The Sustainability Project

By Rich Kozlovich

Editor's Note:  This was originally published in 2015, but it's been hit lately, and was even picked up by a blogger in Australia.  In light of the Chevron decision so many of the articles I've published over the years are worth republishing.  I think this is one of them. RK

 On May 23^rd the Shanghai Daily ran an article titled, “UN chief sees biodiversity key to sustainable development, ending poverty”.   The article starts out stating:

“UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon on Friday called on everyone to recommit to global action to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss, for people and for our planet, saying that biodiversity is essential to sustainable development and eradicating poverty.”  The article goes on to quote the Secretary-General saying, “Protecting ecosystems and ensuring access to ecosystem services by poor and vulnerable groups are essential to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger." 

And how does Ban think this is going to be accomplished?  The article states:

 

“Ban said reducing deforestation and land degradation and enhancing carbon stocks in forests, dry lands, (Is he advocating the building of dams because the environmental movement is against that?) range lands and crop lands generate significant benefits and are cost-effective ways to mitigate climate change.”  He continues saying, “any sustainable development framework must provide conditions for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity for more equitable sharing of benefits”.

 

Souza Dias claims:

 

"Biodiversity underpins all those ecosystem functions and benefits essential to human well-being, not only in terms of our economies, but also for our health, food security, prevention of natural hazards, and our cultural roots”.  He also states that, “biodiversity sustainably can provide solutions to a range of challenges to sustainability and human well-being, including poverty eradication, food security, sustainable production and consumption, water security, disaster risk reduction and climate change.”

For those who don’t follow this stuff you will read these comments and it may sound rational.  But what happens when we take them one at a time, analyze them and then ask what they're really saying and what these statements mean?

First of all sustainable development is indefinable, or unendingly re-definable according the the green whim of the moment, which is common in all things the left promotes, especially when it comes to the green movement.  The word sustainable means to be able to do something over and over again.  What exactly is it that’s not being done over and over again they wish to restore or prevent from disappearing?  What exactly is the current generation destroying for future generations?  They never tell us what isn’t being done over and over again, since they only declare things are unsustainable without any evidence to support these hysterical speculations.  What is it they actually want?   Remember when they claimed using  traditional energy sources was unsustainable?  Which of course meant modern agriculture was unsustainable.  All of that turned out to be blatantly false.  As for biological sustainability - its even less definable and borders on neo-pagan nature worshiping mysticism.   

Are we to assume no species of animal or plant can be allowed to go extinct?  If that’s the case what steps should be taken to prevent that?  Under the Endangered Species Act that requires setting aside “suitable habitat”, which can include ridiculous amounts of acreage.  And it doesn’t stop there.  Anything done around that “suitable habitat zone” can be restricted because some bureaucrat decides it’s detrimental to some bug, or plant that’s been designated as endangered.  That stopped the Keystone Pipeline.  How is that going to reduce hunger and support good economic policy?

 

Let’s take a look at the comments made by Ban and Diaz.  Ban is quoted saying: 

 

“biodiversity is essential to sustainable development and eradicating poverty.”  

 

If there ever was a logical fallacy – this is it!  Okay, so now we have to ask - why and how? If biodiversity is essential to eradicating poverty there must be some firm logical foundation to support that statement.  What is it?  Just exactly how is biodiversity going to eradicate poverty?  If anything - it will increase it!  Unless of course you reduce the world’s population dramatically, which is the underlying motive of the environmental movement, and that doesn’t really supply an answer to ending poverty.  Poverty has been with mankind for all of human history.  The idea of eradicating poverty is just more leftist utopian blather, and will never be achieved by any of the means discussed.  It’s a red herring to deflect attention from the real goal.  World governance by the most corrupt and incompetent organization the world has ever known.  The United Nations!

“Ban said reducing deforestation and land degradation and enhancing carbon stocks in forests, dry lands, range lands and crop lands generate significant benefits and are cost-effective ways to mitigate climate change.” 

 

 What exactly does “enhancing carbon stocks mean”?  First let’s define REDD+. 

 

“Launched in September 2008, the United Nations Collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, known better simply as UN-REDD was created with the goal of helping countries implement REDD+ strategies. What are REDD+ strategies? To quote the UN: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) - is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. “REDD+” goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

 

A key component of the REDD+ strategy, it includes forest management activities such as restoring existing but degraded forests and increasing forest cover through environmentally appropriate afforestation and reforestation.

