The UN’s Rio+20 agenda would harm health, welfare and nature – and make poverty permanent
Guest post by David Rothbard and Craig Rucker
Twenty years ago, the Rio de Janeiro “Earth Summit” proclaimed that fossil fuel-induced climate change had brought our planet to a tipping point, human civilization to the brink of collapse, and numerous species to the edge of extinction. To prevent these looming disasters, politicians, bureaucrats and environmental activists produced a Declaration on Environment and Development, a biodiversity treaty, Agenda 21 and a framework for the Kyoto climate change treaty.
In developed nations, government responses to the purported crises sent prices soaring for energy, increasing the cost of everything we make, ship, eat and do – and crippling economic growth, killing jobs and sending families into fuel poverty. In developing countries, governments restricted access to electricity generation and other technologies – forcing the world’s poorest families to continue trying to eke out a living the old-fashioned way: turning forest habitats into firewood, cooking over wood and dung fires, and living with rampant poverty and disease.
This year, recognizing that people are no longer swayed by claims of climate cataclysms, Rio+20 organizers repackaged their little-changed agenda to emphasize “sustainable development” and the need to preserve “biodiversity.” To garner support, they professed a commitment to poverty reduction, “social justice” and the right of all people to “fulfill their aspirations for a better life.”
However, mostly far-fetched or exaggerated environmental concerns remained their focal point, and (as always) they have been willing to address today’s pressing needs only to the extent that doing so will not “compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
Of course, no one can foresee what technologies future generations will develop, or which raw materials those technologies will require. Sacrificing the needs of current generations to safeguard unpredictable future needs thus makes little sense. Moreover, preventing energy and mineral exploration in hundreds of millions of wilderness, park and other “protected” areas today could well foreclose access to raw materials that will be vital for technologies of tomorrow – itself a violation of sustainability dogma.
It is equally difficult to determine what resource uses are “not sustainable.” If changing economics, new discoveries or new extraction methods (like hydraulic fracturing) mean we now have 100-200 years of oil and natural gas, for example, that would appear to make hydrocarbon use quite sustainable – at least long enough for innovators to develop new technologies and sources of requisite raw materials.
By contrast, wind, solar and biofuel projects impact millions of acres of wildlife habitats, convert millions of additional acres from food crops to biofuels, and kill millions of birds and bats. Calling those projects “eco-friendly” or “sustainable” may be inappropriate – a misnomer.
Of equal or greater concern, activists have repeatedly abused the term “sustainability” to justify policies and programs that obstruct energy, mineral and economic development, and thereby prevent people from fulfilling their “aspirations for a better life.” Set forth in a 99-page report, the UN’s latest “blueprint for sustainable development and low-carbon prosperity” continued this practice.
“Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A future worth choosing” (RP2) called for a global council, new UN agencies, expanded budgets and powers, greater control over energy development and other economic activities, and “genuine global actions” by every nation and community – supposedly to ensure “social justice,” poverty eradication, climate protection, biodiversity, “green growth,” renewable energy, an end to “unsustainable patterns of consumption and production,” and other amorphous and self-contradictory goals.
RP2 also sought to prevent “irreversible damage” to Earth’s ecosystems and climate, as defined and predicted by UN-approved scientists, activists and virtual reality computer models. Reports and campaigns by the UN, World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, Greenpeace and similar groups supported the agenda. To ensure that they would have sufficient funds to implement the agenda – without having to rely on dues or grants from developed nations – the Rio+20 organizers also wanted the power to tax global financial transactions and other activities, with revenues flowing directly to the United Nations.
Rio+20 was clearly not about enabling countries, communities and companies to do a better job of protecting environmental values, while helping families to climb out of poverty. It was about using sustainable development pieties to target development projects, limit individual liberty and market-based initiatives, and provide sufficient wind and solar power to generate and demonstrate modest improvements in developing countries’ living conditions – while ensuring that poor families never become middle class, and communities never actually conquer poverty, misery and disease.
Advancing “social equity” and “environmental justice,” in ways that Rio+20 sought to do, would actually have meant perpetuating poverty for developing countries, and reducing living standards in wealthier countries. The goal, as in all previous incarnations of Rio+20, was to ensure more equal sharing of increasing scarcity – except for ruling elites.
