Sustainable Development: The latest UN scare
The UN's Rio +20
agenda would harm health, welfare and nature – and make poverty permanent
David Rothbard and Craig Rucker
Twenty years
ago, the Rio de Janeiro Kyoto
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.
______________
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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