http://www.newswithviews.com:80/Veon/joan44.htm
CAPITALIZING ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT -
MAKING GOLD OUT OF GREEN
By Joan Veon
April 19, 2007 NewsWithViews.com
Maurice
Strong, the secretary-general of the 1992
“Rio Earth Summit” remarked at the close
of the meeting, “We have established a new
global partnership. You must translate
Agenda 21 and the decision that you have
taken at the global level into your own
national policy and practices. We should
consider new taxes, user charges, emission
permits, citizen funding all based on the
polluter-pays principle. The messages from
the children delivered as we opened this
assembly this morning, gathered during the
15,000 mile journey of Gaia.”
While no
reasonable person took serious the idea of
citizens paying for using or
over-consuming the earth’s resources,
sustainable development is all about
capitalism, according to a meeting
recently held at the Royal Institute for
International Affairs-RIIA in London. In
order to determine what kind of
capitalism, we must consider that the
Programme of Action called Agenda 21 which
supported the 1992 UN Conference on the
Environment and Development, was all about
a total re-make and re-design of the
world. It was all about who will control
the earth resources. Pretty amazing that a
global organization would lay stake to the
waters, oceans, lakes, forests, birds,
animals, earth’s land surface, the air we
breathe and the sky and space, as well as
you and me!
Little by
little, the world is being re-organized
through Agenda 21 by using capitalism as
the global engine to also change the
structure of government from government to
public-private partnership which is a
co-management of government by business.
At the heart of this pagan philosophy
called “Gaia” is the belief that the earth
is a living organism and it deserves to be
given the dominion over you and me and the
plants and animals. Gaia is the
elimination of the authority and dominion
not only of God, but what the Lord God the
Creator of heaven and earth set in place
in Genesis 1 and 2.
In order to
follow all the various components of a
very complex agenda, let us consider
capitalism, the United Nations, corporate
and individual carbon taxes, transfer of
wealth, going from green to gold, a
balance sheet for the earth,
public-private partnership and the purpose
of the Royal Institute for International
Affairs.
Capitalism is
an “ism” like communism, socialism,
fascism or Marxism. Capitalism is the
ability to take a particular commodity and
sell it at a profit. But what IF the
commodity you are selling is literally
“thin air”? The theory of climate change
says the earth is warming and we have too
much carbon being emitted from the use of
oil. The polluter pays principal says that
corporations should be taxed for consuming
too much of the world’s natural oil
resources. Who determines how much you
should be using and what you should pay? A
group of chosen and corporately financed
non-governmental organizations: World
Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace, IUCN,
Sierra Club, Conservation International,
Nature Conservancy, Friends of the Earth,
and The World Business Council for
Sustainable Development.
Fifteen years
later, the message at the “Sense and
Sustainability Conference,” is that “You
can make a lot of money from the
environment.” Posing as Gaia’s
environmental guardians, these savvy
opportunists have changed their mantra and
are now singing the praises of capitalism
with a transfer of wealth melody.
Of course,
they cover their objectives by using Al
Gore horror flicks and a continual stream
of the latest studies that say we must do
something NOW. Behind their message of
despair is one of a transfer of wealth and
power to them. This tune began shortly
after the United Nations was founded in
1945. Since then, nothing has been the
same. The world appears to have more
problems than before and it is the United
Nations that is touting the environmental
agenda. Their solutions to the multitude
of new problems that they have found is to
push the envelope one step further, and to
slowly grab more and more power while
transferring wealth at the same time. If
they are not Fabian Socialists, they must
be using Fabian Socialistic tactics.
Take for
example my interview with British MP Colin
Challen who has suggested that perhaps
each one of us needs a carbon allowance
for the amount of energy we can consume.
Then when we use too much, we can pay an
“allowance” back to the government. He
apparently does not like the word “tax”
because it is too negative while
“allowance” appears to convey that you and
I have been given an opportunity by
government to emit a certain amount of
carbon and when it is used up, we then
need some kind of correction. Of course
they say it is only to change behavior but
how many taxes do you know that have gone
away after we learned our lesson?
