`Eco 92' Must Be Stopped! - RIO UNCED CONFERENCE THREATENS SOVEREIGNTY, DEVELOPMENT - I. INTRODUCTION In June 1992, representatives of the 166 governments of the world--including numerous heads of state--will be brought together in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Also known as the ``Earth Summit'' or ``Eco 92,'' the gathering is expected to formulate a so-called ``Earth Charter'' and a parallel action program, dubbed ``Agenda 21,'' intended to subject the development aspirations, especially of developing sector nations, to global environmental controls. But the truth is that ``Eco 92'' is a giant fraud and hoax, whose real objective is to consolidate the Malthusian New World Order promoted by the Anglo-American financial elite, a New World Order premised on: * the continued looting of the developing sector by the international financial community; * the end of national sovereignty; and * the final destruction of any hope for industrial development in the nations of the South. The Schiller Institute is issuing this White Paper to expose the true intentions of the oligarchical architects of Eco 92; to debunk the pseudo-scientific myths upon which it is premised; to explain the historial roots of the Malthusian policies now repackaged as ``sustainable development;'' and to urge the international community to stop the ``Eco 92'' conference from ever occuring. II. THE REAL AGENDA The premises of the proposed ``Earth Charter'' and ``Agenda 21'' are that the world is faced with an imminent ecological catastrophe, unbridled population growth, and disappearing food supplies and natural resources. Development, they argue, must therefore be sharply curtailed, and {legally binding } ``green conditionalities'' must be imposed on the nations of the world. The philosophical outlook underlying these points is the pagan world view represented by the Gaia cult, to which many of Eco 92's organizers adhere, and which places man on a par with lower life forms such as microbes, and defines ``Mother Earth,'' not man, as a sacred being, to be preserved at any and all cost. With this foundation, ``Eco 92'' has the following principal objectives: 1) An End to National Sovereignty --------------------------------- The one-world concept of a {Global Commons} would replace the concept of a ``community of principle'' based upon inviolable national sovereignty. No longer would a nation's forests, rivers, mineral and other biological resources, be viewed as a part of their national patrimony, to be harnessed for the well-being and development of its population. Instead, they would be considered mankind's ``heritage,'' warranting legally binding global regulation, perhaps under the auspices of a new ``United Nations Environmental Security Council.'' The ongoing drive to ``internationalize'' the Brazilian Amazon is the first major test of this concept. 2) Depopulation --------------- The UNCED Secretariat argues in its document on population that the earth's ``biological systems ... are in danger of losing their capacity to sustain the rising tide of population and meet resource demands.'' Developing sector nations are held responsible for this ``runaway population growth,'' which soaks up resources that could otherwise go to environmental controls, and which furthermore ``needlessly exposes many millions of women to the physical hardships of pregnancy and childbirth in parts of the world where adequate medical care is unavailable.'' Their proposed solution is that methods of population reduction, including involuntary abortion and sterilization such as already practiced in China, Brazil, and elsewhere, should become globally enforceable. An early precedent for this kind of global population control strategy was adopted secretly by the U.S. government during the period 1974-77, under U.S. National Security directors Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. A series of memoranda was issued by the U.S. National Security Council, arguing that U.S. control over developing sector natural resources was being threatened by the growth of population in those nations, and that this constituted a ``security threat'' to the U.S. The most explicit of those documents, National Security Study Memorandum 200, targeted 13 strategically important Third World nations for radical depopulation programs, and recommended means to foist such programs on those target nations. NSSM 200 pointedly complained about Third World ``wishful thinking that economic development will solve the problem'' of supposed overpopulation. 3) Technological Apartheid -------------------------- Under the pretext of prohibiting environmentally unsound technologies, developing nations would be subjected to {technological apartheid,} denying them the right to develop advanced technologies in the nuclear, aerospace, chemical, biological and other fields. This would not only destroy their chances for high technology-based growth to overcome underdevelopment, but in many areas would send them back to pre-industrial times. In fact, the UNCED proposals on technology transfer explicitly argue for employment of ``appropriate technologies'' (that is, backward ones) and ``indigenous capacity building.'' For example, under the fiction of the ``Ozone Depletion Theory'' (see below), underdeveloped nations would be denied the technology for large-scale refrigeration so critical to solving their population's food needs. Because of the nuclear waste scare, nations would be denied access to nuclear energy, forcing them to fall back on