The real “stakeholders” – the world’s poorest people – were barely represented at Rio+20. Their health and welfare, dreams and aspirations, pursuit of justice and happiness were given only lip service – then brushed aside and undermined. The proceedings were controlled by bureaucrats who do not know how to generate new wealth, generally oppose efforts by those who do know, and see humans primarily as consumers and polluters, rather than as creators and innovators, protectors and stewards.
If Rio+20 had achieved what its organizers had set out to accomplish, citizens of still wealthy nations would now have to prepare for new assaults on their living standards. Impoverished people in poor nations would now have to prepare for demands that they abandon their dreams for better lives.
That is neither just nor sustainable. It is a good thing that the radical Rio+20 agenda was largely rejected. Now we must all work together to find and implement constructive and sustained solutions to the real problems that continue to confront civilization, wildlife and the environment.
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David Rothbard serves as president of the Washington, DC-based Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org and www.CFACT.tv). Craig Rucker is CFACT’s executive director.
This essay was originally published in National Review on June 20, 2012, as “The UN’s Rio+20 Agenda: The “sustainable development” agenda will harm health, welfare, and nature.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/303268/un-s-rio20-agenda-david-rothbard?pg=1
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e.c–one of the reasons I wrote stories on dirigisme and modern day mercantilism is the strong strain of Corporatism surrounding both the climate change/sustainable devt pushes and education.
Sometimes as with Mott MacDonald and IBM it’s the same company involved with both for overlapping reasons beyond the benefit to the bottom line. Most of their customers are governments or NGOs so advocating for what adds to state power is a win for them.
It does tend to taint the objectivity of their recommendations of what a country needs to be competitive for example.
A bit like listening to a utility executive who lives in a pass on your costs and get a guaranteed rate of return world.
This whole RIO thing is nothing more then smoke and mirrors brought to you by political demigods who line their pockets at the expense of everyone else.
Oh for goodness sake! I’ve spent the last few years learning all I can about CAGW and now the goalposts have been moved and its SD (CASD?) I’ve got to worry about?
Can we just cut to the chase – just let me know when we’re all going to die if we don’t do what they say and how much extra we have to pay these soothsayers and then we can get on with trying to earn a living as best we can to pay the taxes these worthy leeches demand.
Can we build a city on the Antarctic to house these green morons and then they can scratch a living there, save some penguins etc and not bother us again.
Jesus!!
Michael says: @ur momisugly June 23, 2012 at 6:10 am
I read the pre conference document. Without being defined, “Sustainable development” was used 175 times (by my count) in the first 100 paragraphs of the document. It was interesting, however to note that “extreme poverty” is experienced, in the authors’ view, by 14% of the world’s population. If we want to feed the world (poverty eradication), consider this. 50% of the earth’s food production is wasted, either in harvest, storage, transportation, use as fuel, or thrown in the garbage post preparation. We don’t have an overpopulation problem, nor a production problem, nor a food shortage problem. We have a distribution problem…..
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Michael, The real biggie is wastage. I am going a bit in-depth on this because most Super Market Predators have no idea of how sophisticated and energy intensive our food system has become.
I can remember when “Garbage” aka food waste was cooked to sanitize it and fed to pigs. (Garbage cooking laws were passed in 1953-1954 to deal with trichinellosis) As far as I can tell it is still legal in the USA. However with grain subsidies producing grain at below the cost of production, factory farming of pigs and other animals and the hassles of collecting, sanitizing and feeding garbage while still meeting USDA requirements, the practice is now pretty much dead except for a few small farmers. As long as it is cheaper and easier to feed tax payer subsidized grain, “garbage” will continue going into landfills instead of into producing animal protein. Past sale date bread, veggies and fruits are sometimes available from stores and used to feed chickens, goats and sheep on small farms. (BTDT)
Wastage is also great on harvested grains and silage if state of the art warehousing systems are not used. Harvestore set the standard for use of glass-fused-to-steel in a storage tank. Harvestore silos that are over 50 years old are still performing today. Those puppies take a LOT of energy to produce and are NOT CHEAP, a new 25- by 90-foot Harvestore cost around $175,000 and an unloader around $35,000, in 2006
And that is just for grain. The consumer will receive good quality produce only if each operation in the handling chain minimizes abuse caused by mechanical damage, improper temperature and RH, moisture loss, ethylene damage, odor contamination, and excessive storage time. Not only is controlled temperature and relative humidity important so is sanitizing the harvest. Traditionally chlorine has been the most used sanitizing agent for washing fresh produce, but a newer technology is gaseous ozone. Gaseous ozone is a strong sanitation and fumigation agent and can be used to sanitize foods in the storage room and during shipping to percent bacteria, mold, and yeast on the food surface and to control insects. It can eliminate undesirable flavor produced by bacteria and chemically remove ethylene gas to slow down the ripening process, thus allowing extended distribution.
