|
Given universal awareness
and belief that greenhouse gases are placing our world on the brink of
imminent disaster, we should obligate ourselves to examine the origins of the
climate change issue. For many people awareness and concern has emerged as if
by stealth. Our children arrive
home from school all wide-eyed and anxious about the imminent extinction of polar
bears, melting polar ice caps and glaciers. Frequently, too, we see programs on
television which portray what seems to be a world hell-bent on its own
destruction and predicting an imminent environmental Armageddon.
Former politician Al Gore produced a much
viewed movie predicting certain demise of most living things unless
greenhouse gases were dramatically limited starting immediately. He was given an Academy Award for his
“Inconvenient Truth.”
It is clearly apparent that the vehicles of mass communication,
especially the popular media, entertainment industry, the public school
systems as well as society’s opinion leaders, have been working
overtime to inform and alarm us to the calamities ahead if we fail to
throttle back the creation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Where, When and How did the Global
Warming Issue Begin to Take Shape?
Back in the late 1960’s the United
Nations assigned Canadian Maurice Strong the responsibility of giving form to
the nascent concept of global warming. Actually the climate change issue
started with predictions of a coming Ice Age, but that theme was quickly
abandoned in favour of the warming scenario. The earth’s apparent rapid
warming gained traction first at a UN conference held in Switzerland in 1971.
Funding for climate research was increasingly made available, papers written
and findings shared culminating in the creation of the
“Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (IPCC) in 1988. It was this UN sponsored entity which
drove the warming issue thereafter resulting in much greater public awareness
- in part a consequence of another even larger conference held in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.
It seems that the scale of the Rio conference
and those which followed (which involved many thousands of attendees
representing most of the world’s nations, international
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) and other technical and
interested parties) were designed primarily as a publicity tour de force.
Such was certainly the case with the most recent conference of 20,000 held in
Copenhagen, Denmark in December of 2009 where delegates had only one task
– to endorse what they had been prepped for in advance.
Kyoto, Japan was the venue for the 1997
conference at which specific greenhouse gas emissions targets were
adopted. National governments of
the industrialized world were pressured to endorse and formally subscribe to
those standards and most countries signed on either because they had become
believers in the need to limit greenhouse gases or because political optics
demanded it. Canada, for example,
cynically accepted its assigned carbon targets even though it had no
intention or ability to meet them.
Interestingly, only first world developed
nations were asked to commit.
Rapidly industrializing nations such as China, India, Brazil and many
other smaller emerging economies of Asia were deliberately omitted from the
obligations of the Kyoto Protocol. Given the fact that these countries are
major polluters and their economies are growing at rates far greater than the
economies of developed nations, one wonders why such a gap in coverage was so
casually allowed?
Greenhouse gases, which ostensibly cause
global warming as well as the consequent and imminent environmental
degradation we have been repeatedly warned about, would surely be just as
disaster-inducing whether they originate in China or Canada so why the
“get out of jail free pass” for China, India, Brazil, Indonesia
and others?
Another peculiar feature of the Kyoto Protocol
was the base year selected and proclaimed against which greenhouse gas
emissions reductions would be measured.
Cynics not only found the free pass given to developing nations odd,
but the 1990 baseline proved even more puzzling. The likely explanation is that the year
1990 marked the fall of communism in Europe. Coincidentally it was also the high
water mark in European pollution, including CO2 emissions.
Since then dramatic carbon reductions have
taken place throughout all of Europe, not just in the former communist bloc
nations of Eastern Europe. What
is the significance? Simply put,
Europe has already come a long way to meeting its greenhouse gas reduction
targets simply because much heavy industry has for economic reasons been shut
down or moved to the developing world since 1990. Electrical production has also been
converted into much cleaner burning natural gas and nuclear power and away
from its previous reliance on coal.
Meeting their targets therefore became a relative “walk in the
park."
Why are the United States
and Canada being Singled Out as the Global Villains?
If developing and third world nations get a
free pass and Europe can meet its targets readily because of the
arbitrary1990 baseline, what is the point in adopting carbon emission caps
which severely impact only the United States and Canada? It seems that North America - the US
and Canada - have been consciously and deliberately singled out as the global
villains of greenhouse gas emissions.
Why would the phalanx of the third world
nations, led by the UN and Western European nations, most of whom share
social democratic values, attempt to force North America to pay such a steep
price? Below are a number of reasons:
1. Socialist Dogma
Speculation leads to several possible answers
which are all plausible. When
emissions targets were struck, the United States definitely had the dominant
and most vibrant economy in the world. To outsiders the United States was obviously
more able to shoulder the financial burden of carbon cuts than most other
nations. Ditto for Canada.
