Global green government

the eco-friendly pretext for world order 

By Carl Teichrib

Notions of world government have long circulated among certain elite policy and political circles, and the environmental movement has been a significant part of the global vision. Here, in this article, is a brief historical overview of how global governance and the green agenda have walked hand-in-hand. 

This article is extracted from Carl Teichrib’s research-intensive book, Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment. To order your copy, click on the Amazon sales link.

With the rising interest in ecology during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the priorities of international visionaries began to shift. World order for world peace was still a benchmark, and remains so, but the color green was now added.

During the 1968 World Constitutional Convention, organized by the World Constitution and Parliament Association, Lucile Green found herself chairing its Ecology Commission – possibly the first documented merger of environmental concerns with consultations on world government.[1] Green was chosen to lead this Commission because, in her words, “I was the only one who could define the term, ‘ecology’.”[2] So new was the idea.

World population size and natural resource management were the prime areas of interest, with the Commission suggesting that “earth, water, air and energy” be managed for “the common good.” Another recommendation was the establishment of an agency “which would act as trustee for future world parks, territories and oceans.”[3]

Population control was a fundamental part of the new green thinking, and influential voices were raising the alarm that the Earth was being overrun. Garrett Hardin, a renowned American intellectual, posed and answered a troubling question: “How can we help a foreign country to escape overpopulation? Clearly the worst thing we can do is send food… Atomic bombs would be kinder.”[4] The Environmental Handbook, prepared for the first Earth Day, simply said: “The goal would be half of the present world population, or less.”[5] At that time the world’s population was 3.7 billion.

Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich became a poster-boy for population control, equating population growth to a cancer needing to be cut out.[6] Scary scenarios reinforced Ehrlich’s mandate. Nuclear war, manmade plagues, and global air pollution that would make the “planet uninhabitable” before 1990 loomed before us.[7] Climate change, due in part to human activity – especially the cirrus cloud effect from spreading jet contrails – might usher a new global ice age.[8] Overpopulation was our doom.

How would the planet, and humanity itself, be saved from the scourge of too many people?

Ehrlich suggested a number of control measures, voluntary and coercive, but he understood that it would ultimately require social change through religious and political transformation. In religion: a recognition that Zen Buddhism, the “quasi-religious” New Left, and the “Whole Earth ‘hippie’ movement may well help save our environment.” In politics: a Planetary Regime to administer the global commons – “The Planetary Regime might thus incorporate the United Nations into a sort of International Agency for Population, Resources, and Environment.”[9]

Similar thinking underscored the Club of Rome.

Founded in 1968 by the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei, the Club was, and remains, a diverse group of influencers acting as a catalyst for change. Breaking new ground by using computer modeling to project long-term trends, the Club concluded that human growth needed limits; population and resources were on a collision course, and environmental collapse was imminent. This world problematique would therefore require systematic world solutions. Early on, the Club proposed a World Forum of technical experts who would deliver “a dramatic ‘state-of-the-world’ message supported by proposed policy responses.”[10] Humanity needed guidance to achieve a planned equilibrium between human development and nature. In the words of esteemed Club member Ervin Laszlo, they would “advise and proselytize.”[11] Laszlo, a leading systems theorist, projected a radical transformation of planetary politics: a World Ecology Authority and World Ecology Court.[12]

It was in this intellectual milieu that the age of global environmental planning made its entrance, with the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment firmly pushing green onto the world stage. Headed by Maurice Strong, a Canadian of international reputation with solid ties to the Club of Rome,[13] the Conference linked human development to ecological imperatives. A new understanding of planetary unity was emerging.

According to the Conference’s unofficial report commissioned by Maurice Strong, science and specialized knowledge “has led to a new and unexpected vision of the total unity, continuity, and interdependence of the entire cosmos.”[14] Strong’s understanding was this,

“The central theme of our age is interdependence – the interdependence of all the elements which sustain life on this planet; the interdependence of man with these elements; the interdependence of the natural physical systems with man’s needs and aspirations; and, most of all, man’s interdependence with man.”[15]

One result of the 1972 Conference was the formation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), an organ of the UN dedicated to environmental concerns. Strong became its first Executive Director. Interestingly, the UNEP logo conspicuously has Man in its center, sending an unspoken but powerful message: If the world is to change, humanity must do so first.[16]

The real success of the Conference was not the birth of another UN agency but the placing of the natural environment on a political pedestal.[17] How the international community interpreted nature, and Man’s place in it, would form guiding principals for the next phase of social evolution. This was not about creating a supra-national political authority, a point made by Strong, but about finding a mechanism through which nations could exercise their “sovereignty collectively.”[18] In the decades ahead this would be re-packaged as global governance – the voluntary alignment of one’s nation within a framework of collectively articulated values and decisions.

