Global Warming on Free Republic
Posted on 06/27/2012 6:33:29 PM PDT by neverdem
Watching green ideology crash and burn
Twenty years ago the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro marked the ascension of environmentalism as a political force in international affairs. That conference in 1992 produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. At the time, Chris Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute crowed, “You cannot go to any corner of the globe and not find some degree of environmental awareness and some amount of environmental politics.” Flavin added that with socialism in disrepute, environmentalism is now the “most powerful political ideal today.” At the conclusion of the Rio +20 Earth Summit, it is clear that that is no longer so.
The largest United Nations conference ever—featuring more than 50,000 participants from 188 nations —was a flop. For most of the environmentalist ideologues at the Rio +20 conference the only question was whether it was a “hoax” or a “failure.” Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking preferred "hoax" while "failure" was Greenpeace spokesperson Kumi Naidoo’s dismissive term.
In response to outcomes of the Rio conference, more than a thousand environmentalist and leftist groups signed a petition entitled The Future We Don’t Want. That is a play on the title of the platitudinous outcome document, The Future We Want, agreed to by the diplomats at the end of the conference. Greenpeace’s Kumi Naidoo lamely vowed that disappointed environmentalists would now engage in acts of civil disobedience in order to bring about the world they want.
Should the people of the world be disappointed by the “failure” of the Rio +20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development? No. First of all, sustainable development as a concept is a Rorschach blot. The canonical version reads: "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This has no specific meaning and can be used by anyone to mean anything that they would like. So it is not at all surprising that the representatives from 190 rich and poor nations meeting in Rio de Janeiro could not agree on anything substantive with regard to sustainable development.
Nevertheless, since the first Earth Summit, the world has experienced a lot of development. In 1992, 46 per cent of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty (defined as income equivalent to less than $1.25 per day). Today that is down to 27 percent. In addition, average life expectancy has increased by three and a half years.
At the Rio +20 Earth Summit, environmentalists and the leaders of poor countries were hoping to shake down the rich countries for hundreds of billions in official development assistance annually. However, most of the actual development achieved over the past two decades was not the result of official development assistance (a.k.a. taxpayer dollars) from rich countries being sent to poor countries. In fact, some researchers have found [PDF] that development aid often actually retards economic growth and “has an insignificant or minute negative significant impact on per-capita income.” Why? Largely because the aid is stolen by the kleptocrats who run many poor countries and the rest is “invested” in projects that are not profitable. So what has produced so much improvement in the lot of poor people in developing countries since the first Earth Summit 20 years ago?
“Remember in the 1960s, official development assistance accounted for 70 percent of the capital flows to developing nations, but today it amounts to only 13 percent, while at the same time, development budgets have actually increased,” explained U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Rio +20 Conference. “Why is that? Well, you know very well. Because while continuing to provide assistance, the private sector investments, using targeted resources and smart policies, have catalyzed more balanced, inclusive, sustainable growth.” Summary: The way to development is trade, not aid.
After a week spent listening to environmentalist hopes and objectives, one particularly puzzling and disturbing activist brainchild emerged and that is their undertaking to maintain and expand open access commons. Many participants at the People’s Summit, which was run by 200 activist groups in parallel to the official summit, evidently do believe that property is theft. In the original Marxist version capitalism would collapse as its “contradictions” mounted. In the Green update capitalism will collapse as its pollution mounts. For lots of the hardcore, the solution to environmental problems is a kind of eco-socialism in which nature is not “privatized” or “commodified.” This trend in environmentalist thinking might be called “commonism.”
Looking across the globe, it is the case that various aggregate environmental measures have deteriorated. Since 1992, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) claims [PDF] that biodiversity has declined by 12 percent, 740 million acres of primary forests have been cut down, and 85 percent of the all the fish stocks in the oceans are overexploited, depleted, recovering, or fully depleted. Are environmental calamities the result of rapacious capitalism? Not really. The same report notes that 80 percent of the world’s forests, which harbor the bulk of the world’s biodiversity, are government owned. In most parts of the world, government-owned nets out to owned by no one. Essentially these aspects of nature already exist in the commons for which many environmental commonists are agitating. As Sarah Palin might ask, “How’s that working out for you?” Not too well if the UNEP data are to be believed.
The fact is that in nearly every place where what most people would regard as an environmental problem is occurring, it is happening in an open access commons. A river is polluted? No one owns it and stands ready to protect it. Forest is being cut? Same problem. Overfishing? Yes. A water shortage? Yes, again. Empirically, calling for the enlargement or re-imposition of a commons with respect to an environmental resource or amenity is tantamount to calling for its slow destruction.
Countries with strong property rights generally see environmental improvement, e.g., air and water pollution are declining, fishery stocks are stable, and forests are expanding. First, because owners protect their resources since they directly suffer the costs and consequences of not doing so. And a second indirect effect is that countries with strong property rights are more prosperous and can thus afford to bear the costs of environmental regulations, even inefficient ones, applied to those environmental commons that still remain.
