Chairman Mo's little red website

November 13, 2009
By Peter Foster              
National Post
Original source: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/12/peter-foster-chairman-mo-s-little-red-website.aspx

Why are people not more aware of the greatest threat to human freedom and prosperity since the collapse of Communism?

I refer not to the 2008 financial crisis, or man-made climate change, but to that eminent Canadian Maurice Strong. He is, after all, more than any other person responsible for sending the nations of the world down the path to Copenhagen.

It seems that Mr. Strong too may be fed up with his lack of profile. He has set up a website, http://www.mauricestrong.net \t _blank www.mauricestrong.net,where you will find the bald -- but accurate -- statement that Maurice Strong is the world's leading environmentalist. From heading the first UN environment conference in Stockholm in 1972 to masterminding the 1992 Rio summit, Maurice Strong, says Maurice Strong's website, has played a unique and critical role in globalizing the environmental movement. Mr. Strong is now 80 years old and thus out of the running for the title of CEO of Earth Inc., but it is his environmental nightmares and dreams of global governance that will dominate Copenhagen. This is a man, we might remember, who welcomes the collapse of industrial civilization, and has described the prospect of billions of environmental deaths as a glimmer of hope. My editor didn't believe me when I wrote this, so here's what Mr. Strong actually said, in his autobiography, in a section described as a report to the shareholders, Earth Inc, dated 2031: And experts have predicted that the reduction of the human population may well continue to the point that those who survive may not number more than the 1.61 billion people who inhabited the Earth at the beginning of the 20th century. A consequence, yes, of death and destruction -- but in the end a glimmer of hope for the future of our species and its potential for regeneration.

The site raises questions about just what Mr. Strong's role and status might be at Copenhagen. A cloud fell over his UN career when he was implicated in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, but Mr. Strong never abandoned his crusade. He just moved to Beijing.

Mr. Strong will join with the likes of Desmond Tutu and Sir Richard Branson to harass governments and cheer on NGOs at Copenhagen through something called the Global Observatory, but whatever his reception in December, he has done a brilliant job of promoting climatism.

Mr. Strong reiterated his views on climate apocalypse and how to deal with it earlier this year in a piece titled Facing Down Armageddon (which is available via his website, although you have to pay for it).

For evidence of the current crisis, he cited a report by the Global Humanitarian Forum, an NGO run by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (to whom Mr. Strong was a leading advisor), which suggested that man-made climate change is costing $125-billion and 300,000 lives a year.

This report was eviscerated by Professor Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, who described it as a methodological embarrassment and poster child for how to lie with statistics. One might also note the astonishing coincidence that $125 billion a year was exactly the amount that Mr. Strong said would be needed to compensate the poor for the West's environmental sins 17 years ago.

Now, Mr. Strong has just rounded it all up to a cool $1-trillion that needs to be shipped from the West over time as a climate security fund via the same folks who brought us oil-for-food. But what's a trillion? Mr. Strong points out that the U.S. has spent more than that fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. So apparently the route to global salvation lies in declaring economic civil war.

Mr. Strong calls for a new economic paradigm which will set prices so as to reflect real values. It will be like taxing alcohol or tobacco. Mr. Strong admits that no nation could impose such taxes without disadvantaging its own economy. But if everybody can be cajoled into suicidal behaviour, then apparently we shall all be the better for it.

Mr. Strong admits that governments are unlikely to welcome such schemes, so we have to give priority to the organizations and the people participating in this dialogue. That is, the Strong-sympathetic NGOs set up and/or funded via Mr. Strong's unique skills in accessing taxpayers' money.

Mr. Strong's transparent life long modus operandi has been to answer calls to action which he himself has instigated. Numerous examples appear in the Armageddon article. He praises the UN for bringing climate change to the top of the global agenda, as if this somehow had nothing to do with him. He claims that the 1972 Stockholm Conference cited the risks of climate change, although he's quoting himself! He supports the conclusions of the Brundtland Commission, of which he was a member. He dubs the Earth Charter a citizen-based initiative which sets principles to guide the conduct of nations and people towards the Earth and each other, neglecting to mention that he formulated the principles himself.

Mr. Strong quite blatantly promotes eco dictatorship. He declares that Our concept of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions, particularly in terms of safeguarding the global environment. He suggests that the world be run like a giant corporation: [W]e must learn to manage our impact on the environment much as we manage our businesses -- with amortization, maintenance, and depreciation accounts -- to ensure continued sustainability.

This claim would be ridiculous even if Mr. Strong had not been the architect of so many private business messes. Still, he realizes that if there is only one global corporation then its customers have nowhere else to go.