Clint W. Murchison Sr.
Chair of Free Enterprise
College of Engineering
Global Governance: Why? How? When?
Foreword
When the Chair of Free Enterprise was originally endowed in 1976, the Board of Regents expressed its mandate to the Chair in explicit terms:
"The teaching and research activities of this Chair shall include an examination of the relationships between business management, governmental affairs, social sciences, engineering, secondary education and the free enterprise system."
Moreover, the Chair was directed to enhance the development of scholarly relationships between this academic program of The University and appropriate aspects of government, industry and other educational units.
During the past two decades, the Chair has amplified its efforts to fulfill the Regents' mandate. Regulatory ratcheting by government agencies wielding enormous power in environmental matters has severely impacted private enterprise during the recent past. Unsubstantiated claims have been made about environmental degradation caused by "industrialization" and "free enterprise." Such claims have underscored the necessity of pursuing scholarly research to explain not only the reasons for an emergence of a series of "global environmental crises" -- global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain, endangered species and the like -- but also their putative relationship to a developing strategy for "the rise of global governance."
This publication sets forth in factual detail a sequence of events indicating that latent geopolitical powers have been shaping an agenda for global governance which includes a coercive system of global taxation, supranational police powers, and the enforcement of stringent environmental standards designed to reverse if not coercively eliminate uncontrolled industrial development and its custodian, "national sovereignty."
Moreover, Third Wave Politics, as Alvin and Heidi Toffler tell us, has already begun to supplant Second Wave mass-industrial society. It is to be expected, they say, that "Creating a New Civilization" inevitably entails deep conflicts as Second Wave brute-force economies symbolized by the assembly line become supplanted by Third Wave brain-force economies symbolized by the computer. In proposing their clairvoyant vision of the future, the Tofflers leave unexplored the vacuum into which the geopolitical powers behind global governance intend to insert themselves in implementing their plans to supersede the powers of sovereign nations.
This publication presents research conducted by Henry Lamb, Chairman of Sovereignty International Incorporated. It is an initial phase in the Chair's endeavor to elevate public understanding of imminent threats to our Constitutional liberties, as well as an erosion of the freedom for innovation embodied in a private enterprise system.
M. N. Maxey, Ph.D., Director
C. W. Murchison Sr. Chair of Free Enterprise
Winter 1997
The Rise of Global Governance
Introduction
This report attempts to consolidate four years of research, hundreds of documents, and thousands of pages of material into a brief, concise word picture of how the international community has been able to move society to the brink of global governance. We hope our efforts to achieve brevity have not sacrificed clarity. At the very best, this report is no more than an introduction to a process that has been underway for many years. We have provided extensive endnotes to encourage readers to expand their studies and form their own opinions. We are convinced that the form of government created by the U.S. Constitution is in serious danger of being overwhelmed by the new spirit of globalism that is, in fact, a well conceived, well executed agenda to achieve global governance. Global governance, as it is conceived, and as it is being implemented, cannot tolerate individual freedom or private property rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
The conflicting philosophies of governance are on a collision course. On the one side is a small handful of people who have recognized the erosion of Constitutional principles in recent years. On the other side is a tidal wave of UN organizations and agencies, reinforced by a multitude of non-government organizations, sweeping across the planet, flooding societies with the notion that problems can be solved only through remedies offered by and imposed through the massive UN system.
We hope this report will be a starting point that will serve as a catalyst for a variety of responses that result in a reaffirmation of the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Ultimately, it is the values, beliefs, and attitudes that celebrate, protect, and promote individual freedom that can empower societies to overcome whatever problems that arise. These are the values that offer solutions to the world's problems. These are the values that America can share with the world. These are the values that are being eroded by the rise of global governance.
We wish to acknowledge with deep appreciation the efforts of those who reviewed this report: Dr. Margaret Maxey; Dr. Michael Coffman; Floy Lilley, JD; Tom McDonnell, and Willy Peterson. Their work helped to improve both the accuracy and readability of this information. The content, however, along with any errors that may remain, are the sole responsibility of the author.
We hope this publication will be useful to all who cherish freedom.
The Rise of Global Governance
By Henry Lamb
The desire to rule the world has been a part of the human experience throughout recorded history. Alexander the Great led Greece to dominance of the known world, only to become the victim of Rome's quest for world dominance. The Roman Empire, built on bloody battlefields across the land, was swallowed up by the Holy Roman Empire, built on the fear and hopes of helpless people. History is a record of the competition for global dominance. In every age, there has always been a force somewhere, conniving to conquer the world with ideas clothed in promises imposed by military might. The 20th century is no different from any other: Marx, Lenin, and Hitler reflect some of the ideas which competed for world dominance in the 1900s. The competition is still underway. The key players change from time to time, as do the words that describe the various battlefields, but the competing ideas remain the same.
One of the competitors is the idea that people are born free, "totally free and sovereign," and choose to surrender specified freedoms to a limited government to achieve mutual benefits. The other competitor is the idea that government must be sovereign in order to distribute benefits equitably and to manage the activities of people to protect them from one another. The first idea, the idea of free people, is the idea that compelled the pilgrims to migrate to America. The U.S. Constitution represents humanity's best effort to organize and codify the idea of free people sovereign over limited government. It is a relatively new idea in the historic competition for world dominance.
The other idea, the idea of sovereign government, is not new. Historically, the conqueror was the government. The Emperor, the King, the conqueror by whatever name, established his government by appointment and established laws by decree. Variations of this idea emerged over time to give the perception that the people had some say in the development of law. The Soviet Union, for example, held elections to choose its leaders; but the system assured the outcome of the elections as well as the ultimate sovereignty of the government. During the 1700s, the first idea was ascendant as evidenced by the creation of America. During the 1900s, the second idea has again become ascendant as evidenced by the emergence of global governance. This report identifies and traces some of the major forces, events, and personalities that are responsible for the rise of global governance in the 20th century.
The League of Nations (1900-1924)
Competition for world dominance was fierce in the first quarter of the 20th century. New, dynamic ideas emerged to fill the vacuum created by the crumbling British Empire and the end of the colonial era. At the turn of the century, America, though hardly a world leader, was expanding rapidly. Economic and technological advances attracted worldwide interest. Halfway around the world, another idea was taking hold. The oppression of Nicholas II in Russia, combined with the influence of Karl Marx, gave rise to the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) which became the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the party platform called for the "establishment of nurseries for infants and children in all shops, factories, and other enterprises that employ women"1 and for the "nationalization and re-distribution of land."2 What began as a rebellion against the oppression of government sovereignty as imposed by Czar Nicholas was hijacked by Lenin who, with his colleagues Stalin and Trotsky, promptly replaced the Czar's oppression with their own. Within weeks after Nicholas' assassination, Lenin nationalized all private, ecclesiastical and czarist land without compensation. He introduced press censorship, nationalized big industry, outlawed strikes, nationalized the banks, built up a police force and ordered the requisition of grain from the peasants to feed the Red Army.3 By the time Lenin died in 1924, Stalin had consolidated his power and organized his government to become the world's most dominant example of the idea of government sovereignty.
Americans were far too busy earning a living to pay much attention to the tumult in Russia. While Lenin's party was forging the Principles of Communism in 1903, Orville Wright made his historic flight. The first automobile trip across the United States was completed, and the U.S. government ratified the Panama Canal Treaty. Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913, and Ford Motor Company shocked the industrialized world by raising wages from $2.40 for a nine-hour day to $5 for an eight-hour day in 1914. Americans were divided about entering the First World War, but did in 1917, and had a million troops in Europe when the war ended in 1918 when the warring parties accepted Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" which became the basis for the League of Nations.
Edward Mandell House was Wilson's chief advisor. He persuaded Wilson to sign the Federal Reserve Act and he was the real architect of the League of Nations.4 House was no ordinary advisor. He was Wilson's "alter ego," and he was an "unabashed and unapologetic" socialist.5 House published a novel in 1912 entitled Philip Dru: Administrator. The story is a recitation of socialist thinking enacted by Dru, whose purpose was "to pursue Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx," and who, in the story, replaced Constitutional government with "omnicompetent" government in which "the property and lives of all were now in the keeping of one man."6 In the story, Dru created a "League of Nations" much like the League of Nations he fashioned for Woodrow Wilson.
More importantly, House came to his position with Woodrow Wilson from an elite circle of friends known as the "Inquiry": Paul Warburg, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, John W. Davis, among others, all of whom had direct interest in the Federal Reserve System and great interest in the League of Nations. House was well on his way to transforming Woodrow Wilson into his fictional Philip Dru -- until the Senate refused to ratify the League of Nations in 1920. Embarrassed and defeated, Wilson died four years later, ironically, the same year Lenin died.
The dream of world domination, however, did not die. House and his friends realized that public opinion in America had to be changed before any form of world government could succeed. While shuttling to Europe on post-war peace negotiations, House arranged an assembly of dignitaries from which was created the Institute of International Affairs which had two branches. In London, it was called the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA); in New York, it was called the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), formed officially July 29, 1921.
The founding President of the CFR was John W. Davis, personal attorney to J. P. Morgan. Paul Cravath and Russell Leffingwell, both Morgan associates, were also among the founding officers.7 Money for the new organizations was provided by J. P. Morgan, Bernard Baruch, Otto Kahn, Jacob Schiff, Paul Warburg, and John D. Rockefeller, the same people involved in the forming of the Federal Reserve.8 The purpose of the CFR was to create a stream of scholarly literature to promote the benefits of world government, and attract a membership of rich intellectuals who could influence the direction of foreign policy in America. The CFR, supported by the world's wealthiest foundations and individuals, has been extremely successful. Its flagship publication, Foreign Affairs, is the port-of-entry for many ideas that become public policy. The U.S. delegation to the founding conference of the United Nations included 47 members of the CFR. The Secretary-General of the conference, Alger Hiss, was a member of the CFR. Hiss was later convicted of perjury for lying about having provided government documents to a Communist espionage ring.9
The first quarter of the 20th century forced America into a world war where the strength of its economy and effectiveness of its technology were displayed to the world. On the other side of the Atlantic, Russia gave birth to Stalin's version of Communism. At the time, both nations were primarily concerned about domestic issues with little thought of dominating the world. The Soviet Union exemplified the idea of government sovereignty; America exemplified the idea of free people sovereign over its government. Sooner or later, the two ideas had to collide. Other competitors were also at work. The CFR began to rebuild its plans for a world government, and a new competitor arose on Russia's eastern border.
The United Nations (1925-1950)
While Stalin reigned over "The Great Terror," in which an estimated 20 million Russians were executed, and instituted the first of a series of "five-year plans,"10 America struggled through some of its hardest years. Prohibition brought organized crime, Federal Reserve policies brought a stock market crash, drought brought a dust bowl to the bread basket, and a nation-wide depression brought crushing poverty to most Americans.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to the White House in 1932. The CFR was to Roosevelt what Edward House was to Woodrow Wilson. "The organization [CFR] essentially ran FDR's State Department."11 Henry Wallace, a committed Marxist, was FDR's Secretary of Agriculture.12 The "New Deal" delivered by Roosevelt resembled the performance of Philip Dru in Edward House's novel.
By 1941, Hitler had invaded Russia and Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. For the next five years the world tried to commit suicide. Those not caught up in the war, the CFR, realized that the war provided an excellent reason for the nations of the world to try once again to create a global institution that could prevent war. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, recommended the creation of a Presidential Advisory Committee on Post War Foreign Policy. The committee was the planning commission for the United Nations. Ten of the committee's 14 members were members of the CFR.13
The process of creating the United Nations lasted throughout the war. The first public step was the Atlantic Charter (August 14, 1941), signed by Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, which committed the two nations to a "permanent system of general security." Because Stalin was under attack by Germany, Russia was forced to join the allies in the Moscow Declaration (October 30, 1943) which declared the necessity of establishing an international organization to maintain peace and security. The Dumbarton Oaks Conversations (August, 1944) which produced the World Bank, also settled political and legal issues that were drafted into the UN Charter. The Yalta Summit (February, 1945) produced a compromise which gave the Soviets three votes (USSR, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine) in exchange for voting procedures demanded by the U.S.14 Edward Stettinius made another extremely significant concession. He agreed that the UN official in charge of military affairs would be designated by the Russians. Fourteen individuals have held the position since the UN was created; all were Russians.15 The committee designed and FDR sold the United Nations to the 50 nations that came to the San Francisco conference in 1945. Among the 47 CFR members in the official U.S. delegation were: Edward Stettinius, the new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, Adlai Stevenson, Nelson Rockefeller, and Alger Hiss. To ensure that the new organization would be located in America, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., donated the land for the UN headquarters.16
In his 1962 book, Why Not Victory, former Senator Barry Goldwater recalls that the UN was approved by the Senate largely because of the representations of the State Department which assured the Senate that:
"... it [UN] in no sense constituted a form of World Government and that neither the Senate nor the American people need be concerned that the United Nations or any of its agencies would interfere with the sovereignty of the United States or with the domestic affairs of the American People."17
Five years later, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, CFR member James Warburg said: "We shall have world government whether or not you like it — by conquest or consent."18
The ink on the UN Charter had not yet dried when the Charter for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) was presented in London, November, 1945. UNESCO swallowed and expanded the Paris-based International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation which was a holdover from the League of Nations. Julian Huxley was the prime mover of UNESCO and served as its first Director-General. Huxley had served on Britain's Population Investigation Commission before World War II and was vice president of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944. In a 1947 document entitled UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, Huxley wrote:
"Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable."19
UNESCO's primary function is set forth in its Charter: "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed." UNESCO was created to construct a world-wide education program to prepare the world for global governance. UNESCO advisor, Bertrand Russell, writing for the UNESCO Journal, The Impact of Science on Society, said: "Every government that has been in control of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. ..."20 The National Education Association was a major advocate for UNESCO. In a 1942 article in the NEA Journal, written by Joy Elmer Morgan, the NEA called for "... certain world agencies of administration such as: a police force; a board of education. ..."
A year later in London, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education called for a United Nations Bureau of Education. UNESCO became the Board of Education for the world.
Huxley believed the world needed a single, global government. He saw UNESCO as an instrument to "help in the speedy and satisfactory realization of the process." He described UNESCO's philosophy as global, scientific humanism. He said: "Political unification in some sort of world government will be required for the definitive attainment" of the next stage of social development.21 From the beginning, UNESCO has designed programs to capture children at the earliest possible age to begin the educational process.
William Benton, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, told a UNESCO meeting in 1946:
"As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism. The school should therefore use the means described earlier to combat family attitudes that favor jingoism. ... We shall presently recognize in nationalism the major obstacle to development of world-mindedness. We are at the beginning of a long process of breaking down the walls of national sovereignty. UNESCO must be the pioneer."22
The UN and UNESCO were created in the wake of the worst war carnage the world had ever witnessed. Conditioned by a constant stream of propaganda produced by the CFR in America, and by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in Europe, the move toward global governance was accepted and allowed to go forward. Julian Huxley realized, however, that to be successful over the long haul, a world-wide constituency would have to be developed. In 1948, Huxley and his long-time friend and colleague, Max Nicholson, both of whom were involved with the Royal Institute of International Affairs, created the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The IUCN drew heavily from the 50-year-old British Fauna and Flora Preservation Society (FFPS) for its leadership, funding and its members. Sir Peter Scott, FFPS Chairman, drafted the IUCN Charter and headed one of its important Commissions. This important non-governmental organization (NGO) was instrumental in the formation of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961 and the World Resources Institute (WRI) in 1982. These three NGOs are to the United Nations System what the CFR was to Franklin Roosevelt, or what Edward House was to Woodrow Wilson. These three NGOs have become the driving force behind the rise of global governance.
The Cold War (1950-1970)
The dream of world dominance is not, nor has it ever been, the pursuit by an exclusive cadre of conspirators. The dream has been held by many different factions -- often simultaneously -- always in competition with one another. By 1950, at least three major forces -- all competing for world dominance -- were clearly identified. Each of the three major forces worked overtly and covertly to achieve their objectives.
The Soviet Union had clearly defined its Marx/Lenin/Stalin version of Communism. Its systematic program of expansionism -- including an active organization in the United States -- fully intended to bring all the world under its control. So confident were the Soviets of their eventual success that, on his 1959 tour of the U.S., Nikita Kruschchev pounded his shoe on a podium before the television cameras and declared to America: "We will bury you!"
America would have no part of a world under Communist rule. Senator Joseph McCarthy led a crusade against Communists in America. His campaign tarnished many non-communists but was successful in rooting out Alger Hiss, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell, all convicted of espionage-related crimes. (Because of the statute of limitations, Hiss could not be tried for espionage but was convicted of perjury for lying about his espionage activities.)23
More importantly, the televised McCarthy hearings awakened America to the "Communist threat," and when U.S. troops entered Korea to fight the communists, support for the Communist Party USA diminished steadily from a high of more than 100,000 members to its current low of about 1000 members.24 American leaders did not pound their shoes, nor proclaim a program of world dominance. American foreign and economic policy, however, left no doubt that at the very least, America intended to prevent the Soviets from achieving world dominance.
The third force competing for world dominance was not the United Nations, but the people whose dreams of a world government were frustrated by what the United Nations turned out to be. The annihilation of the League of Nations by the U.S. Senate left the advocates of world government with a large dose of reality. They realized that the UN could exist only by the grace of the U.S. and the Soviets, and that the UN itself could have no authority or power over the major powers. But it was a real start toward global governance which provided an official, if impotent, mechanism for the incremental implementation of their global aspirations.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the UN was little more than a debating society that occasionally attempted to referee disputes among the major world powers. Public attention was riveted on domestic issues and the deepening cold war. Russia's Sputnik launch was a catalyst for the launch of the U.S. space program. Fidel Castro's embrace of Communism in Cuba stiffened America's policy of "containment" -- first articulated in the CFR Journal, Foreign Affairs.25
The 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision pushed McCarthy, Communism, and the UN completely off the domestic radar screen. Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat on a Birmingham bus to a white man was the fuse that ignited an explosion of racial riots. Federal troops confronted Alabama National Guardsmen over Governor Orville Faubus' refusal to let nine black children enter Little Rock Central High School. Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his "I have a dream" speech to a quarter-million people on the Mall in Washington, and tanks rolled on the streets of Chicago and Detroit.
Domestic events also obscured American awareness of the creation of the World Wildlife Fund. The same Julian Huxley who founded UNESCO and the IUCN, along with his friend, Max Nicholson, formed the organization primarily as a way to fund the work of the IUCN. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, served as President. An auxiliary organization called the "1001 Club" charged an initiation fee of $10,000 which went into a trust fund to provide ongoing revenues to WWF. The WWF and the IUCN share an office building in Gland, Switzerland. (In 1987, the name was changed to the World Wide Fund for Nature, but the acronym remained the same).26
Behind the scenes, America developed and launched the Nautilus, the first of a new generation of atomic powered submarines. Both Russia and America tested nuclear devices with ever increasing payloads. Bomb shelters were the mainstay of civil defense, and school children were taught to "duck-and-cover." The official defense policy was MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction.
Much, much further behind the scenes, plans were being developed to defuse the MAD policy. The UN had no authority or power in its own right to do anything about the spiraling arms race between the world's two super-powers. It became the stage, however, on which the advocates of global governance performed their strategic play, using the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the starring roles. In 1961, newly elected President John F. Kennedy presented a disarmament plan: Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World, also known as the Department of State Publication 7277. The plan called for three phases which would ultimately result in the gradual transfer of U.S. military power to the United Nations. The plan called for all nations to follow the U.S. lead and disarm themselves to "a point where no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened UN Peace Force."27 A new and improved version of the same idea was presented in May, 1962, called: Blueprint for the Peace Race: Outline of Basic Provisions of a Treaty on General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World released by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Publication 4, General Series 3, May 3, 1962) headed by John McCloy.
It is neither fair, nor accurate to say that these documents were the product of the CFR. It is accurate, and instructive, to realize that these documents were developed by men who were members of the CFR. John McCloy and Robert Lovett were described as "distinguished individuals" in an article by John F. Kennedy which appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1957. Lovett was offered his choice of cabinet positions in the Kennedy administration buy declined, choosing instead to make recommendations all of which were accepted by Kennedy. Lovett recommended Dean Rusk as Secretary of State. Rusk had been a member of the CFR since 1952 and had published an article in Foreign Affairs in 1960 on how the new President should conduct foreign policy. The New York Times reported that of the first 82 names submitted to Kennedy for State Department positions, 63 were members of the CFR.28 Like FDR and every President since, JFK filled his State Department and surrounded himself with individuals who were, perhaps coincidentally, members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Lovett, John McCloy, Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and Adlai Stevenson (JFK's Ambassador to the UN), all members of the CFR, guided Kennedy through the disastrous "Bay of Pigs" operation and the Cuban missile crisis.
That members of the CFR have exercised extraordinary influence on foreign policy cannot be denied. Whether that influence is the result of organizational strategies, or the result of individuals who simply happen to be members of the same organization, is an endlessly debated question. Richard Harwood, of the Washington Post, observes that members of the Council on Foreign Relations
"... are the closest thing we have to a ruling Establishment in the United States. The President is a member. So is his Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of State, all five of the Undersecretaries, several of the Assistant Secretaries and the department's legal adviser. The President's National Security Adviser and his Deputy are members. The Director of Central Intelligence (like all previous directors) and the Chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are members. The Secretary of Defense, three Undersecretaries and at least four Assistant Secretaries are members. The Secretaries of the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Health and Human Services and the Chief White House Public Relations man ... along with the Speaker of the House [are members]. ... This is not a retinue of people who 'look like America,' as the President once put it, but they very definitely look like the people who, for more than half a century, have managed our international affairs and our military-industrial complex."29
Article 11 of the UN Charter gives the General Assembly authority to "consider" and "recommend" principles governing disarmament and the regulation of armaments, but virtually no authority to enforce disarmament. Kennedy's proposal was a bold first step toward giving the UN the power which early, necessary compromises had stripped from the original vision of a world government.