He explained
that like corporations which use too much
carbon, individuals should also have the
same kind of allotment. When we use up our
allotment of energy: gas in the car, oil
as result of too many airplane rides,
etc., we won’t have any more left on our
“card” and will have to buy more from
someone who has not used all of their
[government] allotment. Great scheme! How
brilliantly demonic considering the last
time the world was taxed was when Rome
ruled. To quote him,
So if you
were driving your big SUV and went on
foreign holiday’s, you would need a
lot more and consequently you would
have to go to the market which would
easily be accessible at Post Office or
on the Internet or on your mobile
phone. You would have to buy the extra
emission to cover your emissions. If
you didn’t buy the extra units you
would still have to pay for the extra
carbon because if you would run out
and you went to the petrol station and
you didn’t have a surplus in your
account of carbon units you would have
to pay a bit more for your petrol and
likewise your electricity and gas.
Over that period of time you can
adjust you can change your vehicles to
a hybrid, you can insulate your house,
you can do a whole range of those sort
of technical fixes to reduce your
dependency on carbon intensive energy.
You might have more renewables, you
may have a mini wind turbine on the
roof and solar panels and you could
have a heat exchange pump. You may
decide to use public transport more.
Or have a smaller car which is what
I’ve done.
When I asked
Challen if the Fabian Society helped him
with this scheme, he thought for a moment
and said, “Well they have their own inputs
in the government. They didn’t have any
involvement on this particular proposal.”
Another
speaker, Professor Daniel Estees Director
of the Yale Center for Environmental Law
and Policy, wrote a book that describes
the new green opportunities, Green to
Gold - How Smart Companies use
Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create
Value, and Build Competitive Advantage.
Ford Motor, you had better read this book
or you will not survive Toyota’s rising
market share!
When I asked
Dr. Estees about his evolutionary thinking
with regard to the environment, he told me
I think
what we're seeing here is a real sea
change in attitudes towards
environmental protection, first with
regard to how society understands how
progress gets made. We are moving away
from a model that has really been
dominant for 40 years where the
government not only sets the standards
but is the primary actor in doing the
work of figuring out how we're going
to protect the environment, what
technologies we need, and how to
develop and then mandate very
specifically to the industry world
what they have to do in the way of
technology for pollution control. We
are shifting down to a model that is
based more on economic incentives
not command and control mandate. And
then this new model it will
involve both taxes for harms or
charges for emissions that are causing
harm as well as perhaps cap and
trade pollution allowance systems. We
are going to see the private sector
taking a leading role in developing
technologies.
When I asked
him to explain the capitalistic evolution
of the environment between 1992 and 2007,
he said,
I think
we are in a sort of a slow roll
revolution in terms of understanding
about how best to pursue environmental
protection. Agenda 21 is really a
valuable compilation of the full
spectrum of things that we need to
think about in the realm of pollution
control and natural resource
management. But because it is so
comprehensive it's not really an
action agenda and frankly it doesn't
really serve the same purpose in a
world where private markets are going
to help drive us toward environmental
solutions so I think government
setting standards on things like
greenhouse emissions, making companies
pay a price for the harms they cause,
is a critical next step to getting us
going on the path toward solving the
climate change problems, getting
innovation going, harnessing the
entrepreneurial spirit that exists
in America and across the world.
In 1995, I
asked Maurice Strong to define sustainable
development for me at the Gorbachev State
of the World Forum and I specifically
incorporated the aspect of reducing the
population of the earth and the family
dependency ratio, he told me,
We want
to put [sustainable development] in
business terms. It’s running Earth,
Inc. with depreciation, amortization
and maintenance accounts so that we
are not really living off of capital.
If we continue to equate wealth
creation with the liquidation of our
natural capital, we will be headed for
bankruptcy and that is the direction
we are going NOW. We need all the
elements you mentioned and more to
bring the ecological systems and
behavior towards them in line with our
economic and social aspirations.
Interestingly, I remember interviewing Dr.
Paul Jeffers from The Royal Society for
the Protection of the Bird at the 2002
Sustainable Development Summit in
Johannesburg. He told me that he and his
colleagues have put a value on all of
nature worldwide and it totals between
$20T to $38T while others say that it
might be has high as $51T. So what is
really happening here?