We are all aware of the fact that “sustainability” and cutting CO2 emissions by 80% will make it difficult to produce enough food, but even if we manage to produce the food we still need a high tech civilization to preserve it and transport it.
Unfortunately the idiot Regulating Class in the European Union hasn’t figured that out.
These %^$# politicos really do want to kill us off!
Windfarms are seen by greenies as a “renewable” resource. It is interesting to compare the resources used in wind turbines with a coal fired power plant.
Coal power station
20 tonnes of steel per MW
Wind turbine
110 tonnes mainly aluminium per nominal MW … considering actual generation efficiency it’s probably say, about 7 times higher.
That is, coal generation uses about 40 times less resources per MW. In addition, aluminium manufacture produces about 8 times the CO2 emissions that steel does.
Any advance on the figures I’ve dug up, or comments ?
On the Corporatist element, the UN also has a broadband commission pushing that as an international right for all with you know who picking up the tab on the buildout. So that boondoggle plus running all things ed through computers and technology which is another boondoggle brings the major tech companies on board for the UN’s other initiatives like AGW and climate change and sustainable devt.
They make lots of money from the initiatives plus the ed initiatives make it far less likely Creative destruction due to genuine innovation will be as much of a problem in the future. It’s a way of trying to protect their current markets. Everyone becomes a political entrepreneur playing off their govt and UN connections instead of the more difficult job of being a market entrepreneur trying to satisfy customers.
@ur momisugly Michael says:
June 23, 2012 at 6:10 am
A diversion of a small amount of that spending could result in a distribution and delivery system to solve world hunger and eradicate poverty. I didn’t see that in the report. Also, elevated levels of carbon dioxide have been proven to lead to yield improvements and drought resistence in crops, especially rice and wheat, two of the staples of the world’s total calorie consumption.
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You don’t really believe they are sincerely concerned with the “worlds poor and hungry ” do you? That’s one of the oldest political lies in history. Remember the “oil for food” program?
This really strikes me funny…
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/business/global/brazil-and-china-sign-trade-agreements.xml
Brazil and China Sign Trade Agreements By REUTERS Published: June 23, 2012
RIO DE JANEIRO – Leaders of Brazil and China signed trade agreements aimed at increasing investment and trade flows at a time when economic growth in both nations is losing momentum.
President Dilma V. Rousseff of Brazil and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China agreed on a common agenda of investments in the mining, industrial, aviation and infrastructure sectors to encourage commerce between the two nations.
Ms. Rousseff and Mr. Wen, who is in Brazil to attend Rio+20, the sustainable development summit meeting sponsored by the United Nations, signed the agreements Thursday. Relations between the nations will be accorded the status of a “global strategic partnership,” highlighting their growing influence in the global economy.
Brazilian officials hailed the accord as crucial to growth in the South American country.
Speaking at the meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Guido Mantega, the Brazilian finance minister, said the accords should provide an increase in manufacturing and sales in China by the Brazilian airplane maker Embraer.
Embraer, one of the largest manufacturers of regional planes, for years was barred from producing jets in China, the world’s fastest-growing market for commercial and executive aviation.
The deals were reached as Ms. Rousseff, a pragmatist, was pressing China to buy more products from Brazilian manufacturers as part of a broader push aimed at reducing the South American nation’s dependence on sales of raw materials like iron ore, oil and soybeans.
China, the world’s second largest economy, after the United States, is Brazil’s biggest export market.
The economies of Brazil and China have slowed sharply, partly because of the European debt crisis.
