The real UN agenda & the Rio+20 summit unmasked: the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development has run its course, but its plans - on abortion, property rights, energy usage, and personal consumption - go on.

RIO DE JANEIRO-During the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in late June, Christ the Redeemer--the city's most famous landmark, a massive statue of Jesus Christ on top of Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio--was illuminated using bright green lights. It was a fitting symbol for the controversial summit in more ways than one.

Shortly before the conference began, green legend James Lovelock--the scientist and environmentalist who first came up with the whole "Gaia" concept--warned that the "green religion" was now "taking over from the Christian religion" While it may sound absurd to most Americans, for many Rio+20 summit participants, the stunt with green lights shining on the statue of Christ no doubt had a special meaning.

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UN critics and many Christians, at least, were outraged. Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy advisor to former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and one of the most well-known opponents of the UN's supposed environmental agenda, called it "a kind of childish message that the environmental religion is now replacing Christianity." According to Lord Monckton, those who have lost the "true faith" nevertheless felt the need for religion and a common bond between themselves--and thought they had found it "in the spurious nostrums of Marxist environmentalism."

The Agenda

According to the UN, the summit was about making the world more " sustainable," Of course, there are literally hundreds of definitions of that term. Critics, including prominent environmentalists, say "sustainability" has largely become meaningless--it can be whatever somebody wants it to be. And that was evident throughout the conference. When asked by THE NEW AMERICAN, no two respondents offered the same vision. Instead, each activist and delegate essentially saw the term as a way to advance his or her own agenda. So, if "sustainability" means anything or nothing, what was the conference really about?

The Players: For starters, it helps to look at who was running the show. The Secretary-General of Rio+20 was a notorious anti-American Chinese Communist known as Sha Zukang, a man who spent decades working for the mass-murdering regime ruling over mainland China before starting his career as a senior UN official.He has openly proclaimed his hatred of Americans. And the fact that he gave an award to the Chinese general responsible for the mass slaughter of protesters at Tiananmen Square offers even more insight into his character.

The executive coordinator of the Rio+20 summit, meanwhile, was French socialist Brice Lalonde, a reliable advocate of bigger and more centralized government.

Finally, the other Rio+20 executive coordinator was a little-known "green" activist and former government minister from Barbados named Elizabeth Thompson. In interviews, she spoke of building partnerships between governments and other players "non-governmental" organizations and big business--to create what she called "Earth Incorporated." The UN, of course, would guide the whole process.

The Reports: A report prepared by some three dozen UN agencies entitled "Working Towards a Balanced and Inclusive Green Economy: A United Nations System-wide Perspective," for example, detailed the scheme to foist a "green" world order on the planet by making every level of government--regional, national, subnational, and local--subservient to the agenda.

According to the document, the transition toward a global "green economy" was expected to cost trillions of dollars per year.Every aspect of human life--lifestyles, opinions, behavior, education, health, consumption, production, agriculture, diet, law, taxation, industry, governance, and more--would have to be reshaped to conform to new international standards.Certain Communist Chinese policies were described as a "good example."

"Specifically, in a transition to a green economy, public policies will need to be used strategically to reorient consumption, investments, and other economic activities," the document explained of the UN's desired central-planning schemes, touting the reduction of carbon emissions and new educational programs to teach humanity why it must become what the UN considers sustainable. "Transitioning to a green economy requires a fundamental shift in the way we think and act."

To enforce its controversial vision, the UN said it would have to assume vast new powers, including global regulatory authority and enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance. National regulations would have to be replaced with global ones, the report explained. Other global powers touted in the document included carbon taxes, trillions of dollars annually in wealth redistribution, populationreduction schemes, and a barrage of programs dealing with everything from poverty and education to health and resource allocation.

To pay for it all, aside from new world taxes and higher prices across the board, a new global currency run by the International Monetary Fund might have to be considered, according to the document. "Efforts need to be made to explore the potential for an innovative use of [an IMF protoworld currency known as] Special Drawing Rights (SDR), international reserve assets, and pools of concentrated assets to serve the aim of financing green economy investments with attractive social as well as private returns and increasing the provision of global public goods," it stated.

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The Earth, the UN claimed in a sepa-rate report dubbed "Geo-5," is in danger. And as always, it's your fault. Humanity is the enemy. There are simply too many people consuming too many resources, and they would eventually bring about a cataclysm. However, if the global population promptly submits to the international body's myriad demands, the UN implausibly alleged, it might still be possible to save the world.

