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Greens Wilt (Ronald Bailey Live from WSSD)
Reason Online ^ | 4 September 2002 | Ronald Bailey

Posted on 09/04/2002 12:15:44 PM PDT by Stultis

September 4, 2002

Greens Wilt

Chastened Environmentalists Leave Joburg Summit Empty-handed

By Ronald Bailey


Johannesburg—"It's clear that we've suffered a number of major defeats in the last 10 days," declared Andrew Hewett, a spokesperson for Oxfam. Hewett was not the only ideological environmentalist to express dismay over the results of negotiations at World Summit on Sustainable Development. The Plan of Implementation negotiated by the summiteers in Johannesburg is like "putting a Band-Aid over a gaping wound," maintained a glum Melanie Steiner from the World Wildlife Federation. Greenpeace climate director Steve Sawyer commented with regard to setting goals and timetables for the global deployment of renewable energy, "What we've come up with is absolute zero, absolutely nothing." Peter van der Gaag, speaking for ANPED, an alliance of European green groups, proclaimed that the World Summit on Sustainable Development was "a damage control summit" and that "we barely kept our heads above water."

In retrospect, from the point of view of political environmentalists, the Summit was probably doomed to failure because it was trying to force two totally incompatible goals together—eradicating poverty and limiting economic growth. Environmental improvement is simply impossible without economic growth, yet economic growth is anathema to green summiteers. "The summit failed to set the necessary economic and ecological limits to globalization," declared Daniel Mittler from Friends of the Earth.

When the greens arrived in Johannesburg, they were demanding that the nations of world commit to:

(1) cutting in half the number of people who don't have access to clean safe drinking water, and cut in half the number of those without adequate sanitation by 2015;

(2) requiring that 15 percent of the world's primary energy be supplied by new renewables like solar, wind and small hydropower by 2010;

(3) setting a global framework for holding multinational corporations accountable for their actions;

(4) requiring that products be labeled for alleged ecological friendliness, especially foods produced using genetically modified crops;

(5) developing a 10-year framework aimed at establishing sustainable patterns of consumption and production;

(6) ending agricultural subsidies and subsidies on conventional fuels;

(7) strengthening the precautionary principle as an international regulatory tool;

(8) obtaining commitments from rich countries to raise the proportion of their GDP they devote to overseas aid to 0.7 percent of their gross domestic products annually.

(9) subordinating agreements reached by World Trade Organization to multilateral environmental agreements.

Of above list, the greens essentially managed to get only the first one adopted by the summit negotiators. "The only new real target is halving the number of people without access to good sanitation by 2015," said WWF's Melanie Steiner. She added, "We did not come to the Summit to agree just to a sanitation target." In any case, it is arguable that only the sanitation target and the proposal to end farm subsidies are really aimed at the Summit's professed goal of eradicating poverty. After 10 days of hard negotiating behind closed doors, there are no global renewable energy targets, no 10-year sustainable consumption and production project, no global eco-labeling scheme outside of the Biosafety Protocol, no end to agricultural subsidies, no strengthening of the precautionary principle, no subordinating of the WTO's trade agenda to the United Nations' green agenda and no 0.7 percent aid increases. Why? Largely because all of these proposals ran into the alliance of Japan, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, commonly known as JUSCANZ.

Ideological environmentalists, looking for what cheer they could find, did point to some language on corporate accountability in the draft political statement, which is supposed to be issued unanimously in the name of all the nations that participated in the Summit. According to Steve Sawyer, nearly everyone at the summit acknowledges "there is something wrong with unbridled neoliberal capitalism." The draft political statement kicks the issue of corporate responsibility upstairs to the United Nations' General Assembly. The idea is that the General Assembly will select a UN agency to convene an international meeting aimed at devising a global Protocol on Corporate Responsibility and Behavior. Of course, corporations should be held responsible for any malfeasance; they already are held responsible by national governments. Just ask executives at Arthur Andersen, Enron and WorldCom. What the green lobbyists are aiming at with their corporate responsibility protocol is to set up global environmental and labor standards to which all companies must adhere. One effect of this type of one-size-fits-all global regulation would be to reduce overall investment in developing nations.

The greens were also cheered by the announcement during the Summit that China, Canada, and Russia have ratified or will soon ratify the Kyoto Protocol which is aimed at limiting the use of fossil fuels so as to prevent alleged man-made global warming. This will increase pressure on the United States to reconsider its withdrawal from the Protocol in April 2001.

Finally, on one point, free marketers and greens can wholeheartedly agree—that economically and ecologically damaging global agricultural subsidies should be eliminated. However, the rogue states of subsidies, the U.S. and the European Union nations, refused to budge on this issue. They claim that the subsidy issue will be taken up and resolved in the WTO negotiations over the next three years.

"Johannesburg is not the end of the line," declared WWF's Melanie Steiner. This is the moral equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger's line in The Terminator, "I'll be back."

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. He is the editor of Global Warming and Other Eco Myths (Prima Publishing) and Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet(McGraw-Hill).



