I have been provided a copy of “The Future We Want” — emphasis on “We Want!” (stay tuned, boy do they ever) — which is the draft agreement being cobbled together right now in New York for presentation and acceptance at the upcoming “Rio+20″ World Environment Summit.
To be held next month in Brazil, this celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations, led by Europe, of roping the U.S. in a presidential election year into Agenda 21 and the Kyoto Protocol’s parent treaty had great aspirations: a “green jobs” treaty.
I walk through the deliberations to date as I learned of them through similar documents and details provided me by someone on the inside in my current piece for the Federalist Society’s Engage magazine.
I’m now going through this deathless tract, which generally reads like it could have been obtained at a fraction of the cost by throwing a bag of weed and ream of paper into most college dorms on a Friday night, if with more Dorito stains on the pages and of course a much smaller carbon footprint (these negotiating sessions have been going on several times a year all over the world).
Then I got down past the global warming and sustainability cant, past the “gender equality and women’s empowerment” — you may have to remind yourself, when reading your copy, that this is about addressing an apparently (as always) urgent environmental crisis — to the global governance and financing sections (beginning on p. 71 of 81).
There’s this call on p. 72 for agreement that the richest developed countries (ummm….Germany?) “to achieve the target of 0.7 percent of gross national product for official development assistance to developing countries by 2015.”
My desktop calculator says that 0.7% of a $14.64 trillion GNP (2010) is $102,480,000,000. From the U.S. Every year. Going up if we ever grow the economy again. That’s a hundred billion, plus.
A page later they clear their throats and get around to asking for debt cancellation too. I mean, while we’re on the subject. Oh, and the next page reminds us that the “UN development system” is going to wet its beak, too, you know, to manage the funds (they certainly wouldn’t be skimming a taste off the top!)
Enviros Want $100 Billion From US For Climate Fraud
There, fixed.