In the old
days when the explorers discovered various
parts of the New World, they planted their
flag and said it belonged to the king or
queen of their respective country. Do you
think it is possible that the United
Nations and a small group of very, very
powerful insiders have just planted their
Agenda 21 flag and are now they are
looking for ways to control their booty?
Is this possible? Have we become nothing
but turnips (since man no longer is
sovereign) and now they can tax us for
every breathe of air, every shower, every
hot cup of tea, every yard we drive in our
car, every hour that we have a light bulb
on, and every carrot we plant and water?
Secondly, let
us consider for a moment the change in
government. Public-private
partnerships-PPP were alluded to in Agenda
21 and they were spelled out in Habitat
II, a global meeting that took place four
years later. In an interview I did at the
5 year follow-up to Rio in 1997 in Rio de
Janeiro with Dr. Wally N’Dow, former UNEP
Director-General, he said with regard to
this concept of combining government and
business,
In 1976,
there were subjects that were taboo.
One could not discuss subjects such as
the role of the private sector because
we were still in the grips of the Cold
War, with ideologies contending over
what was capitalist, socialist, what
was acceptable in the UN for and what
could not be discussed—the private
sector and land—and who owns it, how
it is managed—these things could not
be discussed.
Basically
when you merge government and business
together you get fascism and that is what
public-private partnership is all about: a
total re-ordering of government because
government at every level is broke and it
appears that business has the money and
the power. It also appears that business,
especially eco-friendly businesses, who
are going to make their next trillion
dollars on the new green products they
have invented are the real saviors of the
world. Talk about re-tooling!
Over 23
states here in the United States have
incorporated public-private partnerships
into their modus operandi. They include:
Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana,
Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North
Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas,
Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
What does it mean? It means that
government no longer governs, as in the
old days. The new and powerful player is
business. Every time a public-private
partnership is set up—every time a toll
road, utility, or public asset is sold,
representative government diminishes
because the purpose of business is profit
not service. Who will government leaders
listen to more? Business with millions and
billions of dollars or you and me? We can
see the rise in position of big business
which now holds their global meetings at
every UN meeting. They also now have legal
input into the global agenda, be it the
United Nations General Assembly, the Group
of Eight, the World Trade Organization or
the World Bank. Bottom line: the world is
involved in global corporate fascism:
capitalism, government and business.
Related to
this is the fact that at every turn there
is a transfer of wealth taking place. As a
result of U.S. government policy, the U.S.
taxpayer is financing environmental
projects around the world—nothing in our
Constitution provides for this kind of
expense; funding all of the incentives for
big business and their new eco-green
schemes which we will be forced to buy to
be in compliance; and paying for our
participation in huge international
public-private partnerships with one, two,
or ten other countries, NGO’s, and
corporations. Furthermore, there are
various calls by the UN, the Group of
Eight and others for the American taxpayer
to increase foreign assistance to poor
countries. Lastly, the United Nations
supports Jacque Chirac’s call for a tax on
airlines tickets to eliminate global
poverty. This is just one of many other
tax schemes planned in the future.
Green is now
king. If a corporation does not
incorporate green into your company, you
will not make it. Speaker after speaker
talked of the power of green stakeholders:
corporate shareholders, investors,
consumers, and activists. Some department
stores are now introducing “energy product
labels” for their products. Consumers are
beginning to ask about the kind of “carbon
footprint” a company has that they are
interested in investing in or purchasing
from. And many major corporations now have
a Corporate Social Responsibility-CSR
Department. CSR is now the new mantra and
right for business to be involved in
policy-making.
Stock
exchanges are now setting up green indexes
with lists of corporations that are
eco-friendly. The Dow Jones has one and
the Sao Paolo Stock Exchange has their new
Corporate Sustainability Index. In other
words, if your corporation is not
upholding sustainable development,
investors will not want to invest in your
company and you will be blackballed. The
London FTSE has adopted a definition of
responsible investment which is the
“incorporation into the investment
management process (analysis and research)
and the on-going asset stewardship of
social, environmental, and corporate
governance related to matters.” In the UK
the Pension Act of 2000 includes social
environment and ethics into its assets
while the United Nations has created the
UN Principles for Responsible Investment
which is a set of principles agreed to by
a group of the largest institutional
investors. Lastly, Then there are very
sophisticated investment firms that are
developing and trading in voluntary carbon
trading units with the goal of driving a
new market and creating liquidity in
carbon trading. This must be the new
income fund of the 3rd millennium.