Of course, it would not be easy. Or cheap. Individual liberty, self-governance, national sovereignty, and the human population--that means you and your family would all have to be curtailed, according to the report. Meanwhile, the fortunate people who remain would have to consume a lot less--in other words, become much poorer--to be what the UN considers "sustainable."

"Africa, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean share the common problems of population growth and increasing consumption," noted the UN, bizarrely attacking human beings and decreasing levels of poverty as "problems" to be solved.

"Scientific evidence shows that Earth systems are being pushed towards their biophysical limits, with evidence that these limits are close and have in some cases been exceeded," the global body alleged. "International cooperation is essential, since environmental problems do not follow national boundaries."

Over a dozen respected scientists and university professors, including several who worked with the UN science apparatus in the past, offered TNA their thoughts on the over 500-page report. All of them said the document was nothing but UN fear-mongering--lies, exaggerations, and political propaganda.

Rio+20, then, was more about eroding national sovereignty, concentrating coercive power at the global level, centrally planning the world economy, chipping away at private property rights, reducing the population, spreading abortion and contraception worldwide, using "education" to brainwash future generations into accepting the state of affairs, building more bureaucracies, and more.

The Summit: Throughout the confab, the controversial agenda was again on full display. Assorted global agencies all touted their own roles in the new "green" world order. Non-governmental organizations, science groups, the press, mega-corporations, billionaires, and governments all played their roles in advancing the narrative.

CNN founder and UN Foundation boss Ted Turner, for instance, spoke of banning plastic internationally and--presumably joking--instituting a global ban on human breathing. In the past, he has come under fire for speaking approvingly of China's brutal "one-child" policy and proposing dramatic reductions in the number of people on Earth to save the environment--literally eradicating billions to "save the environment." When asked about population by THE NEW AMERICAN at a panel discussion, the billionaire UN enthusiast with five children suggested a tax-funded UN contraception regime. He also called for the worldwide promotion of feminism to discourage motherhood in an effort to help slash the number of humans.

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Before and throughout the conference, reducing the population through global institutions was a predominant issue. The UN Population Fund, for example, unveiled a new report calling for "universal access" to "reproductive health" services for women and girls to ensure fewer human births. "Slowing population growth can have a positive impact on environmental sustainability in the long run," explained UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin, apparently unaware that the planet has already reached so-called "peak child" and that after rising by a few more billion, the global population is set to decline.

The anti-human attitude was encapsulated by a poster in one of the main halls of the conference showing a doctor diagnosing a "sick" Earth. The diagnosis, according to the image: "You have humans," implying that humanity itself is a disease afflicting the planet that must somehow be "cured."

In addition to reducing the population, slashing consumption through coercion, described by critics as spreading poverty by force, was a top issue at Rio+20. According to advocates, it should be done at the global level, including by reducing the number of consumers, regardless of whether it is moral or accepted by the public. "For too long, population and consumption have been left off the table due to political and ethical sensitivities," complained U.K. Royal Society fellow Charles Godfray, the chairman of a coalition of science groups that released a bizarre attack on humanity and prosperity while calling for the UN to take action. "These are issues that affect developed and developing nations alike, and we must take responsibility for them together."

A key part of reducing consumption involves making energy--especially fossil fuels--much more expensive, or, for people of poor countries, off-limits altogether.Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson, when asked by TNA about what he wanted from Rio+20, called for planetary carbon taxes and global treaties supposedly to protect the environment. In a press conference later, he reiterated his support for the schemes while lobbying against new oil drilling.

More than a few heavyweights, meanwhile, spoke of creating a "new economic model" for the world--another one of the top themes of the conference. "In terms of the international community ... we need to change the economic model," former Soviet Union boss and "Green Cross International" Founding President Mikhail Gorbachev said in a video statement, essentially claiming that what remains of the free market was somehow responsible for the financial crisis while blasting profits and "hyper" consumption. "We badly need a new economic model.... We must consolidate all our resources to create such a model."

Rulers of poorer nations insisted that taxpayers in richer countries give them more money. Developed-nation governments promised to reward Third World regimes with more tax-funded aid if they continued to keep their people in poverty by denying access to cheap energy and economic freedom.

National sovereignty and property rights, meanwhile, when mentioned at Rio+20, were largely frowned upon. Citing UN documents, Lord Monckton said the summit and its broader agenda were actually about the ambition of the "governing class" to "rule the world with as few constraints as possible." Of course, there are real environmental problems, he added. But they should be addressed at the local and national level--and by the free market--not by out-of-control planetary bureaucrats who, he said, were seeking to create a "world socialist" regime. What was going on at Rio+20 was actually an "attempted coup on a global scale by the governing class against the people."