So this is all about CO2 and the false premise that CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming! Since the incredibly small amount of warming that was taking place ended over 18 years ago it’s now “climate change”, in spite of the fact that levels of CO2 has increased.  The very premise for Ban’s comments is fraudulent.   

 

Ban’s solution to end poverty is to take farm land and turn it into forests.  Did I understand that correctly? Not the Sahara desert, or the Gobi desert, or some other largely “pristine” but desolate area of the world, but areas that are already inhabited with large populations needing agricultural acreage.  Acreage that’s being eaten up with crops to make ethanol.  A policy the UN and the green movement supports.  Does this seem like cognitive dissonance, or is it a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the facts? 

Ban claims:

 

“any sustainable development framework must provide conditions for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity for more equitable sharing of benefits”.  What does, “the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity for more equitable sharing of benefits”.  What does that mean? And how is that to be accomplished?  We come right back to the leftist's desire of controlling outcomes that are acceptable to leftist elites.  In effect - when the word’s conservation, sustainability and biodiversity are used by leftists they're nothing more than triggers to promote worldwide socialism under the guise of equitability. In short - it's the same old socialist theme - you are being cheated by the rich so we're going to forcibly take it from them and give it to you.  Just give us the power!  

Souza Dias claims:

 

"Biodiversity underpins all those ecosystem functions and benefits essential to human well-being, not only in terms of our economies, but also for our health, food security, prevention of natural hazards, and our cultural roots”…..“biodiversity sustainably can provide solutions to a range of challenges to sustainability and human well-being, including poverty eradication, food security, sustainable production and consumption, water security, disaster risk reduction and climate change.”  

 

First of all there’s no such thing as an eco-system other than the planet itself.  These ‘eco-systems’ they talk about are never stable. Too much rain and plant and animal species are changed.  Too little water and another change will take place.  Forest fires destroy untold acreage and the plants and animals inhabiting the area changes.  Furthermore, species become extinct as a result of being biologically incompetent, and will be replaced by plants or animals that can adapt to change.  How many species have gone extinct?  Over 95% of all species that have ever lived are extinct, and all the species living today will become extinct.  Extinction is the rule, not the exception!

Let’s break down Dias’ thoughts individually. 

 

"Biodiversity underpins all those ecosystem functions and benefits essential to human well-being"

  

That statement is a red herring. What is it he wants to implement?  Controlled habitat that prevents use by humans so certain species will not be effected? 

 

"Not only in terms of our economies".

 

How is this really an economic issue? Explain!

 

"But also for our health,"  

 

How is this a health issue? Explain!

 

"Food security" 

 

 How does committing to a UN biodiversity project provide food security? Explain!

 

"Prevention of natural hazards" 

 

 How does biodiversity prevent natural hazards, and what exactly qualifies as a natural hazard, and if they’re natural, how could they be prevented?  Do we really believe global warming causes hurricanes, tornadoes, etc?  We know those claims have been proven false.  Perhaps a commitment to biodiversity prevents earthquakes?

 

Cultural roots” 

  

And the least definable and least meaningful of them all….cultural roots. What does that mean?  Never change what we do…forever?  End cultural patterns disapproved by the UN? Perhaps it means destroying the US Constitution.  Since the green movement is so hot on "going back to nature" perhaps it means abandoning all the advances that make modern life possible.  

 

Dias claims:

 

“biodiversity sustainably can provide solutions to a range of challenges to sustainability and human well-being, including poverty eradication, food security, sustainable production and consumption, water security, disaster risk reduction and climate change.”   

 

All these sound bites sound appealing, but this is nothing more that another emotional appeal by the left claiming they have the answers that will bring about utopia.  The problem is all they ever deliver is dystopia.  Following a UN sponsored biodiversity program will not end poverty, provide food security, disaster risk reduction (whatever that means) or climate change.  Oh, it will provide “production and consumption” controls, but I don't think anyone except the ruling elite will like that outcome.  Because misanthropic leftists will be telling the world what to produce and how much of it everyone will be allowed to consume.

 

They will also control how much water you may use and for what.  If we have any delusions about what that will mean then just take a look at what's being done in California (which is facing a devastating drought) with the delta smelt, allowing thousands of gallons of fresh water to flow into the delta for the benefit of a bait fish, while destroying the farms that need it.   

 

As for climate change?  It’s the greatest fraud perpetrated by any human organization in all of human history.   The mere fact the UN continues to use this as a reason to adopt any of their schemes is a clear demonstration of the deliberate fraudulence behind their sustainable development and biodiversity programs.

