.aspx
A Conversation with WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy: http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjir/pdf/Special_Section_Lamy.pdf
quidsapio says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:45 am
Sorry, I can’t agree . . .
. . .
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.”
The Lockerbie terrorist al-Megrahi apparently did not agree with you because when given the chance he left the UK for Libya and received Cabazitaxel – too expensive for the NHS.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2142786/NHS-patients-refused-expensive-prostate-cancer-drug-good-Lockerbie-terrorist-al-Megrahi.html
If we could get “the universe” to pay for all the Earth’s health care needs, that would be great. When you have arranged for that get back to us.
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and @ur momisugly 4:18 in the US if you can’t pay you don’t get it at all.
That’s bs, and you know it.
. . . for example: [see Nolene @ur momisugly4:35 am]
Our neighbor ~~in central rural Washington State – USA~~ needed cataract surgery and got same in short order – and she paid not a dime. Had she not had a son to drive her and pay for the gasoline the ride to the hospital would have been free also.
I think they called it ‘Agenda 21’ so that anyone writing about it would be deemed to be a tin-foil conspiracy nut case (Area 51). The conspiracy of Agenda 21, year right, here try this on, sleeves are a bit long but we can fix that….
It needs a different name like: The Rio Accord for Prosperity Equalization (RAPE).
Ref thingadonta (June 19, 2012 at 3:26 am)
On ‘sustainability’.
The actual truth that these “social engineers” avoid mentioning, is their actual goal.
Sustainable Bureaucracy.
Layer upon layer of departments, officials, cubical dwellers, and inspectors poking and examining the herd. Think “Sam Lowry” in Terry Gilliam’s Brasil or “Winston Smith” from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The organizational framework that those two characters live in is the exact thing that the UN and pretty much all governments strive for… their “sustainment.” A means to justify continued existence.
This is why problems are never solved by government officials… just dealt with or deferred long enough so that who ever is complaining either goes away or is defeated. If the issue is ultimately fixed (through error or self correction) then a new problem has to be found or manufactured to take it’s place to justify the activity of the officials or organization that they belong to.
Thats why they “never let a crisis go to waste.”
My apology for typo’s and mixed tense (to…do, is…are)
What gives you the right to redistribute anybody’s wealth? State-sponsored theft of property is still theft.
As for what’s wrong with universal healthcare? Seriously? How many months do you want to wait to have surgery? Do you want to wait to be assigned a doctor by the government?
“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.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The problem with Britain’s welfare state, which includes all of the benefits in the above quote (they forgot education) is affordability and abuse as reflected in this article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2109526/Why-Britains-fallen-love-welfare-state.html
“Britain now spends 7.2 per cent of GDP (£110 billion, excluding free health care and education), on it’s welfare system, and the costs of supporting the, supposedly, needy continue to rise. As the Whitehall empire grows, drowning the noble intentions of welfare in red tape, so too do the number who choose to abuse the system.
For years the welfare state was one of the glories of Britain’s democratic landscape, a monument to the generosity and decency of human nature, offering a hand up to those unlucky enough to be born at the bottom. The current system has become bureaucratic, sclerotic and ineffective, trapping thousands of people in a cycle of dependency.
Sir William Beverage, who founded the welfare system, was a man of personal austerity, who rose every morning at dawn, took an ice-cold bath and worked for two hours before breakfast, he hated the thought people might ‘settle down’ to a life on benefits.
Beveridge’s mission was to eradicate the grinding poverty of the Hungry Thirties, when three out of four people in some industrial towns were out of work, when thousands of children suffered from disease and malnutrition, and when rickets, dental decay and anaemia were widespread in inner cities.And to his credit, Beveridge’s system was an overwhelming success.
Yet like so many top-down initiatives, the welfare state gradually became a gigantic exercise in Whitehall empire-building.
Not surprisingly, waste and fraud are widespread. A few years ago, even the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) itself admitted that the level of fraud in the jobseeker’s allowance was almost 10 per cent. Year after year, as the former chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, remarked, ‘the story has been the same: the DWP loses enormous sums of money to fraud and error . . . Year after year billions of pounds are going into the pockets of people who are not entitled to them.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2109526/Why-Britains-fallen-love-welfare-state.html#ixzz1yFhuLTY8
Tom in Florida says:
“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.”