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Climate Scare Dying, Plan Remains the Same

In recent years, global warming, climate change, and carbon dioxide were the main justifications for the agenda. But after the spectacular implosion of the alleged "science" behind the climate alarmism (see "Climate Science" article on page 19), very little was said on the subject throughout Rio+20. Even before the summit, top officials said they would avoid the whole "climate" subject due to the controversy it caused. Indeed, the UN finally dropped environmentalism as the top rationale for its agenda, saying in the final agreement that poverty was now the "greatest global challenge facing the world today."

As the poor took center stage, supposed loss of "biodiversity" and humanity's alleged "unsustainability" became the new environmental rallying cries. Of course, the agenda of global control remained the same. The suggested schemes would likely exacerbate poverty and would almost certainly do little or nothing to help deal with true environmental problems, as evidenced by the fact that free markets consistently reduce poverty and help preserve the environment while socialism creates poverty and environmental chaos. The biggest difference between past global conferences and Rio+20 was simply the reasons cited by participants to push the same old agenda.Critics on Both Sides: On the political Right, activists and critics widely denounced the Rio+20 agenda as a dangerous effort essentially to create a global socialist authority. One of the most prominent opponents of the UN agenda, U.S.Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, appeared at the conference via video and blasted the worldwide "far-left" agenda to impose global carbon taxes and redistribute wealth. "Whatever happened to sovereignty?" he asked.

Others had even stronger criticism. "No matter the eco-cause--you can go back and look at overpopulation, you can go back and look at global cooling, global warming, species extinction, deforestation--all of these eco-scares, they all blame it on man, and the only way we can solve it is to give away our sovereignty and our freedom to the United Nations in the form of global governance," Climate Depot editor Marc Morano told TNA, citing Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus to point out that since the fall of the Soviet Union, "ambitious environmentalism" had become the greatest threat to freedom.

On what could be considered the other side of the political spectrum, well-known Indian activist Vandana Shiva told TNA she had a similarly negative view of the agenda behind Rio+20, albeit from a different perspective. "This whole green economy thing, interpreted as a planetary grab of the remaining resources, is not going to solve anything." said Shiva, an author, physicist, and environmental champion. She said the elite class of the world was essentially seizing the planet for itself.

On the Left, sincere opponents of the summit largely said that it was all actually a scheme by mega-capitalist elites to make even more profit at humanity's expense.

Both sides were angry for different reasons--at least on the surface. But in reality, the Rio+20 agenda was more likely something in between: an attempt by the elite of the world--super-capitalists using socialistic policies for their own benefit--to further solidify their control over the planet at the expense of the people's freedom, national sovereignty, and prosperity. What was blatantly obvious, at the very least, was that saving the environment and the poor had little to do with the summit's true purpose.

The Summit & the "Stakeholders"

Police State, Green Hypocrisy, Secrecy & Disorder: Rio+20 was originally touted as the biggest UN summit in history, but analysts later said that probably was not true.Some 50,000 people were supposed to participate, but nowhere near that number actually showed up--some observers even thought less than 10,000 had attended. Many of the world's most important heads of state and government--Obama, Angela Merkel of Germany, and the U.K.'s David Cameron, for example--also stayed away.

Immediately upon arrival, the most striking phenomenon in Rio was the overt nature of the police state. All over the city. attendees were greeted by armored personnel carriers and assault vehicles, dozens of military helicopters swarming overhead with turrets aimed downward, checkpoints manned by machine gun-wielding Brazilian troops, federal police dressed in futuristic costumes, and much more.

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On the first day of the official conference, it took the TNA team more than two hours to cover just a few miles and get into the conference--largely owing to the unimaginable traffic created by "security."

Once inside, the UN again revealed that its inability to run a proper conference--let alone the world--is surpassed only by its zealous ambition to assume ever-greater powers. There were not nearly enough desks for all of the journalists, leading to more than a few heated arguments. Internet cables were also in short supply, and the wireless Internet, when it was actually working, was pathetically slow.

Despite the summit being touted as an effort to increase "sustainability," the waste evident all throughout the conference was astounding. Every building was running the air-conditioning at full blast with the doors wide open, for example. In some rooms, the AC was so cold that journalists were moving out from under the vents.