burning nonrenewable resources such as oil, gas, coal, and wood--ironically, the greatest pollutants! And the economies of the advanced sector would also be gradually stripped of ``offending technologies,'' leading to the dismantling of such vital industries as nuclear energy, medical research, and so on. 4) Zero Economic Growth ----------------------- People like UNCED Secretary General Maurice Strong argue that they are not really against development, per se; it's just that environmental concerns must also be considered--thus the new catch-word, ``sustainable development.'' This argument is an utter fraud, meaning in practice that development must cease in order to ``save the environment.'' The false premise behind ``sustainable development'' is that mankind faces unsolvable problems of ``resource scarcity'' and ``population pressures,'' exactly as described in the Club of Rome's 1972 report ``Limits to Growth.'' But resources are permanently scarce, and population growth inexorably outstrips production --which is precisely ``Eco 92's'' goal! Only if one denies mankind's unique capacity to employ science and technology to create new resources, can one accept the environmentalist/Malthusian premise of a dying, overpopulated planet. 5) Enforced Backwardness ------------------------ Under the banner of defending ``indigenous rights,'' Eco '92 would encourage developing nations to return to the ``environmentally sustainable'' days of the Stone Age. Consider the arguments of Brazilian Environment Secretary Jose Lutzenberger, an ``indigenous rights'' fanatic, Gaia worshipper, and host of Eco '92: ``For about two million years, maybe 99% of its history, the human species practiced a [hunting-and-gathering] lifestyle. Within this lifestyle, living from hunting and gathering, man finds himself perfectly integrated into his natural environment, he does not have the means nor, what is more important, the desire to destroy the natural world of which he considers himself merely a part.... This lifestyle is perfectly sustainable, which is proven by its longevity. There is no population explosion and no degradation of the environment.'' What Lutzenberger fails to report is that a hunting and gathering-based society could not support a global population greater than 10 million people. Does Minister Lutzenberger propose to simply kill off the remaining 5 1/2 billion people? UNCED is preparing a special charter of ``indigenous rights'' to be codified at Eco '92, which would erect a legal barrier between these people and the rest of human civilization, in order to ``preserve'' them in glorified Stone Age misery. 6) Debt Collection ------------------ With ``sustainable development'' (i.e., zero economic growth) legally enforceable under Eco '92, the banks and financial institutions which heavily fund the environmentalist movement will be the big beneficiaries: rather than producing for their own development, developing sector nations will be forced to channel even more of their resources into debt repayment. One brand-new mechanism for enforcing this is the so-called ``debt for nature'' swap, under which developing sector nations are pressured to hand over territory for internationally-supervised ``environmental protection,'' in exchange for (minuscule) debt cancellation. According to a UNCED briefing paper, ``Although established on a very small scale, these (debt-for-nature) swaps have provided badly needed new resources for conservation. They could, however, be `scaled up' as part of a broader approach to the debt question... There is even some indication that despite their dislike of the conditionality attached to structural adjustment programmes, a number of Latin American countries would be willing to have debt relief tied to their adoption of detailed national plans for sustainable development.'' It is no accident that such institutions as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are in on the ground floor of the planning for Eco-92, promoting the notion of ``environmental protection exchange programs'' which would force debtor countries to reduce population growth, abandon allegedly unsound technologies and industrial processes, and swap debt for nature. There is similarly much talk about creating a Global Environmental Facility, administered by the World Bank, and of an Earth Fund administered by former International Monetary Fund directors, which would control a large portion of the funds available for the ``sustainable development'' projects such debt swaps would require. The head of the U.S. delegation to the UNCED preparatory meetings, Assistant Secretary of State Curtis Bohlen, summed up the blackmail content of this approach when he declared in Geneva: ``I would hope that we would never fund projects that do not promote environmentally sustainable development.'' 