With regard
to Agenda 21, why has the entire agenda
been so secretive? Why didn’t the United
Nations just “come clean” and tell us of
these problems? What were they hiding?
With regard to reading any of their
programs of action, only an insider could
interpret them because the words they use
have a different meaning than the normally
accepted use of a word. Why so radical?
Why take God’s place and degrade the
position God gave human beings as being
dominant over the earth? Only an agenda
that would seize control of the world’s
assets and gather them for a greater human
power would do the things that have been
done over the last 15 years. This then
leads us to the last aspect to consider.
British
aristocrat Cecil Rhodes had a dream of
making the world British because in his
opinion, “they are the finest race in the
world.” According to Georgetown professor,
Dr. Carroll Quigley who wrote The
Anglo-American Establishment, “Rhodes
in five previous wills left his fortune to
form a secret society, which was to devote
itself to the preservation and expansion
of the British Empire. This society has
been known at various times as Milner’s
Kindergarten, as the Round Table Group, as
the Rhodes crowd, as The Times Crowd,
as the All Souls Group, and as the
Cliveden set.” He explains that while
Rhodes was alive, he was the leader with
William T. Stead, Reginald Baliol Brett or
Lord Esher (friend and confident of Queen
Victoria and the most influential adviser
of King Edward VII and King George V), and
Alfred Milner. He then describes some of
their achievements,
It
plotted the Jameson Raid of 1895; it
caused the Boer War of 1899-1902; it
set up and controls the Rhodes Trust;
it created the Union of South Africa
in 1906-1910; it has been the most
powerful single influence in All
Souls, Balliol, and New Colleges at
Oxford for more than a generation; it
has controlled The Times for
more than 50 years, with the exception
of 1919-1922; it publicized the idea
of and the name ‘British Commonwealth
of Nations’; it was the chief
influence in Lloyd George’s war
administration in 1917-1919; it had a
great deal to do with the formation
and management of the League of
Nations[now United Nations] and of the
system of mandates; it founded the
Royal Institute of International
Affairs in 1919 and still controls it;
it controlled and still controls, to a
very considerable extent, the sources
and the writing of the history of
British Imperial and foreign policy
since the Boer War (page 5).
What I am
pointing out is the Royal Institute of
International Affairs was organized by
Lord Robert Cecil, known as Viscount Cecil
of Chelwood, along with Lionel Curtis and
others. Of those who started the RIIA,
Lord Robert Cecil and Lionel Curtis were
in key insiders with Cecil Rhodes. When
you consider the fact that the whole
purpose of RIIA is to bring the world
under British control and that the League
of Nations, now the United Nations is part
of their planning, it causes you to wonder
about just who Agenda 21 is for.
My research
shows that at the global level, the
British Commonwealth with its 53 members
has the potential to outvote the single
vote of the United States throughout the
whole global infrastructure. Furthermore,
many of the early environmental
organizations were started primarily in
Britain: The Nature Conservancy was one of
the four official research bodies under
the British Privy Council, Prince Philip
of Britain and Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands founded the radical World
Wildlife Federation and later on in 1982,
the World Resources Institute was founded
by grants from the Rockefeller Brothers
Fund. Prince Charles who is known as the
“eco-prince” worked behind the scenes to
get Agenda 21 to “go down” in at the Rio
Earth Summit and he started a major group
of corporations which have been setting up
public-private partnerships all over the
world. Maurice Strong told me he was in
England in 1991 attending a meeting at the
World Wildlife Federation with Prince
Philip when Prince Charles called him and
asked him to jet with him to the secret
meeting he was holding in Rio de Janeiro
with various country leaders to strategize
how to get Agenda 21 to go down.
Bottom line,
it appears that all of the assets,
including you and me, are going back to
the Crown and we are nothing but
indentured slaves, paying an allowance
back to the government for the right to
use any of their resources! Capitalizing
on sustainable development does not even
come close to the truth. Call it green,
call it gold, call it climate warming, the
real description of Agenda 21’s
capitalistic global corporate fascism is
feudalism.
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