From Johannesburg, South Africa ...
Hate for U.S. dominates World Summit
By Dr. Michael S. Coffman
August 29, 2002
Hatred of the U.S. is palpable among the various state and NGO delegations. While such hatred is prevalent in all U.N. meetings, it seems to be especially acrimonious at the World Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Most of the acrimony centers on perceived trade barriers, subsidies (especially farm subsidies) and the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol by the U.S. As the heads of state and government gather in Johannesburg, the summit was deadlocked late Friday, over 14 issues in a 70-page "Plan of Implementation," pitting the developed nations against the developing nations, and the United States against the European Union (EU).
Meeting the development and environment goals set down by the U.N.'s Millennium Summit -- the backbone of the summit's Plan of Implementation -- will cost up to 85 billion dollars per year, more than 40 percent more than originally estimated, a World Bank official said. Indonesian chief negotiator, Emil Salim, said that the 14 contested points had become "political issues.... If this summit fails, then the United Nations fails."
Similarly, British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott warned: "If we fail here, things would unravel on a scale that we have not seen before in international negotiations.... That would be tragic for the whole world, and most of all for those who are in poverty and despair."
The U.S. continues to be the target of blame for all the ills of the world. While the deep suspicion of the developed nations by the undeveloped nations continues, the strongest words were uttered by environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Friends of the Earth called the U.S., Canada and Australia the "axis of evil." Daniel Mittler, spokesman for Friends of the Earth said that, "Instead of using the Earth summit to respond to global concerns over deregulation and liberalization, governments are pushing the World Trade Organization's agenda and re-branding it as 'sustainable development.'"
Environmentalists are incensed that many of the developed nations, led by the U.S., are promoting free markets and free trade. They are placing banners with the slogan "Don't Let Big Businesses Rule the World" at the summit. To environmentalists, wealth is somehow "the root of evil behind environmental problems, when in reality, all evidence is to the contrary," claimed Chris Horner of the think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, in Washington, D.C. Horner notes that the only solution to environmental woes is a wealthier planet. "Wealthier is healthier, and cleaner."
The U.S. is firing back at the environmentalists. U.S. AID Administrator, Andrew Natsios, accused environmental groups yesterday of endangering the lives of millions of famine-threatened Africans by encouraging their governments to reject geneticly modified U.S. food aid. "They can play these games with Europeans, who have full stomachs, but it is revolting and despicable to see them do so when the lives of Africans are at stake," Mr. Natsios said in an interview.
"They are using big-time, very well-organized propaganda the likes of which I have never seen before" in 12 years of American-led famine-relief efforts, said Mr. Natsios, who could not persuade the Zambians to accept U.S. food aid. "The Bush administration is not going to sit there and let these groups kill millions of poor people in southern Africa through their ideological campaign," Mr. Natsios said on the sidelines of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
In spite of the strong possibility of massive famine in Zambia, environmentalists have been intensively lobbying Zambia, Mozambique and other regional states not to take genetically modified U.S. corn. Major research studies in the past several years have shown the corn is safe, but the environmental groups say it could cause dangerous mutations if it grows alongside the local varieties.
Without any research to back them up, environmentalists have also told Zambian and other African leaders that it could endanger the health of those who eat it. Zimbabwe has refused modified U.S. corn on the grounds that farmers might plant some of the seeds, which might cross-fertilize with the country's native corn. In turn, this would jeopardize the country's future food exports to Europe, which only allows a handful of geneticly modified crops.
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 13 million people face starvation in southern Africa, with up to 300,000 dying in the next six months. This does not seem to concern environmentalists, however.
Prior to the start of the World Summit, one environmentalist claimed, "There is a lot of quality to be had in poverty." He also claimed that electricity is "destroying the cultures of the world's poor." Most people, especially Americans, do not realize that rank-and-file members of environmental groups do not understand the anti-human, anti-civilization goals of environmental leadership.
Gar Smith, editor of The Edge, the newsletter of Earth Island Institute, which publishes much of the environmental literature, said: "The idea that people are poor doesn't mean that they are not living good lives. I don't think a lot of electricity is a good thing. It is the fuel that powers a lot of multi-national imagery," Smith said.
According to Smith, electricity can wreak havoc on cultures. "I have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant cultures and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity," he said.
Environmentalists destroy the environment as well as people. Dr. Kelvin Kemm, a nuclear physicist in South Africa who is affiliated with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) in Washington D.C., said that Greenpeace gave the Government of Botswana $600 million to no longer kill elephants. The ban on hunting allowed the elephant herd to become over populated, which caused the trampling and destruction of the elephant's habitat and the starvation of thousand's of elephants.
This elitist, god-playing mentality is common among environmentalists. Bjorn Lomborg, former Greenpeace member and activist, says that they are wrong, sometimes with deadly consequences. He conducted a multi-year study and concluded that the dire ecological health of the earth that is being espoused by many delegates to the Earth summit is "not supported by the evidence."
Lomborg writes that "resources have become more abundant, not less so." The earth's ecological problems are "best cured, not by restricting economic growth but by accelerating it.... Only when people are rich enough to feed themselves do they begin to think about the effect of their actions on the world around them, and on future generations."
"Mr. Bush, it would seem, had best learn when to nip outrageous, mendacious rhetoric in the bud before he nurtures it by his silence," Horner said. "Barring such leadership ... the U.S. faces a grim future in this community, and among easily-led peoples everywhere."
Read more about the dangers of U.N. sustainable development and how the earth's citizens and environment are better served through individual freedom, free market enterprise, and property rights in Freedom 21, an Alternative to Agenda 21.
Dr. Coffman is CEO of Sovereignty International, and publisher of Discerning the Times, and is a part of a delegation sponsored by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.