I have deja vu! The UN is again pushing hysteria, warning that we are killing the planet. This time it isn’t global warming, but as I pointed out here previously, destruction of habitat. From the story:
A U.N. biodiversity conference aims to address a simple problem: “We are destroying life on Earth,” said the head of the U.N. Environment Program. The world cannot afford to allow nature’s riches to disappear, the United Nations said on Monday at the start of a major meeting to combat losses in animal and plant species that underpin livelihoods and economies. The U.N. cited the worst extinction rate since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, saying it’s a crisis that needs to be addressed by governments, businesses and communities.
To keep us from (once again) “destroying the planet,” the UN is holding the usual big international conference, where delegates will wring their hands and accomplish nothing.
But Wesley, why so cynical? I don’t know, maybe because the history of the UN; claim there is a dire crisis, hold posh conferences to find remedies, create pie in the sky agreements, which most of the world then ignores:
Delegates from nearly 200 countries are being asked to agree to new 2020 targets after governments largely failed to meet a 2010 target of achieving a significant reduction in biological diversity losses, a goal set at the last biodiversity conference in 2002.
Just like Kyoto. Hey, here’s an idea: How about extending the first agreement and coming back to the table when—and if—it is accomplished? Right. It’ll will be a long wait.
So, Wesley, you’re against conservation? Yes! I want to waste resources, pollute the water, kill the trees, and wipe out all endangered species! I want the earth despoiled! I want it turned into a toxic mud hole!
Of course I’m being sarcastic, but that is what hysterics hear when people say they don’t want to stifle human thriving by severely limiting development—or as in the “ecoside” movement, even criminalizing resource exploitation. That is the hell on earth for which we are accused yearning when we simply say that we do not wish to cede control over these matters to unelected UN bureaucrats fundamentally influenced—and even run—by the most radical NGOs.
Nor do we wish to yield to Green Panic as an excuse for wealth redistribution. But as in Copenhagen, that is the very approach that we are yet again supposed to swallow:
Developing nations say more funding is needed from developed countries to share the effort in saving nature. Much of the world’s remaining biological diversity is in developing nations such as Brazil, Indonesia and in central Africa. “Especially for countries with their economies in transition, we need to be sure where the (financial) resources are,” Eng. B.T. Baya, director-general of Tanzania’s National Environment Management Council, told Reuters. “It’s not helping us if you set a lot of strategic targets and there is no ability or resources to implement them,” Baya said. Poorer nations want funding to protect species and ecosystems to be ramped up 100-fold from about $3 billion now.
That’s $300 billion, folks. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of billions we are supposed to pay for global warming hysteria. The checks are in the mail.
What is worse, the radical Greens are pushing redistribution—again, as at Copenhagen—for an anti human purpose—as a bribe to force developing countries with bounteous resources to remain mired in poverty by keeping their natural wealth off limits:
One of the issues certain to prove contentious: The WWF and Greenpeace called for nations to set aside large areas of linked land and ocean reserves. “If our planet is to sustain life on Earth in the future and be rescued from the brink of environmental destruction, we need action by governments to protect our oceans and forests and to halt biodiversity loss,” said Nathalie Rey, Greenpeace International oceans policy adviser.
Countries can and should create laws to conserve resources. Development should be managed properly. Nobody’s stopping them. But no poor country should allow this crowd to decide how prosperous their people can become.
I hope the delegates and NGO activists enjoy the banquets and other posh perks that these kind of conferences often offer, because even if they get some grand deal, it will be DOA. We can, and should, husband resources. But if we want a cleaner planet, we should also encourage systematic development and increased prosperity that lifts people out of destitution and the misery of poverty. Because in the end prosperity—and freedom—are the best tools for creating a cleaner world. (That’s why the old Soviet Union was such an environmental disaster as compared to the USA.) The richer we are, the more liberty we enjoy, the greater capacity we have to manage growth and maintain a healthier environment.
But to get from here to there, we must not surrender to the soft tyranny of Green Panic.
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