Twenty years ago, the Rio Summit created UN Agenda 21. Next week, those planning this agenda will meet again. A draft agenda for the conference leaked out two days ago. It shows what those planners really want: a United Nations that does more than talk (or sometimes send troops into hot zones “to keep the peace”). For the first time, the UN will tax people directly and make all kinds of environmental rules.

The UN Agenda 21 Global Tax

The full name of the Rio Summit was “United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.” The UN Agenda 21 planners will hold another such conference. They gave it the short title of “Rio+20,” because they are holding it twenty years after the first Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Center for a Constructive Tomorrow got the leak of the draft agenda for Rio+20. This agenda has its own nice-sounding title: “The Future We Want.” The leak runs to 288 pages and has “markups” by the many “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) that take part in planning UN Agenda 21.

Two days ago, CFACT spotted the most alarming part of the agenda. Paragraph 71(3) calls for the UN to levy a global tax on all energy from “non-renewable” fuels. CFACT figures that a typical American family of four would pay $1325 a year in taxes on all the energy they use. That would include motor fuel, electricity (from non-“green” fuels), heating oil, and natural gas for heating or cooking. (See also this report in The Washington Examiner.) The UN Agenda 21 planners want to rake in 0.7 percent of the world’s Gross National Product by 2015.

The UN has sought a global tax before. At the Seventeenth Conference of Parties last December, the UN talked of a tax on “foreign currency transactions.” Naturally, the US would pay most of this tax, because transactions in euros, between and among countries using them, would be exempt.

Other UN Agenda 21 ideas

The flag of the United Nations. (Public domain as per UN policy.)

CFACT found many other ideas in that draft agenda. Every NGO seems to have salted it with every utopian scheme they could think of. Among other things, that agenda says that:

1. The UN should not let anyone “speculate” on fuels or other raw materials. (The agenda uses that word four times and never defines it.)
2. All countries should cooperate in making rules about how anyone uses “the environment.” That means giving up national sovereignty and holding the citizens of one country, even on their own soil, subject to some rule that someone makes in a foreign country.
3. The UN should curtail certain technologies because some perceive them as a threat to the environment. Ned Ludd would love this. David Rothbard, head of CFACT, named some of the technologies that these neo-Luddites do not like: “synthetic biology, geo-engineering, genetic modification, nuclear energy and nanotechnology.”

CFACT also keeps this page with links to the draft agenda, and their own agenda that shows how simple freedom can serve “the environment” just as well.

Are they serious?

To dismiss UN Agenda 21 is easy to do. The Senate has never ratified, or even taken up, a UN “Convention” or other treaty to do anything that UN Agenda 21 calls for. But another UN office (Convention to Combat Desertification) sent in its own ideas to the UN Agenda 21 planners.

Besides, environmental activists clearly want those things, and they say so. For instance, the draft agenda says much about “resource justice.” That kind of “justice” usually means taking from some for the unearned, unpaid benefit of others.

The video below expresses the typical philosophy:

To go beyond wealth as the only measure of economic progress.

That video came from the Twitter “timeline” of two hashtags that the UN Agenda 21 planners told everyone to use: #FutureWeWant and #RioPlus20. An e-mail alert from “AgendersNJ” shared seven examples from the timeline:

1. @UN_RioPlus20: What does the #Futurewewant look like to you? Watch this great video about why #Rioplus20 matters to all of us: http://t.co/AenQCES3
2. @UNEP: Any good examples of sustainability where you are? Join in on the conversation! http://t.co/ZcPMVgwA #FutureWeWant
3. @UN_RioPlus20: French President calls for action ‘today’ ahead of #Rioplus20 conference in Brazil for #Futurewewant http://t.co/hgZfwoV2
4. @UNEP_FI: Financing the #futurewewant. Sustainable Stock Exchanges can help foster the #GreenEconomy. http://t.co/vItV3Nmo -Side event at #Rioplus20
5. @IFADnews: What’s being done 2 protect our forests, & what still needs 2 be done? Watch Forests 4 People: http://ow.ly/buBJH #food #futurewewant...
6. From a random eco-drone, about food and water “safety”: Acciones colectivas insuficientes, seguridad alimentaria #agua #rio+20 #futurewewant http://t.co/feOarBNY
7. @Policy_Wonk: NOW: I’m tweeting LIVE the WaPo’s “Future of Food – Food Security in the 21st Century.” #foodsecurity #futurewewant @thepostlive

How to get there

The Rio+20 conference will take place from June 20 through 22, 2012. Planners do not seem to have thought about how to get conferees to Rio in the “greenest” way possible. This logistical page gives only dates, times, places, and tips on how to get around in Rio.

Two and a half years ago, delegates to the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP-15) showed up at Copenhagen, DK in 140 business jets, and rented out every limousine in Europe. Nothing on the Rio+20 logistics page would stop conferees from flying in on their private jets this time.  But at least they seem to expect people to use special shuttles, public buses, and subways in Rio.

Related:

• One State fights back
• Hint, hint, hint!
• A subtle hint from the EPA
• Even Democrats hate it
• Abolishing private property

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