 

Let's not be fooled by clever sounding rhetoric.  The answer is in the history.  The history of the left is filled with tyranny, misery, squalor, suffering, disease and early death, and if the world accepts these deliberate misrepresentations and red herrings of "sustainable development" and "biological diversity" - that's what will follow, and their warnings are as valid as The Monkey Stampede!

 

 Sustainable development is a phrase that's being bandied around everywhere these days. It's promoted by the United Nations as the answer to every problem in every aspect of human activity: sustainable development in agriculture, sustainable development in banking, sustainable development in tourism, sustainable development in education, and more. Let's get this right.  Sustainable development is just another effort by the left to take commonly understood words and re-define them in support of an irrational, misanthropic and morally defective ideology. Socialism! 

P.T. Barnum would have been truly impressed with this trompe l'oeil, for what better way to deflect attention away from themselves, the real perpetrators of the economic mess in which the world finds itself.  And now, because they've adopted and promoted this phrase - sustainable development - and tout it as a philosophy, we're to believe the economic incompetents who run these socialist governments, including the United States, have an economic vision that can be implemented with them in control and it will work to humanities benefit!  We desperately need to explore this.

Just as when they use the phrase “it’s for the children” when they want some pesticide banned - after all, who could be against something that's "for the children" - they resort to these emotional appeals to prevent you from looking deeper into what they’re really promoting.   Their policies haven't been "for the children", it been  “to the children”.  For over 50 years those policies have devastated the children of the third world terribly.

Correspondingly, we had better look more deeply into the phrase “sustainable development” when they talk about economic development.  After all - who can be against sustainability? After all isn’t sustainability something that can be done over and over again!  Who can be against development?  Isn’t development about creating more and better ways to live!  What can be wrong with any of that?

Let’s think about this for a second.  The words sustainability and development can easily be defined separately, but can they be defined as a phrase?  Are they even compatible as a philosophy?  Ask ourselves this question.   Is anything sustainable if there’s development?  We will explore that!

What happens when the two are combined and defined illogically and in a way that will generate a diametrically different goal than either sustainability or development would mean independently? What happens when the real goal isn’t the leftist mantra – we can fix everything if the world just adopts our vision of sustainable development and give us the power to define it, and unendingly re-define it, as we see fit to meet needs that only we can understand and implement according to some unknown formula?  What if the real goal is global governance under the auspices of the United Nations?  

Independently both of these words are easily definable. The trick is to put these words together in order to create a phrase that is so meaningless anyone can attribute any philosophy to it they wish and call their policy “sustainable development”.

In reality the term sustainable development as a philosophy is a logical fallacy because it has no logical foundation.    Who decides what’s sustainable, and for whom?  Who decides some practice or other is or isn’t worth developing?

There are no identifiable parameters for a universal definition or modalities of action to which everyone can agree.  As a result there can be no logical foundation from which to make viable verifiable determinations for what needs to be done.  That leaves opinion - not facts, not science, not history, not results – just someone’s opinion as to how the world should function.  Make no mistake about this.  If the world accepts this there will be no level of individuality that will be tolerated, including the real foundation for economic sustainability or development – personal property rights. 

Here in the United States that is now, and has been, the thrust of these people from the beginning.  The elimination of personal property rights by use of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, via their agents of tyranny at the EPA, the Wildlife Service and the Army Corp of Engineers.

They claim sustainable development is to support current and future generations. Both of which are completely incomprehensible for central planning purposes, especially by bureaucrats who’ve never had a real job. Who knows what future generations need?  Who knows what developments will arise that will change the needs of society today.  Who knows what developments will be thwarted by central planning meddling?   Who’s to say what’s best for current or future generations, and how do we know their goals and plans are benign?

Especially since - as a group – the sustainable development mob thinks – mostly privately lest the world find out how insane their vision of the world really is – the world has between four and six billion too many people.  So why does anyone think a massive infusion of regulations and taxes implemented by an unconnected, unaccountable, unconscionable United Nations bureaucracy dominated by tyrants should regulate sustainability? 

The reality is that sustainability has no need of government at all.  Actual sustainability is self regulating! Either something can be done or it can’t.  If it can’t be done people will stop doing it and attempt some other way of achieving a needed goal. 

That makes development self regulating also.  Development occurs when a need arises, and as in all developmental processes there will be successes and failures.  That’s how the light bulb came into being.  Edison tried 1000 compounds as a filament and failed, but he took each failure as a success because they now knew what wouldn’t work.   When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." 