Consuming less was apparently only a requirement for the ruled. The world's rulers and their representatives stayed at five-star hotels and lived a lifestyle unimaginable to most of the world--not to mention the millions of destitute Brazilians living in squalor throughout Rio's infamous favela slums.

Massive motorcades of gas-guzzling limos transported dictators and mass-murdering gangsters calling themselves "presidents," as well as their oversized entourages, to and from the venue. Meanwhile, other "VVIPs"--the term used by the UN to identify top officials at the summit--landed in carbon dioxide-spewing helicopters.

When the environmental dignitaries left, security did too. At that point, residents of the slums in the area began pouring into the venue to scavenge for the remaining scraps left behind, looting the food court as the few remaining security guards were overwhelmed. The TNA team witnessed part of the commotion before leaving as dozens of favelados, as they're called, ran out from the food court carrying what they could.

Governments: Virtually every national government on Earth was represented at Rio+20. Delegates representing mass murderers, communist tyrants, genocidal maniacs, war criminals, Islamic theocracies, and more were all intermingling, supposedly defending the interests of their "citizens" while trying to hammer out an agreement to "save the world." Of course, it does not take much knowledge about the world to understand that at least the vast majority of the regimes present at the table had ulterior motives.

Unlike past conferences, government delegates at Rio+20 were kept in isolation, hiding behind security personnel in their own special pavilion. Organizations and the media were kept out--unless, of course, they could find a government willing to let them in. Even then, they were supposed to take care of business with the delegation that invited them through security and then promptly get out.

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Across from the main venue was another large area where governments and dictatorships set up booths to tout their own accomplishments. Seeking press coverage for a panel discussion hosted by the Islamic monarchy ruling Qatar, the TNA team was invited to attend and was picked up in a private car paid for by the regime.

The discussion--on redefining the concept of rights to include things like food, rather than liberties--featured more than a few heavyweights, including UN boss Ban Ki-moon, a socialist former Spanish prime minister, heads of UN agencies, and many others. The AC was blasting there, too, in what was essentially an open-air tent. After chatting briefly with the Qatari ambassador to the UN who happens to be serving as the chief of the UN General Assembly, mostly about why and how he thought the global body should save the world, TNA decided to visit some of the other government booths.

The communist dictatorship ruling over China had a massive setup where interested parties could learn about its supposed leadership on "sustainability" issues, though the regime seems to have toned down its celebration of the reduced "carbon emissions" achieved through its barbaric "onechild" policy. Nobody was available for-an interview with TNA, but we did get a "flash drive" containing documents.

The European Union had a big booth, too, where participants were debating the role of regional regimes in the new greenworld order. At the American government's booth, the first visible flyer was promoting population control, while another touted USAID programs to achieve global "sustainability." U.S. taxpayers' money also went to hand out coffee--presumably sustainably grown coffee--to anyone who stopped by. It was delicious.

Throughout the three-day summit, government representatives, including some prime ministers and presidents, offered long speeches about sustainability, what they were doing, what should be done, and more. Their faces were broadcast throughout the conference center on huge screens so people could see the dignitaries no matter where they went. But most people were not paying attention anyway.

The Cheerleading "Media": Supposedly unbiased members of the media applauded UN pronouncements in delight. The bizarre scene offered extraordinary insight into why the one-sided international press coverage of such summits has become so routine.

Rather than asking hard questions about the alleged science or the true agenda, the vast majority of reports being churned out of the Rio+20 media room largely parroted UN claims as if they were gospel.The "significant" UN announcement at the final major summit press conference included few details about the actual agreements or their implications. For the most part, Zukang and other conference speakers simply offered vague generalities about building a "sustainable" world for a "better future," saying governments and businesses around the world had agreed to undertake massive "sustainability" efforts.

"From the very beginning, we have said Rio+20 is about implementation. It is about concrete action. And the commitments that we share with you today demonstrate that governments, the UN system and the nine major groups are committed and serious about implementation," said Zukang, the communist who also heads the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. "The total figure is now 692 registered commitments. Ladies and Gentlemen, this brings the estimated total value of commitments to $513 billion."

That's when most of the supposed journalists at the official press conference applauded and smiled upon hearing Zukang's news. According to critics of the media reaction, they were behaving more like cheerleaders than objective reporters.But unlike past major international environmental summits, most of the press was kept in the dark about the negotiations throughout the final days of the summit--making the applause even more bizarre.