Facing dwindling liquidity abroad, the countries also signed a deal Thursday to set up currency swaps – a deal between them to give out loans in their local currencies – of as much as 60 billion reais, or $29.46 billion.
“As international credit remains scarce, we will have enough credit for our transactions,” Mr. Mantega said.
Brazilian policy makers said they wanted to tap China’s growing local market by increasing exports of manufactured goods and creating joint ventures in China.
Mr. Mantega said Chinese companies were interested in investing in the South American nation’s vast oil and natural gas sectors.
The state-run Brazilian oil company, Petrobras and other oil producers are racing to develop some of the world’s biggest oil reserves, off the South American nation’s coast.
In April last year, the Chinese government allowed Embraer to start assembling executive jets in China, giving the company a foothold in the huge market where its future had been in doubt.
Embraer’s joint venture in China, Harbin Aircraft, will deliver its first plane in late 2013.
Lennon, almost in spite of himself, wrote the truth in Revolution, no lyrics revision required:
Edit;
That was off the web, and I think there are a few errors, like “Don’t you know that you can count me out” and “Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right”.
But of course the point remains: leftist authoritarian utopian “plans” are all alike.
Ugh, that really is a lousy transcription. Here’s a much better one:
Quite so. There will be an accounting in the future for those who held back development for the poor; the accounting should include the number of available lamposts.
@Gail Combs:
FWIW, Plague is endemic in the rodents of the West Coast ( and likely other places too). When in college, the “roomie”s Mom worked at the county health department. A surprising number of “rodents with plague” were sporadically dealt with… and the occasional person.
The good news is that even Tetracycline can kill it, so if treated quickly you don’t need to die.
The bad news is that lots of doctors think it is a thing of the past and don’t treat it quickly…
We’re one really bad cold poverty stricken huddled close the fire with malnutrition event away from “Plague in our time”…
Countering that, the survivors of Plague in Europe had a higher proportion of a particular gene that grants greater immunity and is somewhat protective even against AIDS. The death rate is unlikely to be 60% next time. It looks like “only” about 40% is most likely… Blacks didn’t have that selection done on their gene pool, so it is likely that they will have a 60%+ rate. (Asians were exposed to Plague longer than either of the other two, but don’t know if they had that genotype to select for it, or not.)
It’s one of those interesting things folks don’t talk about much…
On the “Hogs and food” issue:
Don’t forget all the tons of corn going to PC motor fuel…
Recently went by a field down south where celery was being harvested. The “slash” left in the field would have fed a pretty good pig lot or warren…
The reality is that the developed world grows so much food so efficiently it is in such excess we have burn it up or let it rot. It is only in the non-industrialized world that food is scarce.
The Rio folks want us all to return to that world…
@All:
I saw on the news last night a report that the present US representative at Rio was negotiating to hand over $2 Billion ( $2,000,000,000.00) of our dollars (Oh, pardon, of Chinese loan dollars) to the UN for spreading around to fellow “progressives”… Please, just say no!
The Agenda 21 site at the UN says they expect to tax the “developed nations” (that being Europe, North America, and Australia) for $200 Billion ( $200,000,000,000.00) each year for this.
As Europe is presently imploding under the Green Agenda and the USA is on Life Support Loans from China ( what is it, $1 Trillion now? $1,000,000,000,000.00 and we’re racking up a $5 Trillion deficit PER YEAR for the foreseeable future $5,000,000,000,000,00) I don’t know where they think the money will really come from…
Somebody needs to explain the concept of flat dead busted broke to these folks…
The term, not defined in the Rio documents, “sustainability” is pragmatically null, empty. The (stretched) adage that the Stone, Copper, Bronze, Iron, or Steam Ages did not end because we ran out of the eponymous resources is key. Both desired improvements and better costs moved us along to the next stage.
So “sustaining” anything is pointless. It will be supplanted by a newer better alternative. This forces Peakists and sustainers to abuse the truth about availability and to hand-wave away pending and virtually certain improved substitutes.
The fall-back is to label every aspect of the “natural world” sacrosanct and endangered. There’s always some chunk of it available to claim is in the way of changes or progress. That wealthy nations and economies exploit and pressure “nature” far less than poor, much less subsistence, ones is just ignored; it seems to be impossible for conservationists to take on board, with rare exceptions like Patrick Moore and Lovelock.