The Kennedy plan has never been revoked. Though modified and delayed by political necessity, the essential principle of relinquishing arms, as well as control of the production and distribution of arms, to the UN has guided the disarmament policy of every American President since JFK. Prior to the Kennedy Disarmament Plan, the UN sponsored a Truce Supervision Operation in 1948, and a Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan in 1949. Since the Kennedy Disarmament Plan, the number of UN Peace-keeping operations has steadily increased.30
Still further behind the scenes, the fledgling United Nations was beginning to take shape. UNICEF (United Nations International Emergency Children's Fund) was created in 1946 to provide emergency relief to the child victims of WWII. It was reauthorized in 1950 to shift its emphasis to programs of long-term benefit to children in underdeveloped countries. It became a permanent UN entity in 1953. UNESCO's purpose was to "educate" the world. UNICEF was created to provide the mechanism through which that education could be delivered to children.
UN Article 55 provides for the UN to "promote higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development." To fulfill this charge, the UN Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (UNEPTA) was created in 1949, and expanded with a Special Fund in 1957. By 1959, the program had been transformed into the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (now headed by James Gustave Speth, former President of the World Resources Institute) which spends more than $1 trillion annually, mostly in developing countries.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was created in 1949. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was created in 1951. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) brought together existing international food programs in 1946 and began its World Food Program in 1963. The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created in 1953. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was created in 1947. The International Labor Organization (ILO) created in 1919 as an instrument of the failed League of Nations was reconstituted and folded into the United Nations in 1948. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) was authorized in 1947. Founded in 1863, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) became an entity of the UN in 1948. The World Health Organization (WHO) was created in 1948. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which had existed since 1865 was folded into the UN system in 1949. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) was created in 1966. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was established in 1967. These are only a few of the 130 UN agencies and organizations that proliferated during and since the Cold War.
While the UN organization was expanding exponentially, out of the media spotlight which was focused on race riots and the arms race, UNESCO plodded forward with its mission to educate the world. Robert Muller, long-time Secretary-General of the UN's Economic and Social Council under which the UNESCO operates, delivered a speech at the University of Denver in 1995. His musings and recollections provide valuable insights into the kind of education UNESCO was preparing for the world. From Muller's comments:
"I had written an essay which was circulated by UNESCO, and which earned me the title of 'Father of Global Education.' I was educated badly in France. I've come to the conclusion that the only correct education that I have received in my life was from the United Nations. We should replace the word politics by planetics. We need planetary management, planetary caretakers. We need global sciences. We need a science of a global psychology, a global sociology, a global anthropology. Then I made my proposal for a World Core Curriculum."31
The first goal of Muller's World Core Curriculum, is:
"Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of 'the greater whole.' In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness."32
The World Core Curriculum Manual says:
"The underlying philosophy upon which the Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey, by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul (published by Lucis Publishing Company, 113 University Place, 11th floor, New York, NY 10083) and the teachings of M. Morya as given in the Agni Yoga Series books (published by Agni Yoga Society, Inc., 319 West 107th Street, New York, NY 10025)."33
Alice Bailey established the Lucifer Publishing Company, which was renamed Lucis Press in 1924, expressly to publish and distribute her own writings and those of Djwhal Khul, which consisted of some 20 books written by Bailey as the "channeling" agent for the disembodied Tibetan she called Djwhal Khu1.34 Until recently, the Lucis Trust, parent organization of the Lucis Press, was headquartered at the United Nations Plaza in New York.35 Bailey assumed the leadership of the Theosophical Society upon the death of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The Society's 6,000 members include Robert McNamara, Donald Regan, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Paul Volker, George Shultz, and the names that also appear on the membership roster of the CFR.36
Hindsight reveals that -- while the United States was performing on the UN stage, sparring with the Soviet Union, keeping score with nuclear warheads -- the forces which heavily influenced the official policies of both the United States and the United Nations were actually outside both governments: non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Three distinct NGO influences were clear by the end of the 1960s: the CFR and its assortment of affiliated spin-off organizations; the mystic, occult, or "new-age" spiritual movement; and the growing number of organizations affiliated with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In 1968, the IUCN led a lobbying effort with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (headed by Robert Muller) to adopt Resolution 1296 which grants "consultative" status to certain NGOs. This resolution paved the highway for global governance. The Lucis Trust was one of the first NGOs to be granted "consultative" status with the UN.
The Environmental Movement (1970s)
Not a single vote was cast against the Wilderness Act of 1964 when it finally reached the Senate. Congress thought it was setting aside nine million acres of wilderness so posterity could see a sample of what their forefathers had to conquer in order to create America. The new law was the crowning achievement of the Wilderness Society, to which its Director, Howard Zahniser had devoted five years of constant lobbying. Though unnoticed at the time, the new law signaled an end to the traditional "conservation" movement and the beginning of a new environmental "preservation" movement. The conservation movement might be characterized by the idea that private land owners should voluntarily conserve natural resources; the environmental preservation movement is characterized by the notion that the government should enforce conservation measures through extensive regulations. By this distinction, the Wilderness Society brought the environmental movement to Congress. Robert Marshall, Benton MacKaye, and Aldo Leopold -- all avowed socialists -- organized the Society in the early 1930s and proclaimed their socialist ideas loudly. Marshall's 1933 book, The People's Forests, says:
"Public ownership is the only basis on which we can hope to protect the incalculable values of the forests for wood resources, for soil and water conservation, and for recreation. ... Regardless of whether it might be desirable, it is impossible under our existing form of government to confiscate the private forests into public ownership. We cannot afford to delay their nationalization until the form of government changes."37
This significant event failed to register a blip on the radar screen of public awareness. Instead, public attention focused on the racial strife, the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and the Viet Nam War which tore apart the convention, the party, and the nation. The First "Earth Day" in 1970, which perhaps coincidentally was celebrated on Lenin's birthday, April 22, was viewed as little more than a festival for flower children. The anti-war fervor, again, brought a quarter-million protesters to the Mall, and Watergate brought down the Nixon Presidency. The Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973 served as beacons to attract the energies and idealism of a generation of young people who had successfully forced the world's most powerful government to abandon a war they saw to be unjust. The 1970s witnessed an unprecedented explosion in the number of environmental organizations and in the number of people who joined and supported these organizations.
Among the more important but lesser known organizations formed during this period are the Club of Rome (COR -- 1968) and the Trilateral Commission (TC -- 1973). The COR is a small group of international industrialists educators, economists, national and international civil servants. Among them were various Rockefellers and approximately 25 CFR members. Maurice Strong was one of the "international" civil servants.38 Their first book, The Limits to Growth, published in 1972 unabashedly describes the world as they believe it should be:
"We believe in fact that the need will quickly become evident for social innovation to match technical change, for radical reform of the institutions and political processes at all levels, including the highest, that of world polity. And since intellectual enlightenment is without effect if it is not also political, The Club of Rome also will encourage the creation of a world forum where statesmen, policy-makers, and scientists can discuss the dangers and hopes for the future global system without the constraints of formal intergovernmental negotiation."39
That "world forum" was authorized in 1972 by UN Resolution 2997 (XXVII) as the UN Conference on the Human Environment. Maurice Strong was designated Secretary-General of the Conference which, among other things, recommended the creation of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which came into being January 1, 1973, with Maurice Strong as its first Executive Director.40 The Conference held in Stockholm produced 26 principles and 109 specific recommendations which parroted much of the language in the COR publications. The difference is, of course, that the Conference Report carries the weight of the United Nations and has profound policy implications for the entire world.41
Another COR publication, Mankind at the Turning Point, provides further insight into the thinking that underlies global governance:
"The solution of these crises can be developed only in a global context with full and explicit recognition of the emerging world system and on a long-term basis. This would necessitate, among other changes, a new world economic order and a global resources allocation system. ... A 'world consciousness' must be developed through which every individual realizes his role as a member of the world community. ... It must become part of the consciousness of every individual that the basic unit of human cooperation and hence survival is moving from the national to the global level."42
A companion work by the same authors, Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, entitled Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System, introduced and described a system of regionalization which divided the globe into 10 regions, each with its own hierarchical system of sub-regions.43
The Trilateral Commission published a book entitled Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World's Economy and the Earth's Ecology, by Jim MacNeil. David Rockefeller wrote the foreword; Maurice Strong wrote the introduction. Strong said:
"This interlocking ... is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life."44
In retrospect, it is clear that the early work of the United Nations was an effort to achieve global consensus on the philosophy upon which its programmatic work would be built. It is also clear that, despite the disproportionate share of the cost borne by capitalist nations, the prevailing philosophy at the UN is essentially socialist. The fundamental idea upon which America was founded -- that men are born totally free and choose to give up specified freedoms to a limited government -- is not the prevailing philosophy at the UN, nor at the CFR, the COR, the TC, or the IUCN. Instead, the prevailing philosophy held by these organizations and institutions is that government is sovereign and may dispense or withhold freedoms and privileges, or impose restrictions and penalties, in order to manage its citizens to achieve peace and prosperity for all. In his book, Freedom at the Altar, William Grigg says it this way:
"Under the American concept of rights, the individual possesses God-given rights which the state must protect. However, the UN embraces a collectivist worldview in which 'rights' are highly conditional concessions made by an all-powerful government."45
Another description of the difference between the two ideas is offered by Philip Bom, in The Coming Century of Commonism:
"In the western Constitutional concept, limited government is established to protect the fundamental natural human rights of the free individuals in a free society. In a radical socialist concept of the state, the citizen has a duty to the state to help the state promote the socialization or communization of the man."46
These fundamentally different, conflicting ideas have been described differently by different people at different times. In 1842, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels preached their gospel through an organization known as the "Federation of the Just." In 1845 it was the International Democratic Association of Brussels that promoted their ideas. By 1903 the organization that championed Marxism was the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party before Lenin transformed it into the Communist Party. The names used to describe the prevailing philosophy at the UN are confusing to Americans. Regardless of the name attached, the underlying philosophy has several common characteristics that readily identify it as different from the philosophy upon which America was founded. Chief among those characteristics is the abhorrence of private property. As Philip Bom points out:
"In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels identified communism with democracy. 'The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations ... to win the battle of democracy'. They also pointed out that, 'The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism. ... The distinctive feature of communism is ... abolition of private property.' "47
Another tell-tale characteristic of socialist/communist philosophy is the assumption of omnipotent government. Philip Bom addresses the semantics problems as well as the omnipotent government issue this way:
"The war of words and world views of democracy continues but with greater confusion of priorities. President Reagan professed that 'freedom and democracy are the best guarantors for peace.' President Gorbachev confessed that peace and maximum democracy are the guarantors of freedom. 'Our aim is to grant maximum freedom to people, to the individual, to society.' "48
In the Gorbachev statement, it is assumed that 'freedom' is the government's to give. The U.S. Constitution clearly views 'freedom' to be the natural condition of man and assigns the protection of freedom as government's first responsibility. International equality, equity, social justice, security of the people, democratic society all are terms used in UN documents that have a completely different meaning in a socialist context from the meaning understood in America.
These differences become exceedingly important in the context of official UN documents. Consider the language in the UN's Covenant on Human Rights, a document that bears approximately the same relationship to the UN Charter that the Bill of Rights bears to the U.S. Constitution.
Article 13 says:
"Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law. ..."
By contrast, the Bill of Rights says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. ..."
Article 14 of the Covenant says:
"The right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to certain penalties, liabilities, and restrictions, but these shall be only such, as are provided by law."
The Bill of Rights says:
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. ..." Period.
The philosophy of omnipotent government permeates virtually all of the documents that have flowed from the UN since its inception. Consider the preamble to the report of the first World Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) held in 1976 under the auspices of Maurice Strong's newly formed United Nations Environmental Programme: "Private land ownership is a principal instrument of accumulating wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable." Their recommendation: "Public ownership of land is justified in favor of the common good, rather than to protect the interest of the already privileged."49 Morris Udall and others tried unsuccessfully to implement the Federal Land Use Planning Act in the early 1970s influenced by those seeking to impose global governance.
In the early 1970s the UN created a Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. As if singing in the same choir, the U.S. created a Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. On May Day, 1974, a proposal was submitted to the UN General Assembly calling for a New International Economic Order (NIEO); it was adopted as a Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States on December 12, 1974. It called for the redistribution of wealth and political power, and the promotion of international justice based on the 'duties' of developed countries and the 'rights' of developing countries.
Throughout the 1970s, college students and others joined environmental organizations in droves. They protested, carried placards, picked up litter, preached recycling and organic gardening, mostly unaware that their leaders were attending conferences and promoting agendas based on the same philosophy that America had opposed in Viet Nam, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. Carefully crafted documents, magnified by a cooperative media, elevated the environment to a most noble cause. The object of near-worship for an army of energetic activists, "the environment" as an international issue was ripe for the picking by the advocates of global governance.
The Environmental Movement (1980s)
"Bait-and-switch" is a time-tested technique used by unscrupulous merchants to offer one thing and then provide another. The environmental movement of the 1970s was the unwitting victim of its leadership which offered a cleaner environment but, in the 1980s, delivered instead a massive program to achieve global governance. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had already launched a Regional Seas Program (1973); conducted a UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 1974); developed a Global Frame-work for Environmental Education (1975); established the International Environmental Education Program (IEEP); set up a Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS); set up a World Conservation Monitoring Center at Cambridge, England (1975 as a joint project with the IUCN and the WWF); implemented the Human Exposure Assessment Location Program (HEAL -- 1976); conducted a UN Conference on Desertification (1977); organized the Designated Officials for Environmental Matters (DOEM); and in 1980, published World Conservation Strategy jointly with the IUCN and the WWF. The DOEM is an organizational structure that requires every UN agency and organization to designate an official to UNEP in order to coordinate all UN activity with the UNEP agenda. UNEP was well positioned to interject the environment into the argument for global governance.50 Recognizing that communications was the key to global education, UNESCO adopted in 1978 a "Declaration on Fundamental Principles Concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthen Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering Racialism, Apartheid and Incitement of War." To figure out what the declaration meant, UNESCO Director General, Dr. A. M. McBow, appointed Sean MacBride to chair the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems. Their report was released in 1980 entitled Many Voices, One World: Towards a new more just and more efficient world information and communication order. The head of TASS, the official news agency of the Soviet Union, was one of fifteen chosen to serve on the Commission.
Not surprisingly, the report said that the "media should contribute to promoting the just cause of peoples struggling for freedom and independence and their right to live in peace and equality without foreign interference." It expressed concern about independent news monopolies, such as the Associated Press and Reuters, but was not at all concerned about state controlled news monopolies such as TASS. It recommended a transnational political communication superstructure "within the framework of UNESCO," an International Centre for the Study and Planning of Information and Communication.51 The Commission believed that a "new World Information Order" was prerequisite to a new world economic order. The report reflected the same "sovereign government" philosophy demonstrated in Article 14 of the Covenant on Human Rights: government, UNESCO in particular, should have the authority to regulate the flow of information to "promote" its agenda, and minimize public awareness of conflicting ideas. A proposal to require international journalists to be licensed brought swift and dramatic negative re-action which pushed this proposal to the back burner. The idea of controlling the media continues to simmer, even though an alternative plan was developed through NGOs.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) allocated funding to establish computer network services for NGOs and academics in Latin America. The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) linked together networks in Brazil, Russia, Canada, Australia, Sweden, England, Nicaragua, Ecuador, South Africa, Ukraine, Mexico, Siovenj, and then entered into a partnership with the Institute for Global Communications (IGC). Known simply as igc.apc.org, this gigantic computer network now boasts 17,000 users in 94 countries. It has exclusive contracts with several UN agencies to coordinate, facilitate, and disseminate information about and from UN conferences. This NGO has arrangements with at least the following UN agencies: UN Association International Service (UNAIS); UN Centre for Human Rights; UNICEF; UNDP; UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW); UNESCO; UNEP; UN Information Centre (UNIC); UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD); UN International Emergency Network (UNIENET); UN Non-Government Liaison Service (NGLS); UN Population Fund (UNFPA); UN Secretariat for the Fourth World Conference on Women (UNWCW); UN University (UNU); and UN Volunteers (UNV).52
West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, was tapped to chair another International Commission in 1980: the Independent Commission on International Development. The Commission report, entitled North-South: A Program for Survival, stated:
"World development is not merely an economic process, [it] involves a profound transformation of the entire economic and social structure ... not only the idea of economic betterment, but also of greater human dignity, security, justice and equity. ... The Commission realizes that mankind has to develop a concept of a 'single community' to develop a global order."
The report says that the choice is either development or destruction; either "a just and humane society" or a move towards [the world's] own destruction."53
For 50 years, Sweden was a socialist country. In 1976, the socialists were dumped and conservatives took over -- until 1982. Olof Palme restored socialism to Sweden and was promptly rewarded with the chairmanship of the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security (ICDST). In their report, entitled A Common Security: Blueprint For Survival, the Commission built on Kennedy's 1962 Blueprint for the Peace Race, and on the 1974 Charter for a New International Economic Order, which linked disarmament with development.
The Charter's Article 13 says:
"All States have the duty to promote the achievement of general and complete disarmament under effective international control and to utilize the resources released by effective disarmament measures for the economic and social development of countries, allocating a substantial portion of such resources as additional means for the development needs of developing countries." (Emphasis added).
The Brandt Commission report had concluded that security meant not only the military defense of a nation, but also required solving the non-military problems -- such as poverty -- to improve the basic conditions necessary for peaceful relations among nations. Their conclusion was bolstered by the report of a UN advisor, Inga Thorsson, a Swedish Under-Secretary of State, who wrote:
"It is important that we do not content ourselves only with the actual disarmament efforts. World disarmament is needed for world development -- but equally, world development is a prerequisite for world disarmament. Not until we have arrived at a situation of reasonable equity and economic balance in the world, will it be possible to develop conditions for a lasting disarmament."54
The United States and the Soviet Union had hammered out a policy generally known as "peaceful coexistence," to avoid MAD -- Mutually Assured Destruction. The Palme Commission proposed a strategic shift from collective security, insured by the superpowers for the constellation of affiliated nations, to the concept of common security through the United Nations. The concept also linked the transfer of money saved by the disarming superpowers to the development of underdeveloped nations, transferred through and redistributed by the United Nations.55
A work that began in 1973 was completed in 1981 -- the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The U.S. and the USSR wanted the Convention limited to navigational questions. But a group of 77 developing nations, known as G-77, hijacked the conference and the subsequent negotiations and wrote into the treaty the principles of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) -- a UN taxing authority. The treaty created the International Seabed Authority (ISA) which would have jurisdiction over all non-territorial waters and the seabed. No seabed activity, mining, salvaging, and so forth, can occur without a permit from the ISA.
Application fees begin at $250,000 and a schedule of royalties is set forth in the Convention. The Convention is the first to give direct taxing authority to the UN. It is a legal mechanism for the redistribution of wealth from developed nations to developing nations. The U.S. had avoided the Convention until 1994 when President Clinton signed the Treaty. Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, has announced that ratification of the treaty will be a priority for the Clinton Administration in 1997.56
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had grown dramatically by 1982, with organizations in several countries, including the United States. Russell Train, the President of WWF-usA, secured more than $25 million in grants from MacArthur Foundation, Andrew K. Mellon Foundation, and from "US and Foreign governments, international agencies, and individual gifts," to launch a new NGO -- the World Resources Institute (WRI) headquartered in Washington, D.C. James Gustave Speth was chosen as President. Speth, a Rhodes Scholar, turned to the environment after the Viet Nam war and co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. He became a Rockefeller protégé and is described as "one of the most effective environmentalists alive today." He served as President of WRI for 11 years, then as a member of President Clinton's transition team, then moved to the UNDP as its head.57 The WRI joined the WWF and the IUCN to become the three-cornered NGO foundation for the global environmental agenda.
A World Charter for Nature was the chief product of a 1982 World Conference on Environment and Development, at which Maurice Strong said:
"I believe we are seeing the convergence of the physical and social worlds with the moral and spiritual. The concepts of loving, caring and sharing ... for a saner, more cooperative world ... are the indispensable foundations on which the future security system for a small planet must now be based."58
In 1984, there was a World Conference on environmental management. But a Conference in Vienna, Austria, in 1985 established UNEP as a major player in world affairs when it produced the Vienna Convention on Ozone Depleting Substances. The ascendancy of Mikhail Gorbachev to the Soviet throne received far more media attention than did the Ozone Treaty. Most Americans did not hear about the Treaty until the Montreal Protocol in 1987 which banned certain refrigerants and fire-fighting materials.
Another World Conference on Environment and Development was held in 1987. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Vice President of the World Socialist Party, was named as Chair. The Brundtland Commission Report, entitled Our Common Future, embraced most of the ideas contained in the UNEP/IUCN/WWF publication World Conservation Strategy, including the concept of "sustainable development." It is the Brundtland Commission that links the environment to development and development to poverty. The Report says:
"Poverty is a major cause and effect of global environmental problems. It is therefore futile to attempt to deal with environmental problems without a broader perspective that encompasses the factors underlying world poverty and international inequality."59
Brundtland was a member of the Brandt Commission. Maurice Strong (who chaired the first world Conference on Environment and Development in 1972) was a member of the Brundtland Commission. Shirdath Ramphal was a member of the Brandt, Palme, and Brundtland Commissions, and later co-chaired the UN-funded Commission of Global Governance. Ramphal is a past President of the IUCN. The Brundtland Commission succeeded in two break-through accomplishments: (1) it linked poverty, equity, and security to environmental issues and (2) it recognized that the environment was a popular issue around which individuals, NGOs, and governments could rally. The environment was firmly established as the battle-cry to mobilize the world to create the New Economic World Order.