The media applause continued after each speaker at the press conference--statements by politicians, bureaucrats, business leaders, and more all received a very warm reception from hundreds of journalists in attendance. When a non-profit foundation leader on the panel announced mandatory "sustainability education" for all Brazilian children enforceable by law, as well as the inclusion of "sustainable development" themes on national standardized tests, the reporters exhibited special delight.

Later that night, when the Rio+20 plenary session finally voted to adopt the highly controversial UN document known as "The Future We Want," the media section at the conference center erupted with applause, cheering, and whistling as if a goal had been scored in a soccer game.When asked on camera by TNA why they were celebrating, some refused to talk, others said they were happy because the summit was over, and still more claimed not to know.

Even with the cheerleading media, however, more than a few analysts and critics who spoke with TNA said the world was waking up to the UN's schemes and its failed science--especially in the United States, where opposition to the global agenda is building while the public largely rejects the alarmism being hyped to push it.And those trends, especially with the rise of the Internet and the alternative media, are likely to continue accelerating.

NGOs Demand Anti-liberty Global "Solutions": As the summit got started on June 20, a 17-year-old NGO activist gave a speech to the national delegates about how it was their duty to decide the fate of her future and the future of her children. It was a dramatic opening--official dignitaries seemed impressed. Strong agreements and global measures were needed to save the world, she insisted.

Countless so-called NGOs were in attendance, supposedly representing "civil society." Much of the funding for the groups comes from taxpayers, so, unsurprisingly, most of them loudly called for more and more government to stop poverty, environmental problems, gender inequality, class inequality, and innumerable other real and perceived issues affecting the planet.

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The Brazilian government helped them along, spending millions of taxpayer dollars to create a "People's Summit." Immediately upon arrival, this reporter was approached by a man wearing a giant condom suit handing out taxpayer-funded condoms from the "Ministry of Health" to the taxpayer-funded activists at the taxpayer-funded "People's Summit." Military helicopters were swarming overhead the whole time.

The TNA team spent several hours perusing the whole area. We spoke to socialists of various persuasions ranging from a representative of the Movement for Socialism, who did not think Latin America's socialist despots were radical enough, to a spokesperson for the "Movement to End Capitalism," who said the group desired reform that was impossible to achieve through politics and that money should be abolished. When asked how it might be accomplished without the existing political system, however, they offered few details.

A partially tax-funded Danish artist with "Art in Defense of Humanism" was there with a series of exhibits including a decent-sized replica of the Statue of Liberty with the words "Freedom to Pollute" written across it. Another piece he was showing off featured a young pregnant girl on a crucifix, which he said was a protest against the Catholic Church for its opposition to sex education, contraception, premarital sex, abortion, and other teachings.

Many of the activists at Rio+20 were no doubt sincere. TNA interviewed some young Brazilians wearing funny-looking pig costumes, for example, who were passionately representing "Rio+Veg." The swine-suit-clad trio was very friendly as they explained the environmental benefits of vegetarianism. However, their mission at the conference--lobbying governments and the UN to curtail meat consumption--was typical of the NGOs' mindset: coercive power must be used to reform and guide humanity.

Opponents of the environmental agenda have called for an end to all taxpayer subsidies for NGOs, calling the governmentfunded groups "AstroTurf" designed to apply pressure from below and create the impression of popular support for the UN schemes. Of course, not all of the organizations receive public funds, but many do, even amid an economic crisis that has left untold millions completely destitute.

A few NGOs were at Rio+20 actually promoting what seemed to be real solutions to real problems. The Brazilian Association for Sustainable Development (ABIDES), for example, gave a presentation explaining that true sustainability should mean protecting nature while lifting people out of poverty--and it should start at the local level.

"The UN is speaking at a level that is not close to reality," said ABIDES President Everton Carvalho in an interview with TNA, noting that the real--issues increasing food production, developing infrastructure, creating jobs, and promoting economic growth--should be dealt with by locals who understand what is needed. "You have to solve the problems that are real, right now, for us."

Other organizations with representatives at Rio+20 promoting market solutions, economic growth, private property, real science, and individual liberty included the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. However, such groups were a tiny, tiny minority. The vast majority of NGOs were busy calling on the UN and world governments to expand their powers under the guise of environmentalism, poverty, and more.

Big Business Joins Forces With UN & World Governments: Despite the widely held misconception of Big Business and Big Government as being at odds with each other, many of the world's top corporate chieftains played a central role throughout the UN conference. Many literally begged the global institution and its member governments for new regulations and more economic meddling.

