The much-hyped Rio+20 Summit in Brazil has ended. The UN Conference on Biodiversity, aptly named, “The Future We Want,” (we being the environmentalist NGOs and other UN affiliates) was met with vociferous protests from thousands of women who were joined by hundreds of men. As reported by AFP, advocates against the “green economy” and “green capitalism,” have gathered in Flamengo park for the People’s Summit, “a march of urban and rural women against this Rio+20 charade.”
According to AFP, a large banner of the international peasant movement Via Campesina proclaimed, “The peoples are against the mercantilization of nature.” Shouting, the group objected to “green capitalism” as a replacement for the current form of “failed capitalism,” choosing instead to back an economy based on “solidarity and people’s sovereignty.”
Having failed to convince an ever-growing population of skeptics across the earth that global warming is dooming the planet, the UN has changed its propaganda tactics to climate change and to biodiversity threat.
Wanting a greener and more sustainable future for the rest of us, whether we want it or not, the environmentalists are admitting that the 45,000 attendees and 100 world leaders achieved very little in their green agenda quest other than spending tens of millions of dollars in Rio.
It was a real bust of non-binding declarations, theatrics of Greenpeace unfurling an “Arctic Scroll” signed by Paul McCartney, Robert Redford and other Hollywood types (it will be planted at the North Pole on the seabed), and small countries signing pledges.
Maldives will “ban damaging fishing practices.” Ecuador asked for donations in exchange for agreeing to protect its own Yasuni National Forest rather than exploit the oil underneath the rainforest. Grenada will only use clean-energy sources by 2030. The Vatican shocked everyone by urging leaders “to recognize access to reproductive health services,” underlining gender equity. (The Washington Post, June 23, 2012)
Surprisingly supportive of a free market economy, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton “spoke of forging partnerships that would harness ‘the power of the market’ rather than relying solely on government action.” (Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, June 23, 2012)
Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway, expressed her concern in an opinion post that “governments are currently refusing to make the transformative changes needed to resolve the global sustainability crisis.” (Earth Agonistes, June 18, 2012, New York Times)
Could it be because governments are waking up to the global warming/climate change manufactured crisis, and representatives are being held accountable by constituents for their actions?
Prince Charles chimed in with a pre-recorded video address in Rio. The Prince of Wales “had watched in despair” how people have ignored the dire warnings of “catastrophic consequences of inaction.” Could it be because skeptics would like to see hard scientific evidence as opposed to “consensus” which is just an opinion of people with agendas and (in)vested interests?
David Rothbard and Paul Driessen addressed the biodiversity emergency claims by the UN as the “greatest threat” to our planet. Craig Loehle, an ecology consultant, noted, “of 191 bird and mammal species recorded as having gone extinct since 1500, 95 percent were on islands,” killed by disease or predators introduced by humans. Six bird and three mammal species were extinct on continents, but none in recorded history attributed to climate change. (Rothbard and Driessen: UN’s threat to biodiversity, The Washington Times, June 15, 2012)
Rothbard and Driessen said that environmentalists make dire predictions based on “extrapolations from the island extinction rates fed into virtual-reality computer models that assume rising carbon dioxide levels will raise planetary temperatures so high that plants and animals will be exterminated. That is nonsense.”
Dr. Klaus L. E. Kaiser clearly explained that modelers ignore water vapor impact on climate because it is too difficult to include in computer models that are “preordained to show CO2 as the determinant factor.” Even massive releases of CO2 during numerous volcanic eruptions throughout history are used up by the “insatiable appetite of the oceans for CO2,” measuring a “steady state” of 250 ppm. (Convenient Myths, 2010, p. 97 and p. 101)
Why are environmentalists going after CO2 and not water vapor? CO2 can be sequestered and taxed. California is auctioning off carbon credits on November 14 this year in spite of citizen protests.
Cap and Trade has been voluntarily implemented in nine states (the tenth state, New Jersey, dropped out) for the last three years in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) reported, they have capped and will reduce CO2 emissions 10 percent by 2018.