Essentially, the worldview supporting the new international consensus was to translate into national planning; a measurable response to the politicizing of nature. Humanity’s relationship to the environment, and to each other, would profoundly change.

Twenty years later the world community reconvened in Rio de Janeiro. The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) – better known as the Earth Summit – was an opportunity for governments to negotiate a new and expansive set of framework documents on biodiversity, climate, and human behavior.[19] Maurice Strong, now the Secretary-General of the Earth Summit, was unequivocal about the importance of its anchor document: “Agenda 21, the action plan to implement the principles and agreements of Rio, is a blueprint for constructing the new world order called for at Rio.”[20]

Agenda 21 and the other official texts acted as rallying flags for national, state/provincial, and municipal planning. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Ecosystem Protection paper of 1993, referencing the Earth Summit documents, encouraged the Executive Branch to direct federal agencies “in light of international policies and obligations” and to “amend national policies to more effectively achieve international objectives.” Suggested were “human population policies” and the development of a “Green Bank Program,” a federal institution to collect environmental permit fees and enforcement fines from the general public.[21]

Former principle author of the Santa Cruz County Local Agenda 21, Mark Edward Vande Pol, makes an astute observation: “Rules beget interpretations, which beget violations, which beget new rules until the system jams with conflicting demands.”[22]

Mark’s task was to re-constitute the UN’s Agenda 21 for local implementation, giving bureaucrats and environmental NGOs justification to directly interfere with private property in Santa Cruz County. Deeply disturbed by this process-of-control, he came away from the experience with another realization: “The last thing we need is to make a welfare case out of the planet.”[23]

Returning to the United Nations, it is important to know that an extensive, behind-the-scenes process takes place before all UN summits. Preparatory conferences or prep-cons are first-tier events in which working-groups made up of government ministers, UN representatives, invited stakeholders, and select NGOs flesh-out the summit’s goals and benchmarks. Behind this is a secondary level of activity: a matrix of government hearings and NGO consultations, expert roundtables, academic conferences, and public relation campaigns. It is within this secondary context that theoretical and ideological expressions are given ample room to maneuver.

Consider an audacious, second-tier case in point.

Two years before Rio a stakeholder event was held in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Its official theme: “Sustainable Development Strategies and the New World Order.” Approximately 3,000 experts and delegates participated in nearly 200 working sessions. “Protecting the Environment – Preparing for Tomorrow” was the general motif, with “education for sustainable development” a major subject of concern. Maurice Strong was its patron.[24]

Event findings were published under the title, Sustainable Development for a New World Agenda, and it was expected to be a springboard for “discussion and calls to action.” The report, along with the Manitoba government statement to the Earth Summit – The Manitoba Protocol, also written at this conference – was submitted to UNCED organizers.

Chapter two was breathtaking: “Towards A Global Green Constitution,”

   “The issues are not about if a global politics is necessary. The question is how do we achieve binding agreements in Law complete with effective programs for applying sanctions against non- compliance that would oblige each nation, regardless of size, to abide by a set of principles that are required to guarantee the survival of life on this earth. Perhaps we will find that there is no other alternative to a system of rigid controls that some would equate to a police state. Unfortunately, in order to save the planet from biocide, there have to be very powerful constraints from doing the ‘wrong’ things. The constraints must transcend national boundaries, be world-around and enforceable. There would be a need for an agency for preventing eco-vandals from acting unilaterally.