7) Paganism ----------- In one sense, the most important objective of ``Eco 92'' is to consolidate a ``New Age'' cultural paradigm shift which has been underway for two decades: to destroy the idea of ``man in the living image of God,'' and thus capable of infinite development, and replace it with pagan beliefs that equate man with each and every other animal species. Thus, UNCED head Maurice Strong has described Eco-92 as ``a whole new vision'' and as a ``sea change in relations between countries and people.'' The outlook of Brazil's Environment Secretary, Jose Lutzenberger, is exemplary of this ``new vision.'' Lutzenberger heads the Gaia Society in Brazil, and claims that ``ecology has never been a technical question, but a religious one.'' Lutzenberger explains: ``For the nature worshipper, nature is not merely the object of study and manipulation, she is much more. She is divine ... she is sacred, and we humans are merely a part of her.... In the body of Gaia, we individual humans are just the cells of one of her tissues, a tissue which today seems to be cancerous... Industrial society is significantly interfering, opposing the trends of Gaia.'' In his book entitled ``The Human Avalanche,'' Lutzenberger writes: ``In the living world, in its infinite complexity, population growth is always controlled. Among more primitive beings, [demographic control] is blind, intermittent and brutal. A population of bacteria, provided with an appropriate environment, will grow exponentially, but long before it fully achieves its designs, before consuming its resources, it destroys itself through its own toxins. Equilibrium is reestablished.... How ironic, Man, the `king of creation,' who, because of his cerebral complexity, now finds himself at the apex of the Pyramid of Life, with all his intellectual capacity, his science, his technology, is readying himself to again submit to blind and inexorable forces, is readying himself to return to the level of the bacteria.'' Lutzenberger won his appointment to the Brazilian cabinet through the influence of Prince Charles of England, a fellow earth worshipper. In fact, many leaders of the Gaia Foundation in England are closely tied to the British royal family, whose Prince Philip--the Queen's consort--is head of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, a leading sponsor of Eco-92. Prince Philip, too, shares a fascination for the lowly microbe, and has publicly expressed a desire to be reincarnated as a ``deadly virus'' so that he could help eliminate the world's excess human population. In a May 18, 1990 address to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Prince Philip asserted: ``it is now apparent that the ecological pragmatism of the so-called pagan religions, such as that of the American Indians, the Polynesians, and the Australian Aborigines, was a great deal more realistic in terms of conservation ethics than the more intellectual monotheistic philosophies of the revealed religions.'' III.- THE SCIENTIFIC HOAXES One of the central arguments used by the organizers of Eco 92 is that, unless the nations of the world act to stop environmental destruction, there will be giant catastrophes that will wipe out the planet. Since the probability of these catastrophes has supposedly already been proven by the constant barrage of articles in the news media reporting on such "scientific" predictions, the negotiators for the Earth Summit have dismissed the science, and are now only negotiating the politics. But the fact is that every one of these environmental doomsday theories is a scientific fraud. Dozens, if not hundreds, of the world's leading scientists have debunked these theories in great detail in the scientific literature and at scientific forums. The news media, however, has an explicit policy of not reporting on the work of these scientists. The so-called scientific meetings that were called by the UNCED-linked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other pseudo-scientific bodies deliberately excluded any scientists who have challenged the doomsday theories, establishing a "scientific consensus" based on flawed or deliberately fraudulent data. Before Christopher Columbus sailed to the new world, the "scientific consensus" was that the Earth was flat. Sometimes all it takes is one individual to stand up for the truth to overturn entire sets of beliefs in science. In the case of environmental doomsday theories, it is the world's most renowned scientists who are challenging the claims of junior scientists who have risen to fame and wealth through their environmental catastrophe theories. Here are some of the salient scientific facts that refute the media hysteria. 1) Ozone Depletion ------------------ The basis of the ozone depletion theory is that chlorine molecules from the alleged breakup of man-made chlorfluorocarbons (CFCs) in the stratosphere (a phenomenon that has never been observed to happen in real life), break up ozone molecules, thereby increasing the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface of the Earth. Never mentioned is the fact that the amount of chlorine in CFCs is absolutely insignificant in comparison to natural sources of chlorine: The total amount of chlorine contained in a year's production of CFCs is 750,000 tons (of which only 1%, or about 7,500 tons makes it to the stratosphere, according to the theory). In contrast, natural sources (the oceans, volcanoes, etc.) pump more than 650 million tons of chlorine into the atmosphere every year. The comparison is even more shocking when one takes into account that only a very small percentage of CFCs is actually broken up in the stratosphere (according to the theory). Just since the month of June, for example, the volcanic eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, Mt. Unzen in Japan, and Mt. Hudson in Chile have injected more than 8 million tons of chlorine into the atmosphere, a large percentage of which was injected directly into the stratosphere, where it is now circling the Earth. The Antarctic ozone hole that is the subject of scare headlines is actually a natural and seasonal phenomenon discovered by ozone research pioneer Gordon Dobson and his collaborators in 1956. Furthermore, recently reexamined data from France's Antartic scientific station at Dumont D'Urville, shows that the Antarctic Ozone Hole was actully deeper in 1958 than at any time in the past two decades. 