I know this is the way it’s presented in the US – but I can promise you that’s not the way it operates in practice. The standard of healthcare offered in the UK is very high, and would be even higher if we didn’t have a government intent on destroying the NHS. And anyhow universal health care doesn’t preclude private practice. In the UK we have both and people have been able to exercise a choice.
I believe it’s been demonstrated that the US spends far more per capita on healthcare with far less benefit, because of course the profit motive drives the principle of least possible service for highest possible cost. That might b acceptable in other areas of commerce, but when it comes to people’s health, it obviously isn’t good for anyone.
And I don’t consider our NHS to be anything to do with socialism btw – it’s just an expression of civilised values.
@ur momisugly Frank K. says:
June 19, 2012 at 7:51 am
Pamela Gray says:
June 19, 2012 at 6:55 am
“CNN has teamed up with The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Carbon Disclosure Project to show the risks climate change poses to five major global cities and the steps they are taking to protect them for future generations. ”
I wish I could say I really cared about CNN and their involvement with “climate issues” – but alas they are irrelevant to me and my life, and simply aren’t worth my time anymore. However, this may help increase their viewership from 5 to maybe 7 or 8 people…
This is the group (C40) that is chaired by none other than estimable Mayor Bloomberg of NYC. The same Mayor who has recently declared war on large soda’s, popcorn and milkshakes, among other things. What an asinine idiota.
In the San Francisco Bay area, Agenda 21 has taken the form of a program called “One Bay Area.” Scoping meetings have been held around the Bay using what is known as the “Delphi” technique. In these scoping meetings, the general public is asked to contribute to the process with their thoughts and ideas. The problem is that under the Delphi technique they are offered limited choices, all compatible with the underlying ideology. The resulting choices are then presented to governing bodies indicating public support for the program (with no dissent). Elected legislators and council people then assume this is what their constituents want, and so pass Draconian measures to alleviate a perceived threat (global warming), while simply adding to the tyrannical utopian state of Progressive Collectivism.
I’ve noticed a careful avoidance of the term “communism” in most responses and critique of what’s going on. Perhaps it is time to begin clarifying the soft terms of sustainability, collectivism, environmental justice, progressive, equity, etc., and reveal the tyrannical ideology that is behind them. It is Doublethink, Newspeak, propaganda, and the rules for radicals. One must understand those techniques, the ideologies that underlie them, and recognize when they are being used in order to defend against tyranny. We must be willing to call out and ridicule the proponents of this before they gain any more power. (Look how far global warming alarmism has gone, while most of us still don’t realized it is just a tool for Progressive Collectivists to gain power.)
I am at a loss to explain the silence on the Wall Street Journal in regards to Rio+20.
Even today, in the The Decline of Democracy by Bret Stephens, Rio isn’t mentioned once.
Some possible explanations:
1. WSJ is waiting for the ink to dry before the first of many salvo.
1a. WSJ is waiting the the ink to dry on the US Signatures before the first of many salvos.
2. Rio+20 is really quite harmless and the CFACT guys are making it seem much worse than it really is to drum up hits.
3. WSJ editors figure that the financial tax, like all government programs, will still make Wall Street a fortune in taking their cut.
4. WSJ is inexplicably asleep at the switch, though the UN Internet Power Grab a few days ago belies that.
5. WSJ Editorial Board has been infiltrated by Agenda21 supporters.
I hope it is #1 or 1a.
As other’s have mentioned, when you use government weaponry to force the citizenry into universal health care, you also put their health care decisions under the control of bureaucrats and politicians. Do you really want [insert the name of your least favorite political figure here] deciding whether or not you qualify for that operation you need?
Below is an article with a few examples of how nanny state ideas have already started to infiltrate the US. Maybe universal health care ‘doesn’t have to mean a nanny state’, but it surely will.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/06/18/the-dangerous-synergy-between-the-nanny-state-and-universal-health-care/
“When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
This is a fallacy perpetuated by the short-sighted petty tyrants who want to control everybody else, and thus seek to buy their allegiances with other people’s money.
The fact is that redistribution of assets *inevitably* takes them away from those who manage them well (thereby accumulating wealth) and hands these assets out to people who do not manage them well (thereby squandering wealth).
When the receivers outnumber the providers, politicians get re-elected, but providers get discouraged, and the receivers get greedier.