By Michael F. Haverluck
The three-day 2012 United Nations Environmental Summit in Rio de Janeiro has concluded with anything but a bang – as one participant described it as no better than an “epic failure.”
There was lackluster attendance and no interest in committing funds to the goals.
Getting its name from the first Earth Summit taking place at the same location two decades ago, Rio+20 served as a dismal reminder to the U.N. that the climate for securing funds and support for global warming alarmism has cooled.
Centered around the theme of “sustainable development,” the agenda promoted at the conference was substantially less aggressive than the plan laid out in 1992.
“Twenty years ago, the Earth Summit put sustainable development on the global agenda,” U.N. Secretary General Bank Ki-moon addressed delegates at this year’s conference. “Yet let me be frank: Our efforts have not lived up to the measure of the challenge.”
The global economic crisis and scandals in recent years that revealed scientists essentially “cooked the books” to make it look there was a problem with global warming, the radical environmental agenda is not the easy sell it used to be.
As the fight against so-called global warming no longer takes center stage on the world scene, many prominent leaders simply dropped the issue.
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On this year’s list of no-shows were Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, results that emphasized the dismal and anticlimactic tone at Rio+20.
Unlike many global environmental events of the past, there was little enthusiasm and optimism by those fully behind the green agenda.
“The future we want has gotten a little further away today,” Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo conceded. “Rio+20 has turned into an epic failure. It has failed on equity, failed on ecology and failed on economy.”
Dreams of billions of dollars from economic superpowers to fund green programs as well as calls for enforcement of stringent environmental regulations recently have gone up in smoke. Lowering expectations, U.N. officials did not focus Rio+20’s agenda this year on pressuring industrialized nations to commit to new financing and technology transfers to developing countries.
But even with the organizers’ bleak outlook and scaled-down itinerary, not all hopes were dashed – at least not completely
“Disappointment, yes, there’s always a bit of disappointment,” said French President Francois Hollande in a statement to the media at the conference. “But I’ve come here to show my hope, my confidence.”
But this “confidence” was riddled with doubt, as Hollande expressed his outlook for the event, citing what he believes to be its main failures. France’s new socialist president pointed out how the negotiators who put together the document on the summit’s goals were remiss to organize an international agency for development.
He further complained how the preparers of the document were unable to come to a consensus about new ways to fund sustainable development, such as the taxation of monetary transactions.
Contributing to the stalemate, the United States and other rich nations insisted that any mandate calling for the direct transfer of environmentally sound technologies would constitute a violation of intellectual property laws.
Other factors keeping these countries from committing their investment include the downward spiral of the U.S. economy, as well as the European financial crisis.
With these nations’ unwillingness to commit the funds, delegates from developing countries attest that they lack the financial resources to purchase the high-tech factory machinery needed to reduce emissions.
But the philosophy behind the 2012 U.N. Conference of Sustainable Development requires the allocation of resources from rich nations to poor nations, and an integral part of this plan was outlined 20 years ago in a U.N. plan called “Agenda 21,” which the Rio+20 website explains.
“Twenty years after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, where countries adopted Agenda 21 – a blueprint to rethink economic growth, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection – the UN is again bringing together governments, international institutions and major groups to agree on a range of smart measures that can reduce poverty while promoting decent jobs, clean energy and a more sustainable and fair use of resources,” stated the Rio+10 site.
Even though Agenda 21 might sound harmless and even altruistic to some, the Republican National Committee sees it in a different light, calling it “a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering and global political control,” in its 2012 resolution.
“This United Nations Agenda 21 plan of radical so-called ‘sustainable development,’ views the American way of life – of private property ownership, single family homes, private car ownership and individual travel choices, and privately owned farms – all as destructive to the environment,” the resolution continues, labeling it as a covert program designed to implement a socialist/communist redistribution of wealth.
And just like many other U.N. environmental events, Rio+20 was preceded by scare tactics published to keep America on the right page of the green agenda. One article titled “The World as We Know It Is About to End, Say Some Really Frightened Scientists” appeared earlier this month in Nature, a scientific journal.
Another alarmist piece published recently in the New York Times claimed scientific research indicates humans have inflicted irreparable damage on the earth, which will usher in our not-so-distant doom.
“How soon do these scientists expect the world as we know it to end? … within a few generations, if not sooner,” NYT blogger Justin Gillis shared. He goes on to note that the study shows humans have depleted 43 percent of the earth’s ice-free land, and that “the ecological web can collapse” if we pass the 50 percent mark.
Along the same lines, the organizers of Rio+20 would have the world believe that without the intervention and control of a global force to ensure environmental and economic stability, humanity’s days are hopelessly numbered.
Officials in the state of Alabama were taking no chances with the events and any proposals that could have come out of them.
The chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, T.J. Maloney, said of a state legislative proposal, “This bill that would bar the state from taking over private property without due process is intended to shelter Alabamians from United Nations Agenda 21, a sustainable development initiative that some conservatives see as a precursor for the creation of a world government.”
Earlier this year, the National Republican Committee announced that any candidate running for office as a Republican could not support UN Agenda 21 or they might lose their party’s endorsement.
Kansas, Texas and Tennessee are also states mulling over how to push back against the United Nation’s global environmental movement and 40-chapter Agenda 21 agreement. In California, a soon-to-be-launched Cap and Trade scheme (directly from Agenda 21 strategies) to control the state’s greenhouse gas emissions is being actively opposed by a citizens-business coalition.
