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Frank Loy gets pied
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By Henry Lamb
(November 23 2000)
Frank Loy, chief negotiator for the U.S. delegation at the Hague climate change talks, was hit in the face with a cream pie today, in a protest demonstration staged by environmental extremist NGO observers.
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Conference President, Jan Pronk, suspended the conference and asked that all NGOs assemble in a meeting room. "O.K.," he said, "you wanted to say something, now is your opportunity." Silence. No one admitted staging the demonstration. Finally, a young man stood to say that he knew some of the demonstrators and would go try to persuade them to come into the room. He returned with about fifty students, one of whom walked to the microphone.
She said simply, that the meeting was a scam, staged by "big oil," and was nothing more than a scheme to advance profits over people. With that, she said "we're out of here." Pronk asked the group to stay and discuss their views, to listen to a rebuttal. The students departed, shouting their usual mantra as they left.
A spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund then took the microphone, denouncing the methods used by the students, but said they represented the views held by the WWF. A spokesman for Greenpeace took the microphone, and agreed, saying that the longer the negotiations were prolonged, the weaker the Protocol became. None of the NGOs took responsibility for the student demonstration.
A quick review of the participants list reveals that Greenpeace registered 260 participants, many of whom are students. In Berlin in 1995, Greenpeace chain-locked the doors of the meeting room for several hours - with the negotiators inside. These demonstrations have become a strategic part of the U.N. process.
It is a world unto its own - this world of international negotiations. It is a world defined, not by geography, not by language, not by culture, but by process. It matters little whether the meeting is in Geneva, Bonn, Kyoto, Buenos Aires, or the Hague, the process is the same - an enormous pep rally for the objectives of the meeting.
NGO observers outnumber the official delegates by at least three-to-one. The representatives of so-called "civil society" travel from meeting to meeting to coordinate a series of demonstrations designed to convince the delegates that their point of view reflects the demands of normal people from around the world.
Each day at the Hague, delegates are greeted by costumed "volunteers" who hand out elaborately printed posters, brochures and placards, all demanding immediate action on the Protocol. Across the street, more members of "civil society," dressed alternately as skeletons or ghouls, shout "save the planet" platitudes.
Inside the conference halls, stilt-walking clowns hand out more literature, and advertisements for special theater events. Before the pie-throwing tantrum, Greenpeace staged a "Climate change dance and song routine." The Climate Action Network performed a mock "carbon audit" throughout the conference center to illustrate how energy is being wasted. KIKO, a green extremist group from Japan staged a "symbolic suicide," to demonstrate how the earth is killing itself.
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Another big theater event was the construction of a sandbag dike around a reflection pool at the conference center. The dike, about 150 yards long and five feet tall, took a day to build, by thousands of people who were symbolically doing their part to build a dike to block out global warming.
Where does the money come from to pay for all these people to travel around the world to engage in this foolishness? We know for sure that five of these NGOs, (including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund) are identified in the financial reports of the Global Environment Facility, as "collaborators" in projects funded to the tune of more than $750 million per year. The purpose of many of those projects is described as "to elevate public awareness."
These NGOs are the activist army of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the granddaddy of all extremist NGOs. The IUCN develops the policy proposals which the United Nations legitimizes through international treaties. The NGOs drum up public support through extravagant propaganda so the treaties are adopted at international conferences and implemented by participating governments.
The uncivil acts of the so-called "civil society" attract the attention of the press. The siege in Seattle surrounding the WTO meeting is a recent example. The press amplifies the claims of the extremists and public opinion is influenced - without the benefit of factual information.
Here at the Hague, there is a steady drumbeat of misinformed accusations that the "luxury emissions" from the United States are causing the flooding in England and Australia. We heard the same accusations in Buenos Aires, shortly after Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America. Countless scientific studies have failed to reveal any connection at all to extreme weather events caused by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Facts do not matter. As the founder of Greenpeace said in a Forbes magazine article, "It doesn't matter what is true; what matters is what people think is true." This is certainly the philosophy that drives the strategy and tactics of the green machine here at the Hague.
What do the extremists want? For starters, they want to ban the use of fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and hydro-electric dams. They want to force Americans in particular, to transform their "patterns of production and consumption" according to the principles of sustainable development.
In plain English, this means choking our industrial capacity, forcing industry, and jobs, to the developing world, which is not bound by the Kyoto Protocol. It means forcing American citizens off private property, into sustainable communities, where they must travel on foot, on bicycles, or on public light-rail people-movers. It means forcing Americans to live in common-wall, low-rise, high-density housing, built and managed in public-private partnerships with NGOs and selected businesses. It means abandoning the free-market, and moving to a managed economy, in which the government decides which products are "sustainable," and which are not - regardless of the price.
In plain English, "sustainable development" is a euphemism for a managed society. Management of the new globally sustainable village, of course, is vested in the United Nations, and administered by national agencies which we once recognized to be sovereign nations.
The Kyoto Protocol, now in the final stages of negotiation here in the Hague, is, as French President, Jacques Chirac told the delegates, "the first component of an authentic global governance."
Despite this admission, the Clinton/Gore administration continues to push for full implementation of the Protocol. A cadre of liberal Senators and Congressmen are also pushing for final approval. The year 2000 has been targeted by the United Nations as the turning point in history - the point beyond which there is no turning back for the long-held dream of global governance.
This is the year. The Kyoto Protocol is the first "authentic component." For all practical purposes, the success of the U.N. will be determined by who moves into the White House next January. Should Al Gore continue the current administration, global governance will surely advance. Should there be a change, there is still a chance that it can be slowed, if not stopped completely.