2) Global Warming ----------------- The Global Warming scare is based entirely on the prediction of computer models that claim a rise in worldwide temperatures of several degrees caused by an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The public is never told that these computer models have proven themselves to be completely incapable of predicting future climate. These models have to deal with thousands of variables, most of which are still unknown. The change of just variable in these models, that of cloud feedback, makes the exact same models predict an Ice Age, with kilometer-thick glaciers over New York City in 50 years, instead of global warming. Despite the claims that the Earth has been warming for the past 100 years, neither the data nor the methods used to analyze this data are very reliable. Furthermore, even looking at the alleged global warming chart, one immediately notices that most of the warming ocurred by 1940, after which there was a pronounced cooling which lasted until 1976, when many of the present proponents of global warming were predicting an Ice Age. This pattern completely contradicts the global warming theory, since less than one fifth of all emissions of carbon dioxide had occurred by 1940. 3) Nuclear Waste ---------------- Most of what we call nuclear waste is actually a valuable resource. More than 96 percent of the so-called waste produced by nuclear reactors can be reprocessed to be reused as uranium or plutonium fuel for reactors; only about 4 percent is actually high-level radioactive waste that requires disposal. Even this high-level waste could be transformed into a resource: advanced isotope separation technologies could separate and concentrate it into its constitutent isotopes, thus providing costly and scarce strategic metals like rhodium, ruthenium, and palladium. There are nearly 500 radioactive isotopes that could be "mined" in this way, many of which are used in medical procedures and in providing fuel for themoelectric generators. From the beginning of the nuclear age, scientists have been convinced that the disposal of high-level waste is technologically feasible and safe. The problems are not scientific but political. All the nuclear nations reprocess their spent fuel, except the United States. By treating as "waste" all of the spent fuel produced by a single 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant over 40 years, we are throwing away the equivalent of 130 million barrels of oil, or 37 million tons of coal. 4) Pesticides ------------- Pesticides have played an important role in making possible an abundant supply of food at reasonable prices and stopping the spread of pest-transmitted diseases. They are essential for mankind's well-being and survival. Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, a well-known U.S. entomologist from San Jose State University, has estimated that the antipesticide activities of the environmentalist movement in the United States are responsible, both directly and indirectly, for the death of 100 million people a year. As pesticides and insecticides were restricted because of environmentalists' campaigns, insect-borne diseases like malaria again became widespread and crop production and agricultural productivity declined. Edwards states, "I can't see any good reason for these actions except that the environmentalists intend to cut the population in the poorer nations of the world." 5) Carcinogens -------------- In the 40 or so years that the use of synthetic chemicals in food has been widespread, cancer rates--except for lung cancer--have not risen in the United States. Dr. Bruce Ames, chairman of the Departemnt of Biochemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, has stated that exposure to man-made carcinogens is not the kind of threat that enviornmentalists have portrayed it as, because: a) the evidence is that these carcinogens do not damage DNA; b) exposure to man-made carcinogens is trivial compared to exposure to natural carcinogens; and c) there is evidence that extrapolating the high doses of carcinogens given to rats to low-dose human exposure is not accurate. Ames and others have shown that Americans today ingest about 10,000 times more of natural carcinogens than man-made carcinogens. 6) Deforestation ---------------- Deforestation is in fact a very serious ecological problem. However, what is never mentioned to the public is that more than 60% of global deforestation is the result of the use of wood as a fuel source. A study by the United Nations has documented that 83% of logs cut down are used as firewood. Another 20 to 25% of deforestation is the result of slash-and-burn primitive agriculture. In Central Africa, for example, IMF conditionalities have forced most countries to use wood as a fuel, since it doesn't require the use of foreign exchange, which the IMF insists be used solely to pay the foreign debt. As a result, most Central African countries obtain more than 90% of their energy from burning firewood! Most shocking, this is exactly the "sustainable energy" policy proposed by the environmentalists, who call for "biomass burning" to replace fossil fuels. Although indiscriminate logging in certain parts of the world has indeed caused severe damage, logging accounts for only approximately 18% of deforestation. Given the massive forest destruction resulting from existing "sustainable" energy and agricultural policies, a stop to all logging will not significantly stop deforestation. The solution is advanced energy production, including nuclear energy, and modern agricultural production methods--exactly the opposite of what the environmentalists propose. IV.