Posted on 05/23/2012 7:04:13 PM PDT by neverdem
The World Wildlife Fund, the posh flagship of the global environmentalist movement, has just released its biennial publication assessing “the state of the planet.” Entitled “Living Planet Report 2012,” the publication bemoans alleged catastrophic effects that humanity is inflicting upon the Earth, and calls for drastic curbs on civilization as a necessary corrective measure.
According to the WWF, the human race is currently consuming at a rate that would be sustainable only if we had 1.5 Earths. Since we do not, overall human activity needs to be reduced by 33 percent to put mankind “in balance with the Earth’s biocapacity.”
The WWF amplified this thesis by determining how much acreage each person on Earth is using. With a total land mass of 12.6 billion hectares (a hectare is 10,000 square meters, or about 2.5 acres) and a population of 7 billion, there are now, on average, 1.8 hectares assignable to each person. However, according to the WWF, each American currently uses the resources of 7.2 hectares, so that if everyone lived like us, four Earths would be required. (The report does not consider productivity. For example, the fact that Americans on average produce eight times the per capita GDP and 24 times the number of inventions that non-Americans do goes unmentioned.) Even the living standards of countries like Botswana, Romania, and Iran, which score near the world average of 2.7 hectares used per capita, are still 50 percent too high.
No, if we are to live in harmony with nature, human consumption needs to be brought down to the consumption level of 1.8 hectares per capita. The feasibility of this is proven by the fact that this consumption level is currently being achieved by such model countries as Chad, Mali, and Sudan. In fact, even smaller “ecological footprints,” of less than 0.7 hectares per capita, are currently being demonstrated by the world’s top five environmental citizens, which are, from fifth to first place: Eritrea, Haiti, Afghanistan, Timor-Leste, and, best of all, “Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
So what is to be done? “The immediate focus must be on drastically shrinking the ecological footprint of high-income populations,” says the WWF. This can best be done by cutting carbon emissions. (The report presents no data showing what harm global warming may cause to wildlife.) The Kyoto Treaty’s target of reducing global carbon emissions to less than 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2020 (which would require cutting the world’s current 34 billion tons of annual CO2 emissions down to 18 billion tons over the next eight years) is insufficient, the report tells us. We must “increase the proportion of sustainable renewable energies in the global energy mix to at least 40 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050.” As a means for achieving this impossible, economy-destroying objective, wind power — which kills innumerable birds — is strongly recommended, and the use of biomass — which can destroy natural habitats — is supported implicitly. But nuclear power, which draws on no resources used by the wild biosphere, goes unmentioned.
In order to enforce the policy of global impoverishment, governance in accord with a “one planet perspective” that “proposes to manage, govern, and share natural capital within the Earth’s ecological boundaries” is set forth. The proposed governing body will have the power to “redirect financial flows” and enforce “equitable resource governance,” which will “explicitly integrate population dynamics . . . and per capita consumption trends into national planning policies to support a better balance between population and available resources.” This will ensure that we “produce better” (“manage resources sustainably,” “scale up renewable energy production”), “consume more wisely” (“achieve low-footprint lifestyles,” “change energy consumption patterns”), and “preserve natural capital.”
Founded in 1961 by British Eugenics Society president Sir Julian Huxley and the Netherlands’ prince consort, Prince Bernhard, and supported over the years by a galaxy of aristocrats and jet-setters, the WWF (whose U.S. branch alone boasts an operating budget of $240 million per year) is the high church of the global environmentalist movement. It has used its considerable resources over the past half-century to take possession, directly or indirectly, of millions of square miles of land in Africa and remove them from the possibility of development. However, as the 2012 report shows, its core agenda goes well beyond the protection of wildlife. Rather, it is hunting bigger game.
The Earth is not endangered by humanity. But humanity is being seriously threatened by those who follow the guides of the WWF.
— Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy, and the author of Energy Victory. His newest book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, has just been published by Encounter Books.
I move that we start by abolishing the World Wildlife Fund.
Who will second my motion?
I second your motion.
Rigged game? You bet. And their names are public record. You can check it out.
Lots of deer & antelope in our area who are driving a Prious & in line at the gaspump. Also can’t buy farmland. /sarcasm.
Reminds me of the attitudes behind the eco-freaks in Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six".
