Yesterday the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued the sort of press release that makes me want to pull out my hair.
Titled Rio+20 must ensure a future that is both sustainable and fair, it’s a great example of how this activist group has gone entirely off the rails.
Saving endangered species may be a fine thing, but the WWF abandoned that straightforward goal years ago. Now it thinks its job is to urge United Nations gatherings to “develop and plan a sustainable future for all.” Excuse me, but unaccountable UN bureaucrats are the last people to whom I’d entrust that task.
The larger issue, though, is that I don’t believe it’s within anyone’s power to direct the future. It will unfold in its own manner, in a multitude of unexpected directions. People, nations, and technologies we’ve barely heard of will shape it irrespective of whatever resolutions busy-bodies might pass during meetings scheduled for June 20-22nd of this year.
The WWF press release contains a statement from Jim Leape, the Director General of WWF International. He’s a Harvard-educated environmental lawyer who worked for the WWF for a decade, spent four years employed by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation deciding which “conservation and science initiatives” deserved to be funded, then became the WWF’s head honcho in 2005.
Now isn’t that cozy? It’s fair to say that the Packard Foundation has been very good to the WWF. Its website contains a list of 32 separate grants bestowed upon it between 2006 – the year after Leape departed – and 2010 (backup link here).
These fine folks (UN bureaucrats) can control the climate, so why shouldn’t they be allowed to control the future? Well, if only big oil would let them.