Socialist dogma is rooted in the belief that
income redistribution is and should be a core function for government. In this instance the UN imposed its
values and objectives on its constituent parts. It is also frequently held that the
wealth of rich nations comes at the expense of relatively less economically
advantaged countries. Hence
“taxing” the industries of rich nations through Cap and Trade
impositions on carbon emissions seems perfectly fair and reasonable to
advocates of wealth redistribution.
2. Global Governance
Keep in mind that the climate change agenda
has been shepherded throughout by the United Nations, assisted in no small
measure by institutions and individuals which subscribe to the ideals and
merits of supranational agencies and organizations. Establishing world governing
structures, institutions and processes is their ultimate longer term
objective. Advocates of global
governance commonly hold the view that nation states are inherently
self-serving and remain obstacles to attaining a higher level of civil and
civic consciousness.
Multinational organizations, measured against values like this,
provide a superior form of government resulting in more desirable outcomes. How does the world reach this nirvana
of global governance? The simple
answer is by assembling it through a series of building blocks.
3. Need for Money
Think about it. The UN has existed since the
end of WWII. Its constituent
parts include agencies such as the International Court of Justice, World
Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Health Organization, International Labour Organization, governance of the world’s
oceans, prosecution of criminal behaviour and
actions from wars in such places as the Balkans and Rwanda, peace-keeping and
peace-making missions in many of the world’s zones of conflict. Its
ubiquitous humanitarian aid and third world development projects are
universally known. These
initiatives and responsibilities come at the expense of nation states which
have ceded authority and money to the UN with its transnational reach.
Until now many sovereign nations jockeyed to
set their own foreign aid priorities, targets and funding levels. It is also a
fact that citizens in many first world nations, especially the United States,
are tiring of giving money to countries which have difficulty in using it
efficiently and effectively. Too
often too much of it ends up in the pockets and Swiss bank accounts of
government officials and other ‘kleptocrats’
in recipient nations. Is it any
wonder there is increasing reluctance by national governments, the source of
most development funding, to contribute to costly, corrupt and questionable
projects in failing and failed nations?
Would not the range of programs sponsored by the UN be much more
effective if the UN no longer needed to beg,
compromise or negotiate with sovereign nations for both mandates and funding?
4. Power and Influence
Referenced above is another emerging category
of international institution called the Non Governmental Organization
(NGO). Because of their
transnational origins, scope, structure and technical specialties, over the
years these groups have been enlisted by national governments and the UN as
their preferred operational arms to implement their aid and development
projects around the world. While
many of their activities are project based, a continuing series of projects
effectively necessitates large numbers of what amounts to permanent
staff.
Employment therefore is frequently
institutionalized resulting in the full range of organizational
imperatives. Large organizations
mean large budgets, layers of management and impressive staffing levels
requiring many technical and professional skills. Job security and elevated
pay grades assume greater importance.
Power and influence are sought over policy and program priorities of
both national governments and the international governmental agencies. In many ways NGO and UN interests
converge in that they both end up being advocates of supranational governance
and institutions at the expense of individual countries.
Summary
The answer to the question why the UN would
attempt to force North America to adopt such stringent carbon emission caps?
It is simply that the building blocks of international organizations depend
on the exploitation of discrete needs and issues around and through which an
organization can be established, grow and institutionalize itself on its
route to permanent status.
Clearly climate warming provides a case study
through which a single issue, global in scope can be structured and managed
to enlist the support of various constituencies. It becomes another
multinational program initiated, managed and promoted by the United Nations
which morphs into the placement of another permanent building block in the
UN’s fledgling firmament.
Organizations are built and processes created which form a precedent
for future initiatives coalescing around a different set of issues each
time. This is the building block
process employed to create and institutionalize global governance.
Conclusion
The issue of climate change has been enlisted
to help construct global governing institutions. President Obama’s chief of staff
said some time ago that “it would be a shame to waste a good
crisis.” What he meant was
that a crisis can be mobilized to enlist the support of individuals, interest
groups and organizations which, under normal circumstances, would be impossible.
Global warming is not a
crisis created by man wantonly burning fossil fuels to the detriment of
nature. Rather, global warming is
a methodically fabricated issue cleverly designed and exploited by proponents
of global governance under the tutelage of the United Nations.
Arnold Bock
Editor's Note: The above article is
Part 2 of a 4-part series including: "Global Warming: A Man-Made Crisis (Part 1)"; "Why Should WE Make Sacrifices to Offset
Global Warming? (Part 3)"; "Global Warming: The 'Anthropocentric' Crisis (Part 4)".
Arnold Bock is a Canadian living abroad retired from a career in
government. He has a substantial
background in partisan politics and public policy development as well as in
project and program management within the public sector.
|