- THE ROOTS OF `ECO 92' The sponsors of Eco 92 promote the myth that environmental issues first surfaced as a ``grass-roots movement,'' and that only with great sacrifice on the part of many concerned individuals everywhere were the governments of the world forced to take up the fight. The fact is that Eco 92 is the culmination of a several-decade Malthusian conspiracy which got its official start in 1972, with the simultaneous publication of the Club of Rome report ``Limits to Growth'' and the appointment of Canadian Maurice Strong as secretary general of the U.N. Conference on Human Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden, that year. Club of Rome member Strong is today also the secretary general of UNCED. The so-called Stockholm Conference was key to launching the global ecology movement in earnest. As Strong himself describes it, ``The Stockholm Conference put environment on the international agenda. The Earth Summit will move it into the center of economic policy and decision making.'' According to a U.N. briefing paper on UNCED, Strong is to be credited with the idea of assuaging developing sector sensibilities on environmental and population matters by ``changing the political dynamic of the Conference preparations to bring the concerns of the developing countries about natural resource management, poverty, and the need for more equitable patterns of development, to the fore.'' Strong, a Canadian oil millionaire with a long history of involvement with numerous high-level and well-funded environmental institutes, was also a commissioner for the World Commission for Environment and Development, or ``Bruntland Commission,'' set up by U.N. mandate in December 1983. The Bruntland Commission's 1987 report ``Our Common Future,'' is considered a blueprint for the ``Earth Charter'' to be formulated during Eco '92. Its primary contribution, according to UNCED reports, was its argument that the environment had to become ``a mainstream economic issue.'' In fact, ``Our Common Future'' popularized the concept of ``sustainable development.'' Funding for this international Malthusian conspiracy comes from the same place as its policy line: the blue-blood ``Establishment'' foundations in Great Britain, the United States, and a handful of other countries. For example, the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, which lent its name to UNCED and which is today deeply involved in preparations for Eco 92, is funded by such leading Anglo-American banks and companies as American Express Foundation, Atlantic Richfield Foundation, Barclays Bank, Bankers Trust Foundation, Citibank, Morgan Guaranty Trust, National Westminster Bank, Security Pacific Foundation, Shell Companies Foundation, Standard and Chartered Bank, Royal Dutch Shell, and so forth. Its current chairman is Robert O. Anderson, a board member of Kissinger Associates, former chairman of Atlantic Richfield oil corporation, and a chief founder and patron of the Aspen Institute. The Geneva-based Center for Our Common Future, a clearing-house for the world environmental movement and the acknowledged ``private'' organizing body for Eco 92, is funded by several governments, the City of Geneva, the Gro Harlem Bruntland Environment Foundation, and the Chicago-headquartered John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The latter is also one of the leading funders of environmentalist projects in the United States, and played a central role--together with the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, among others--in setting up and/or funding such organizations as the World Resources Institute, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Worldwatch Institute, Environmental Defense Fund, and so on. V.- STOPPING ECO 92 But all is not proceeding as smoothly as Strong and his blue-blood backers would like. There are growing signs that many nations--especially among the developing sector--are balking at the refurbished Malthusianism that is being peddled. For example, Malaysian prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad announced Aug. 16 that his country might boycott the Eco '92 conference altogether, on the grounds that it is a new form of imperialism. Similarly, the Brazilian Armed Forces, along with a number of congressmen and governors in that country, see Eco '92 as an explicit assault on their national sovereignty, and have even threatened to go to war to protect the Amazon from being ``internationalized.'' A G-77 delegate to UNCED recently said the developing nations would not negotiate away ``our permanent sovereignty over our natural resources'' at Eco '92. And the Algerian delegate to UNCED warned that Eco '92 might usher in a new era of ``green conditionality'' that would inhibit economic growth in the Third World. But it is not enough to protest one or another aspect of Eco 92, to try to ``separate the good from the bad.'' The Eco 92 summit must be cancelled outright. Its underlying Malthusian premises must be emphatically and explicitly rejected. And the world community of nations should instead convoke an urgent conference to discuss how to bring about a true Fourth Development Decade, based on the inalienable right of all nations to sovereignty and economic development.