While UNEP was convening the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, the UNDP was funding a Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival, sponsored jointly by the UNDP's Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (created in 1982) and the Temple of Understanding. The Temple of Understanding is an NGO accredited to the UN, and one of several projects of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The featured speaker at the Forum was James Lovelock, author of The Ages of Gaia. Lovelock said: "On Earth, she [gaia] is the source of life, everlasting and is alive now, she gave birth to humankind and we are a part of her."60 The Gaia Institute is also housed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as is the Lindisfarne Association which published G-A-I-A, A Way of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology. Maurice Strong is a member of Lindisfarne and often speaks at the Cathedral, as do Robert Muller and Vice President Al Gore.61
The Forum produced what was called the "Joint Appeal" which grew into the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE). The project is endorsed by eleven major environmental organizations, has received grants of more than $5 million, and is currently engaged in mailing "education and action kits" to 53,000 congregations. Amy Fox, Associate Director of the NRPE, says:
"We are required by our religious principles to look for the links between equity and ecology. The fundamental emphasis is on issues of environmental justice, including air pollution and global warming; water, food and agriculture; population and consumption; hunger, trade and industrial policy; community economic development; toxic pollution and hazardous waste; and corporate responsibility."62
The decade had begun with an eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and perhaps a more spectacular political eruption: arch-conservative Ronald Reagan captured the White House from arch-liberal, Jimmy Carter. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), more popularly known as "star wars," is cited as a major factor in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. The USSR, which Reagan dubbed "the evil empire," did assume a new attitude about arms reduction and disarmament. Gorbachev announced "glasnost," a new policy of openness, and "perestroika" a restructuring program which featured measured "free market" opportunities. Gorbachev, who was infinitely closer to the socialist dominated inner-circle of the UN-global-governance cabal than was the Reagan Administration, may well have been preparing to shift the seat of socialist leadership from the Soviet Union to the United Nations. The newly formulated strategy of common security, rather than collective security could not accommodate the notion of a single state, even the Soviet Union, as the seat of global authority. And it is now clear that, even though it appeared to the west that Gorbachev was moving his country toward capitalism, he never had any such intention.
Gorbachev told his Politburo in November, 1987:
"Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep."
He later wrote:
"Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed. Every part of our program of perestroika -- and the program as a whole, for that matter -- is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy. ... We will proceed toward better socialism rather than away from it. We are saying this honestly, without trying to fool our own people or the world. Any hopes that we will begin to build a different, non-socialist society and go over to the other camp are unrealistic and futile. We, the Soviet people, are for socialism. We want more socialism and therefore more democracy."63
By November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed, it became clear to the world that events had out-run Gorbachev's intentions. The Soviet Union, along with 70 years of utopian-communist dreams, collapsed as thoroughly as did the wall. The vacuum thus created in the global political balance was seen as an invitation to usher in a new, permanent balancing force -- global governance.
The role and capacity of NGOs was greatly enhanced in the mid 1980s when Donald Ross of the Rockefeller Family Fund -- the same Rockefeller money pot that launched the Council on Foreign Relations -- invited the leaders of five other Foundations to meet informally in Washington. From that meeting grew the Environmental Grantmakers Association, a nearly invisible group of more than 100 major Foundations and corporations. They meet annually to discuss projects and grant proposals and decide which NGOs will be funded.64
Having gained a measure of national prominence in his failed bid for the White House in 1988, then Senator Al Gore, as chair of the Senate Science and Technology Committee, assumed the responsibility of advancing the global environmental agenda in America. It was Gore, and then-Senator Timothy Wirth, who arranged special "prayer breakfasts" with selected congressmen for James Parks Morton, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, to promote the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.65 It was Gore who led the Senate to approve the Montreal Protocol which banned refrigerants. It was Gore who brought James E. Hansen, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to the Senate chambers to testify that he was "99% certain that greenhouse warming had begun."66
The decade of the 1980s was a pivotal period for the advocates of global governance. The MacBride Commission had established the principle of information management as a legitimate responsibility of the United Nations, though only partially implemented through participating NGOs: IGC/APC. The Brandt Commission had linked development with peace, and the Palme Commission had linked development with peace and disarmament as a way to shift military power to the UN and money to the third world. The Brundtland Commission linked development to the environment and introduced the concept of "sustainability." The NGOs, coordinated by the IUCN/WWF/WRI triumvirate, and funded by the Rockefeller-coordinated Environmental Grantmakers Association, launched a world-wide campaign to convince the world that the planet stood at the brink of environmental disaster. It could be averted only by a massive transformation of human societies which would require all people to accept their spiritual and moral responsibility to embrace their common global heritage and conform to a system of international law that integrates environmental, economic, and equity issues under the watchful, regulatory authority of a new system of global governance.
Global Governance: The Final March (1990s)
A decade of world conferences and international commissions in the 1980s proved to be only practice sessions for the world conferences and UN commissions of the 1990s, beginning with the World Summit for Children in New York City in 1990. The Convention on the Rights of Child was adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 20, 1989, and the Summit was designed to promote the Convention for acceptance by the world. The Convention's preamble says: "Recalling that in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations has proclaimed that childhood is entitled to special care and assistance," and the Convention designates the UN to guarantee that "special care" and deter-mine what "assistance" is needed. The Convention grants to children the right to express their own views freely in all matters (Article 12.1); the right to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds (Article 13.1); the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 14.1); the right to freedom of association and peaceful assembly (Article 15.1); and the right to privacy in the family, home, or correspondence (Article 16.1).67
Many Americans believe that children have no such rights until they have been earned through the painful process of growing up, and then it is the parent's rightful privilege to grant those rights to the child. Ratification of the Convention would be tantamount to the U.S. government giving the UN the authority to grant those rights to children, and the authority to guarantee and enforce those rights, even when parents disagree. In fact, the Convention would establish the authority, if not the mechanism, for the UN to establish the criteria for childrearing, including education, sex education, religion, and even leisure-time activities. There is nothing in the Convention to preclude the UN from requiring all children to attend state-run schools from nursery school to high school, and taking children completely away from the influence of the family.
From New York to Rio (1992)
A heat wave and an extended period of drought the last few years of the decade gave credence to a coordinated media campaign of global environmental disaster. The Union of Concerned Scientists published a "Warning to Humanity" which said: "A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated."68 The annual "State of the Planet" report, issued by the WorldWatch Institute, predicted progressively worsening environmental disasters. And the mainstream media joined the campaign to convince the world that the planet was on the brink of collapse:
Charles Alexander, Time magazine: "As the science editor at Time, I would freely admit that on this issue [the environment] we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy;"
Barbara Pyle, CNN environmental director: "I do have an ax to grind. ... I want to be the little subversive person in television;"
Dianne Dumanoski, Boston Globe environmental reporter: "There is no such thing as objective reporting ... I've become even more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are true. That is my subversive mission;"
Bernard Goldberg, CBS 48 Hours: "We in the press like to say we're honest brokers of information, and it's just not true. The press does have an agenda."69
To this mix of extravagant propaganda, then-Senator Al Gore added his best-selling book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring thirty years earlier, what Gore's book lacked in scientific accuracy was more than compensated for by an abundance of emotion. He called for a tax on fossil fuels. He called for a "global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over say, a twenty-five year period."70 And he called for the reorganization of society:
"I have come to believe that we must take bold and unequivocal action: we must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization. ... Adopting a central organizing principle -- one agreed to voluntarily -- means embarking on an all out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action -- to use. In short every means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system."71
Despite significant, legitimate objections from the scientific community, which were ignored by the media and ridiculed by environmental organizations, the public perception of impending environmental disaster was successfully blamed on exploding human population; human-caused global warming; and human-caused loss of biological diversity. The stage was set for the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) scheduled to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. No previous UN conference had ever received such planning and promotion. Maurice Strong was named to head the conference, which was dubbed "Earth Summit II." He had chaired the first "Earth Summit" in 1972 and had participated in every environmental commission and conference since. (Strong became Chairman of the Board of WRI in 1994). To guide the agenda for the conference, UNEP and its NGO partners published two major documents: Caring for the Earth, (1991 via UNEP/IUCN/WWF), and Global Biodiversity Strategy, (1992 via UNEP/IUCN/WWF/WRI). These documents contained the material from which the revolutionary UNCED documents would be produced.
The NGO community, coordinated through the IUCN and the WRI publication Networking, used the igc.apc.org computer networks extensively to funnel information to and from the UNCED agenda planners, and to plan the NGO Forum. UNCED provided an opportunity for the NGOs to perfect the lobbying process. With the blessings of and assistance from the UNEP, the NGOs scheduled a "Forum" the week immediately preceding the official conference. Nearly 8,000 NGOs were officially certified to participate in the UNCED Forum, and another 4,000 NGOs were observers, swelling the total attendance at UNCED to more than 40,000 people -- the largest environmental gathering the world has ever known. UNCED may be recorded in history as the most significant event the world has ever known; it was the watershed event that began the final march to global governance.
Agenda 21, the underlying conference document, was a distillation of the UNEP/IUCN/WWF/WRI documents. It consisted of 294 pages and 115 specific program recommendations. Agenda 21 was further distilled into another document called The Rio Declaration which was a succinct statement of 27 principles on which the recommendations were based, and which would guide the global environmental agenda. Two major international treaties had also been prepared for presentation at UNCED: the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
In the summer of 1992, President George Bush faced a difficult reelection campaign. He expressed little interest in the Rio conference and was savagely ridiculed by then-Senator Al Gore and his own EPA Administrator, William Reilly, who publicly urged Bush to attend. Bush relented and was one of more than 100 heads of state that adopted the UNCED documents. Bush, however, did not sign the Convention on Biological Diversity due to ambiguities relating to the transfer of technology. He told the conference audience:
"Our efforts to protect biodiversity itself will exceed the requirements of the treaty. But that proposed agreement threatens to retard biotechnology and undermine the protection of ideas, ... it is never easy to stand alone on principle, but sometimes leadership requires that you do. And now is such a time."72
Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration are not binding documents. They are "soft law" documents which are the foundation for future binding documents such as the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. These two treaties contained important new features that are not present in the hundreds of other international treaties that the U.S. has ratified. These treaties do not allow any reservations or exceptions. Other treaties provide for parties to specify particular reservations or exceptions to which they are not bound. The UNCED treaties require all-or-nothing participation. The UNCED treaties created a "Conference of the Parties" (COP) which is a permanent body of delegates which has the authority to adopt "protocols" or regulations, through which to implement and administer the treaty. The UNCED treaties were non-specific. The treaties were actually a list of goals and objectives; the COP was created to develop the protocols necessary to achieve the objectives -- after the treaties had been ratified.
The Framework Convention on Climate Change, for example, binds participating nations to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000; the COP develops the protocols necessary to achieve that goal, and the member nations are legally obligated to comply. The Convention on Biological Diversity requires the creation of "a system of protected areas." The COP will adopt protocols to define what is an acceptable system of protected areas long after the treaty has been ratified. The binding treaties are written in language that appears to pursue environmental objectives: however, the principles upon which the treaties are based (The Rio Declaration) are in fact a refined re-statement of the principles for social change developed by the various socialist-dominated commission of the 1980s.
For example,
Principle 1:
"Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development ...;"Principle 2:
"National sovereignty is subject to international law ...;"Principle 3:
"The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations;"
social change is clearly the first objective of the Declaration.73 Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, who attended the conference, reported:
"The objective, clearly enunciated by the leaders of UNCED, is to bring about a change in the present system of independent nations. The future is to be World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises -- whether real or not -- is expected to lead to compliance."74
To assure that the COPs of the respective treaties were properly guided in their discussions of the protocols necessary for implementation, the UNEP/IUCN/WWF/WRI partnership launched a Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA). Robert T. Watson, NASA chemist and co-chair of UNEP's Ozone Panel, was chosen to chair the project. IUCN's Jeffrey McNeely was selected to produce the important section on "Human Influences on Biodiversity," and WRI's Kenton Miller coordinated the critical section on "Measures for the Conservation of Biodiversity and Sustainable use of Its Components." The work was begun before the treaty had been ratified by a single nation, and involved more than 2000 scientists and activists from around the world.75 UNCED adjourned and the thousands of NGO representatives went home to begin the campaign to ratify the treaties and implement Agenda 21 and the principles of the Rio Declaration.
A Chicago Tribune article by Jon Margolis, September 30, 1994, said that the Global Biodiversity Assessment was a process that had just begun, that no document existed. A participant in the GBA process had secretly photocopied several hundred pages of the peer-review draft of the document. Summaries of the draft documents were prepared and provided to every member of the U.S. Senate. The shocking details of the bizarre plan to transform societies was sufficient to block a ratification vote in the closing days of the 103rd Congress, despite the fact that the treaty had been approved by the Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 16 to 3.
Agenda 21 called for each nation to create a plan for sustainable development consistent with the principles of the Rio Declaration. The UN created a new Commission on Sustainable Development, and Maurice Strong created a new NGO called Earth Council, based in Costa Rica, to coordinate NGO activity to implement the Rio Declaration principles through national Sustainable Development Programs. Earth Council has produced a directory listing more than 100 nations that have formal sustainable development plans under development. The UN created another program to "empower children" to help implement the sustainable development program: "Rescue Mission: Planet Earth." In a Rescue Mission newsletter Action Update, their work is described as getting governments together "who try to make the others feel guilty for not having done what they promised on Agenda 21."76
To implement Agenda 21 and the principles of the Rio Declaration in America, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order No. 12852, June 29, 1993, which created the Presidents Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). Jonathan Lash, President of the World Resources Institute (WRI) was named as co-chair. Jay D. Hair, President of the IUCN, and former President of the National Wildlife Federation was one of eight NGO leaders appointed to the Council. Eleven government officials, along with the eight NGO leaders, easily dominated the discussions and produced a predictable report from the 28-member Council. Not surprisingly, the final report, Sustainable America: A New Consensus, presents 154 action items to achieve 38 specific recommendations that are precisely the recommendations called for in Agenda 21.
The most casual reading of the PCSD's 16 "We Believe" statements, compared with the 27 principles of the Rio Declaration, reveals that the PCSD has simply Americanized the Rio language to form the foundation for implementing the UN agenda in America. PCSD Belief No. 10, for example: "Economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity are linked. We need to develop integrated policies to achieve these national goals" sounds very much like Rio Principle No. 3 "The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations."77 The PCSD is Agenda 21 at work in America.
The PCSD also provides a glimpse of the global governance process to come. Public policy is initiated by non-elected officials, massaged into specific proposals by an NGO-dominated "stake-holders council," written into regulations administratively by willing bureaucrats (who themselves, are frequently former NGO officials), or presented to Congress for approval -- along with the threat of retaliation at the ballot box from the millions of NGO members represented by the stakeholders council.
The UNCED and Agenda 21 covered an extremely wide range of issues that affect virtually every person on the planet. The purpose for the array of policy recommendations put forth for public consumption is, ostensibly, to protect the planet from inevitable destruction at the hands of greedy, uncaring, or unaware humans. At the core, however, the policies recommended are socialist policies, built on the assumption that government is sovereign and must manage the affairs of its citizens. Nothing in Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration, or the PCSD recommendations even acknowledges the idea that humans are born free, and are sovereign over the governments they create. Nothing acknowledges the idea that government's first responsibility is to protect the inherent freedom of its citizens, particularly, the freedom to own and use property. To the contrary, everything about the UNCED documents aims to limit human freedom and to restrict the use of private property until it can be placed in the public domain. As sweeping as the UNCED documents are, they are but the first step in the final march to global governance.
The IUCN held its triennial session in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1993. Dr. Jay D. Hair assumed Presidency of the organization, as Shirdath Ramphal stepped down to devote more time to his position as co-chair of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance. His parting message is illuminating:
"Rio, for all its disappointments, set the seal on a new agenda for the world: the agenda of sustainable development. It was not, of course, new for IUCN, which had blazed a trail for sustainable development since 1980 with the World Conservation Strategy. In the final analysis, it is a matter of equity. There are also other aspects to the claims of equity. If there are limits to the use of some resources, they must be fairly shared. Early users, who have prospered, must not pre-empt them but must begin to use less so that others may also progress. The rich must moderate their demands on resources so that the poor may raise theirs to levels that allow them a decent standard of living. Equity calls for no less. We need ... to persuade others that, for the Earth's sake consumption, must be better balanced between rich and poor."78
Equity, or wealth redistribution, is clearly the underlying purpose for "sustainable development," in the IUCN agenda. Its influence over UNEP activities and upon the global agenda cannot be overstated. Its membership includes 68 sovereign nations, 103 government agencies, and more than 640 NGOs. Among the government agencies listed as contributors in the 1993 Annual report are: the U.S. Department of State; U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The U.S. State Department contributes more than $1 million per year to the IUCN.79
The IUCN evaluates every proposed World Heritage site and recommends to UNESCO whether or not it should be listed, or listed "in danger."80 George Frampton, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, asked UNESCO specifically to send a representative from IUCN to evaluate Yellowstone Park as a site "in danger" in 1995.81 On January 18, 1996, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12986, which says:
"I hereby extend to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources the privileges and immunities that provide or pertain to immunity from suit."82
The IUCN is the driving force behind UNEP and the global environmental agenda. The Convention on Biological Diversity was developed and proposed by the IUCN in 1981 to the World Commission on Environment and Development.83 The IUCN is the architect and engineer designing the road to global governance.
From Rio to Vienna (1993)
The UN Conference on Human Rights was held in Vienna, June 1993. The primary objective of this conference was to promote the pending Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). FewAmericans have ever heard of such a treaty and would probably not object on the basis of the title alone. However, as is always the case, the devil is in the details. The treaty would "guarantee" the right to housing for women, the right to "choice," or abortion (Article 16e). Cecilia Acevedo Royals, President of the National Institute of Womanhood, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
"This Convention is deeply flawed. It will, in fact, harm women, men and children by establishing an international policy instrument that can be used as a weapon against the family, the institution of marriage, and cultural and religious values, and that can be turned into a tool for the societal control of women."84
While the Convention aims at guaranteeing certain "rights" to women, it would, in fact, give to the UN the power to enforce those rights. Instead of empowering women, it would, in fact, empower the state, the global state, the United Nations. The Convention has been ratified by 130 nations, though not by the United States. The Clinton Administration prodded State Department officials to urge Senate ratfication.85
From Vienna to Uruguay (1994)
On April 15, The New York Times carried a full-page ad that hailed the World Trade Organization as "the third pillar of the new world order."86 The World Trade Organization (WTO) sailed through the Senate in the closing days of the 103rd Congress, handing over to the UN system the authority and the mechanism to impose and enforce its agenda on America. The WTO Charter requires "the optimal use of the world resources" in accordance with the objective of sustainable development (Preamble). It requires the WTO to "make appropriate arrangement for effective cooperation" with NGOs and intergovernmental organizations (Article V). It requires member nations to change their laws to conform to the WTO: each member shall ensure the conformity of its laws, regulations and administrative procedures with its obligations as provided in the annexed Agreements (Article XVI). Although the U.S. must pay a disproportionate share of the WTO cost, it has only one vote and no veto (Article IX).
The WTO may impose trade sanctions on a nation that it determines is not in compliance with any international treaty. It may impose sanctions, fines, and penalties on a nation, or on an industry. Members are bound by the dispute resolutions dictated by the WTO (Section 2, Annex 2). Bilateral trade deals must meet the approval of the WTO. Bilateral or multilateral trade agreements can be changed by a vote of the members of the WTO (Article X (4)). Article XVI says: "No reservations may be made in respect to any provision of the Agreement."87
The WTO could not have survived without the U.S. The UN could not have controlled world trade without the WTO. But now the facility is in place and the bureaucracy is gearing up to become the first-line enforcement mechanism of global governance.
From Uruguay to Cairo (1994)
Population control has long been a high priority for the United Nations, though promoted for different reasons, by different names, at different times. Currently, the population explosion is cited as the underlying cause of the human impact on biodiversity and on climate change. Population control entered the UN agenda as a eugenics issue by virtue of Julian Huxley's involvement with British Population Investigation Commission and the Eugenics Society. In 1954, the Rome conference promoted the concept of fertility as an economic factor. By 1974, the Bucharest conference integrated population and development issues with the developed nations insisting that population reduction was essential to economic development. When the issue emerged at the Mexico City Conference, it appeared as a matter of "women's rights" and freedom of choice. In Cairo at the September International Conference on Population and development (ICPD), population control was seen by some to be a matter of "women's empowerment by the state"88 while others saw population control as an essential requirement of sustainable development initiatives.89 The Cairo "Programme of Action" said:
"... unsustainable consumption and production patterns are contributing to the unsustainable use of natural resources and environmental degradation as well as to ... social inequities and poverty" (Chapter 3.1); and "Governments should establish the requisite internal institutional mechanisms ... to ensure that population factors are appropriately addressed within the decision-making and administrative processes" (Chapter 3.7).90
The conference agenda focused on gender equality; the eradication of poverty; family in its various forms; children's rights; education; as well as population policies, human rights, and sustainable development. Population control is critical to the overall global environmental agenda. The Global Biodiversity Assessment concludes that:
"A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 1 to 3 billion would be possible. An 'agricultural world,' in which most human beings are peasants, should be able to support 5 to 7 billion people. ..."91
The cost of the various UN population programs discussed at the conference was estimated to be between $17 and $75 billion. The World Resources Institute (WRI) reported in the NGO Networker that Zero Population Growth was the NGO coordinating lobbying activities for the Cairo conference.92
From Cairo to Copenhagen (1995)
In Copenhagen, the UN's World Summit on Social Development was the occasion for advancing the road to global governance. The central theme of the conference was the "eradication of poverty." The agenda also included population policies, the reduction of consumption, and elevating NGO participation. More than anything else, the conference was about money, getting it to the UN, and increasing the power of the UN to collect it and spend it.
The conference proposed an international "20/20 Compact" which would require developing countries and aid donors to allocate 20 percent Official Development Assistance (OAD) to "human development priorities." Commitment 8 in the Draft Conference Document calls on nations to target .07 percent of Gross Domestic Product to Official Development Assistance.93
The conference was used by the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance to float a trial balloon: global taxation. Buried in the UNDP's 1994 Human Development Report was an idea advanced by James Tobin calling for a "uniform international tax on international currency transactions." When the UNDP report was presented to the conference, it was heralded as the way to provide "substantial reliable funds for sustainable human development." Conference documents describe the proceeds from the tax as "immense, over $1.5 trillion per year (150 times the current total UN budget) to be devoted to international and humanitarian purposes and to be placed at the disposal of international institutions."94
Other global taxes were also proposed: international travel; telecommunications; and taxes on resource use -- especially energy resources.
Paragraph 75 of the conference document calls for the "strengthening of ... non-government organizations ... enabling them to participate actively in policy-making ... involving these organizations in the design, implementation and evaluation of social development strategies and specific programmes." It was clear to Rita Joseph, who attended the conference for Population Research Institute, that
"The thrust currently behind the latest declarations is to set up not only monitoring bodies, but enforcement agencies, to which individual and group petitions concerning perceived grievances may be mounted. There is a push on to expand international government so that it reaches right down to communities and homes, there to dabble in values reorientation."95
NGO lobbying activities for this conference were coordinated by the Overseas Development Council in Washington, DC., according to WRl's NGO Networker. (The editor of the NGO Networker, Sarah Burns, went to work for the UNDP in Washington as NGO Liaison in 1994).