   Enforcement agencies would need the power to act without being invited by the offending nation. Therefore, there needs to be an agency that is acceptable to all nation states on the planet. We can probably accept the fact that there will always be one or more nations that will not go along but there must be effective sanctions in place. If sanctions do not work, then physical occupation and the installation of a World Trusteeship would be imposed upon the offending nations.”[25] 

Energizing this idea was a hypothetical Global Green Constitution,

“The Constitution would need to be the world-around political expression of a radical new value system… governments would come to power that could most effectively formulate national policy implications of a Global Green Constitution. The United Nations would be a signator and take responsibility for the global commons… Nation states would each be signators and take responsibility for the impacts of industrial and commercial activities that occur within territorial boundaries. A Global Environmental Congress having Constitutional authority and responsibility would inspect and determine the degree of compliance of each signator nation.”[26]

Environmental protection would be humanity’s highest duty. To that end, de-humanized wilderness zones must be legally enacted: “It is the human population that needs management, not wildlife.”[27]

And managed we were to be through a new economic order.

Under a Social Justice heading, the report recommended an “assured basic income from birth to death for every woman, man, and child on Earth.” Free university education, free medical and dental care, and “access to socially useful work” would hallmark an era of “global economic equality.”

How could something this utopian function? Roughly assimilating the Technocracy movement from the 1930s, it was explained that an Energy Accounting system with pre-determined allotments of energy for everyone would guarantee equilibrium. Natural resources are depleting, the report said, and if Social Justice is to be attainable, then a “global policy of one child per family” would have to be implemented. This calibrated balancing of production, consumption, and population – the management of humanity for the sake of the planet – would be Sustainable Development.

Obviously not everyone would appreciate living under this version of world order, what “some would equate to a police state,” but so what? Humanity’s re-enchanted values are articulated in service to the Earth, and the planet cannot afford insubordination,

“Popular or not, green governments will oppose any culture if it proves to be prejudicial by reasons of gender, age, colour, race, religion, belief, sexual orientation, mental or physical condition, marital status, family composition, source of income, political belief, nationality, language preference, or place of origin.”[28]

That this Global Green Constitution was a theoretical offering does not diminish the seriousness of its underlying worldview. Nor is this the only example attesting to a radical reshaping of civilization. Only a few months before the Earth Summit, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation hosted a workshop in light of Rio. “We need a unified one world order,” the workshop summary said.[29]

One expert who attended the workshop proposed a biocracy,

“Democracy is replaced with ‘biocracy,’ where not people but life- sustaining systems are the central concern. Democracy remains a need within this model, at both local and global levels, but as one part of the whole system. ‘Participation’ becomes more than people’s physical presence and deepens to contain a cultural and spiritual dimension.”[30]

A new international framework did emerge from the Earth Summit, one dependent on nations voluntarily aligning domestic policies to global sentiments. The effect was subtle and substantial: Subtle in that the general public remained unaware or uninterested in the process, and profound in that it sought to re-shape citizen’s behavior through regulations and campaigns. The result was an undermining of private property rights as land users faced progressively tightening restrictions. Some individuals and organizations, thankfully, spoke out in warning.[31]

Although the enshrined hope of centralized, international management did not come to pass, post-Rio literature continued to advocate total solutions. This was especially so with resources geared to young people. Rescue Mission Planet Earth: A Youth Edition of Agenda 21 is one example.

“Written and illustrated by children for children to inspire young people all over the world,” Rescue Mission critiqued the Rio process and Agenda 21. The world community simply had not gone far enough,

“The Agenda suggests no new government structures to implement even its own proposals let alone the ones it leaves out. We need a new way of governing the whole planet. The problems we face are bigger than any single country.”[32]

To solve planetary problems, Rescue Mission Planet Earth outlined a “Global Democracy of Children.” Mirroring the concept of a soviet, the Democracy would start with local Councils in public schools – “perhaps to organize the Local Agenda 21” – and then move upward to state, national, and continental Councils. The final stage would be an International.[33]

An explosion of youth-directed projects and campaigns emerged after Rio. Indeed, the Earth Summit ignited interest in school-based global citizenship programming and green educational outcomes. President of the European Cultural Agency, Edgar Morin, told UNESCO that the new role of education would be to “Civilize and Unify the Earth… the education of the future should teach an ethics of planetary understanding… accession to earth citizenship… for an organized planetary community.”[34] 

The Temple of Man was being painted green, and a generation of young people were being conditioned to see themselves as democratic representatives of Mother Earth. Re-enchantment was being politicized.