What regulation from a central authority could have made that happen?   What if central planners didn’t want this development to happen?  What if central planners had decided electric light bulbs were destructive to the economic interests of candle makers and declared light bulbs as a threat to current and future generations? 

Who was the most antagonistic opponent of the electric light bulb?  John D. Rockefeller!  Why, was he a supporter of sustainability or development?  I guess you could say he was a supporter of sustainability – because his company, Standard Oil of New Jersey’s number one product was kerosene, which was used to light the nation’s buildings, and the electric light bulb would not be sustainable for his business model.  Remember, gasoline was a by-product of kerosene production and was thrown away because it was so volatile and there were few cars.  Once again – the reality of history is this - nothing is ‘sustainable’ if there’s development.

Now we find these promoters of sustainable development claiming sustainable development isn’t possible without equality of genders.  Really?  Why?  Whether or not our particular societal paradigms practice equality of race, equality of gender, equality of class or not, there is no ‘sustainable’ proof that has anything to do with sustainability or development.  Great political and economic empires came into being without practicing anything that could be construed equality in any arena. 

The world’s history demonstrates the largest obstacle to sustainability or development is   government!   The very people who are promoting what they call sustainable development are the very people who stand in the way of legitimate economic sustainable or development with massive infusions of regulations, fees, taxes and penalties for doing anything with which they disagree. 

What if they decide drinking wine is a threat to the needs of today’s society? What if they decide growing grape vines or the making of wine will not be tolerated?  What if they decide theatrical entertainment should be restricted in order to more directly focus on producing the things the central authority decides is most important?  Both of those things occurred in ancient China. 

These aren’t stupid people.  They’ve been educated in the best universities in the world so they must have studied history, but did they really?  In order to really understand world economics we need to study the history of China!

According to the book Wealth and Poverty of Nations:

 

“by about 500 BCE the Chinese had learned to improve the supply and use of water by means of artificial devices and arrangements; were making use of draft animals (above all, the water buffalo) for plowing; were weeding intensively; and were putting down animal waste, including night soil, as fertilizer. All of this required prodigious labor, but the work paid off.  Yields shot to a high of 1,100 liters of grain per hectare, which would have left a substantial surplus for the maintenance of nonfood producers.”

Printing and paper was invented by the Chinese around the 9^th century, but the difficulty of ideographs versus an alphabet made printing or even learning difficult. 

 

  “for all that printing [in China] did for the preservation and diffusion of knowledge in China, it never “exploded” as in Europe,.  Such publication depended on government initiative, and he Confucian mandarinate discouraged dissent and new ideas”.  (WAPN pg 52)

The Chinese use of gunpowder started by the eleventh century (two to three hundred years before it appeared in Europe, and probably brought from China) but never advanced beyond their use as incendiaries because:

 

Chinese would seem to have been more afraid of rebellion from within than invasion from without.  More modern armaments might fall into the wrong hands, and these including those of the generals.” (WAPN Pg. 53)   

So it appears the central authorities decided gunpowder was not to be developed any further for the benefit of a sustainable society…Right?  Or was it for the benefit of the central authorities?  

The control of the Chinese population by a central authority – The Emperor, who was presented as “The Son of Heaven”, making him a semi-divine being in the eyes of the Chinese – feared innovation as a threat to his rule.  As a result a nation that was scientifically 500 years ahead of the rest of the world stifled innovation with regulations and an unyielding bureaucracy until the rest of the world surpassed them.  That’s been the history of central planning all over the world. 

While there have been times when in the short term it has worked to meet a specific need, as a permanent arrangement to meet societies needs – it’s a disaster!

Their rhetoric about "sustainable development" gives the impression this will benefit society providing for all of humanities needs.  But what happens when this central authority decides to change it to "sustainable consumption"? All they promote in all their schemes and international treaties lead to that - sustainable consumption - and they will decide what and how much will be consumed and by whom.

After he took power in China communist dictator Ma0 Tse Tung decided he needed armament but he didn’t have the capital to purchase it.  So to fix that economic problem he decided to sell the food needed by his Chinese countrymen to get that capital.  Over thirty million innocent people starved to death and Mao said that was the beginning and more may need to die in order to attain his goals.  What was he sustaining?  His power at the expense of humanity! 

 

The left is not a lover of humanity, sustainable development as a policy defined by them and under their control, will not be benefit humanity.   We have the history of leftism, and that history is incontestable!  There really is good and evil in the world and there really is such a thing as right and wrong.   

 

What needs to be demonstrated over and over again is the left isn’t just wrong.  It’s evil!