PART FIVE
Transfer of Wealth: The Rio+20 Treaty
Until June 2012, the United States showered the world with foreign aid. We couldn’t afford it. It went to the pockets of third world tyrants and dictators. Countries who received our largesse snubbed us at every turn. And some of the money went to our outright enemies.
But at least we had control over how much we gave and who received the money.
In June 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton journeyed to Rio to attend the twentieth anniversary of the original Rio Conference on global sustainability. There, she set a bold new precedent: She committed the United States to giving the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)—an incipient global EPA—$2 billion toward an eventual fund of $100 billion, in turn to be given to the nations of the third world, nominally to assist in their adjustment to global climate change.
There’s nothing new about the $2 billion commitment. But what is new is that:
a) It implied an American commitment to an even more massive transfer of wealth running to the full $100 billion; and
b) It left it up to a new “Green Climate Fund” headquartered in Switzerland to decide how to spend the money. We would have no control over who received the funds.
The Green Climate fund was formally created at a UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011. It is to be administered by a twenty-four-nation interim board of trustees. Its short-term goal is to amass $100 billion, including $30 billion in “fast start-up” money that has already been pledged by member nations. Hillary’s $2 billion was part of that fund.
Hillary’s pledge was made at the Rio+20 Conference, where 190 nations gathered on the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 Rio Conference on global sustainability. They committed themselves to the development of a worldwide “green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.”1
Achim Steiner, UN undersecretary-general and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director, proudly reported that at the Rio+20 Conference, “world leaders and governments have today agreed that a transition to a Green Economy—backed by strong social provisions—offers a key pathway towards a sustainable 21st century.”2
By lumping a “transition to a green economy” and “strong social provisions” in the same statement, Steiner really announces a new global quid pro quo between the developed and less developed world—a historic linkage between payoffs to third world dictatorships and environmental goals. The conference “agreed that such a transition [to a global green economy] could be an important tool when supported by policies that encourage decent employment, social welfare, and the inclusion and maintenance of the Earth’s ecosystems from forest to freshwaters.”3
Third world autocrats no longer need to beg for foreign aid, but instead can demand payoffs as necessary preconditions for their cooperation in protecting the environment. “If you don’t pay us off,” these nations are in effect saying, “we will chop down rain forests and refuse to cooperate with you in achieving your green goals.”
The novelty of this new form of global extortion, enshrined at the Rio Conference, is that it is the first major step in a global scheme to redistribute resources from the first world nations, whose industry and hard work has created them, to world dictators who can stash the money in Swiss bank accounts.
In more civilized language, the Rio Conference noted that its “decision supports nations wishing to forge ahead with a green economy transition while providing developing economies with the opportunity for access to international support in terms of finance and capacity building.”4
And who will pay the bill for the “decent employment and social welfare” in third world countries? And who will provide developing nations “wishing to forge ahead with a green economy transition… the opportunity for access to international support in terms of finance and capacity building?”5
We, the taxpayers of developed nations (a category that does not include China or India), will have that privilege. The Rio+20 Conference admitted the “reality that a transition to an inclusive green economy and the realization of a sustainable century needs to also include the footprints of developed nations as well as developing ones as they aim to eradicate poverty and transit towards a sustainable path.”6
To be sure the money actually flows as directed, “the Summit also gave the go-ahead to a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to bring all nations—rich and poor—into cooperative target setting across a range of challenges from water and land up to food waste around the globe.”7
These Sustainable Development Goals are not about eating your broccoli and remembering the starving millions when your children eat their supper. It is a far larger effort to regulate every aspect of our global economy, consumption patterns, modes of transportation, lifestyles, and economic decisions in the name of achieving the holy grail of “sustainability.”
For the greens and globalists, the Rio+20 Conference is the first big step toward global governance, establishing regulations affecting all aspects of our lives, bending every effort toward their environmental priorities.
It was as a down payment on this transfer of wealth that Secretary of State Clinton proudly chipped in the first $2 billion courtesy of the American taxpayer (without asking Congress first) to “mitigate the effects of climate change” in third world countries.8
The third world dictatorships are seeking a Global Climate Fund of $100 billion they say is to help them rein in climate change. At the Copenhagen Conference on Global Warming in December 2009, the rich and poor nations of the world agreed to raise $100 billion “in climate aid by 2020, starting with $30 billion by 2012 for ‘fast track’ financing.”9
But negotiators from the rich and poor nations have not yet approved the deal. The
But there are still high hopes for the $100 billion fund. David G. Victor, an energy expert at the University of California, San Diego, says that “for people focused on the lack of progress in the diplomatic talks, the $100 billion was the great hope for bringing countries together and making a deal. For people keen on fixing the world’s economic ills, the $100 billion was supposed to help jumpstart a green economy. For people who want to re- allocate the world’s wealth, the $100 billion was a new way to move money from North to South.”11
In October 2011, the negotiating committee of twenty-five delegates from rich countries and fifteen from poor ones completed its draft treaty to set up the $100 billion fund, but the US and Saudi Arabia blocked its approval. In explaining the reason for the American position, the Times noted that “the administration of President Barack Obama has come under pressure from prominent Republicans and others to limit financing for UN climate protection initiatives.”12
Likely the approval of this slush fund for climate aid is one of those areas in which President Obama is waiting for the increased flexibility he expects in his second term, when he will not have to listen to the conservative voices back in Washington.
Negotiations between the rich and poor nations were briefly imperiled in June 2012 when representatives from the developing nations stalked out of the talks “because wealthy countries were refusing to include the transfer of money and technology” in the deal.13
The British newspaper the
In a statement of unfathomable arrogance, Brazilian negotiators said this was no excuse. “We cannot be held hostage to the retraction resulting from financial crises in rich countries. We are here to think about the long term and not about crises that may be overcome in one or two years,” said Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, undersecretary at the Brazilian foreign ministry.15
Figueiredo equates being “held hostage” with not getting his hands on our money!