From Copenhagen to New York (1995)
The UN Commission on Sustainable Development held its third meeting in New York, April 1995. This was a Commission meeting rather than a World Conference. The pomp was not as pompous, but the circumstance was as significant as any UN meeting. The agenda focused on land degradation, desertification, forests and biodiversity; patterns of consumption, financial resources, and technology transfer. The Commission is said to be developing a new international Convention on Sustainable Development, but a new strategy is being used. Other Conventions have been developed through a long series of Commission meetings until they are complete. Then they are presented to the world at a World Conference, as was the case with the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Maurice Strong's strategy is to get individual nations to develop their own sustainable development plan, all of which are developed within the framework of Agenda 21 so that when the Convention on Sustainable Development is finally completed, most of the nations will already be doing what the Convention calls for. Until the Convention is complete and ratified, the sustainable development programs within individual nations will be authorized by national law. When the Convention is ratified, the programs will come under the authority -- and under the regulatory and enforcement procedures -- of the United Nations.
From New York to Beijing (1995)
All the pomp that was missing in New York was present in Beijing for the fourth World Women's Congress in September 1995, preceded by a week-long NGO Forum. The event was expected to produce a Platform for Action to guide national and international policy on women's issues into the 21st century. The event was the culmination of a "180-Day Local-to-Global-to-Local Women's Empowerment Campaign" organized by the NGO WEDO (Women for Environment and Development Organization).
WEDO's parent organization, Women U.S.A. Fund, Inc, is headed by Bella Abzug, Congresswomen Patsy Mink and Maxine Waters, and Gloria Steinem. Funding for the NGO comes from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the Turner Foundation. The campaign featured the coordinated release of press kits to the media, boycotts, "take over the legislature for a day" rallies, forums, lunchtime workshops with fellow workers, and a "myriad of actions" all over the world. The purpose of the campaign was to focus public attention on the Beijing Conference, and more particularly, on WEDO's conference agenda.
WEDO called for the tracking of all national and international economic and development programs by social and gender impact studies; restrictions on economic growth in industrialized countries; the transfer of common property (water, forests, grazing lands and fishing waters) to international control; prohibiting ownership of such common property to national or international corporations; national and international strategies to alleviate women's poverty; remuneration for women's unpaid work (housekeeping, child rearing, etc.); taxes shifted from income to consumption; universal guaranteed income and payment for childcare and other socially productive activities; and a universal 50/50 program that would require all business and government entities to have a 50/50 men/women work force.96
The conference produced more hype, hoopla, and hyperbole than anything else. First there was a flap about having a World Conference on Women's issues in a nation which so severely oppressed women. Then there was a flap about the facilities. Then there was a flap about the extreme security measures. Then there was Hillary Clinton, who put in a personal appearance. Of significance is the reappearance of the "Tobin Tax" as a recommended way to fund the extravagant programs demanded by the delegates. There reappeared new calls to elevate the status and authority of NGO's in decision-making and in program administration. And there was a new idea advanced -- the FDR (not Franklin D. Roosevelt).
The FDR means "Family Dependency Ratio." The idea calls for extensive monitoring of the activities, consumption, and production of every member of every family to determine whether a family is a net "consumer" or "producer." This idea grew out of WEDO's demand to "value and remunerate" women for their unpaid work.97
Throughout the Conference, debate on the serious issues as well as the frivolous issues proceeded with virtually no challenge to the appropriateness of UN jurisdiction over a range of issues that should be at least national, if not extremely personal. Taxation, employment policies, and land use policies were all offered up to the UN. Delegates and the NGO lobbyists passed the stage of questioning the appropriateness of global governance; it is now a question of how much and how soon. There is no longer any discussion of freedom, property rights, or national sovereignty. The discussion centers around how best to get the wealth from developed countries into the UN for redistribution to the undeveloped countries. The documents coming from each of the successive World Conferences continue to reflect the assumption that government -- the United Nations Government -- should be sovereign, and that nation states are secondary, and individuals are cannon-fodder.
From Beijing to San Francisco (1995)
The Beijing Conference had hardly adjourned when Gorbachev's State of the World Forum convened in San Francisco, September 27, 1995. Though not an official UN function, the Forum was designed to advance global governance. Forum President and founder of the Christic Institute, Jim Garrison, told the San Francisco Weekly, "We are going to end up with world government ... we have to govern and regulate human interaction."98 Gorbachev told the hand-picked audience of celebrities and dignitaries that "we are giving birth to the first Global Civilization." Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor, told the audience that "regionalism" must precede world government. New-age guru, Sam Keen received enthusiastic applause for his pronouncement:
"If we cut the world's population by 90%, there won't be enough people left to do ecological damage."
The Forum's agenda called for the transfer of all armaments to the UN, the initiation of global taxation, stricter population control programs, and the elimination of nationalism and national borders. The highlight of the event was a joint presentation by Gorbachev, former President George Bush, and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Gorbachev is the founding President of Green Cross and the Gorbachev Foundation. He along with Maurice Strong were regarded as candidates to replace Butrous Butrous-Ghali as Secretary-General of the United Nations at the expiration of Ghali's term December 31, 1996.99 However since UN rules have required that an African hold the position of Secretary-General for another term, Kofi Annan has assumed this position. Maurice Strong has been designated his "Senior Advisor" for restructuring the United Nations. On 16 July 1997, Kofi Annan released a report on UN "reform" plans. They coincide with the blueprint drawn in Our Global Neighborhood: Report of the Commission on Global Governance. It is noteworthy that its lead author is Maurice Strong.
From San Francisco to Istanbul (1996)
Habitat II, the UN Conference on Human Settlements, convened in Istanbul in June 1996. Despite the fact that Habitat I called for the elimination of private property in 1976, the U.S. has contributed more than $32 million100 to its operations and sent an enthusiastic delegation to Istanbul to assure the Conference that America is supporting its objectives. The entire agenda was bathed in the ambiguous language of sustainable development. Two of the major issues to emerge through the noise of 4000 delegates and 25,000 NGO representatives, were: (1) the right to housing, and (2) good governance.
Although at least three previous UN documents declare the right to housing, two of them have not been ratified by the U.S. Consequently, the universal right to housing is in question. Article 5 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination declares a right to housing. The U.S. has ratified that Convention. The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Human Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which declare the right to housing, have not been ratified by the U.S. As the leader of one NGO, called the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, says: "The right to housing is a powerful, mobilizing tool for women's groups, street children and so on. Denying this right would be a great step backwards."101 If housing is declared to be a universal right, then the UN would have the responsibility of guaranteeing and enforcing that right. And to have meaning, the UN would have to have the authority to collect the money necessary to provide universal housing.
Of more direct importance is the issue of "good governance." Throughout all the conferences of the 1990s, emphasis has been placed on expanding the role and functions of NGOs in the decision-making process and the management and administration of government programs at every level. Habitat II Director-General, Wally N'Dow, said:
"The road to Istanbul has been marked by many innovations. One of seminal importance has been a pioneering change in the rules of procedure -- a change that was initiated during the preparatory process and subsequently endorsed by the General Assembly [Rule 61] in recognition of the important role of local authorities and NGOs. As a result, all the organizations and institutions of civil society will receive unparalleled recognition at a UN conference, nominating their representatives to participate in a formal session. ... They speak for countless millions of men and women in the cities and towns across the planet, the true constituents of Habitat II."102
This rule change officially elevates NGOs to participatory status in the policy-making process of the United Nations. Policy making by individuals who have no direct or indirect accountability to the electorate is a foreign concept in America. It is common -- in fact expected -- in socialist countries. In America, if voters do not like the way America is being represented in the UN, voters can remove the President who appoints UN delegates and elect someone else who more accurately reflects American values. American voters cannot unelect representatives from the Sierra Club, or the president of a gay feminist NGO, or any other NGO who may be selected by their peers to make global policies which affect Americans.
Moreover, Rule 61 invites participation by local officials. Heretofore, the UN has served its member nations as represented by official delegates. This rule is the first step toward bypassing the official national government to extend UN influence, programs, and eventually money, regulations, and enforcement -- directly to the people within the nation. This is the essence of governance by civil society, orchestrated by the United Nations. This is the first wave of the reality of global governance.
From Istanbul to Geneva (1996)
The second meeting of The Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COPII-FCCC), convened in Geneva, Switzerland July 8-19, 1996. The treaty was presented in 1992 at the Rio "Earth Summit," and has now been ratified by 159 nations, including the U.S. The treaty requires participating Annex I (developed) nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000.
At COPI, however, meeting in Berlin in 1995, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) proposed that developed nations reduce emissions to a level 20%, less than 1990 levels. The COP did not adopt the proposal, but did adopt the "Berlin Mandate" which was an agreement to develop a legally binding Protocol by 1997. COPII was designed to negotiate The terms of the Protocol for adoption at COPlII in Kyoto, Japan in 1997.
To influence the proceedings, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Second Assessment Report (SAR). For the first time, the official UN body claimed that "... the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." Although 100 scientists -- some of whom were participants in the IPCC process -- publicly objected to the report's findings in a statement called the "Leipzig Declaration," the Conference pushed forward toward a legally binding Protocol. The conference document, called the "Ministerial Declaration," endorses The SAR; declares that emissions will eventually have to be reduced by 50%; and calls on developed nations to initiate policies to reduce emissions within specific industries: energy, transportation, agriculture, forestry, waste management, and economic instruments.
From Geneva to Global Governance (1998)
When Shirdath Ramphal handed over the IUCN gavel to Jay Hair in 1993, he turned his attention to the Commission on Global Governance which he co-chaired along with Ingvar Carlsson, former Prime Minister of Sweden and then-Leader of the Social Democratic Party in Sweden. Like the Commissions of the 1980s (Brandt, Palme, MacBride, and Brundtland) it was an independent commission, meaning that it was not created by a resolution of the UN General Assembly. It operated officially as an NGO but, as a practical matter, it was an instrument of the United Nations. The Commission on Global Governance received the formal endorsement of Butrous-Butrous Ghali, UN Secretary-General, and funding from the United Nations Development Program. Nine nations and several private foundations also supplied funding. Oscar Arias, former President of Costa Rica was a member of the Commission. Arias won the Nobel Peace Prize for his "peace plan" which called on nations to direct disarmament savings to the UN's development programs.
Adele Simmons, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, was a member. Maurice Strong also served on the 28-member Commission.
Several of the Commission's ideas were advanced experimentally at the various world conferences during the early 1990s. They tested the waters particularly for the several global taxation ideas, and for their ideas about global governance through civil society. Their final report was released in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in the fall of 1995, entitled Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance.
The Commission recommended that:
"the General Assembly should agree to hold a World Conference on Governance in 1998, with its decisions to be ratified and put into effect by 2000."103
Hereafter, numbers in parentheses indicate the reference page number in Our Global Neighborhood.
The Commission bases its recommendations on the belief that human activities have irreversible environmental impacts and that human activities need to be "managed" to keep the "adverse outcomes within prudent bounds" (p. 11). "Effective and equitable management calls for a systemic, long-term, global approach guided by the principle of sustainable development. Its universal application is a priority among the tasks of global governance" (p. 30).
The Commission is convinced that the world is ready to accept "a set of core values that can unite people of all cultural, political, religious, or philosophical backgrounds. ... It is fundamentally important that governance should be underpinned by democracy at all levels and ultimately by the rule of enforceable law" (p.48). "Underpinned by democracy" has a totally different meaning to people who live in a socialist democratic nation, than to people who live in a "free" country such as America. Americans think of "democracy" as the process by which they elect the individuals to represent them in their exercise of the limited power that Americans have chosen to give to their government. In socialist nations, "democracy" means participating in the process by which the sovereign government decides how to manage its subjects.
The "core values" upon which global governance is to be based include liberty. But again, in America, liberty has a totally different meaning from what the Commission describes. "Liberty is threatened by deprivation, economic dislocation, oppression based on gender or sexual orientation, abuse of children, debt bondage, and other social and economic patterns." (p. 50) Americans realize that these conditions are only some of the inherent risks of being free. Liberty is the freedom to exercise individual ingenuity and apply individual energy to avoid the risks and rise above all other dangers.
The very fact that Americans, and others who live in free societies, have risen above these risks, creates an injustice in the world according to the Commission. "Although people are born into widely unequal economic and social circumstances, great disparities in their conditions or life chances are an affront to the human sense of justice. ... A concern for equity is not tantamount to an insistence on equality, but it does call for deliberate efforts to reduce gross inequalities ... and to promote a fairer sharing of resources" (p. 51). Mutual respect which is defined to be "tolerance," caring -- with a global reach -- and integrity, which is defined as supporting the program, round out the Commission's core values.
Voluntary acceptance of global governance is the preferred means of achieving it. Education programs to teach the "global ethic" have been underway by UNESCO and by UNEP for more than 20 years. That the U.S. government, through its representatives to the various UN agencies, has not already crushed this global governance agenda is a testament to the effectiveness of the UN's education program. But the Commission is not content to rely upon voluntary acceptance. An intricate maze of international, enforceable law is encircling the planet in the form of Conventions, Treaties, and Executive Agreements.
To implement, administer, and enforce global governance, the Commission has recommended a major restructuring of the UN system. The Commission recommends an "Assembly of the People" which "should consist of representatives of organizations accredited to the General Assembly as Civil Society Organizations. ... A Forum of 300-600 organs of global civil society would be desirable and practicable" (p. 258-259). A new "Petitions Council" is recommended, to consist of five to seven representatives of "civil society," for the purpose of reviewing petitions from NGOs in the field to direct to the appropriate UN agency for enforcement action (p. 260).
A new Economic Security Council (ESC) would replace the existing Economic and Social Council. The new ESC would consist of no more than 23 members who would have responsibility for all international financial and development activities. The IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO -- virtually all finance and development activities -- would be under the authority of this body. There would be no veto power by any nation, nor would there be permanent member status for any nation (p. 266f).
The existing Security Council would be restructured. Veto power of the five permanent members would be eliminated, as would permanent member status over time. With the Secretary-General's office expanded to include the function of Commander-in-Chief, the Security Council would oversee a new UN standing army, complete with support and transport car capabilities. (p. 100f) The Commission calls for an international convention on curtailment of the arms trade (p. 129), a demilitarization of international society, and disarming of civilians. (p. 131)
A new International Criminal Court would be created, complete with its own "independent prosecutor or a panel of prosecutors of the highest moral character." (p. 324) The International Court of Justice would become "compulsory" and it would issue binding verdicts in order to "strengthen international law." (p.308f)
To protect the environment:
"We propose that the Trusteeship Council ... be given the mandate of exercising trusteeship over the global commons. The global commons include the atmosphere, outer space, the oceans beyond national jurisdiction, and the related environment and life-support systems that contribute to the support of human life. Its functions would include the administration of environmental treaties in such fields as climate change, biodiversity, outer space and the Law of the Sea. It would refer, as appropriate, any economic or security issues arising from these matters to the Economic Security Council or the Security Council." (p. 251f)
The Commission suggests that "the new Council" would benefit from contributions from civil society organizations. Of major significance is the expansion of the concept of security:
"All people, no less than all states, have a right to a secure existence, and all states have an obligation to protect those rights. (p. 84) Where people are subjected to massive suffering and distress, however, there is a need to weigh a state's right to autonomy against its people's right to security. (p. 71) We believe a global consensus exists today for a UN response on humanitarian grounds in cases of gross abuse of the security of people." (p. 89) The security of the people is challenged "from threats to the earth's life-support systems, extreme economic deprivation, the proliferation of conventional small arms, the terrorizing of civilian populations by domestic factions, and gross violations of human rights." (p. 79)
The Commission believes that the UN should protect the "security of the people" inside the borders of sovereign nations, with or without the invitation of the national government. It proposes the expansion of an NGO "early warning" network to function through the Petitions Council to alert the UN to possible action. It has recommended implementation of the Tobin Tax, and several other taxing schemes. (p. 217f) It has called for a world conference in 1998 to present the treaties and other documents necessary to bring about complete global governance by the year 2000.
Endnotes
1 Basil, Dmytryshyn. Editor. 1974. Imperial Russia: A Source Book. 1700-1917. Second Edition. Hindsale: The Dryden Press. p. 398, as quoted by Philip C. Bom. The Coming Century of Commonism. 1992. Policy Books, Inc. Virginia Beach, Va., p. 42.
2 Richard Moore, Fodor's Soviet Union 1978. David McKay Co., Inc., 1978, p. 107.
3 Ibid, p. 111.
4 Gary H. Kah, En Route to Global Occupation. Huntington House Publishers, 1991, Lafayette, Louisiana, p. 29.
5 William Norman Grigg, Freedom on the Altar: The UN's Crusade Against God and Family. American Opinion Publishing, Inc., 1995, Appleton, Wisconsin. p. 18-19.
6 Ibid p. 20.
7 Grigg. Op Cit., p. 21.
8 Kah. Op Cit., p. 31.
9 Harvey Klehr, et al, The Secret World of American Communism. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 1995). p. XXVI.
10 Richard Moore, Op Cit., p. 114.
11 Grigg. Op Cit., p. 22.
12 Grigg. Op Cit., p. 174
13 Kah. Op Cit., p. 37.
14 Philip C. Bom, Op Cit., p. 17.
15 William F. Jasper. Global Tyranny ... Step by Step, (Appleton, Wisconsin: Western Island Publishers, 1993) p. 16.
16 Kah. Op Cit., p. 36f.
17 Cliff Kincaid. Global Bondage: The UN Plan to Rule The World. (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1995) p. 36.
18 Kah, Op Cit., p.33.
19 William F. Jasper, Op Cit., p. 165.
20 William Norman Grigg. Op Cit., p. 33.
21 Ibid., p. 38.
22 William Benton, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, in his initial address before the first meeting of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. September 23, 1946. UNESCO publication No. 356.
23 Harvey Klehr, et al, Op Cit., p. 12.
24 Ibid., p. xxxii
25 William Norman Grigg, Op Cit., p. 23.
26 'The Global Environmental Community.' eco-logic. May, 1995. p. 28.
27 Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Dissrmament in a Peaceful World (Department of State Publication 7277, Disarmament Series 5, Released September 1961, Office of Public Services, Bureau of Public Affairs) as quoted by William F. Jasper. Global Tyranny ... Step by Step, p. 13.
28 James Perloff, The Shadows of Power. (Appleton, Wisconsin: Western Island Publishers, 1992) p.111.
29 Richard Harwood, 'Ruling Class Journalists,' Washington Post, October 30, 1993, p. A21. (as reported by William Norman Grigg. Op Cit., p. 24.)
30 'The United Nations System -- Peace-keeping Operations.' eco-logic, May/June. 1996. P. 4.
31 Robert Muller. Comments presented to the College of Law. University of Denver. March 30, 1995, transcribed by Virginia Meves, Brookfield, Wisconsin.
32 World Core Curriculum Manual, The Robert Muller School, Arlington, Texas. 1985. p. 2.
33 Ibid, preface.
34 Brenda Scott and Samantha Smith. Trojan Horse. (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1993) p. 158.
35 Gary H. Kah, Op Cit., p. 77.
36 Michael S. Coffman, Saviors of the Earth, (Chicago. Illinois: Northfield Publishing Co., 1993), p. 221f.
37 Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy, (Bellevue, Washington: Free Enterprise Press, 1993), p. 299; from The People's Forests, Robert Marshall, p. 210.
38 Larry Abraham with Franklin Sanders, The Greening, (Atlanta, Georgia: Soundview Publications, 1993, p. 98.
39 Gary H. Kah, Op Cit., p. 43.
40 United States Department Report to Congress, United States Contributions to International Organizations, 40th Annual Report for Fiscal year 1991, p. 20.
41 'More than you want to know about UNEP.' eco-logic, September/October, 1995, p. 8.
42 Gary H. Kah, Op Cit,. p. 43.
43 Ibid., p. 41.
44 'Meet Maurice Strong.' eco-logic, November/December, 1995, p. 4.
45 William Norman Grigg, Op Cit., p. 39.
46 Philip C. Bom. Op Cit.., p. 36.
47 Philip C. Bom. Op Cit.., p. 7.
48 Philip C. Bom. Op Cit.., p. x.
49 David A. Witts, Theft, (La Verne, California: University of La Verne Press, 1981, p. 16.
50 'More than you want to know about UNEP.' eco-logic, September/October, 1995, p. 9.
51 Sean McBride, Many Voices, One World, (New York, New York: Unipub, 1980, p. 270, as quoted by Philip C. Bom. The Coming Century of Commonism, p. 93.
52 'How the GAGs do it.' eco-logic. May, 1995, p. 24.
53 Willy Brandt, North-South: A Program for Survival, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1980, p. 12f, as quoted by Philip C. Bom. Op Cit., p. 60f.
54 Philip C. Bom. Op Cit.., p. 73.
55 Olof Palme, Common Security: A Blueprint For Survival, (New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), in Philip C. Bom. Op Cit.., p.70f.
56 James L. Malone, 'Mineral Resources and the International Environmental Agenda,' Mining Voice, November/December, 1995, p. 27. (See also: Convention on the Law of the Sea)
57 Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb. Op Cit., p. 537f.
58 Philip C. Bom, Op Cit., p. 81.
59 Gro Harlem Brundtland. Our Common Future. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). p. 3.
60 'James Lovelock Views Our Earthly Relationships.' Shared Visions. Global Forum of Spirituality and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival. Number 1. 1989, p. 3.
61 'Cosmolatry: The Worship of Gaia.' eco-logic. May, 1995. p. 14f.
62 Cathedral. News of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Fall 1994, Volume 8 No. 2 p. 7.
63 'In their own words.' eco-logic, May/June, 1996, p.20f.
64 Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Op Cit., P. 595f.
65 National Religious Partnership for the Environment. 'Statement of Goals,' 1047 Amsterdam Ave. New York, NY 10025 (212) 316-7441, Fall, 1995.
66 Robert Jastrow et al, Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem, (Ottawa, Illinois: The Marshall Press, Jameson Books, Inc., 1990), p. 82.
67 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Preamble (paragraph 4).
68 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity. Union of Concerned Scientists, 96 Church Street, Cambridge, MA 02238. (617) 547-5552, e-mail: ucs@igc.apc.org.
