THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 127, June 18, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
"SUSTAINABLE JUSTICE = REDISTRIBUTION OF SCARCITY:
The United Nations Rio+20 Agenda Means Less Freedom,
Happiness, True Justice, & Human Rights Progress
By Paul K. Driessen & Duggan Flanakin
THE UNITED NATIONS RIO+20 SUSTAINABILITY GABFEST & ATTEMPTED POWER GRAB: THE STAKES INVOLVED -- WHAT THE ENVIRONMENTALIST,
GLOBAL, & UN AGITATORS ARE REALLY TRYING TO DO -- HOW IT WILL AFFECT OUR LIVES, LIVELIHOODS, LIVING STANDARDS, DREAMS, OPPORTUNITIES &
HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRESS, IF WE ALLOW THEM TO SUCCEED
FULL STORY:
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 U.S.A. and the governments of other sovereign states 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, 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 reject and undermine 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 United Nations/Maurice Strong/ Civil Society Reflection Group vision is merely the latest embodiment of Plato’s Republic. Under Plato’s thesis, an
educated, benevolent, and mythical elite 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.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The United Nations, Its Agencies, & U.S. National Interests
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Conservative columnist and political commentator and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death,
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), the Congress Of
Racial Equality (CORE), the Center For The Defense Of Free Enterprise (CDFE), and the Atlas Economic Research
Foundation. Driessen has served on the Staffs of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Department of Interior, as well as on that of
an energy trade association. He has often spoken and written on such topics as environmentalism, global climate change,
global warming alarmism, corporate social responsibility, and public policies relating to energy, the environment, and
economic development.
Driessen earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Geology and Field Ecology at Lawrence University, Appleton,
Wisconsin, and his Juris Doctor (JD) at the University of Denver College of Law. He received accreditation in Public
Relations from the Public Relations Society of America, New York, N.Y.
Duggan Flanakin is Director of Policy Research for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Having served as a policy analyst for CFACT since 1997, Flanakin is
responsible for many of the articles published on CFACT's website. He began his journalistic career serving as a science editor with the U.S. Bureau of Mines. From
1989-2005, Flanakin worked as the editor of a high-level, Texas-based newsletter dealing with state and federal environmental regulatory policies. He also served as
senior fellow with the Public Policy Foundations in Texas and Arkansas.
Flanakin has written and published widely on issues of environmental education, as well as on the distinction between true science and pseudo-science and the
impact of environmental policy on individual rights and human welfare. He is widely held in esteem in Texas for his detailed analyses and assessments of the state's
environmental regulatory bureaucracy and his laying the basis for a new Texas Environmental Education Partnership, a framework which brought together diverse
interests to enhance the quality of science instruction in the Texas schools.
Flanakin holds the Bachelor of Arts in History from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the Master of Arts in Public Policy from Regent
University, Virginia Beach, Virginia.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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