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: anticapitalism; capitalism; development; economicgrowth; economics; environmentalism; freetrade; globalism; poverty; povertylobby; ronaldbailey; sustainability; un; wssd

1 posted on 09/04/2002 12:15:44 PM PDT by Stultis
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To: Stultis
This article is part of a series. Ronald Bailey of Reason (Magazine) Online is currently reporting live from the WSSD. His introductory article, Changing Everything, has been posted on FR. To find his reports you can search on exact phrase Ronald Bailey Live from WSSD. Use this link to view Bailey's latest WSSD dispatch, and an index of previous ones, at Reason's website.

For these and other articles on the UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development, click on the WSSD Keyword.

2 posted on 09/04/2002 12:17:45 PM PDT by Stultis
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To: Stultis
Sounds like many of the "Greens" were really globalist-money front orgs. That's basically what "NGOs" have become.
3 posted on 09/04/2002 12:17:50 PM PDT by Shermy
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To: Stultis
Tech Central Station is also doing some really excellent coverage of the WSSD with articles and reports by various of their editors and contributors. Their page also has a number of good links. I've posted a few of the TCS articles to FR:

An Energetic Victory (U.S. sides with developing nations against green euros at WSSD)

'Actions Are Better' (U.S. delegation at WSSD sheds timidity of past - lectures econuts)

Just a Climate Cowboy (Bush & Kyoto)

4 posted on 09/04/2002 12:18:56 PM PDT by Stultis
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To: Stultis
"The idea is that the General Assembly will select a UN agency to convene an international meeting aimed at devising a global Protocol on Corporate Responsibility and Behavior."

So...a group will form another group to call a meeting with the aim of ideally devising a framework for a possible piece of paper.

Wow. Even amoebas are more animated than this.

5 posted on 09/04/2002 12:20:33 PM PDT by TheBigB
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To: Stultis
Environmentalism pays quite well. Take a look:

Laughing All The Way To The Bank

6 posted on 09/04/2002 12:47:06 PM PDT by What Is Ain't
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To: Stultis
I guess ideological environmentalists are different than say "scientifically verifiable environmentalist Proposal supporters. Anti-capitalism has many names. If these yahoos actually wanted to accomplish something, their #1 proposal isn't a bad idea. It is doable by an internationally funded NGO. The problems are:

(1) Governments such as those in much of Africa and all of the Middle East/Muslim South Asia are incapable of sustaining the development of even the simple well by well water treatment methods that have long been available. Due to violence and corruption any monies for development are better used in campfires to cook food.

(2) Our European "friends" would expect the USA to foot the bill but hire their "experts".

(3) The other demands of the Enviro-wackos, if implimented, make clean water useless as the poor would already starve before the water systems could be built

7 posted on 09/04/2002 12:56:29 PM PDT by JimSEA
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To: JimSEA
(2) Our European "friends" would expect the USA to foot the bill but hire their "experts".

This is why the Bush admin is busily reforming economic aid distribution, channeling much of it through government/industry partnerships. The uber-idea is for aid to use and synergize with (and as developing countries prosper, to be replaced by) normal channels of capital flow as much as possible. This will tend to keep the money out of the hands of the global poverty pimps. It will also render programs more effective, to the point where they might actually solve problems rather than perpetuate them. The poverty pimps HATE this whole scheme (part of the reason why Powell was shouted down at the WSSD as he highlighted such programs).

8 posted on 09/04/2002 1:05:12 PM PDT by Stultis
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To: Stultis
Cutting people in half is a sick way of eliminating the poor.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

9 posted on 09/04/2002 1:06:49 PM PDT by Democratic_Machiavelli
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To: Stultis
Thanks! I appreciate the information.
10 posted on 09/04/2002 1:29:26 PM PDT by JimSEA
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To: Stultis
"The only new real target is halving the number of people without access to good sanitation by 2015,"

OH NO! Say it ain't so!!! Good sanitation means clean water and sewage treatment! Clean water means holes drilled into mother earth, and ELECTRICITY to move it around and purify it!! And of course we know that even treated sewage must eventually be returned back into the environment!!! Heaven forbid!

11 posted on 09/04/2002 4:17:54 PM PDT by sam_paine
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To: What Is Ain't
Thanks for the link ;-)
12 posted on 09/04/2002 5:28:43 PM PDT by Prodigal Son
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To: Stultis
The only thing worthwhile is their first proposal. That would be the most cost-effective way to save lives. Trouble is, implementing it would require a significant amount of energy, beyond that available from "renewable" forms, and the wackos will oppose that. So in the end they're self-defeating. Instead of working towards helping poorer countries get clean water and sanitation, they'll be out protesting against nuclear energy, and agitating about AIDS, or ranting against capitalism, or any other among numerous kook agenda items.
13 posted on 09/04/2002 6:10:28 PM PDT by chimera
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To: Stultis
(7) strengthening the precautionary principle as an international regulatory tool
precautionary principle: the principle that all innovation is guilty of environmental harm unless the innovator can prove the negative that it is not guilty. The principle, IOW, that all innovation must cease forthwith.

14 posted on 09/04/2002 7:20:00 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
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