69 Dixy Lee Ray with Lou Guzzo, Environmental Overkill, (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1993). p.171.
70 Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. (New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992) p. 326.
71 Ibid. p. 270, 274.
72 'Second to none' (The President's address to the Earth Summit). eco-logic, August, 1992, p. 13.
73 'UNCED Report: An eco-logical approach.' eco-logic, August, 1992, p. 11f.
74 Dixy Lee Ray, 'Blame it on Rio? Platitudes and Attitudes: A Perspective.' eco-logic, August, 1992, p. 14.
75 'Conspectus,' Global Biodiversity Assessment. United Nations Environment Programme, 5th Issue, November, 1994, p. 1.
76 Rescue Mission: Planet Earth, Action Update, Issue No. 2 September 5th, 1994, p. 24.
77 'We Believe Statement.' Sustainable America: A New Consensus. President's Council on Sustainable Development, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996, p. v.
78 IUCN Annual Report, 1993, p. 2.
79 U.S. State Department, Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 1994.
80 Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, I(D)(45), February, 1994 p. 15.
81 Letter from George Frampton to Dr. Bernd von Droste. UNESCO. June 27, 1995,. A38 (023).
82 Executive Order 12986, January 18, 1996.
83 Global Biodiversity Assessment Section 10, 'Measures for Conservation of Biodiversity and Sustainable use of its Components.' Draft: September 2, 1994, Section 10.4.6.2 p. 243. (See also: Global Biodiversity Assessment. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) p. 1048.
84 Senate Report S. HRG. 103-892. Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations on Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Ex. R. 96-2). p.18.
85 Ibid. p.5.
86 The New York Times. Friday, April 15 1994, p. A9.
87 Agreement Establishing The World Trade Organization.
88 Jean M Guilfoyle. 'The Agenda.' Population Research Institute Review. Volume 4, Number 6, November/December 1994, p. 5.
89 Joan M. Veon. The United Nations and its Global Agenda for the Environment, Economy and Family, (Olney, MD: TWG, Inc., February, 1996) p. 23.
90 Jacqueline R. Kasun, Ph.D. presentation delivered at the National Conference on Global Environmentalism, Kansas City, Missouri, March 21-23, 1996.
91 Global Biodiversity Assessment Section 9, phase One Draft, Section 9.2.3.2. p. 108 (See also Global Biodiversity Assessment, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1995, p. 773).
92 NGO Networker, Winter 1994-95, Number 22 p. 4.
93 Rita Joseph, 'From Cairo to Copenhagen,' Population Resource Institute Review, Volume 5, Number 2, March/April, 1995, p. 1.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid. p. 3.
96 Jean M Guilfoyle. Population Research Institute Review, Volume 5, Number 1, January/February, 1995.
97 Joan M. Veon, Op Cit., p. 24.
98 San Francisco Weekly, May 31, 1995.
99 Lu Haynes, 'Gorbachev is 'Giving Birth'' Special Report to eco-logic, December 21, 1995.
100 U.S. Department, as reported in eco-logic, March, 1995, p.29.
101 'Is there a right to housing?' UN DPI/1730/Rev.I/HAB/CON-96-01274, January, 1996.
102 Joan M. Veon, report to eco-logic from Habitat II, Istanbul, Turkey, June 14, 1996.
103 Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) p. 351. (Available from Oxford Press, ISBN 0-190827997-3, 410 pp. , (919) 677-0977))
The Rise of Global Green Religion
Introduction
The National Religious partnership for the Environment (NRPE) is currently providing "education and activity" kits to 67,300 American congregations which minister to more than 100 million members. The "education" contained in these kits flows from an "enlightenment" empowered by a belief in gaia as the giver of all life. The "activity" encouraged in these kits is political activity in support of legislation and regulations that will force individuals to modify behavior to comply with the tenets of gaia worship.
Gaia enlightenment contends that the planet is warming excessively as the result of human activity; that the planet is biologically impoverished; and that the planet cannot support the current population. None of these allegations is supported by convincing scientific evidence. Nevertheless, public policy is being developed and implemented, at both the national and international level, as if the allegations were established fact.
This report unravels the NRPE, identifies its creators, reveals its political connections, and lays bare its reliance upon New Age cosmolatry. Extensive endnotes are provided to encourage the serious reader to explore further the preponderance of evidence which so pointedly indicts the NRPE as an instrument used by the international gaia community to engage American churches and synagogues in a paradigm shift of historic proportions -- from anthropocentrism to biocentrism -- from God-worship to gaia-worship.
Special appreciation is extended to Floy Lilley, J.D., and Dr. Margaret Maxey of the Clint W. Murchison Chair of Free Enterprise at The University of Texas at Austin. Their review of this manuscript has made it more precise, more readable, and more valuable to all who read it. Any errors that may appear, as well as the content, however, are the responsibility of the author.
In the Beginning
The National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE) announced its $5 million program on October 4, 1993, at the Mount Gilead Baptist Church in Washington, DC, "to underscore the connection between addressing issues of poverty and the environment."1 The Partnership is a formal agreement among four of the nation's largest religious organizations:
Although not a full partner, the Union of Concerned Scientists is identified in a special "consultative" relationship, and the NRPE has established an office in their headquarters.
The NRPE is presently engaged in mailing "education and action kits" to 67,300 religious congregations which ultimately reaches 100 million church-goers. Paul Gorman, Executive Director of the Partnership, says: " ... how people of faith engage the environmental crisis will have much to do with the future well-being of the planet, and in all likelihood, with the future of religious life as well."2
Gorman's comment may prove to be the understatement of the century. The objectives of the NRPE are nothing less than the transformation of social order into a global society organized around the notion that the earth itself is the giver of life, and that all the world's religions are evolving into a state of enlightenment that recognizes Gaia as the true source of life and spirituality, and is the only relevant object of worship. In order to fully appreciate the scope and significance of the NRPE, it is necessary to examine its origin, trace its development, and explore the motivation and philosophy of the individuals who brought the idea to fruition.
In the beginning ...
The Temple of Understanding, housed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, was founded in 1960 by Juliet Hollister and a prestigious group of "Founding Friends" which included: H.H. the XIV Dalai Lama, Jawaharlal Nehru, H.H. Pope John XXIII, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anwar el-Sadat, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, UN Secretary-General U Thant, and others. The Temple developed a series of "Spiritual Summit Conferences" that met in Calcutta (1968), Geneva (1970), Harvard and Princeton Universities (1971), Cornell University (1974) and at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City (1984). The Temple also convened a conference on Mount Sinai in October of 1984 to "thrash out an inter-religious consensus," for which Dr. Robert Muller, Assistant UN Secretary-General, and author of New Genesis, was asked to draft a "Declaration of the Unity of World Religions."3 In 1988, the Temple co-founded the "Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival," an unprecedented event sponsored jointly with the UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development. The Forum met in Oxford, England in 1988, and again in Moscow in 1990.4 The Temple was also instrumental in creating the "North American Interfaith Network" which held international conferences in Wichita in 1987 and in Seattle in 1990.
The UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development was created in 1982 with funding support from the UN Population Fund, and a special trust fund established by the UN Development Program "to provide information on global survival issues to parliamentarians, spiritual leaders and the media, and to fund network meetings at national, regional and global levels."5 It is significant that twelve individuals listed on the Board of Directors or Advisors of the Temple of Understanding are also listed as members of the Global Forum Council, including the Very Reverend James Parks Morton who is Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, President of the Temple of Understanding, and co-chair of the Global Forum Council.
The featured speaker at the 1988 Forum in Oxford, England was James Lovelock, author of The Ages of Gaia. He told the audience:
"On Earth, she [Gaia] is the source of life everlasting and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are a part of her."6 Lovelock's gaia hypothesis first appeared in 1979 and evolved into Gaia: A New Look At Life On Earth, published by Oxford Press in 1982. The gaia hypothesis contends that the earth itself is a living organism, the source of all life, which has the capacity to regulate or "heal" itself under "natural" conditions. Lovelock's contention is that the human species has developed the technology to overwhelm gaia's capacity to "heal" itself, and is therefore doomed to destruction unless the human species stops its technological assault. He told the Forum that global warming is the result of the human assault on the earth, and likened it to a fever in humans, but is worried that humans are not allowing gaia to recuperate. He said: "She may be unable to relax because we have been busy removing her skin and using it as farm land, especially the trees and forests of the humid tropics ... we are also adding a vast blanket of greenhouse gases to the already feverish patient."7
The 1990 Forum in Moscow featured Mikhail Gorbachev and then-UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. It was sponsored by the Supreme Soviet and the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity, along with the Temple of Understanding and the UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development. Gorbachev said "Perestroika has changed our view of ecology; only through international efforts can we avert tragedy." He called for each nation to produce state-of-the-environment reports at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. He reiterated an earlier call for a UN "green cross," an international emergency task force that could be rushed to the scene of an ecological disaster.8 Transportation was provided to invited participants free of charge by Aeroflot, and local expenses were paid by the host country. The primary thrust of the Forum was to explore the role the news media could play in promoting global survival, "and especially sustainable development." More than 50 international journalists, 20 international business leaders, scientists, including Carl Sagan, and selected leaders of the arts and cultural community were invited to join 700 spiritual and parliamentary leaders.9
Carl Sagan led 22 other noted scientists in an appeal for science and religion to "join hands" in a new ecological alliance. More than 100 religious leaders endorsed the appeal. James Parks Morton, co-chair of the Forum, said "We welcome the scientists' Appeal and are eager to explore as soon as possible concrete, specific forms of collaboration and action. The Earth itself calls us to new levels of joint commitment."10 Other religious leaders who signed the Appeal document, included: Elie Wiesel; Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, the Grand Mufti of Fyria and co-chair of the Forum; Joseph Cardinal Bernadin, Archbishop of Chicago; the Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of Notre Dame University; Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation; Jain leader Acharya Sushil Kumarji Maharaj; The Reverend Ronald F. Thiemann, Dean of the Harvard Divinity School; and the Reverend Dr. Milton B. Efthimiou, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America.
Among the scientists launching the appeal were James Hansen of NASA (whose testimony before the U.S. Senate brought global warming to public attention); Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University; Mohammed Kassas of the University of Cairo; Motoo Kimura of Japan's National Institute of Genetics; Sir Frederick Warner of Essex University; and Jerome B. Wiesner of MIT.11
Five months after the Moscow Forum, a similar conference was held in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the North American Conference on Religion and Ecology (NACRE), described in conference literature as an "Inter-faith organization designed to help the North American religious community enter into the environmental movement in the 1990s." The program featured HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and President of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Russell Train, Chairman of the WWF-US, Carl Sagan, Cornell University, Jessica Mathews, Director of Global Issues of the National Security Council and editorial board member of The Washington Post, Lester Brown, President of Worldwatch Institute; and Brian Swimme, co-author with Thomas Berry of The Universe Story.
NACRE President, Donald B. Conroy, said the conference, entitled "Caring for Creation," was "an introduction to congregational habitat," which will provide resource materials for local congregations, "the first steps of an environmental ministry."12
Paul Gorman, former Vice President of public affairs of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, then-Director of the Temple of Understanding's Joint Appeal, led a coalition of 200 local environmental organizations in 1990 to assist in the election of Mayor David Dinkins. The Coalition invited then-Senator Al Gore to a breakfast symposium with its members before he delivered the Sunday sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.13 Senators Al Gore, Tim Wirth, John Heinz, and James Jeffords, then arranged an October 1990 Congressional breakfast in Washington which led to a decision to expand the Joint Appeal to "initiate environmental programs, to measure interest in grass roots religious environmental activity, and to facilitate formal consultations between religious leaders and scientists."14
In June, 1991, another meeting of the religious leaders, scientists and members of Congress was convened. At the end of the gathering, they concluded:
"We believe a consensus now exists, at the highest level of leadership across a significant spectrum of religious traditions, that the cause of environmental integrity and justice must occupy a position of utmost priority for people of faith."15
Eleven chief executive officers of major national environmental groups sent a letter endorsing the program, "particularly in our efforts to support struggles for environmental justice by poor, minority and indigenous peoples." Among the groups were: the National Audubon Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the World Resources Institute.
The four major partners of the NRPE met on May 11, 1992 and agreed to a three-year program. The first year was devoted to fund-raising which produced an initial $3 million. Program activity began in late September, 1993. The formal announcement in a black church in the ghettos of Washington, D.C., was followed by a day-long celebration a few days later featuring a press conference by Vice President Al Gore who said the NRPE "will trigger the beginning of grassroots activity in tens of thousands of religious congregations across thecountry." Other dignitaries celebrating the event included: James P. Morton, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, who praised Gore "for the role he played in bringing the partnership to life;" Chancellor Ismar Schorsch of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; Bishop James Malone of Youngstown, Ohio; Reverend W. Franklyn Richardson, general secretary of the National Baptist Convention; and representatives from the National Association of Evangelicals; World Vision; Sojourners; the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship; the AuSable Institute; and Carl Sagan, who said: " ... separately, neither science nor religion could solve the problem of redeeming the environment from the shortsightedness of the last few decades."16
The Program
The program seeks to "broaden exponentially the base of mainstream commitment, integrate issues of social justice and environment, and urge behavioral change in the lives of congregants." Specific goals include:
Distribution of education and action kits to 67,300 congregations (including every Catholic parish plus every Reform and Conservative synagogue in the nation) for three successive years;
Clergy and lay leadership training programs; Legislative updates, testimony and action alerts, with highest priority given to issues of "environmental justice;"
Creation of a "1-800 Green Congregation Hotline" documenting grass-roots religious environmental activities;
Joint educational initiatives with Nobel laureates and other eminent scientists and national scientific associations;
Summit meetings for leaders of historic black and Orthodox Christian churches;
Preparation of environmental curriculum for every Jewish seminary;
Teleconferences and videos for Catholic dioceses, parishes and schools.17
Education and Action kits are prepared for each faith and each denomination. NRPE literature provides a telephone number for ordering the kits. The NRPE has also developed a 171-page directory of congregations and organizations that are involved in "environmental programs" in cooperation with the partnership.
A January 23, 1996, mailing by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America provides insight into the "education and action" sponsored by the NRPE. The letter, signed by Kristin D. Sundell, Advocacy Associate for Environmental Concerns, accompanies a bulletin insert and an action alert about the Endangered Species Act. The letter says,"This Noah's Ark is under attack by persons in the current Congress. ... The efforts of the religious community are key to its survival."
The action alert in the package claims that "Many scientists estimate that one quarter of the world's species could be lost within the next 50 years." Such claims are grossly exaggerated according to Julian L. Simon and Aaron Wildavsky, in an article published by the National Wilderness Institute. The best scientific studies reveal that the extinction rate between 1600 and 1900 is one species every four years. Since 1900 until the present, the best studies estimate that about one species per year has become extinct. There is virtually no scientific evidence to support the claims made in the action alert.18
The alert also claims that the Endangered Species Act "has been successful in protecting and recovering many species." Again, the action alert is wrong: " ... after twenty years, no species has been legitimately recovered and delisted primarily as a result of efforts taken pursuant to the Endangered Species Act."19 The alert said the bills before Congress should be opposed because they would (1) overturn the Supreme Court decision, Babbitt v. Sweet Home, (2) require landowners to be paid for complying with the ESA, (3) allow the Secretary of the Interior to "choose extinction," and (4) increase bureaucracy and delay. The analysis failed to explain that the Supreme Court decision substantially expanded the definition of "harm" in the ESA to include not only the endangered species, but also to include the habitat that a species might use. Such judicial expansion beyond the intent of Congress gives the federalgovernment the power to declare virtually any land to be the potential habitat of an endangered or threatened species, sub-species, or population, and thereby prohibit the land owner from using his own land, whether or not an endangered species, sub-species, or population has ever been seen on the property.
The analysis failed to recognize the 5th Amendment imperative that requires the government to pay just compensation for private property when taken from individuals for the "public good." The analysis says instead, that payment for a regulatory "takings" " ... ignores the responsibility of all landowners for the common good and creates a costly entitlement program." The alert package includes sample letters to Congress which oppose changes to the Endangered Species Act along with an appeal to "support our biblical covenant to 'be stewards, protectors, and defenders of all creation.'" The admonition includes this:
"God has woven creation together like a beautiful and marvelously intricate fabric. Human greed and exploitation, however, are pulling the threads out of this fabric one by one. As many as 75 to 100 species are becoming extinct each day. If that trend continues it will only be a matter of time before the entire fabric unravels and the ecosystem collapses around us."
The final item in the packet is this prayer by St. Basil the Great (329-379):
"O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, even our brothers and sisters the animals, to whom you have given the earth as their home in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised our high dominion with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to you in song, has been a groan of pain. May we realize that they live, not for us alone, but for themselves and for you, and that they love the sweetness of life."
The Legislative Update, also provided in the "education and action kit," (Volume IX, Issue 1, February, 1996) praises Clinton's veto of the Republican Comprehensive Welfare Reform proposal. Another article is headlined "Budget cuts disproportionately affect the hungry," and calls on readers to "continue to express your concern. ..." Another article is entitled "Availability of housing for poor at risk," and readers are told "advocacy is needed on these issues." Still another article advises "anti-family and anti-refugee provisions remain in House [immigration] bills." Kristin Sundell, author of the ESA action alert, also has an article entitled "Help stop the attack on endangered species." The article repeats the incorrect information about the number of species going extinct each day (75 to 100), and tells readers that protection of endangered species "is not a matter to be decided by politics or economics alone. Rather, the protection of God's creation is a profoundly spiritual issue." Ironically, Sundell has no problem inciting congregants to use the federal government to enforce the "spiritual issue" of endangered species, while another article on the same page opposes laws that would allow school prayer.
It is more than coincidence that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America uses an "education and action kit" that closely parallels the Clinton/Gore program. As a part of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a full partner in the NRPE, its message is heavily influenced and coordinated by professionals who have close ties to the Clinton/Gore administration. The Lutheran "education and action kit," containing the endangered species action alert, was mailed on January 23, 1996. On January 31, 1996, a press release was issued by Fenton Communications, with the headline: "Evangelicals Kick Off Million-Dollar Campaign to Protect Endangered Species." Here it is necessary to look behind the headlines, behind the scenes, and examine the sources of funds and the loyalties of individuals.
Fenton Communications is the Washington Public Relations firm hired in 1989 by the Natural Resources Defense Council to develop the campaign against Alar that devastated a portion of the apple industry. On February 26, 1989, nearly 50 million people watched Ed Bradley of CBS's 60 Minutes, tell America that "The most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them on the trees longer and make them look better."20 The report, and the entire campaign, was based on a report produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council entitled Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in our Children's Food. Ed Bradley's statement andthe NRDC report were clearly wrong. The EPA had already rejected the flawed studies on which the NRDC report was based.
"Extensive studies carried out with scrupulous attention to scientific protocol have failed to find any credible evidence that Alar causes cancer. Extrapolating to humans from the NRDC mouse tests, a person would have to eat 28,000 pounds of apples every day for 70 years to produce tumors similar to those suffered by mice exposed to megadoses of Alar. What the NRDC did not include in its well publicized attack on Alar was that mice fed half the maximum amount -- which would equal a man's eating 14,000 pounds of apples a day for 70 years -- produced no tumors at all."21
Neither accuracy nor truth were objectives of the Fenton-NRDC campaign. The objective was simply to get Alar banned, regardless of the estimated $300 million cost to many apple growers, and regardless of the unwarranted fear instilled in the American people.
Fenton Communications has left its fingerprint on several public relations campaigns that might be called less than honorable: an "Ancient Forest Campaign," funded by the Rockefellers' Environmental Grantmakers Association, as well as campaigns for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Andreas Papandreau of Greece, and the People's Republic of Angola.22
Fenton's client for the endangered species campaign was apparently the Environmental Information Center (EIC), not the Evangelical Environmental Network. Stan LeQuire, Director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, told The Washington Post that the Environmental Information Center had been asked to help set up the January 31 news conference because "We're not politically skilled."23
The Environmental Information Center's Board of Directors includes Francis C. Beineke of the NRDC; Donald K. Ross of the Rockefeller Family Fund and coordinator of the Environmental Grantmakers Association; and Thomas A. Wathen of the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Executive Director is Philip E. Clapp, former employee of Senator Timothy Wirth, and a member of the National Steering Committee of Environmentalists for the Clinton/Gore Campaign. Arlie Schardt is a media coordinator, a former employee of the Environmental Defense Fund and Press Secretary of the Al Gore for President Campaign. Mike Casey is the Media Relations Director who joined the EIC directly from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. EIC Communications Director, Peter Kelley, came from the League of Conservation Voters whose former President, Bruce Babbitt, is now the Secretary of Interior, and whose Political Action Committee contributes 96% of its funds to Democratic candidates.24 This cast of characters operating behind the scenes explains why the Evangelical Environmental Network's literature so closely follows the Clinton/Gore agenda. Bruce Babbitt told a reporter for The Oregonian:
"When God directed Noah to build the ark, the commandment was to take all the creatures of the Earth aboard, not just those useful to mankind."25
Babbitt is making and implementing public policy based on his biocentric interpretation of the Bible.
A Broader Agenda
The Clinton/Gore agenda is but a small part of a much broader global agenda being advanced by the NRPE. The 230 organizations that participate in the Evangelical Environmental Network are hardly one battalion in the army of foot-soldiers marching in the parade toward a global green gaia-religion which seeks to swallow up all the world's religions into a single, unified "earth ethic" administered and enforced through global governance.
Such a notion is incomprehensible to Christians, especially those who feel the need to protect the environment, and those who are caught up in the appeal of the NRPE. Examination of the ideas of those who brought the NRPE into existence, however, reveals how each program of the Evangelical Environmental Network is but another step toward the inevitable objective pursued by the organizers of the NRPE.