Here on WUWT Monckton pegs sustainability as a Non-Problem. Willis, in Nothing Is Sustainable, shows the pointlessness of “saving” resources that will be obsolete or peripheral to our descendants, as demanded by the UN: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Amongst other things, the arrogance of assuming we either know or can control the abilities of more advanced future generations is risible.
There’s no “there” there.
Well, it works out to 320 times the CO2 generated in construction phase to build a windmill. So that is the “CO2 debt” it has to pay off before it breaks even. (Is there CO2 interest to consider? Is present CO2 more potent than later CO2? ;p ) Don’t forget to add on the incremental transmission corridor construction. Plus all the CO2 generated every time an inefficient load-following plant has to ramp up or down or run to accommodate and compensate for the vagaries of the wind and its mills. And then there’s the CO2 released by nearby residents torching their houses for the insurance and fleeing the region. Etc., etc.
Heartland doing more than the entire mainstream media. Richard Branson cornered:
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/303790/rio20-showdown-richard-branson-david-rothbard
prevent?
I think it has about the same operation as peroxide; in effect, it “burns” the target. Produces our old friend CO2 as a product, just like fire, of course. LOL
For those of you interested in the history of the “sustainable movement,” the Brundtland Report to the United Nations is required reading…it was at this meeting that the term “sustainability” was first defined and put into common usage.
http://conspect.nl/pdf/Our_Common_Future-Brundtland_Report_1987.pdf
Dont worry about poverty and the poor, Ban Ki Moom has Julia Gillard, our Aussie PM, in his sights to solve that problem.
Are these bureaucrats the graduates (last night) of a First Aid course standing (this morning) on a busy city street desperare for something to bandage?
Frustrated entrepenurs who have come out of the top of the education system with a heap of learned knowledge and nowhere to play it?
The “Arab Spring” revolutions are determined by some to be a pumping of education into restless youth who found there was no place to apply their new knowledge outside the university doors who then became restless again…
Sustainability rather than global warming is now the focus of debate.
Gas supplies from fracking offer several more decades of cheap energy.
But is it being used in the most effective and sustainable way?
Most proposals seem to envisage power stations using gas to produce electricity for the grid.
The efficiency of this energy transfer is at best 40%.
Contrast this with the use of gas for domestic heating which is in excess of 80%.
Would it not therefor be more rational to use gas mainly for domestic heating and use coal for power station use?
There are several examples of good practice used in design of coal fired power plants.
Contaminants such as Sulphur should of course be removed to produce environmentally friendly discharges.
Bryan;
Yes, and both it and coal can be transformed with high school chemistry into liquid fuel for vehicles, if desired. And it is very valuable feedstock for chemical companies, many of which are rushing to set up/reopen US plants to use it. Steel and aluminum plants can generate their own power onsite economically, and are preparing to move production back onshore. Etc., etc.
I am going back through some of the UNESCO documents from the beginning of the decade of ESD. It is interesting how often they reiterate the need to clear the misperception that ESD was about environmental education.
Here’s a money quote on just how much ESD is about altering emotions and beliefs and values to create a permanent desired filtering mindset. Basically training each student from an early age. Preschool is mentioned which would explain why the accreditors like AdvancED have now gone into accrediting preschools.
“Ultimately, the Decade’s goal is to integrate the values inherent in sustainable development into all aspects of learning to encourage changes in attitudes and behavior that allow for a more sustainable and just society for all.”
If totalitarianism is targeting what citizens are to think and feel and may do, then ESD is expressly totalitarianism with a happy face.
Masking a dark underlying aspiration of control over the individual. Preferable an instinctive, reflexive, unconscious control.
Natural gas has a portability issue. a CNG car only has a range of about 200 miles. Conversion of our vast natural gas supply to Gasoline and Diesel is the cutting edge today. Probably a good investment opportunity if you can pick the winners.
With so much accent being placed on the interests of ‘future generations’, would it not make great sense for us to leave them a legacy of a beautiful natural countryside, not disfigured by wind turbines and the additional overhead electrical lines and pylons that these involve?