—————

Endnotes:

[1] The World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA) was founded by Philip Isely, a world federalist who formed the WCPA with “maximalist world federation” in mind. By the mid-1990’s more than 900 NGOs from 110 countries – the majority being underdeveloped nations – had joined the WCPA Global Ratification and Elections Network. The strong support from underdeveloped countries raised a question that became a WCPA selling point: “What if the Third World begins world government?” Although Philip Isely passed away in 2012, his organization remains active.

[2] Lucile W. Green, Journey to a Governed World: Thru 50 Years in the Peace Movement (The Uniquest Foundation, 1991/1992), p.21 (see the text box on that page).

[3] Ibid., p.19. Note: Later drafts of the WCPA Constitution for the Federation of Earth listed population control, protection of the atmosphere, natural resource usage, and the establishment of wilderness areas as under the jurisdiction of the World Government.

[4] Garrett Hardin, “The Immorality of Being Soft-hearted,” Stanford Alumni Almanac, January, 1969. As quoted in Barry Commoner’s book, Making Peace with the Planet (New York: The New Press, 1992 edition), p.167.

[5] The Environmental Handbook: Prepared for the First National Environmental Teach- In, April 22, 1970 (Ballantine/Friends of the Earth, 1970, editor, Garrett de Bell), p.323.

[6] Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (Sierra Club/Ballantine Books, 1968, thirteenth printing, 1970), see his Prologue.

[7] Paul R. Ehrlich, “Eco-Catastrophe!,” The Environmental Handbook, pp.161-176.

[8] Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Population, Resources, Environment: Issues in Human Ecology (W.H. Freeman and Company, 1972), pp.240-241. Ehrlich at least recognized that climate change was a nebulous science, and that “Climate, of course, is an ever-changing thing.” Still, the Stanford professor could not help but add: “At just the time that man has populated the planet to the point of stretching his food resources to the maximum, he is almost certainly accelerating climate changes.” (pp.241-242).

[9] Ibid. For religion, see p.351. For politics, see p.435.

[10] The Predicament of Mankind: Quest for Structured Responses to Growing World-wide Complexities and Uncertainties – A Proposal (Club of Rome, 1970), Annex II, p.34.

[11] Ervin Laszlo, “The Club of Rome of the Future vs. The Future of the Club of Rome,” Goals in a Global Community: The Original Background Papers for Goals for Mankind – A Report to the Club of Rome, Volume 1, Studies on the Conceptual Foundations (Pergamon Press, 1977), p.282. In Canada, the Club’s national branch flavored the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a federal government corporation working with developing countries. And in China, two of the Club’s reports were reconstructed into a mathematically formulated, scientifically validated, theory of national population; too many Chinese people, not failed government policies, had stymied prosperity and development. The result of this pseudo-scientific blame-shift was China’s notorious one-child policy. For information on the IDRC connection, see Jason L. Churchill, The Limits to Influence: The Club of Rome and Canada, 1968 to 1988 (Thesis presented to the University of Waterloo, 2006), pp.99-106. For China’s one-child policy, see Robert Zubrin, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism (Encounter Books, 2012), pp.181-183.

[12] Ervin Laszlo, A Strategy for the Future: The Systems Approach to World Order (George Braziller Inc., 1974), p.176. The Authority and Court were envisioned as parts of a total world system, a “global homeostasis.”

[13] In his book, Where on Earth are We Going? (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2000), Maurice Strong states he was a member of the Club of Rome’s executive (p.399). However, no year is given. Strong does tell us that he read an article by Aurelio Peccei in the late 1960s and was so impressed that he flew to Rome for a meeting with Peccei: “We became friends and collaborators” (p.116). For some background on the Club of Rome’s general impact on the 1972 Conference, see Wade Rowland, The Plot to Save the World (Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1973).

[14] Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos, Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet (W.W. Norton and Company, 1972), p.30. Only One Earth was the “Unofficial Report Commissioned by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.” Aurelio Peccei was on the Committee of Corresponding Consultants who helped shape the document, which became an important book within the burgeoning environmental movement.

[15] Maurice Strong, Introduction, The Plot to Save the World: The Life and Times of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, by Wade Rowland (Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1973), p.x.

[16] As explained to me by an original UNEP staff member: Source is confidential.