Nature is my God. ..." Meet Dr. Robert Muller, a member of the Board of Advisors to the Temple of Understanding, a former Assistant Secretary-General to three UN Secretary-Generals, Chancellor of the UN University, author of the World Core Curriculum, and founder of the Robert Muller Schools. Muller described his religious views to an audience in Costa Rica in 1989:
"We thought at the time that the sun was turning around the earth until we learned from Copernicus that it was not true. Now we're learning that perhaps this planet has not been created for humans, but that humans have been created for the planet. We hear now of the Gaia hypothesis, of the interdependence of all inert and living matter, that we are part and parcel of a living planetary organism. We are temporary living manifestations or incarnations of this Earth. We are living Earth. Each of us is a cell, a perceptive nervous unit of the Earth. The living consciousness of the Earth is beginning to operate through us. You as cosmic and earth cells are part of a vast biological and evolutionary phenomenon which is of first importance at this stage, namely humanity as a whole; the whole human species has become the brain, the heart, the soul, the expression and the action of the Earth. We have now a world brain which determines what can be dangerous or mortal for the planet: the United Nations and its agencies, and innumerable [sic] groups and networks around the world, are part of the brain. This is our newly discovered meaning ... we are a global family living in a global home. We are in the process of becoming a global civilization. I hope that religious leaders will get together and define before the end of this century the cosmic laws which are common to all their faiths. The third millennium should be a spiritual millennium, a millennium which will see the integration and harmony of humanity with creation, with nature, with the planet, with the cosmos and with eternity."26
Muller's vision is a little more than can be digested in a single bite. But it succinctly expresses the world view that underlies the NRPE agenda as well as the policy agenda of the United Nations.
Mikhail Gorbachev is an advocate of Muller's world view. As recently as October 23, 1996, Gorbachev appeared on the popular Charlie Rose PBS television program where he said:
"We are part of the Cosmos. ... Cosmos is my God. Nature is my God. ... I believe that the 21st century will be the century of the environment, the century when all of us will have to find an answer to how to harmonize relations between man and the rest of Nature. ... We are part of Nature. ..."27
Both Muller's and Gorbachev's world view are an outgrowth of James Lovelock's gaia hypothesis and Thomas Berry's theological interpretations. Thomas Berry is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Temple of Understanding. The Florida Catholic describes Berry as " ... perhaps the leading figure in the movement to preserve the environment."28 Berry believes that the world is being called to a new "post-denominational," even a post-Christian belief system that sees the earth as a living being -- mythologically, as Gaia, Mother Earth -- with mankind as her consciousness.29
It is difficult to grasp Berry's theology, or more properly described -- cosmolatry. He believes the world is experiencing a new enlightenment of a greater magnitude than Copernicus' discovery that the earth actually revolved around the sun. He believes that the traditional Christian view of an external God who created man in His image is as wrong as the pre-Copernican view of the sun revolving around the earth. He is convinced that the earth itself is the life-giver, and that humans have no special place in the universal community of life which is, collectively, the manifestation of the divine.
This enlightenment is described by Brian Swimme, in his introduction to Berry's book, The dream of the Earth, by comparing Berry's vision of cosmolatry to the moment in time when physical vision was experienced for the first time in evolutionary history. Berry himself says:
"It has taken the entire course of some fourteen billion years for the universe, the earth, and all its living creatures to attain this mode of presence to itself through our empirical modes of knowing. One of the finest moments in our new sensitivity to the natural world is our discovery ofthe earth as a living organism ... awareness that the entire planet is a single organic reality that needs to be addressed in its spirit and person qualities as well as in its physical aspects.30
Berry is also convinced that:
"This reenchantment with the earth as a living reality is the condition for our rescue of the earth from the impending destruction that we are imposing upon it. To carry this out effectively, we must now, in a sense, reinvent the human as species within the community of life species. Our sense of reality and of value must consciously shift from an anthropocentric to a biocentric norm of reference."31
This conscious shift from an "anthropocentric" world view, to a "biocentric" world view is alleged to be the most significant paradigm shift since monotheism overwhelmed pantheism four thousand years ago. Advocates believe that the shift is well under way.
Thomas Berry had a profound influence upon the Very Reverend James Parks Morton, President of the Temple of Understanding, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, co-chair of the Global Forum for Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders, and a member of the Board of Directors of the NRPE.
"Morton shares Berry's belief that an ecological interpretation of the cosmos requires a corresponding re-interpretation of the story of creation. 'The new scientific evidence about the origins of life made me realize that we could no longer deal with the human story as something apart from the life story, or the earth story, or the universe story,' says Morton."32
From his Cathedral of St. John the Divine located at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue in New York City, the seat of a bishop in the Anglican Church, one of the largest religious denominations in the world, James Parks Morton is translating Berry's cosmology into specific programs, rituals, and institutions. The NRPE is but one.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is also home to the Gaia Institute, "whose mission is to explore the practical implications of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis," directed by Paul and Julie Mankiewicz.33 It is the home of the Lindisfarne Fellowship, a membership organization of influential world leaders who subscribe to Berry's cosmology. Maurice Strong is a member and a frequent speaker at the Cathedral. Strong was the Secretary-General of both Earth Summit I and II, and was the first Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The Cathedral also provides a home for celebrating the Feast of St. Francis. This special ritual not only mirrors this most unusual church but also epitomizes the cosmolatry of Thomas Berry. In the words of William Bryant Logan, editor of the Cathedral's newsletter:
"I saw children lying in the laps of large dogs and a boy bringing his stuffed animals to be blessed. I saw the not-yet famous elephant and camel march up the aisle; a lawyer who scoops the poop and enjoys being clown-for-a-day; a priest who finds himself covered with wriggling ferrets; a man and a woman who meet when their leashes become enmeshed; a volunteer gardener marching to the altar with a bowl full of compost and worms; a sermon by Al Gore, in which he called on the congregants to recognize that 'God is not separate from the Earth.'"34
The ritual is not limited to the New York Cathedral. The Episcopal Diocese of Kansas and the Stewardship Office of the Episcopal Church sponsored a celebration of Earth Day in April, 1995 that featured, among others, James Parks Morton, Thomas Berry, and Paul Winter, official musician of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Samantha Smith, author of The Trojan Horse and Goddess Earth, attended the affair and offered the following report:
"The gathering, held at the Westin Crown Center Hotel, included a North American Native Indian praying to God, then praying to the Grandfather Spirit and to spirits of the Four Directions to bless the earth and oversee the conference. California Senator, Tom Hayden, offered an Earth Day prayer, claiming the earth was speaking through him:
" 'On this Earth Day let us say an earth prayer and make an earth pledge. In the Bible ruah means both wind and spirit, so let us take time to breathe with the universe, connect with the earth and remember what we need to know and do. Celebrate that ancient spirits are born again in us, spirits of eagle vision, of coyote craft, of bear stewardship, of buffalo wisdom, of ancient goddesses, of druids, of native people, of Thoreau and Sitting Bull -- born again and over again in John Muir andRachel Carson and David Brower and Alice Walker.' He then asked us to 'commit ourselves to carry the written word of Al Gore into official deeds.' Thomas Berry offered a prayer for the healing of the earth."35
Paul Winter then entertained with his saxophone. He explained that he had gone into the Superior Forest and taped exchanges of howls between his saxophone and a wolf. With his sax, he demonstrated the sound. He then asked the audience to join him in a "Howl-le-lu-ia Chorus." He made a wolf sound, and nearly 200 people howled back, expressing their oneness with the wolf.
This is the "theology," or cosmology, which underlies the NRPE. These ideas are those of the people who conceived the NRPE, and these are the people who are creating the material that is being delivered to 67,300 churches in America.
Gaia Awakened
The gaia hypothesis, introduced by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis (former wife of Carl Sagan) is an ancient idea, presented in scientific-sounding language that makes it politically correct for the new age. The idea itself pre-dates the Christian era and even Greek mythology, from which the name gaia was taken. The idea is rooted in ancient cultures and, until Lovelock, was generally known as "paganism."
"There are three principles of paganism: (1) animism -- the belief that everything is imbued with a soul; (2) polytheism -- the belief that many gods exist and each one has a function to preside over various aspects of nature and life; and (3) pantheism -- the belief that all things, animate and inanimate, including the earth and humans are manifestations of God, that God is all; the universe is totally God."36
Some form of paganism was practiced by almost every known culture before the emergence of the Hebrews circa 2000 BC. Hebrew tradition rejected "many gods" in favor of the concept of "one God" -- Yahweh. Out of this monotheistic tradition, Christianity was born, and in the third century, Constantine declared Christianity to be the official state religion of the Roman empire. Paganism faded, but did not die. In the jungles of Africa and the Americas, it continued untarnished by European influence. In Europe, paganism went underground, emerging periodically in the form of secret societies and eclectic writings. Despite persecution by the established church and proper society, secret pagan societies survived into the 20th century.
One of the more influential of those societies was the Theosophical Society, created in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott.37 Blavatsky's two books, The Secret Doctrine and Iris Unveiled, articulate the pagan world view. A glimpse of Blavatsky's view is revealed in Iris Unveiled: "Interference by man in this civilization can disrupt the life forces of nature and the occult. Only in countries where there is no civilization can the power of nature be found -- the world's soul."38 After Blavatsky's death, Annie Besant and Alice Bailey assumed leadership of the society. Besant headed the more radical European branch, and Bailey led the movement in America until she established the Lucifer Publishing Company in the early 1900s. One of the earliest books published by Lucifer, was The Consciousness of the Atom, by Alice Bailey. It was a series of lectures delivered in New York City during the winter of 1921-1922. In the book's Foreword, Bailey says:
"The purpose of this series was to present to their auditors the testimony of science as to the relation of matter and of consciousness; to enable the hearers to observe the identical manifestation of these relations and of certain basic laws in successively higher states of being, and thus to bring to them a realization of the universality of the evolutionary process and its actuality; and to deal somewhat with the nature of the expanded states of consciousness and the enlarged life toward which all mankind is traveling."39
The name "Lucifer Publishing Company" was not well received in the early 1900s, so the name was changed to Lucis Publishing Company, but Bailey continued her prolific writing.
It is essential to understand Bailey's world view in order to fully appreciate her influence on the individuals whoorganized and are advancing the NRPE and the agenda moving toward global governance. Here follows a series of excerpts from Bailey's writings:
" ... the problem with which the Hierarchy is now concerned is ... to awaken all the nations ... to the dramatic import of the present time ... and thus to engineer a climax wherein the correct world lesson may be learnt; whereby the world may be purified by the elimination of the undesirable elements which hinder the new era and the upspringing of a more spiritual civilization; and whereby the forces of hate, of cruelty, of materialism and of darkness may be driven back (wherever found) before the sweeping onslaught of the Forces of Light ... just as the Aquarian Age is coming into manifestation ... bringing in its wake universal awareness and the new modes of expressing world synthesis, human interests, and the world religion. ..." (Alice Bailey, Esoteric Astrology, pp. 373-374.)
" ... it is as one humanity, chastened and disciplined but illumined and fused, that we must emerge into the future. Those who do not grasp this important fact, whether they are what is called belligerents or neutrals, will suffer deeply as a result of their non-participation in the fate of the whole. ... The Hierarchy is not neutral, it is one with the right element in every nation and set against all separative, isolationists and materialistic attitudes. ..." (Alice Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, 1939, p. 65.)
"Another fear which induces mankind to regard death as a calamity, is one which theological religion has inculcated, particularly the Protestant fundamentalists and the Roman Catholic Church, the fear of hell, the imposition of penalties, usually out of all proportion to the efforts of a lifetime, and the terrors imposed by an angry God. To these, man is told he will have to submit, and from them there is no escape, except through the vicarious atonement. There is, as you well know, no angry God, no hell, and no vicarious atonement ... and the only hell is the earth itself, where we learn to work out our own salvation. ... This teaching about hell is a remainder of the sadistic turn which was given to thinking of the Christian Church in the Middle Ages and to the erroneous teaching to be found in the Old Testament about Jehovah, the tribal God of the Jews! Jehovah is not God. ... As the erroneous ideas die out, the concept of hell will fade from man's recollection and its place will be taken by an understanding of the law which makes each man work out his own salvation ... which leads him to right the wrongs which he may have perpetuated in his lives on Earth, and which enables him eventually to clean his own slate." (Alice Bailey, Esoteric Healing, p. 393.)40
Robert Muller is a devotee of Alice Bailey. The preface of the Robert Muller School World Core Curriculum Manual, November, 1986, says:
"The underlying philosophy upon which the Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey, by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul (published by Lucis Publishing Company, 113 University Place, 11th floor, New York, NY USA 10083)."41 (The Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul, is said by Bailey to be an "ascended master" who speaks through her while she is in a trance).
The school is fully certified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a "participating institution in the UNESCO Associated Schools Project in Education for International Cooperation and Peace."
Muller's words take on a new relevance in light of his devotion to Bailey. Muller spoke at the University of Denver on March 30, 1995. He told his audience:
" ... now we have a spiritual dimension entering the United Nations. I have seen how spirituality can help the poor. We are becoming a new species on this planet. The United Nations is the biological metaorganism of the human species. We have now the birth of a global nervous system. We are beginning to have a global heart, be it only our love for nature, to preserve this earth -- this planet of ours -- and we will also see the birth of a global soul. Whoever will understand that we are a part of the universe and of evolution -- that we are cells of a total humanity. We should replace the word politics by planetics. We need the planetary management, planetary caretakers. We need global sciences. We need a science of a global psychology, a global sociology, a global anthropology."42
Vice President, Al Gore, is seen by the contemporary pagan community to be one of their own. In Green Egg, the newsletter of the Church of All Worlds, whose mission is "to evolve a network of information, mythology and experience that provides a context and stimulus for reawakening Gaea [gaia], and reuniting Her children through tribal community dedicated to responsible stewardship," Otter Zell applauds the Clinton/Gore election victory. He says:
"We are Neo-pagans -- implying an eclectic reconstruction of ancient Nature religions, and combining archetypes of many cultures with other mystic and spiritual disciplines -- and our beliefs and values are no different from those you describe as your own. As you observed in your book, Earth in the Balance, the 'best-documented tenet seems to have been a reverence for the sacredness of the Earth -- and a belief in the need for harmony among all living things.' Your book is heralded by our People as a manifesto of all we hold dear. In the last quarter-century a movement has grown up to reclaim that connectedness at the deepest and most spiritual level. We are Gaians. ... We have always agreed with James Lovelock ... that this realization evokes a spiritual response. But we are not just trying to recreate a Paradise Lost; we are working to actualize a visionary future. We ask no special favors; we wish nothing more than that you be true to yourself, and to your own values and ideals as expressed in Earth in the Balance. Know that there are half a million American NeoPagans out here who support you, who voted for you, and who will rally to the aid of your policies for the salvation of the Earth and the reunification of the Great Family."43
The literature of the NRPE, and of its partners, skillfully avoids direct linkage with the more overt statements of Alice Bailey and Otter Zell. The ideas, however, are clearly present. Read again the prayer by St. Basil the Great. The literature produced by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, an NRPE partner, says:
"We understand ourselves as partners in Creation, responsible for protecting the Earth's ecological integrity and the common good. Judaism teaches us that consumerism should not be placed at the center of our lives, but rather the pursuit of justice, peace, and spiritual development. We are united in deep concern that the quality of human life and the earth we inhabit are in danger, afflicted by rapidly increasing ecological threats. Among the most pressing of these threats are: depletion of the ozone layer, global warming, massive deforestation, the extinction of species and loss of biodiversity. ... Narrow private interests (such as the mining, timber, and petro-chemical industries, among others) have been building a movement to dismantle the environmental protections that we have come to take for granted. ..."44
While the literature hints at biocentric underpinnings, it is carefully written to avoid offending the Judeo-Christian community by denying its New Age characteristics, and fending off charges of paganism.
A starter-kit for Evangelical Churches says:
"What New Age followers don't realize is that they love creation because they are actually seeing and experiencing the invisible attributes of God. Some even worship the creation because they do not know the Creator."45
The Feast of St. Francis, with elephants, worms, dogs, and cats, brought to the altar to be blessed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which houses the Gaia Institute and boasts of a "sacred ecology" wall that is decorated with rainforest flora,appears to be a ritual of worship focused on the creation rather than on the Creator.
The rituals in Kansas City, where Paul Winter led the congregants to "howl" in response to their "oneness with the wolf," where prayers were offered to the "Four Directions," and to the "spirits of eagle vision, coyote craft, of bear stewardship, of buffalo wisdom, of ancient goddesses, of druids ... " certainly appear to be rituals of worship to entities other than to the Creator God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Yet, the literature that is mailed to the churches says, " ... the God we worship is beyond nature, rather than within nature."46
This statement stands in stark contrast with James Lovelock's " ... she [Gaia] is the source of life everlasting and is alive now, she gave birth to humankind ... ;" with Thomas Berry's "One of the finest moments in our new sensitivity ... is our discovery of the ... entire planet [as] a single organic reality that needs to be addressed in its spirit and person qualities ... ;" and with Al Gore's "The earth is not separate from God."
Christian leaders who support the NRPE ignore the paganistic rituals of the program's founders and try to deflect charges of New Age. Richard Land, executive director of the Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Life Commission, one of the Christian denominations listed in the NRPE's directory, told The New York Times, that "We make it very clear, we do not worship creation, we worship the God of creation."47
The organizers of the NRPE have no problem with its members denying paganism and insisting that they worship the God of the Bible rather than gaia. To them, it makes no difference what name is applied to the object of worship, so long as individual behavior is modified to support laws and regulations that enforce behavior modification of the masses to conform with the tenets of biocentric paganism. In the final analysis, the religious context for the political activity is designed to draw a cloak of ethics and morality around the unethical, immoral distortion of scientific evidence which, when revealed, will crumble the foundation of the entire appeal.
Amy Elizabeth Fox, former coordinator of the Joint Appeal, and initial Associate Director of the NRPE said that "we began by thinking in terms of the four sacred elements: earth, air, fire and water." She continued:
"'We are required by our religious principles to look for the links between equity and ecology.' In the materials that the Partnership has sent out to more than [67,300] congregations, the fundamental emphasis is on issues of environmental justice, including air pollution and global warming; water, food and agriculture; population and consumption; hunger, trade and industrial policy; community economic development; toxic pollution and hazardous waste; and corporate responsibility."48
The biocentric philosophy of the gaia hypothesis which underlies the NRPE is being translated into public policy, now assisted by more than 100 million congregants under the influence of the NRPE.
The proposed paradigm shift from anthropocentrism to biocentrism is increasingly evident in public policy and in the documents which emanate from the United Nations and from the federal government. Public policies are being formulated in response to biocentric enlightenment, rather than in response to scientific evidence. The picture of an imperiled planet, as described in the literature of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, rests upon three mythological expressions of biocentric enlightenment: (1) global warming, (2) biological impoverishment, and (3) excessive population. None of the three is supported by convincing scientific evidence.
Global Warming
The idea of global warming entered the world in 1896 when Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, postulated that the elevation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would eventually result in global warming. The scientific communitypaid little attention. In the 1970s, Dr. Stephen Schneider and others postulated that elevated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was causing global cooling, and articles appeared that warned of a coming ice age. In 1971, Paul Ehrlich stated:
"The continued rapid cooling of the earth since World War II is also in accord with the increased global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization, and an exploding population, added to a renewal of volcanic activity. ..."49
Science magazine's March 1, 1975, issue said:
"According to the Academy [National Academy of Sciences] report on climate, we may be approaching the end of a major interglacial cycle, with the approach of a full-blown 10,000-year ice age a real possibility ... with ice packs building up relatively quickly from local snowfall that ceases to melt from winter to winter."50
In the 1980s, global warming again became the rage. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) held a conference in Toronto and then created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Then-Senator Al Gore convened a hearing at which James Hansen testified that he believed the current heat wave was the first sign of anthropogenic (human-induced) global warming. In 1990, then-Senator Timothy Wirth (now Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs) said: "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."51 Richard Benedick, an employee of the State Department, said: "A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the green house effect,"52 And Dr. Stephen Schneider told a group of scientists, "We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."53
There is little or no reliable scientific data to support the global warming theory. The theory is based on computer models which the IPCC has revised downward three times since 1990. In November, 1995 world-renowned climatologists and other scientists met in Leipzig, Germany. The conference document they adopted, known as the Leipzig Declaration, says " ... most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever. Based on the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the so-called "scientific consensus" that envisages climate catastrophes. ..."54
The NRPE literature sent to the churches makes a strong case for political action based on the global warming scare. A chart measuring the century-long increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dramatically presented as the basis for the computer projections of global warming.55 The publication failed to print, however, a diagram showing the actual global temperature during the same period. Those diagrams are readily available from a variety of legitimate scientific sources. They all reveal that the actual global temperature declined during the second half of the century, during the period of sharpest increases of carbon dioxide. Where the actual science fails to support the "enlightenment", the science is ignored.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is an example of public policy that has been adopted on the basis of "enlightenment" rather than on the basis of scientific evidence. It appears that the paradigm shift has moved away from the anthropocentric, and close enough to the biocentric world view, that the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) actually adopted the following principle as a part of the Rio Declaration:
"Principle 15: In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."56
As written and adopted, "threats" do not have to be verified or confirmed, simply declared. Global warming has been declared to be a "threat" by Al Gore and Timothy Wirth, both of whom were instrumental in organizing the NRPE, and by the United Nations organizations, on the basis of what can best be described as "biocentric enlightenment."
Biological Impoverishment
The notion of biological impoverishment stands on an even less-firm scientific foundation. Through the media, movies, and textbooks, environmental organizations have painted a vivid picture in the public mind that tropical rain forests aredisappearing, that biodiversity is being paved over, and that species are becoming extinct at a rate greater than at any time in history. The figure used in the Evangelical Environmental Network's action alert (75 to 100 per day) is typical of the propaganda that is constantly repeated. Where do these ideas originate? How valid are they? An unusually frank analysis of the issue appeared in U.S. News & World Report. Here is an excerpt:
" ... many oft-cited `facts' used to paint a picture of impending ecological disaster are more myth than reality.... Although field studies had documented an extinction rate of only one species per year worldwide, in 1979 biologist Norman Myers [The Sinking Ark] predicted that the rate would balloon, with the loss of 1 million species by the end of the century. Myers offered no basis for his prediction other than to call it a 'reasonable working figure' [enlightenment?]. Nonetheless, the number received much attention and is still frequently cited by activists.