Letter to Congressional Leaders on the DISCLOSE Act (From the NRA's chief lobbyist, Chris Cox)
The Power of Cool classic VDH
Why Kenyan Birth Claim Was No 'Fact Checking Error' Jack Cashill
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Thanks for the ping!
Why is it that liberals never see themselves as soylent green? They’re always the elites getting to run things from airconditioned rooms overlooking zen gardens with a latte in hand.
If liberals were sincere they’d collect themselves at the mouth of a volcano and mass sacrifice to Gaia.
“…Founded in 1961 by British Eugenics Society president Sir Julian Huxley and the Netherlands’ prince consort, Prince Bernhard, and supported over the years by a galaxy of aristocrats and jet-setters, the WWF (whose U.S. branch alone boasts an operating budget of $240 million per year) is the high church of the global environmentalist movement. It has used its considerable resources over the past half-century to take possession, directly or indirectly, of millions of square miles of land in Africa and remove them from the possibility of development. However, as the 2012 report shows, its core agenda goes well beyond the protection of wildlife. Rather, it is hunting bigger game….”
Visions of man: Huxley vs. Dante
Catholic San Francisco ^ | April 13th, 2011 | Sandro Magister
Posted on 4/18/2011, 4:06:51 PM by bronxville
Visions of man: Huxley vs. Dante April 13th, 2011
This is an excerpt from a talk by French philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj March 24 in Paris at an event that was part of a Vatican-sponsored initiative to create dialogue among Catholics and atheists and agnostics in Europe, called the Courtyard of the Gentiles after a section of the ancient Jewish Temple that was accessible to non-Jews. He contrasts the “trasumanar,” or openness of heaven, of Dante’s Paradiso and the “transhumanism” of the first director general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Julian Huxley. Rome journalist Sandro Magister published an English translation of highlights of the talk on his website, chiesa.espressonline.it.
“Transhumanism” was coined in 1957 by the biologist Julian Huxley, the first director general of UNESCO. What is interesting is that this first director general of UNESCO did not at all mean what Dante did by “transhumanism.” His thought, in fact, goes radically against that of the “Divina Commedia.” But it has the advantage of making manifest the only alternative that is posed today in the modern world.
Brother of Aldous Huxley, the author of “Brave New World,” Julian Huxley might have been expected to be inoculated against any temptation to eugenics. Instead the opposite is true. Not that Julian Huxley was inconsistent; no, he was consistent in the extreme. In 1941, at the very time when the Nazis were gassing the mentally ill, Julian Huxley wrote with a certain audacity: “Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future, or of whatever complex of sentiments may in the future take the place of organized religion.” These statements were written in 1941. But it was in 1947 that they were published in French, when he was already director general of UNESCO. Not one line was changed on that occasion. Of course, Huxley was anti-Nazi, social democratic, and above all anti-racist. But he presumed to replace the traditional religions with biotechnology.
Of course, Julian Huxley is not on trial here. I would only like to highlight an ideology so widespread that it did not spare this place, and that it even had its first director general as an illustrious representative. If, in 1957, this first director general of UNESCO invented the substantive “transhumanism,” he did it in order to avoid talking further about “eugenics,” a word that had become difficult to use after Nazi eugenics. Nonetheless, the same thing is intended: the redemption of man through technology. I cite the 1957 text that invented the term; it presents this “new principle”: “(The) quality of people, not mere quantity, is what we must aim at, and therefore that a concerted policy is required to prevent the present flood of population-increase from wrecking all our hopes for a better world.” Julian’s “better world” is not so far from the “New world” of Aldous. It is precisely a matter of improving the “quality” of individuals, as one improves the “quality” of products, and therefore, probably, of eliminating or preventing the birth of everything that would appear as abnormal or deficient.…’
” Of course, Huxley was anti-Nazi, social democratic, and above all anti-racist. But he presumed to replace the traditional religions with biotechnology.”
Julian Huxley was pro-Soviet until his second visit to the USSR in 1945. After that he began attacking Lysenkoism, a biological theory the Soviet government was promoting that was in conflict with Huxley’s own views. But he remained a fellow traveler who could be relied upon to lend his reputation to causes such as the humanist movement and the Jesuit heretic Teilhard de Chardin.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.