[17] For example: a framework document was produced to assist nations in ecological planning for global outcomes: Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (United Nations Publication, A/CONF.48/14/Rev.1).

[18] Strong, Introduction, The Plot to Save the World, p.x.

[19] Framework documents: Agenda 21, Rio Forest Principles, and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. Legally binding agreements open for signatures: Convention on Biological Diversity, Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Convention to Combat Desertification.

[20] Maurice Strong, Forward, The Earth Summit’s Agenda For Change (International Institute for Sustainable Development), available on the IISD website from 2002 until 2015 – www.iisd.org/rio+5/agenda/foreword.htm.

[21] Ecosystem Protection (US Environmental Protection Agency, National Performance Review, August 6, 1993), pp.9-10. Another US response was the establishment of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. In Canada, the federal government put forward national directives and reviews to achieve the goals of Agenda 21. Australia did likewise (see its Commonwealth document, Our Community Our Future: A Guide to Local Agenda 21), as did many other nations.

[22] Mark Edward Vande Pol, Natural Process: That Environmental Laws May Serve the Laws of Nature (Wildergarten Press, 2001), p.85.

[23] Ibid., inside back cover.

[24] See the outcome document, Sustainable Development for a New World Agenda (ICASE/STAM/CASE/ Government of Manitoba, 1990), Preface and Introduction. This event was titled the World Environment Energy and Economic Conference, also known as World ’90, and was held from October 17-20, 1990. UNESCO and the International Council of Associations for Science Education, along with the Manitoba government, were primary sponsors.

[25] Jim Bohlen, representing the Greengrass Institute, “Towards A Global Green Constitution,” Sustainable Development for a New World Agenda, p.15, italics in original.

[26] Ibid., p.16.

[27] Ibid., p.14.

[28] For the subsection on Social Justice, including the quote on opposition, see pp.11-13.

[29] James Robertson, “Toward a New Economic Paradigm,” Sustainability: From Vision to Reality – A Summary of a Workshop on Alternative Economics (Canadian Council for International Co-operation, with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, February 25-28, 1992), p.5.

[30] Maximo Kalaw, “A Community-based Model of Sustainable Development,” Sustainability: From Vision to Reality, p.8. After the Earth Summit, Kalaw became Executive Director of the Earth Council – a post-Rio organization founded by Maurice Strong.

[31] A small group of individuals worked tirelessly to understand the intent and applications of the Rio agreements, along with other UN agendas, and to bring warning. Dr. Michael S. Coffman and Henry Lamb of Sovereignty International (SI) and the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO) immediately come to mind. Both spoke to Congressional and State committees, community groups, and did interviews regarding UN activities. They also provided a platform for other voices of concern. In the 1990s and early millennial years, SI hosted conferences and ECO produced a magazine titled eco-logic. I attended the 1997 SI conference and was privileged to speak at its 2001 Freedom 21 event, and eco-logic published some of my earlier articles. Others who labored for liberty in the face of a rising green establishment included former governor of Washington, Dixy Lee Ray, and my friend Doug Hindson. Doug worked to protect property rights in the Trent Severn watershed of Ontario, Canada. Another Canadian, Dr. Tim Ball, continues to stand against the tide of UN-initiated climate change bureaucracy. Some critical resources worth perusing on the subject are: Michael Coffman, Saviors of the Earth? The Politics and Religion of the Environmental Movement (Northfield Publishing, 1994); Dixy Lee Ray, Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened to Common Sense? (Regnery Gateway, 1993); and James Wanliss, Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death (Cornwall Alliance, 2010). Elaine Dewar’s Cloak of Green (James Lorimer and Company, 1995), focusing on Rio and its historical development, is a fascinating peek behind the international green agenda. Tim Ball’s books, The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science (Stairway Press, 2014) and the abbreviated Human Caused Global Warming: The Biggest Deception in History (Tim Ball, 2016) are powerful critiques.

[32] Rescue Mission Planet Earth: A Youth Edition of Agenda 21 (Kingfisher Books, coordinated by Peace Child International, with sponsorship from UNESCO, UNDP, UNEP, and UNICEF, 1994), “by children for children” from the back cover, italics original.

[33] Ibid., p.84.

[34] Edgar Morin, Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future (UNESCO, 1999), p.39, for “accession” and “planetary community,” see p.62.