"More recently, Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson has heavily publicized his claim that 4,000, or 30,000, or 50,000 species a year -- he has used all three numbers at different times -- are being driven to extinction. Such numbers, carrying the ring of scientific authority, have featured prominently in calls to action from environmental groups, and they played a persuasive part in the debate over the U.S. position on recent international treaties to slow deforestation and protect biodiversity."57
Reason magazine quotes an unnamed "conservationist" who admitted that "the lack of data does worry me. I'm absolutely sure we're right, but a gut feeling isn't much backup when you're asking people all over the world to change their lives completely."58
Like the global warming myth, the biological impoverishment myth is based, not on scientific evidence, but on an "enlightened" declaration of a "threat" to the environment. The Lindisfarne Fellowship, founded by William Thompson and James Morton (President of the Temple of Understanding), published a book entitled G-A-I-A, A Way of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology. James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis contributed to the book. Enlightenment is the "new way of knowing." Enlightenment, as understood by the biocentric community, may be compared to the "conversion experience" of Christians. As the Christian is "born again" by his acceptance or "belief," the biocentric becomes "enlightened" by his acceptance, or belief in gaia as the giver of life. A major difference, however, is that the Christian accepts that he is subservient to the omnipotent giver of life, while the biocentric believes he is a part of the omnipotent giver of life, and therefore, a part of god; whatever he thinks, or believes, must be "enlightened." Biological impoverishment is a "threat" declared by "enlightened" biocentrists. Public policy has been formulated and is being implemented in response to the alleged threat, even though in reality, there is little or no scientific evidence to support the threat.
The Convention on Biological Diversity is a sweeping public policy formulated in response to the perceived threat of biological impoverishment. The Convention, often called the "Biodiversity Treaty," was adopted in Rio de Janeiro at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Then-President George Bush refused to sign the treaty, but Bill Clinton, shortly after he defeated Bush, signed the treaty and sent it to the Senate for ratification. Al Gore anticipated rapid ratification since the Senate was controlled by his political party, and began immediately to revise the policies of the Department of Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency to implement the provisions of the treaty, despite the fact that the treaty never came to a vote in the Senate.Behind the facade of "reinventing government," Gore created a White House Task Force on Ecosystem Management. The task force oversaw the development of the Administration's Ecosystem Management Policy which coordinates the activity of 20 federal agencies toward the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Perhaps the most significant shift in public policy is the shift away from implementing policies for the benefit of humans; the new Ecosystem Management Policy is designed to benefit biodiversity -- at the expense of humans. Federal policy has shifted from anthropocentric to biocentric. The Environmental Protection Agency's policy says: "EPA must make ecosystem protection a primary goal of the Agency, on a par with humanhealth. ... "59 The Department of Interior ecosystem management policy statement says: All ecosystem management activities should consider human beings as a biological resource."60 In the Clinton/Gore White House, the paradigm shift has already occurred. Public policy is being formulated based on the biocentric view that humans have no value greater than any other life forms.
The policies that have been and are being formulated to prevent biological impoverishment have much broader implications for the human community. The ultimate objective is to replace the 50 states with 21 "bioregions" where the human population is relocated into "sustainable communities" that occupy no more than 25 percent of the land area of North America, while half the land area is restored to "wilderness," and the remaining 25 percent is managed collaboratively by the federal government and environmental organizations. This bizarre plan is met with, at best, skepticism, and most often, with utter disbelief -- until the documentation is examined. The idea of bioregions originates in the enlightened minds of people such as Thomas Berry, Dave Foreman (Earth First! founder), and others. The public policy of bioregions originates in the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The Convention itself is quite bland and even more ambiguous. For example, Article 8 says simply: "Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate: (a) Establish a system of protected areas or areas where special measures need to be taken to conserve biological diversity. Since nearly 12 percent of North America is already protected by an extensive system of areas protected as National Parks and Monuments, wildlife refuge areas, and wilderness (more than 100 million acres), this particular Article should not present a problem to anyone. That is, until what the United Nations means by "a system of protected areas" is discovered.
Article 25(a) of the Convention calls for "assessments of the status of biological diversity" to be developed by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention. When the Conference of the Parties convened its first meeting in Naussau, November 1994, it was presented with an 1140-page document entitled Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA), developed by the United Nations Environment Program over the previous three years with a $3.3 million grant from the UN's Global Environment Facility.61 More than 200 pages of the document are devoted to describing what is an acceptable "system of protected areas."
Section 13 of the Global Biodiversity Assessment is entitled "Measures for Conservation of Biodiversity and Sustainable Use of its Components." The "measure" described is the creation of bioregions and a system of protected areas. Here's what it says:
"The protection and management of natural habitat fragments requires a reduction in the deleterious effects of matrix-derived influences [human activity] on remnants and an increase in the area and connectivity of habitat. This means that representative areas of all major ecosystems in a region need to be reserved, that blocks should be as large as possible, that buffer zones should be established around core areas, and that corridors should connect these areas. This basic design is central to the recently proposed Wildlands Project in the United States (Noss 1992). ..."62
The Wildlands Project is a "land conservation strategy" developed by Dr. Reed F. Noss under contract with the National Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy.63 Noss says:
"I suggest that at least half of the land area of the 48 conterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones (essentially extensions of core reserves) within the next few decades. ... Nonetheless, half of a region in wilderness is a reasonable guess of what it will take to restore viable populations of large carnivores and natural disturbance regimes, assuming that most of the other 50 percent is managed intelligently as buffer zone. Eventually, a wilderness network would dominate a region ... with human habitations being the islands."64
A review of the Wildlands Project, published in Science magazine, June 25, 1993, said: "It is nothing less than the transformation of America to an archipelago of human-inhabited islands surrounded by natural areas." The Wildlands Project is being implemented in America through the Administration's Ecosystem Management Policy, in compliance with an unratified treaty developed by the United Nations, in response to an unsubstantiated "threat" declared by a small group of biocentric, enlightened elite.
In his essay, Bioregions: The Context for Reinhabiting the Earth, Thomas Berry says:
"The most difficult transition to make is from an anthropocentric to a biocentric norm of progress. The solution is simply for us as humans to join the earth community as participating members, to foster the progress and prosperity of the bioregional communities to which we belong. A bioregion is an identifiable geographical area of interacting life systems that is relatively self-sustaining in the ever-renewing processes of nature. Such a bioregion is a self-propagating, self-nourishing, self-educating, self-governing, self-healing, and self-fulfilling community. For humans to assume rights to occupy land by excluding other lifeforms from their needed habitat is to offend the community in its deepest structure. Further, it is even to declare a state of warfare, which humans cannot win. ..."65
Dave Foreman shares Berry's view:
"All of us are warriors on one side or another in this war; there are no sidelines, there are no civilians. Ours is the last generation that will have the choice of wilderness, clean air, abundant wildlife, and expansive forests. The crisis is that severe (emphasis in original). It is not enough to protect our few remaining bits of wilderness. The only hope for Earth is to withdraw huge areas as inviolate natural sanctuaries from the depredations of modern industry and technology, ... identify big areas that can be restored to a semblance of natural conditions, reintroduce the Grizzly Bear and wolf and prairie grasses, and declare them off limits to modern civilization."66
Dave Foreman not only co-founded Earth First!, he is Chairman of the Cenozoic Society, Chairman of the Wildlands Project, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, which published a special edition of Sierra in 1994 which proposed replacing the 50 states with 21 bioregions.
The cosmology of Thomas Berry, James Parks Morton, and Robert Muller -- all officers of the Temple of Understanding -- is being translated into public policy with the aid of 100 million congregants who respond to the "action alerts" generated by the NRPE.
Excessive Population
The third expression of biocentric enlightenment which drives the global environmental agenda is the notion that population growth has exceeded the earth's carrying capacity. This idea was exploited by Malthus (1766-1834), and has been dredged up periodically by the likes of Paul Ehrlich, who in 1968 wrote The Population Bomb. Ehrlich advanced three scenarios, in two of which human populations were devastated as the result of overpopulation. In the third scenario, an "enlightened" government imposed severe population control measures and spared the planet.67 Both Ehrlich and E.O. Wilson are a part of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and are advisors to the NRPE. The exponential increase in population is given as the reason for biological impoverishment, and therefore, population must be reduced forcefully by governments. Jacques Cousteau wrote in a UNESCO publication:
"It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that weshouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable."68
The myth of excessive population, like the myths of global warming and biological impoverishment, are deeply instilled in the public mind and in official public policy. The Global Biodiversity Assessment, has concluded:
" ... an agricultural world, in which most human beings are peasants, should be able to support 5 to 7 billion people ... a reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be one billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2-3 billion would be possible."69
The current global population is approximately 5.8 billion.
Again, the conclusions reached about the earth's carrying capacity are based on enlightenment rather than on science. Colin Clark, former director of the Agricultural Economic Institute at Oxford University, conducted studies which indicate that by using "best methods," enough food could be produced to provide an American-type diet for 35.1 billion people. In Clark's estimate, no more than half the land area would be used for agriculture. Roger Revelle, former director of the Harvard Center of Population Studies, estimated that world agricultural resources are capable of providing an adequate diet (2,500 kilocalories per day), as well as fiber, rubber, tobacco and beverages, for 40 billion people, using 25 percent of the land area.70 A simple calculation that divides the global population by the 262,000 square miles of Texas, reveals that the entire global population would fit nicely into that state, with the average family of four having space approximately the size of an urban building lot.
The claim that population is exploding is also a myth. The fact is that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is declining world wide. In developing countries, where the problem is said to be most severe, the TFR reflects a 45-year decline, down from 6.1 in 1950, to 3.9 currently. In developed countries, the rate is below zero growth. A TFR of 2.1 is generally accepted as population stability. In America, the rate is 2.0; in Europe, 1.6; in Japan, 1.5; in Spain and Italy, the rate is 1.3.71
The shift from an anthropocentric world view to a biocentric world view seems almost complete in America, and throughout the world. While the biocentric view is clearly based on a religious, rather than scientific foundation, its advocates strive to avoid the appearance of pagan religious motivation. The ideas are presented in the form of public policy proposals to protect the environment, justified on the basis of morality and ethics, rather than on the basis of sound science. Science itself is being diluted by advocates who use science not to discover truth, but to "prove" preconceived ideas which have arrived as the result of biocentric "enlightenment." The Union of Concerned Scientists is led by people who are first advocates of the biocentric world view, and who also happen to be scientists. E. O. Wilson, Paul Ehrlich, Carl Sagan, Stephen Schneider, Robert Watson, and others frequently ignore scientific evidence that fails to support their agenda, and, as in the NRDC studies that spawned the Alar scare, misrepresent evidence to advance their agenda. Thomas Berry openly advocates expanding the "enlightenment" process in the scientific arena:
"We must awaken a consciousness of the sacred dimension of the earth. We have treated the nonhuman world as object for exploitation rather than as subject to be communed with. Yet the soil is a magic place where the alchemy takes place that enables living forms to survive. Even Paleolithic humans knew this. We feel that the scientist must participate to some extent in shamanic powers. We might say that the next phase of scientific development will require above all the insight of shamanic powers."72
Advocates of biocentrism realize that Americans, raised under the influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, would resist a missionary attempt to convert Christians to paganism. Therefore, rather than seek converts to a religion, they seekpublic policy to modify behavior of individuals to conform to the tenets of their religion while calling the result of the transformation the emergence of a new "earth ethic."
Our Global Neighborhood, the official report of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance, refers to this new "earth ethic" as a "global civic ethic" to guide action within the "global neighborhood."
"People have to see with new eyes and understand with new minds before they can truly turn to new ways of living. That's why global values must be the cornerstone of global governance."73 The Commission on Global Governance believes that the world is now ready to accept "a set of core values that can unite people of all cultural, political, religious, or philosophical backgrounds. They all derive in one way or another from the principle, which is in accord with religious teachings around the world. ..."74 Central to this set of "core values" is the idea of the sacredness of earth and all its life forms.
The Global Biodiversity Assessment reports that primitive (indigenous) people who were hunter/gatherers, viewed "themselves as members of a community that not only includes other humans, but also plants and animals as well as rocks, springs and pools." Consequently, biological communities evolved as "sacred sites" which afforded some measure of protection.75
This perception of the earth as a "sacred" community of life is the core value which, when fully appreciated by humans, will allow them to embrace the draconian restrictions proposed by the emerging public policies called for in the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Climate Change, and in other international agreements.
If children are taught from an early age that the earth is the sacred giver of life, that all life forms are of equal value, that humans who reject these ideas are immoral or unethical, then their vision of the earth will be substantially different from the vision that evolved through the Judeo-Christian tradition. In fact, Christianity is identified as the culprit most responsible for the degradation of the planet.
"Societies dominated by Islam, and especially by Christianity, have gone farthest in setting humans apart from nature and in embracing a value system that has converted the world into a warehouse of commodities for human enjoyment. In the process, not only has nature lost its sacred qualities; conversion to Christianity has meant an abandonment of an affinity with the natural world for many forest dwellers, peasants, fishers all over the world. These people followed their own religious traditions which included setting apart between 10 and 30 percent of the landscape as sacred groves and ponds. Most of these people were drawn into the larger market economy and converted to Christianity by the late 1950s. On so converting to a religious belief system that rejects assignment of sacred qualities to elements of nature, they began to cut down the sacred groves to bring the land under cultivation, as well as to market rattan and timber."76
This sentiment is buried on page 839 of an 1140 document entitled Global Biodiversity Assessment where very few church-goers are likely to see it. Rather than to denounce Christianity publicly, the strategy is to infiltrate Christian churches and Jewish synagogues and enlist their support to enact laws and regulations to ostensibly "protect the environment," but which will in actuality coercively modify the behavior of individuals to conform to the belief system described by Thomas Berry, James Parks Morton, and other instigators of the NRPE.
Behavior modification is the goal, not just for Christians and Jews, but for the entire human race. In his book, Earth in the Balance, Al Gore articulates both the principle and the means:
"I have come to believe that we must take bold and unequivocal action: we must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization. Adopting a central organizing principle -- one agreed to voluntarily -- means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action -- to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system.
Minor shifts in policy, marginal adjustments in ongoing programs, mode-rate improvements in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change -- these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public's desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary."77
Al Gore's passionate plea to reorganize civilization around the principle of "environmental protection" is well underway. And while he suggests that the "wrenching transformation" should be voluntarily agreed to, he is advancing regulations, laws, and international agreements to force behavior modification, often without prior knowledge by the individuals affected, and certainly without their voluntary agreement. Gore has maximized the influence of his position as a Senator, and as Vice President, to implement the tenets of biocentric paganism through domestic policy. But it is the international community, particularly the United Nations system, that generates the policies that are being implemented in nations around the world.
The Temple of Understanding is an accredited NGO (non-government organization) of the United Nations. Temple literature boasts:
"The Temple of Understanding is a Non-Government Organization affiliated with the United Nations. In cooperation with the Pacem in Terris Society of the United Nations staff, we sponsor monthly round-tables at the United Nations Headquarters featuring outstanding religious leaders and scholars. The Temple of Understanding is working on a conference to incorporate the role of spiritual values at the United Nations and as part of the emerging new world order."78
A major link between the Temple of Understanding and the United Nations comes in the person of Maurice Strong.
Strong, a frequent speaker at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, was the Secretary-General of the first Earth Summit in 1972. He was the first Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. He was the Secretary-General of Earth Summit II in Rio in 1992. He is the founder of the Earth Council, Chair of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, co-chair of the World Economic Forum, a member of the UN's Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development, a member of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance, and a member of the Lindisfarne Fellowship, housed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.79
Among Strong's world-wide holdings is a 63,000 acre Colorado ranch called the Baca Grande. It is a mecca for mystics. The ranch is home to a group called Disciples of the XVI Gyalwa Karmapa, a strain of Tibetan Buddhism. Shirley MacLaine planned to build her New Age Center at Baca, but locals resisted the idea of a resort. A group of Carmelites built the Spiritual Life Institute, a co-ed monastery for silent contemplation. The Disciples of Babaji, an Indian Guru, celebrate Hindu rituals in a $175,000 solar-powered, gold-domed, adobe temple which features an alabaster statue of Murti, the Divine Mother, built by the Lindisfarne Fellowship. There is a temple for Sufis, and another for Taoists. Still another group was blocked by county officials who quickly enacted a building height restriction when it was learned that the group intended to build a 46-story pink granite pyramid in compliance with instructions received from an intergalactic leader named Commander Kuthumi who was channeling from the planet Arturus. Strong and wife Hanne see the Baca Grande as the "Vatican City" of the new world order.80
Strong uses his influence with the United Nations in the same way Al Gore uses his influence in the White House. Both are using governments to implement laws which force behavioral conformity to the tenets of their biocentric, pagan-gaia belief system.
The Convention on Biological Diversity seeks to convert half of North America to core wilderness areas off limits to human beings. Although the treaty is not yet ratified, the White House Task Force on Ecosystem Management is implementing the provisions of the treaty administratively.
The President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) has issued its final report (Sustainable America: A New Consensus, February, 1996), which sets forth a Plan of Action with 154 "action items" to transform cities and towns into "sustainable communities," designed to conform with the UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II).81
The UN's Vienna Convention on Ozone Depleting Substances, and its subsequent Montreal Protocol, have already banned CFC's (freon and halons) in America, which has dramatically increased the cost of refrigeration and air-conditioning and eliminated an important fire-fighting material.
The UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change is currently developing a Protocol which will have the effect of increasing the cost and reducing the availability of electricity, gasoline, and all fossil-fuel-generated energy. The Protocol is scheduled for adoption in 1997. The United States has ratified this treaty and Timothy Wirth (Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs), has announced the U.S. government will accept legally binding timetables and targets for the reductions -- even before it is known what those reductions will cost or what the timetables and targets will be.
The UN's Convention on the Law of the Seas declares the non-territorial seas to be "global commons" under the authority of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) which has the authority to impose global taxation on the use of the global commons. An $85-million headquarters facility is under construction in Hamburg, Germany, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali has selected 21 justices to oversee the treaty's implementation.82 The treaty is in force and former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, announced that U.S. ratification would be a high priority for the second term of a Clinton/Gore Administration.83
The UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child identifies the "rights" of children which, if not provided by parents, must be provided by the state, enforced by the UN. Those "rights" include the right to privacy, the right to associate with whomever the child wishes, the right to birth control, and a host of other so-called rights that could no longer be determined by the parent. The treaty actually strips authority for child-rearing from parents and gives it to the government, with the UN setting the guidelines and having ultimate enforcement authority. This treaty, too, is on Warren Christopher's "high priority" list. The treaty has been ratified by 169 nations. The U.S. is one of 8 nations that has signed, but not ratified the treaty.84
The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) grants the "right" to housing to all women in the world. Each nation is required to provide housing, with the ultimate authority vested in the UN. Developed nations are expected to pay the cost of securing this right to women in undeveloped nations.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is developing a Convention on Food Security that would grant the "right" to a full stomach to every citizen on earth. Each nation would be required to secure the "right" with developed nations again, expected to pay the costs of feeding people in developing nations.
These are only a few of the hundreds of treaties and international agreements either now in force or rapidly making their way into international law. The ratification of the World Trade Organization Charter (WTO) by the 103rd Congress gives the United Nations -- for the first time in its history -- the enforcement mechanism necessary to actually enforce these treaties and agreements. The WTO has the authority to impose trade sanctions upon nations, or upon industries within nations, for non-compliance with international treaties. A subsidiary body of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change treaty, charged with developing an enforcement mechanism, has identified the WTO as the favored and most effective enforcement tool.85
Enforcement of international treaties by the United Nations is becoming even more effective as global governance plans move forward. One of the recommendations of the Commission on Global Governance is the creation of a new International Court of Criminal Justice which would have its own panel of prosecutors with the authority to investigate inside the borders of any sovereign state. An official "Preparatory Committee on the International Criminal Court" has been created and held its second session in New York, August 12-30, 1996.
Another recommendation of the Commission on Global Governance is the creation of a new Economic Security Council, under which the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the World Trade Organization would be consolidated. The purpose is to create a global currency under the control of the United Nations. One of the 20 global taxation schemes is to tax international currency exchange. Revenue estimates project a yield of $1.5 trillion per year, 150 times more than the total UN budget. This tax alone would produce two and a half times the $600 billion per year estimated to be the cost of implementing Agenda 21 adopted in Rio in 1992. This new structure and taxing scheme are the vehicles for redistributing the wealth of developed countries to the developing countries. This process is called "equity" and "social justice."
Equity and social justice are among the "core values" the Commission on Global Governance believes the world is now ready to embrace:
"Justice and equity are essential human values. Respect for them is indispensable for peace and progress, as their absence can give rise to resentment and be destabilizing. Although people are born into widely unequal economic and social circumstances, great disparities in their conditions or life chances are an affront to the human sense of justice. A concern for equity is not tantamount to an insistence on equality, but it does call for deliberate efforts to reduce gross inequalities ... and to promote a fairer sharing of resources."86
Redistribution of wealth is necessary, according to the Commission on Global Governance, to achieve what is called the "security of the people."
The United Nations was created to promote national security by reducing the risk of war between and among nations, through a forum provided by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council. Now, the UN is expanding its definition of security: "The security of people recognizes that global security extends beyond the protection of borders, ruling elites, and exclusive state interests to include the protection of people."87 Security of the people is said to include safety from chronic threats such as hunger, disease, and repression, as well as protection from sudden and harmful disruptions in the patterns of daily life -- such as the loss of a job or catastrophic illness. The Commission lists the principles that must be adopted to provide "security of the people:"
"The world needs to translate these concepts of security into principles for the post-cold war era that can be embedded in international agreements:
All people, no less than all states, have a right to a secure existence, and all states have an obligation to protect those rights;
The primary goals of global security policy should be to prevent conflict and war and to maintain the integrity of the planet's life-support systems by eliminating the economic, social, environmental, political, and military conditions that generate threats to the security of people and the planet, and by anticipating and managing crises before they escalate into armed conflicts.
Military force is not a legitimate political instrument, except in self-defense or under UN auspices.
The development of military capabilities beyond that required for national defense and support of UN action is a potential threat to the security of people.
The production and trade in arms should be controlled by the international community."88
An extremely important change in the function, purpose, and methods of the United Nations is represented in the following statements:
"We do think ... that it is necessary to assert ... the rights and interests of the international community in situations within individual states in which the security of the people is violated extensively. We believe a global consensus exists today for a UN response on humanitarian grounds in cases of gross abuse of the security of people.89 (Emphasis added).
In other words, the Commission on Global Governance believes the world is now ready to grant to the UN the authority to enter the sovereign borders of any nation to guarantee the "security of people" as defined by the "rights" expressed in the various international treaties and agreements.
