Turning to the UN to fix a problem is like going hunting with an orchestra. It’ll be really expensive, you won’t catch anything and you’ll never be able to satisfactorily explain to anyone who you thought it was a good idea in the first place.
The United Nations which ignores fake problems like genocide and Islamic terrorism to focus in on real problems like the lack of affirmative action in political representation and temperatures rising and falling as part of a cyclical millennial process, is spending millions to save Afghanistan from the scourge of… Global Warming.
The United Nations is to help Afghanistan combat the effects of climate change, teaming up with the country’s Government to implement a $6 million initiative that aims to operate in vulnerable communities and shore up the ability of Afghan institutions to independently address risks posed by changes to the climate
I imagine the Afghan government will be thrilled with that 6 million and will immediately use it help Opium growers develop more sustainable harvesting practices and educating child molesters about the need to prepare their dancing boys for careers in Green Energy.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which will serve as the lead UN agency involved in the initiative, identified Afghanistan as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. The scheme is the first of its kind in the landlocked country, where four-fifths of the population is directly dependent on natural resources for income and sustenance
Afghanistan, being landlocked, is of course at grave risk of rising tides. Just think if the icebergs melt, Afghanistan might have its own harbor. And the population might have an occupation besides beating their wives and smuggling drugs.
The initiative’s interventions will include improved water management and use efficiency; community-based watershed management; improved terracing, agro-forestry and agro-silvo pastoral systems; climate-related research and early warning systems; improved food security; and rangeland management.
And then they’ll definagle the ecohumminger and transduce the climatefloogle. But who exactly is going to be implementing this in a country that will have no NATO troops in 2014 and which will fall to the Taliban a year or two later?
Now don’t get the wrong idea here. Afghanistan does have its own environmental agency (NEPA) and an environmental law almost as complex as anything in the US. It has hilarious passages like this
Unless in possession of and in compliance with a valid pollution control licence issued in terms of Article 28, no person may discharge or cause or permit the discharge of a pollutant into the environment, whether land, air or water, if that discharge causes, or is likely to cause, a significant adverse effect on the environment or human health.
I’m sure the Taliban apply for licenses when they’re discharging polluting lead into human bodies. Some cynical people might say that NEPA, like the rest of the Afghan government, is a facade that exists to suck in foreign money. I say those people have clearly never seen a warlord waiting to fill out a pollution permit before dumping his fifth wife in a river.
“The Government of Afghanistan is showing a remarkable commitment to working with communities for a landscape approach to dealing with climate change in the country,” said the UN Afghanistan Resident Coordinator, Michael Keating, speaking from Bamyan in Afghanistan’s Central Highlands, some 200 kilometres west of the capital, Kabul.
The difference between the Government of Afghanistan and UN officials is that the Afghans may be murderers, terrorists, pedophiles and drug dealers… but at least they’re not complete lunatics.
Karzai does not care about global warming. He cares about keeping excessively large numbers of enemy fighters out of Kabul. If he has to set all of Kabul on fire to do that… or if he has to pat UN officials on the head and pretend to believe in their magic green demons to make that happen, he will.
The difference between us and our enemies is that they know what matters and it’s not the global warming boogeyman, it’s winning or at least surviving.