The Best Global Warming Videos on the Internet |
Posted on 04/28/2008 4:53:07 PM PDT by kiriath_jearim
In my column last Friday – headlined “Bioperversity” – I suggested that a new book, “Sustaining Life,” from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which claimed that species loss was threatening medicinal discoveries and thus human health, was a typical alarmist crock. It was intended primarily as propaganda to whip up eco-hysteria ahead of next month’s huge United Nations conflab in Bonn to discuss the floundering Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
As if to prove my point, the IUCN the very next day issued a release about the so called “COP9,” that is, the ninth “Conference of the Parties” to the Bonn boondoggle. The release noted that COP9 would feature a “high level ministerial segment” (nothing is ever pitched at anything less than a stratospheric level in UN wonkworld), a Mayors’ Conference titled “Local Action for Biodiversity,” and a “Global Island Partnership Event.” Bonn will also address the “role of women in biodiversity.” According to Lorena Aguilar Revelo, head of IUCN’s Gender Programme, “Ministers in Bonn must listen to the experience of women when deciding on the future of our planet.”
Now I’m all in favour of hearing women’s "stories" being heard, but the thought of government Ministers “deciding on the future of our planet” scares me far worse than any possible prospect of species loss.
The IUCN release inevitably adopted the Chicken Little approach for which the organization is famous. “We need to act now to stop the destruction of life on this planet,” intoned Sebastien Winkler, head of IUCN’s Countdown 2010 (the date by which biodiversity is somehow to be “saved.”).
Alleged loss of biodiversity (which is based on claims of the extinction of tens of thousands of species annually, even though the IUCN can’t actually name one because they haven’t been discovered yet!) is of course closely conjoined to the allegedly catastrophic consequences of climate change (which also tend to be difficult to spot on any objective basis).
According to Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN’s director general, “We need sophisticated and uncompromised strategies to address these issues – the world expects nothing less.” I have to agree that sophisticated and uncompromised strategies – whatever the hell they might be – are certainly likely to be superior to unsophisticated and compromised ones, but the notion that the world is waiting with baited breath for the results of Bonn may be stretching it a bit.
Not only do such meetings consistently fail to produce anything but a further proliferation of busybody but useless initiatives and an urgent agenda for the next COP-out, the vast majority of mankind is blissfully unaware that they are taking place. Which is a real danger, because if anything threatens humanity, it is the UN and its handmaidens, prominent among which is the IUCN.
The Best Global Warming Videos on the Internet |
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