I am presently in beautiful Roseburg, Oregon near Eugene and Cottage Grove where I also spoke a few years ago (2006). I'm speaking for a group of really nice people in Canyonville, Oregon, Lighted Way Ministries. I return to Michigan on Tuesday, April 22nd. Richard Peterson, known to most of us as "Rich of Medford" has prepared an article and kindly submitted it for publication here which I am more than honored to do. He would appreciate your "on topic" comments. So would I.
Constance
"CLIMATE CHANGE"
by Richard Peterson
Last month the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report on the impacts of climate change. The message that civilization is on the brink of collapse ought to raise a sense of déjà vu in those familiar with the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment materials, in part, because that is the IPCC’s template. The Stockholm Conference served to consolidate the environmental movement and provided it with a political voice.
Stockholm’s message was one
of urgency: exponential growth would cause the planet to exceed its capacity to
sustain human life. Earth’s carrying
capacity was estimated to be one-half of the 1970 population level, or approximately
1.7 billion people. We were quickly
approaching an irreversible environmental crisis caused by the pressures of
industrialization and overpopulation. The
crisis later manifested itself as global cooling which changed to global warming and today is called climate change. The solution proposed was to achieve balance
following drastic population reduction with each nation sharing proportionately
in the reduction. Failure to take
immediate action would lead to repercussions felt as early as the 1990s; a
breakdown in civilization was inevitable.
While some may be unfamiliar
with the political process started at Stockholm its subsequent constructs are well known. Stockholm’s 20-year follow-up was the Earth
Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. Conference
participants introduced what they considered to be a world constitution known
as the Earth Charter. (The Earth Summit is
also commonly known as Agenda21 while the Charter is known as the biodiversity
treaty.) More recently, the 2012 Rio+20
Conference, concentrated on mobilization and the implementation of the
framework. The Occupy Movement is
closely connected to this political process.
Stockholm Conference
Secretariat Maurice Strong set the stage saying that the environmental crisis
transcends national boundaries and that “no one nation can go it alone”; global problems require global solutions and need
to be managed by a supra national authority.
Yet Strong understood the sensitivities developing nations had about
yielding sovereignty so he worked to alleviate their fears. Nonetheless, the Stockholm Conference preparatory
committees indicate otherwise: erosion
of national sovereignty would be necessary but would not be accepted for at
least a generation or more.
The adopted environmental
crisis would need to be prostituted if Stockholm’s political agenda were to be
advanced. The April 14-16, 1972
preparatory Conference on the Environmental Crisis-International Justice
states “In global
environmental control…politicization of issues is necessary and desirable if
action on environmental problems is to be forthcoming. Although politics…can be counterproductive,
action can be obtained only through the effective use of political processes…International
politics, in the Bismarkian sense, can and generally do lead to the
prostitution of issues in order to get the upper hand.”
The International Justice preparatory committee
was charged with identifying the environmental crisis for Stockholm. Whitman Bassow, Stockholm Conference’s Public Affairs Officer, delivered the keynote
address. Participants were asked “what kind of vehicle will get the world community along
the road that we’ll have to travel?” The vehicle would be given to Earth Watch the newly created environmental watchdog. The selected issue would serve a
purpose: “this very pedestrian nature of the Stockholm Conference may be an
advantage for another reason: in a
revolution you have to have an idea and an ideal.”
While the preparatory
committee brainstormed for a crisis to avert they were hard pressed to identify
one. “It is quite difficult to state
what the major problem is on a global scale, and it is extremely difficult to
set priorities…Sometime something is going to happen that is truly
irretrievable, but we have not come to this.
What is most likely to become irreversible? Should this be the topic of the Stockholm
Conference? Not really because Stockholm
is looking to world-wide situations and there is no particular environmental
(pollution, at least) issue that needs an immediate global response.”
The committee, however, did
conclude with a recommendation. “Earth
Watch as a global effort at environmental cooperation, should obviously be
directed to a global problem. The
problem priority for Earth Watch should involve that global problem which may
most easily become irreversible. We
suggest that seas and oceans…represent a prime global concern.”
The crisis which underlies
the rising seas and oceans is global warming.
Stockholm’s roadmap for averting this crisis includes: 1)
global governance; 2) the erosion of national sovereignty; 3) the erosion of
private property rights; 4) the redefinition of religious beliefs; and 5)
the formation of a supra national moral authority (a role now claimed by the UN’s
Alliance
of Civilizations initiative).
The time for debate is over
declare those convinced of human caused climate change and they really mean
it. The UK now seeks to severely restrict climate change critics to be heard. CNN’s
Carol Costello declared the climate debate over
and used a discredited survey to portray a 97 percent consensus amongst climate scientists that
humans have caused global warming. President
Obama’s “we don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat
Earth Society” message reflects
a strategy of ridicule and marginalization typically employed by the radical
left. The marriage of politics and
environmentalism has made is especially difficult for dissenting
scientists. The media has shown itself
to be, more or less, escorts.
Evidence shows that climate
scientists are far from unanimous in their agreement. The US Senate Committee on Environment &
Public Works posted a report showing more than 700 international scientists dissent that man is causing global warming. The International Climate Science Coalition exists to counter the global warming
scare. The 2009 Copenhagen Climate
Conference was overshadowed by “climategate” where hacked e-mails suggested that dissenting scientific
opinion had been suppressed by IPCC scientists.
The Stockholm International
Justice committee concluded “we respectfully ask all to consider the world’s
resources as the common property of all man.
No person or nation has an absolute right to any property. Private or national property exists merely to
offer to an individual or nation a decent quality of life. It carries with it the responsibility to
share with those in need. We suggest
that all consider the proposition that the right to property (whether individually
or nationally held) must be looked on as a guarantee of the capability and
obligation to share it with those in need.”
Repackaged communism is
being delivered to us through the vehicle of the environmental movement. History has demonstrated Marxism does not
work. The people of the United States need
to carefully consider and resist any attempts to yield national sovereignty and
property rights to a supranational authority which, upon scrutiny, shows it
holds very different values than those of a free people.