This notion is a major expansion of authority for the United Nations. This is the essence of global governance. This is the mechanism being developed to force individual humans to modify their behavior to conform to the tenets of the underlying belief system demonstrated by the organizers of the NRPE. Churches are being recruited through the NRPE to support political agendas designed to expedite theobjectives of global governance. The paradigm shift is being called an appropriate response to an emerging global "earth ethic."
It is not a mere coincidence that the recommendations offered by the Commission on Global Governance closely parallel the policies of socialist countries. Many of the architects of the global agenda are socialists. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Chair of the UN Commission on Environment and Development that produced the 1987 report, Our Common Future, was Vice President of the World Socialist Party. Maurice Strong is closely aligned with the Socialist Party of Canada. Most of the power-brokers responsible for the development of the global agenda have their roots in socialist governments or in the century-long effort to achieve a world government. The global governance agenda seeks to establish a world-wide system of governance in which the State (the United Nations) is the omnipotent authority which establishes policy that is implemented by national governments, enforced by the ultimate power of the United Nations either by taxation, trade sanctions, or as a last resort, by consolidated military action.
Few of the 100 million congregants who are being influenced by the NRPE have any idea of the massive agenda behind the "action alerts" to which they respond. Indeed, most of the pastors, priests, and rabbis who respond to the NRPE have no idea that they are being used to advance a global governance agenda. Most sincerely believe that they are taking responsible action to help protect the environment. Until the evidence is reviewed, there is no way that the average church-goer could possibly realize the sinister objectives of those who have organized the program. The organizers -- James Parks Morton, James Lovelock, Robert Muller, Al Gore, Timothy Wirth, and many, many others -- have been "enlightened" through their biocentric belief in gaia, and, therefore, they know what is best for the planet. They also know that the only way to protect the sacred gaia, is to control the people who are degrading her. The only way to control the people is through an omnipotent government which is, at this moment, consolidating its power into an ever-growing bureaucracy, now stretching around the globe, extending its tentacles into every corner of human life, creating de facto global governance. The National Religious Partnership for the Environment has reached into 67,300 churches and is drawing those congregations into its lair.
Endnotes
1 Dorothy Vidulich, "Poor, black church hosts service when program goes public," National Catholic Reporter, Kansas City, MO, Friday, October 15, 1993.
2 The National Religious Partnership for the Environment, (P.O. Box 9105, Cambridge, MA 02238-9105, (617) 547-5552), "Statement of Goals," (undated), p. 3.
3 Michael J. McManus, "Ethics & Religion," Courier Gazette, Rockland, Maine, April 26, 1984.
4 Private communication with Eileen Laurence, Assistant to the Executive Director of the Temple of Understanding, June 1, 1992, with photocopies of brochure and newsletter (on file).
5 Update, published by the Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development, 345 East 45th St, 12th floor, New York, NY 10017, (212) 953-7947, 1988.
6 Shared Vision, Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival, Volume 3, Number 1, 1989, p. 3. (Note: the address on the publication is 345 East 45th Street, 12th floor, New York, NY 10017, the same address as the UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development.)
7 Ibid.
8 Sabbath Newsletter, Volume 1, Number 2, United Nations Environment Program, Winter, 1990, p. 1.
9 Ibid.
10 Shared Vision, Volume 4, 1990, p. 4.
11 Ibid.
12 Program, The Inter-continental conference on "Caring for Creation," Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., May 16-19, 1990 (on file).
13 Jon Naar, "The Green Cathedral," The Amicus Journal, (Quarterly publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council), Winter, 1993, p. 27.
14 "History and Organizational Background," The National Religious Partnership for the Environment, Op Cit.
15 Ibid.
16 David Anderson, "Gore, churches join environment forces," Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1993, page 7.
17 "Statement of Goals," The National Religious Partnership for the Environment, Op Cit.
18 Julian L. Simon and Aaron Wildavsky, "Extinction: Species Loss Revisited," NWI Resource, Volume 5, Issue 1, Fall, 1994, p. 4f. (Note: This article provides an excellent foundation for understanding the conflicting claims about species loss. The authors also wrote "On Species Loss, The Absence of Data and Risks to Humanity," in The Resourceful Earth: A Response to Global 2000.)
19 Ibid., p. 16.
20 Michael Fumento, Science Under Siege, (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1993) p. 19.
21 Dixy Lee Ray and Lou Guzzo, Trashing the Planet, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1990) p, 78-79.
22 Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy, (Bellevue, Washington: Free Enterprise Press, 1993), p. 242.
23 Guy Gugliotta, "Spreading the word on preservation," The Washington Post, February 27, 1996.
24 Jack E. Kinney, "Truth and Ethos," prepared for the Workshop on Environmental Ethos, Institute for Theological Encounter With Science and Technology, St. Louis, MO, March 15-17, 1996, (on file).
25 Harry Bodine, "Bureaucracy and the Bible meet beside Fanno Creek," The Oregonian, February 29, 1996.
26 Robert Muller, "A Cosmological Vision of the Future," World Goodwill Occasional Paper, October, 1989, World Goodwill, P.O. Box 722, Cooper Station, New York NY 10276.
27 Mikhail Gorbachev, transcribed from the Charlie Rose television program, PBS, October 23, 1996.
28 Thomas J. Grady, "The integrity of the universe," The Florida Catholic, February 14, 1992.
29 Donna Steichen, UnGodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism, (Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 237.
30 Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990), p. 18.
31 Ibid., p. 21.
32 The Amicus Journal, Op Cit., p. 24.
33 Ibid., p. 25.
34 William Bryant Logan, "Saint Francis in the Cities," Cathedral, Volume 8, Number 2, Fall, 1994, p. 7.
35 Samantha Smith, "The Pagan Howl-le-lu-ia Chorus," The Eagle Forum, Volume 15, Number 4, Winter, 1995, p. 1.
36 Samantha Smith, Goddess Earth, (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1994) p. 68.
37 Michael S. Coffman, Saviors of the Earth, (Chicago: Northfield, 1994) p. 221.
38 Ibid., p. 214.
39 Alice A. Bailey, The Consciousness of the Atom, (New York: Lucifer Publishing Co.) Foreword (page unnumbered). (Note: Lucifer Publishing Company, 135 Broadway, New York City, is the address in this 1922 publication. The company was later affiliated with the Lucis Trust.)
40 Willy Peterson, "Independence Day: A Parable for Mother Earth," eco-logic, September/October, 1996, pp 20-21.
41 The Robert Muller School World Core Curriculum Manual (Overview), November, 1986, Preface. (Note: Published by: Gloria Crook, Founding President, The Robert Muller School, 6005 Royaloak Drive, Arlington, TX 76016, (817) 6654-1018.)
42 Robert Muller, "United Nations at 50: Achievements & Challenges," The Wisconsin Report, Volume XX, Number 32, August 24, 1995, p. 1. (Note: The Wisconsin Report is available at P.O. Box 45, Brookfield, WI 53008. (414) 782-4832.)
43 Otter Zell, "On the Occasion of Bill & Al's Excellent Election," Green Egg, Volume XXVI, Number 100, Spring, 1993, p. 2.
44 Caring for Creation, literature published by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, 443 Park Avenue South, 11th floor, New York, NY 10016, (212) 684-6950 (undated, on file).
45 Let the Earth Be Glad: A Starter Kit for Evangelical Churches to Care for God's Creation, p. 4. (Note: published by the Evangelical Environmental Network, 10 E Lancaster Ave, Wynnewood, PA 19096, (610) 645-9392).
46 To Till and to Tend: A Guide To Jewish Environmental Study and Action, p. 1. (Note: published by The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, 443 Park Ave. S., 11th floor, New York, NY 10016, (212) 684-6950).
47 David Gonzales, "Religions Are Putting Faith in Environmentalism," The New York Times, November 6, 1994, p. 34L.
48 Cathedral, Op Cit., p. 7.
49 Reid Bryson, "Environmental Roulette," Global Ecology: Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man, John P. Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, eds. 1971.
50 Dixy Lee Ray, "Up in the air: Shattering the global warming say-so," eco-logic, March, 1992, p. 16.
51 Michael Fumento, Science Under Siege, Op Cit., p. 362.
52 Dixy Lee Ray, Trashing the Planet, Op cit., p. 167.
53 Ibid. p. 167.
54 "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change," eco-logic, July/August, 1996, p. 15.
55 To Till and to Tend, Op cit., p. 5.
56 "UNCED Declaration," eco-logic, August, 1992, p. 12.
57 Stephen Budiansky, U.S. News & World Report, December 13, 1993, p. 82.
58 Charles Oliver, Reason, April, 1992, p. 25.
59 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Performance Review, "Ecosystem Protection," August 6, 1993, p. 11.
60 Special Issue Briefing Papers Prepared for the Bureau of Land Management Summit, April 30, 1994, "Human dimensions of ecosystem management," (page unnumbered, on file).
61 Convention on Biological Diversity, UNEP/CBD/COP2/5, 21 September, 1995, "Report of the First Meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice," p. 2 (on file).
62 "Measures for Conservation of Biodiversity and Sustainable Use of its Components," Global Biodiversity Assessment, (Published for the United Nations Environment Program by Cambridge University Press, 1995) Section 13.4.2.2.3, p. 993.
63 Reed F. Noss, "The Wildlands Project," Wild Earth, Special Issue, 1992, p. 21. (Note: Wild Earth is published by the Cenozoic Society, editorial address: P.O. Box 492, Canton NY 13617, (315) 379-9940. Dave Foreman and Reed F. Noss are Directors.)
64 Ibid., p. 15.
65 Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth, Op Cit., p. 166.
66 Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, (New York: Harmony Books, 1991), pp.ix, 19.
67 Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, (New York: Ballantine Books, Inc., 1968), pp. 69-80.
68 Jaques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier, November, 1994, p. 13.
69 Global Biodiversity Assessment, Op Cit., Section 11.2.3.2, p. 773.
70 Jacqueline Kasun, The War Against Population, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), pp. 34-35.
71 Jean M. Guilfoyle, "The Agenda," Review, Volume 4, Number 6, November/December, 1994, p. 8. (Note: Published by Population Research Institute, P.O. Box 2024, Baltimore, MD 21298, (301) 670-1864.)
72 Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, "The Universe Story," The Amicus Journal, Winter, 1993, pp. 30-31.
73 Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighborhood, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p.47.
74 Ibid, pp. 48-49.
75 Global Biodiversity Assessment, Op cit., Section 12.2.3, p. 838.
76 Ibid, p. 839.
77 Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), pp. 269, 274.
78 Eileen Laurence, private communication, Op Cit.
79 Elaine Dewar, Cloak of Green, (Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 1995), pp. 249-283.
80 "Meet Maurice Strong," eco-logic, November/December, 1995, p. 4.
81 Sustainable America: A New Consensus is available from the U.S. Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402, ISBN 0-16- 0485299-0. (Note: a comprehensive report on Habitat II may be found in July/August, 1996 eco-logic).
82 "UN Chief Launches Law of the Sea Tribunal," The Tampa Tribune, October 18, 1996.
83 Warren Christopher, Foreign Policy Speech, Stanford University, April 9, 1996.
84 Convention on the Rights of the Child is available from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), 3 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017 (212) 326-7000.
85 Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Volume 12, Number 30, Wednesday, July 10, 1996, p. 1. (Note: Published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/climate/).
86 Our Global Neighborhood, Op cit., p. 51.
87 Ibid, p. 81.
88 Ibid, pp. 84-85.
89 Ibid, pp. 88-89.
Does National Sovereignty Have a Future?
As international bodies gather power unto themselves to solve imaginary problems, the future of national sovereignty is threatened
by Kenneth Minogue
The story is told of how Charles II, back in the 1660's presented to the Royal Academy an interesting problem: why does a dead fish weigh more than a living one? the scientists thought long and hard about this problem, coming up with many ingenious solutions. The actual solution lay in a different area altogether: the initial premise was wrong. Dead fish don't weigh more than living ones. There was no problem to begin with.
This abstract idea needs a concrete focus, and I shall take mine from a paper put out by the UN Committee on Natural Resources -- CNR to its friends, of whom, given its prose style, it can't have many. CNR belongs to a world of acronyms so powerful that we might well posit as their homeland the greatest power in the world of ideas: ACRONYMIA. The CNR is an "expert" committee of 24 members. Its mandate was formally approved by ECOSOC (UN Economic and Social Council) in July 1992 -- basing itself on earlier resolutions going back into the mists of bureaucratic time.
CNR believes that the issue of the supply of minerals ought to be considered as a part of an "integrated approach to the planning and management of land resources." In pursuance of this approach, it offers to those who mine metals -- let us call them "metalkind" -- "an overall global partnership for sustainable development." Offers of partnership here resemble the Mafia's offers of protection: devices for forcing yourself into the act.
Decisions on sustainable development must, we learn, "be based on the best possible information," and then follows this eye-catching sentence: "The kind of holistic and global view that is necessary is not readily acquired by individual enterprises and countries." This leads immediately to a conclusion: "The Committee therefore believes that the UN (alias the Committee itself!) has a critical role to play in coordinating and integrating information on key issues on a global scale." The Committee is going to "provide the new global links to improve the basis for global management strategies integrating environmental and development concerns."
The art of diplomacy was once described as saying "Nice doggie" while searching for a big stick. "Nice doggie" in this document is soothing talk of planning, integration, coordination, and "partnership." Self-defense, on the other hand, is locating the stick -- often a slim twig that will soon grow into a big stick. In this case, the twig is the simple sentence that metalkind (and nationkind) are incapable of acquiring "the kind of holistic and global view" that is necessary. Only an international committee of experts can do that. I am reminded of a cartoon character who remarks to the drunk: "What we all admire is the way you have acquired megalomania without losing common touch."
The UN project, then, is to find a solution to one big problem, and it is this style of thought -- instrumental rationality it is often called -- which we must consider. Solving problems is of course, often a sensible thing to do. But earlier civilizations were parsimonious in construing the world as a nest of problems. Some things, they thought, just had to be endured. And sometimes even moderns like us feel that way. Back in the 1950s, the days of Dr. Dichter the great market psychologist, men and women were surveyed about what they most disliked in life. Men said shaving, women said menstruation. They were then offered an (as it turned out) imaginary pill which could dispense these problematic inconveniences. Most rejected the offer. This response, like the dead fish, is a parable about the human condition.
A great deal of salesmanship, alias propaganda, consists in persuading people that they have a terrible problem which only the propagandist can solve. Hitler on Jews, or Marx on the bourgeoisie, persuaded many to believe in a dead-fish problem. But there are many other forms of the dead-fish problem. Unemployment for example, poses a famous rationality problem because our natural response to it is to say: how absurd that many of able bodied people should be sitting around idle when there are so many important things (renewing the infrastructure, etc.) that need to be done. When the question is posed in this way, the natural solution is to use the powers of government to create a natural labor force. That way leads to central planning of the economy. It is a perfect case where abstract instrumental rationality takes a lot of small problems and creates one great big disaster.
That example gives us a clue to the many dangerous assumptions concealed in our natural instinct for collectively instrumentally rational solutions to grand problems. We should be particularly critical of the assumption that small problems agglomerate together into One Big problem which requires One Big solution and consequently, One Big Solver. And what is clearly assumed in the bid for international regulation of metalkind is that the One Big Solver must have the power to impose a solution. Concealed beneath the euphemistic language is a doctrine quite explicit in many reports with an environmental slant: The very essence of global governance is the capability to ensure compliance.
The inventor of the One Big solution to the One Big Problem was the philosopher Plato, who imagined humanity trapped in a cave of shadowy illusions. Salvation could only come from the philosopher-king who had emerged from the cave and seen what things looked like in the sunlight. The test of understanding was reality; the difficulty was that the only person who could test whether the philosopher was actually in contact with reality was -- well, the philosopher himself. The philosopher-king solution, when transferred to politics, ends up with that most vacuous of political demands: put your trust in me.
With the Committee on Natural Resources we have something only marginally different from Plato: the philosopher committee has replaced the philosopher-king. And instead of Plato's subtle theory of ideas, we have "the best possible information" to provide the "information links" that will in turn provide the basis for "global management strategies integrating environmental and development concerns."
Or will it? It is not easy to sustain a questioning frame of mind when reading words which are bureaucratically exciting but intellectually void. In construing the meaning of this argument, I might take as my text a remark by an American Deputy Secretary of State for Environment. His name is Tim Wirth and, when a Senator, he made a striking comment which comes from the heart of the internationalist movement:
What we've got to do in energy ... is ... ride the global warming issue. ... Even if the theory is wrong ... (it) means doing the right thing ... in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.
Here is a dramatic illustration of my argument that any problem-solution nexus of argument must be treated with extreme suspicion. What is here revealed is a powerful moral drive riding on a theory whose very truth and reliability is relegated to a secondary place. So much for that "best possible information."
There is, in fact, nothing like the cynicism of the well-intentioned. Thus Stephen Schneider of the National Center of Atmospheric Research in Colorado comments on global warming:
... we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of doubts we might have. ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
It was George Orwell who warned us that vague and pompous language could conceal specific and unpompous political ambitions. But leaving language aside, and leaving aside also the fact that for many internationalists the actual truth of the theory is a secondary issue, we as rational critics must consider the logical question of what such a committee might actually be in a position to know. One striking example can be found even in the memorandum of the CNR. In looking to what it calls the "horizon of sustainability" the Committee measures "Demonstrated Economic Resources" (p. 3). To know the unknowable is a cute trick, but by no means the cutest in this field.
It might seem that I am being merely pedantic, a bit carping, in treating the Committee proposal in this way. For surely, it will be said, we are dealing with a real problem here. Is it not unjust that rich Western countries gobble up more that "their share" of scarce minerals -- ought not metalkind think more of mankind? And do we really want to leave our children a planet looking like an old abandoned mine shaft?
While the point of this rhetoric is to create a stirring sense of urgency in the listener, it cannot obscure the serious question, namely: do we have the knowledge available to solve this problem? Does it not raise very large questions of politics which will lead to major conflicts? And if we push our question even further we might ask: Are we not dealing with another of those dead-fish questions?
Such questions are neither frivolous nor pedantic. As Dipak Lal has pointed out, acid rain, the nuclear winter and oil fires of Kuwait have all had their moment of glory as global problems and disappeared from sight. We in the West love to have our bowels chilled by tales of imminent catastrophe. Men telling about the end of the world used to operate from pulpits, or go about in sandwich boards. Today they work from the Lab, and instead of recommending prayer, they demand an international committee and urgent action. And as for future generations -- well, one cannot but wonder at the selfishness of the British Admiralty at the turn of the nineteenth century in cutting down all those oak trees to build ships to protect them against Napoleon, when they should have been conserving oak forests for ship building in the twenty-first century. There is at least one highly significant affinity between environmental activists and Communists of yesteryear: both are dependent for their assumptions upon existing -- usually an already outmoded-technology.
Some of you may remember the cartoon figure of Mr. Magoo, whose myopia never interfered with his confident sense of his own infallibility. He was forever walking along the edges of precipices under the illusion that it was the center of the road; he was the classic searcher for a gas leak with a lighted taper. Observing the marvelous combination of confidence and ignorance in the proposals of inter-national regulatory committees, the figure of Magoo is never far frommy mind. As Alice remarked in another cartoon: "Don't just do something. Stand there."
Immobilism is not, of course, a particularly heroic policy, nor is it quite what I am advocating. No doubt it is prudent to respond even to such imperfect understanding as we have of the impact of industry on the environment. But it would seem plausible to believe that the world is better served by many intelligent people in different sovereign states responding to a variety of situationally different problems than by a single committee of experts imposing one big solution on everybody.
International problems often provoke us to this insidious kind of false rationality. We respond eagerly to famine pictures, only to discover that the food is being diverted to war lords, or that we are destroying the market on which the long-term future of these people will depend.
It is in fact the very logic of rationality which deceives us. The moment we have constructed a situation in problem terms, we have moved into a world of abstractions which conceals from us important aspects of a situation. Those in America early in the century who thought that drunkenness was a problem, to be solved by constitutional prohibition, did not recognize in the power of a forbidden desire the potentiality to create whole gangster empires which plague America to this day. The philosopher Kant, like many of his generation, thought war was a problem, and the removal of kings and aristocrats -- the only people who he believed who had an interest in war -- was the solution. It was this idea which paved the way for the infinitely more deadly mass mobilization of wars of recent times.
The problem of unintended consequences is well-illustrated in the Aesop fable of Horse which was being tormented by a boar, and called on Man to help. "Certainly," said Man, "I shall help you, but first you must let me saddle you up." The horse solved the problem of the boar, but was lumbered ever after with the saddle. My basic question is whether metalkind will allow itself to be similarly saddled.
The international world is the natural habitat of instrumental rationality in its extreme form, because there's nothing else out there except talking shops, so they talk things up using standard moves. One, for example, is to attribute all conflict between states to "nationalism" which is actually something highly specific. This move undermines states by suggesting that they are always blind and selfish, and that enlightenment can only be found at the international level.
Another device is to tell us, as Marx did and many others before him, that we have now entered a new world of interdependence in which frontiers are permeable and the old values don't apply. It was no doubt an opinion that occurred to the Emperor Hadrian as he contemplated the barbarians on the borders of Rome. Today the doctrine is called "globalization." National Sovereignty, it is said, cannot deal with modern problems, because problems -- ah, those pesky problems again -- don't stop at the borders of states. What we must do is "pool sovereignty." National sovereignty is an anachronism -- like monarchy, the family, honor, fountain pens, and pleasing architecture.
What we have is a new ideology for an emerging class of internationalists, and global problems are ways of talking up its power and increasing its leverage over the national state. Power is to selfless international committees of the enlightened.
Don't think that I am sentimentalizing the national state. It is in many ways a vile old brute, and the misuses of instrumental rationality have been lavishly used by states to aggrandize their own power. The state is a monster, but it is our monster, in the sense that it must endure some sort of accountability, in democracies, to us. In a perfect world one would want to focus on diminishing its power, which is certainly one of the virtuous causes of our time. But then, it isn't a perfect world, and as the famous Irishman said -- he is one of the tragic but realistic conservatives of our time -- "If I wanted to get there, I wouldn't have started from here."
1996 by national review, Inc., 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016.