Free Republic

August 30, 2002 Today's Special: Fillet of Springbok Fun at the World Summit on Sustainable Development By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg—United Nations meetings are an acquired taste. You have to love things like "nonpapers," "the Vienna Process," and press conferences by the "Group of Like-Minded Megadiverse Countries," not to mention a whole lot of speeches as high-minded as they are long-winded. But once you're hooked. your're hooked. I had my first experience at the Earth Summit in Rio ten years ago, and now you just can't keep me away from UN confabs. My last fix before this one was the...

August 26, 2002 A Summit Misconceived Their hearts are in the right place... By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg, South Africa - The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is supposed to be aimed at eradicating global poverty, but many of the measures favored by negotiators and activists would increase poverty, not alleviate it. The problems are stark. Some 1.1 billion people lack safe drinking water; 2.2 billion are without adequate sanitation; 2.5 billion lack access to modern energy services; 11 million children under the age of five die each year in developing countries from preventable diseases; and despite an abundance...

August 27, 2002 Listening to the Poor What Western environmentalists could learn from real poor people By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg, South Africa - During a thirty-minute taxi ride to the National Exposition Center in Johannesburg - where the "civil society" Global Forum groups are holding sessions - I had a chance to talk with our driver Issac, a 60 year old black resident of Johannesburg. Issac is a twin and one of nine children. His father raised cattle in the Northern Province. I told him that I, too, grew up on a farm and thought it was very hard...

August 28, 2002 Fueling the Future What energy sources will drive the 21st century? By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg, South Africa — "The priority has to be getting energy access to poor people no matter what the source," said Greenpeace spokesman Steve Sawyer at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He was responding to my question about whether the 2 billion or so people without access to modern energy services should nonetheless be able to get access to energy from whatever source, renewable or not? It is indeed progress that radical groups like Greenpeace now recognize poor...

August 29, 2002 "Profit Beats Poverty" Farmers and Street Peddlers from India and Africa March for Free Trade By Ronald Bailey Johannesburg—"Profit Beats Poverty," "Say No to Eco-Imperialism," "Free Trade Is Fair Trade," and "People or Pandas?" were just a few of the placards carried by 300 or so protesters at the Sandton Convention Center, where delegates from 190 countries are meeting at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The marchers, pushing a broken-down sound car, wound through the swank Sandton business and shopping district north of downtown Johannesburg. Sandton is where the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is located...

WASHINGTON -- American farmers are destroying the topsoil and can no longer produce healthy food, claims George Pyle, writing for the Kansas Land Institute recently. Pyle warns that we must go back to traditional farming before we create another Dust Bowl. But if traditional farming was so wonderful, how come we had the Dust Bowl in the first place? In the 1930s, when the original Dust Bowl crisis hit America, all farming was organic and low-intensity. That's what Pyle recommends for our future. But the dust clouds roiled, literally, from the prairies all the way to the U.S. Capitol in...

August 21, 2002 Changing Everything Ronald Bailey prepares to cover the World Summit on Sustainable Development By Ronald Bailey More than 100 presidents, prime ministers, and other potentates will convene over the next couple of weeks (August 26-September 4) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in a desperate attempt to save the Earth. The occasion is the United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which is aimed at revolutionizing how the world's economy operates. This economic, social and environmental revolution must occur because, it is claimed, humanity is on an unsustainable path that is leading toward global catastrophe. Indeed, all...

On the eve of the biggest enviro-mania fest in a decade comes the signal to brace ourselves. We're in for a slew of depressing "news" about our planet. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio launched the PR campaign for the upcoming Earth Summit by essentially equating our home turf with the Titanic. The neophyte activist called the U.S. "the world's biggest polluter." Ostensibly, he was trying to convince President Bush to join international counterparts – Tony Blair, Vicente Fox and Jacques Chirac – and attend the U.N. Summit in South Africa later this month. So far Bush hasn't committed, and he'd be wise...