The people of those nine states have spent over a billion dollars to reduce CO2, which occurs 96 percent naturally, and they have only reduced an inconsequential amount of it. These citizens have paid 3.5 times as much per Kwh for their electricity. (RGGI.org)
The Journal Nature dedicated a large portion of its June 7, 2012 edition to “Second Chance for the Planet,” wondering if “Rio Earth Summit can reverse twenty years of failure,” referring to the 1992 Rio Summit. All articles lamented the “shrinking biodiversity” and its effects on ecosystems due to the “voracious consumption patterns of the developed world,” which is entirely to blame. (p. 19)
Anthony Barnosky et al advance the preposterous idea that “the global ecosystem could eventually pass a tipping point and shift into a new state, the likes of which are hard for science to predict.” (p. 19)
If the earth demise is hard to predict, how do they know that it could pass a tipping point? Is science now no longer exact but a field of computer modeling with extrapolated data and faulty assumptions and premises involving “could” and “might?”
Using a fortuneteller’s globe, environmentalists proclaim, “Earth and its inhabitants have a second chance in Rio.” If we do not avail ourselves of this opportunity, “we may not get many more.”
However, do not worry, Paul Ehrlich, Peter M. Kareiva, and Gretchen C. Daily can tell you how to make your country more sustainable and avoid the world’s chronic environmental problems. (Nature, “Securing natural capital and expanding equity to rescale civilization,” pp. 68-72)
Achieving a sustainable population size
Earth’s carrying capacity cannot sustain the numbers of people and lifestyles at the current rate. Although the authors admit that carrying capacity is difficult to measure, it is clear that “human population’s size and consumption patterns are well above what Earth could support without impairment of vital life-supporting systems, exceeding planetary boundaries.” If this is not a scientifically accurate assessment, then it becomes just an individual’s perception.
Securing vital natural capital
(food, timber, industrial products, fresh water, water purification, crop pollination, coastal protection, recreation, genetic diversity, energy, climate, and health)
Rescaling population size, prosperity, equity, and the risk of reducing Earth’s carrying capacity can be achieved through UN global governance. (p. 69)
Equity and environmental justice, including gender equity
“CO2 emissions per capita are lower in nations where women have higher political status.” (p. 71)
“The distribution of wealth and power permeates social, economic, and ecological thinking.” (p. 69)
“The uneven distribution of climate risk… falls most heavily on the world’s poorest nations.” (p. 69)
Strengthen the societal leadership of academia
Academia can form university partnerships with NGOs, community organizers, and government agencies to transform “the dominant social paradigm globally by opening new options and incentives to change.” (p. 71)
Positive change is good but change in the vision of a global elite lead by the United Nations, academia, and non-governmental organizations is neither desirable nor recommended.
Academia already plays a major role in the brainwashing of our children into Gaia environmentalism at all universities around the world.The article states that UN Population Division projects that world population will be over 10 billion by 2100 at which time, demographer Ronald Lee suggests, “it is possible that desertification, global warming, shortage of fresh water, extinction of species, and other man-made degradation of the natural resource base will lead to catastrophic effects on the population and its growth.” (p. 69)
Since each person born will use “food and other resources from poorer sources, generally involving more energy and disproportionate environmental impact,” the suggested fix is to reduce fertility rates by ‘unmet need’ for contraception, by “supplying safe, modern means to those who do not want a child in the next two years of their lives but are not using any means of birth control.” (p. 69)
Education can have a demographic impact on the 75 million unintended pregnancies in the world annually, half of which end in abortion. (J. Bongaarts, Human population growth and the demographic transition)
“Making reproduction education and family planning universally available in the developing world could theoretically avert 20 million or more births annually, avoid over 25 million abortions, reduce maternal mortality by 25-40%, and greatly reduce the population growth rate.” (p. 70) I may be na√Øve and misinformed, but aren’t Planned Parenthood clinics primarily providing abortions?
Ehrlich, Kareiva, and Daily believe that a crash program of education globally would result in a billion fewer people in 2050.
“The Future We Want” Rio+20 Earth Summit should have been named “The Future We Dread” since freedom loving Americans and free market supporters have been pushing back against the destructive march of controlling environmentalists against private property, prosperity, economic development, and sovereignty.
We take a collective sigh of relief since the Earth Summit appears to have ended in a monumental floundering.
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