Looking back the failure of environmentalism as an ideology looks inevitable since has misconstrued the causes of many of the problems to which it claims to have a solution. At the close of the Rio +20 Earth Summit last Friday, environmentalism reached its highwater mark and is now ebbing as a political force internationally. It will be interesting to see in which direction those cherishing a permanent animus against democratic capitalism will go.
Locally I have the Raisin Valley Land Trust. They play themselves off as local small town folks but they’re driven from above and have state and federal help.
They claim to be about protecting the river but they’re really about restricting land use. They lure people in with the promise of tax breaks for protecting their own land. Before long the victims discover that they’ve lost control of their own property with approval required for building and tax penalties imposed for doing so. Try selling property that’s virtually off limits and see what its worth.
They want the property but don’t want to pay for it so to get rid of it you basically have to let the state have it. This happened to a little half acre woodlot just down the street from me. The owner found that he couldn’t cut the trees or do anything with it so he just quit paying the taxes on it.
Another group we’re fighting is the Waterkeeper alliance. They’re a group founded by Robert Kennedy and are opposed to petty much all human activity from private wells, to farming and logging.
My congressman (Tim Walberg) is sponsoring some good legislation that is a step in the right direction. Its the Defending America’s Affordable Energy & Jobs Act. If you have the time, be sure to encourage your congressman to get on board. What it does is takes the decision making out of the hands of the EPA and puts it back in the hands of congress and by extension, we the people.
Damn Cripplecreek, I hoped it would not have to come to that.
I always get Maurice Strong and Charles Ogletree confused, but he is one of Ubama's mentors.
That "logical expectation" sees their farm in isolation from its extended surroundings. It is a logic built upon the purposeful construction of control boundaries that make such constructs practicable. Without them, the control variables would be meaningless. They presume the existence of the farm's supply chain, utilities, and access to fuel. Without them, those models for land management are completely useless. Nor do we maintain the means to adapt, as we would if we had a logical risk management architecture.
From what I have seen of the soil in a lot of these "professionally managed" farms, they don't get it either. Those deep soils in the Midwest were built with grasses. Learning how to reconstruct that pastoral rotation is critical, long term. Although the mineral bases for those soils are enormous because of their geological youth, the amendments they receive are barely beyond what Nelson & Barber called, "the bare economic optimum."
All this education is valid because the people taking it are living it -
"All this education is valid" only under conditions within that presumptive control boundary. That's a "taught ology" my FRiend. The method will only go so long, particularly as we continue to neglect the land outside said boundary. The effects I am talking about are continental in scope, and capable of REAL climate change. Therein is the failure to comprehend how the fires in Colorado affect the sand hills of Nebraska.
In fact, it is my contention that both the Saudi and Sahara deserts are anthropogenic in origin, not by overgrazing, but by assimilating and killing the people who knew how to run it for over 14,000 years. Once Abel was dead, the locusts won, and there was no going back. If you think we're immune now, I've got bad news for you.
I have every confidence you have no idea what I'm talking about.
I actually look forward to the day that the cities self consume themselves along with their political clout and socialist mentality; only those individuals and the familys on corporate farms shall remain in this vision.
Worse, if you think farming will make it without the recombinant technology that keeps us ahead of pests, (wheat rust, for example), or keeps that ammonia truck coming, or brings in the sewer cake, or refines your diesel, or supplies parts for pumps, or pesticides, or electrical power, keeps the satellite data coming in, upgrades your optimization software, negotiates prices, organizes delivery, well, those "professional farmers" you cite have no idea how to make it without that URBAN industrial infrastructure, and you have only to look at the San Joaquin Valley once the delta smelt charade cut off ONLY their water, never mind the rest of that list, to recognize what I mean. Once the dust storms get going, no amount of preparation will protect any of their neighbors.
I'll bet you still don't know what I'm talking about, but believe it or not, this thesis was explained 3,000 years ago, describing a relationship between agro-urban settlers and nomadic pastoralists as coupled to the survival of nations. It predicted the process that led to industrial ag today. And I'm CERTAIN you have no idea what I'm talking about there, as I'm just finishing up my translation of Genesis 4. It doesn't say what everybody thinks it does.
As a matter of historical continuity, would it not be more appropriate to do a “Kyhmer Rouge” - while kneeling alongside a tree, place the side of the prisoner's head against the tree and then use a hammer on the temple.
Saves a bullet, said Pol Pot.
Given the nastiness of Soviet military planning which included using nukes and then three different bacteriological weapons on each targeted cities, I am reminded of “the survivors will envy the dead”.
Even if there are sufficient survivors, many before the Great Debacle were so poorly educated and acculturated that continuation of a representative Republic is questionable.
PS Isaiah 5:8 would seem to be critical of much of our present tract home building.
Global Warming on Free Republic
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