"Businesses like regulation," said General Electric Brazil CEO Adriana Machado during a World Business Council for Sustainable Business panel discussion, without mentioning how much the U.S.-based side of GE has benefited at taxpayer expense. "Regulation is necessary to show companies who want to get better on how to get there."

In an interview with TNA, Infosys cochairman Senapathy "Kris" Gopalakrishnan, who also served as chief of an international coalition of companies known as "Business Action for Sustainable Development," offered similar remarks on joining hands with government. "As we move forward we have to start thinking about some policy framework, including regulations," he said, adding that businesses--which participated at Rio+20 in "record numbers" --should partner with "civil society" and governments to create rules."It should be a public-private partnership in creating those regulations."

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Other CEOs and corporate leaders spoke of creating an "alliance" between government and enterprise--for "sustainability" purposes, of course. Indeed, there are now close to 10,000 corporations participating in the UN Global Compact, which aims to have businesses submit to the global body's schemes and "catalyze actions in support of broader UN goals." The Rockefeller Foundation's president wholeheartedly agreed.

Mega-companies at the summit some of which have received massive taxpayer bailouts even in recent years were so enthusiastic about the UN agenda that many of them offered billions for the cause. Bank of America, after receiving some $45 billion directly from American taxpayers, more than $100 billion in government loan guarantees, and even more in bailouts from the Federal Reserve, for example, pledged $50 billion to the agenda over the next decade. Many other top firms made similarly grandiose promises.

So-called "multilateral development banks" --taxpayer-backed transnational institutions working to finance the erosion of national sovereignty while putting populations in perpetual debt for their leaders' extravagant borrowing--pledged around $175 billion for "sustainability" schemes as well. The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank were both among the participants.

"We commit our institutions' support for implementing the sustainable development for all agenda," the banks said in a joint statement, noting that they would help harmonize and build policies around the world to advance the controversial "green" schemes. "We will work together to support global transformation in line with Rio+20 agreements." Apparently the public-private financing plan, as UN documents revealed before the summit, will use coercive power to prod investors and companies into showering more resources on "sustainability" schemes.

One analyst, Ronald Bailey, who covered the summit for the libertarian Reason magazine, described the agenda of many Corporate Sustainability Forum participants as "green crony capitalism"--especially because virtually every panel touted so-called "public-private partnerships" as the way to achieve "sustainability."

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Obviously, not every corporate action taken under the guise of "sustainability" is necessarily wrong. Some firms, for example, are simply seeking to reduce costs by lowering water or electricity consumption, which would, in theory, benefit consumers by making production cheaper. However, for most of the businesses at Rio+20, benefiting consumers was--at the very least not--the main objective.

"The reason lots and lots of businesses are in Rio is they're rent-seeking," Copenhagen Business School Professor Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, was quoted as saying. "They're looking for huge potential subsidies for everything they produce."

Other analysts described the open discussions on "collaboration" between business and governments as something even more alarming, pointing to Benito Mussolini's widely quoted definition of fascism: "a merger of state and corporate power." Some observers also used the term "corporatism" to describe the ever-deepening bonds between the private sector and coercive power.

The Outcomes

The fact that Obama stayed away was seized upon by virtually every critic--from lawmakers and scientists to activists and NGOs--to point out that the UN agenda has now become extraordinarily unpopular, at least among the American voting public. Following the "globalwarming" debacles and the seemingly never-ending series of "green energy" scandals in the wake of Solyndra's bankruptcy, federal involvement in "green" schemes has indeed become politically toxic--not to mention the UN as an institution.

CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker told TNA that the UN and its tax-funded affiliates would not give up their funding without a fight. But he also expressed hope that the UN's grandiose vision of increased powers for itself and more centralization at the international level would not come to fruition--especially in the wake of the climate-scare meltdown.

The swarms of NGOs and UN bureaucrats, of course, had high hopes for the summit in terms of advancing their agenda and perpetuating their tax-subsidized existence. But considering the lack of binding agreements or significant progress on moving the schemes forward, the feeling of disappointment among many of the key players was overwhelming.Greenpeace, for example, said Rio+20 was a "failure of epic proportions." Not everyone was as downbeat, however.Some supporters of the UN agenda noted with pleasure the creation of a "high level" forum on sustainability to keep working on the schemes.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--without citing any constitutional or congressional authority--pledged some $2 billion in taxpayer funds to advance the agenda. In all, more than $500 billion in pledges and commitments from governments and companies were secured to advance the agenda--more than at any previous UN summit.

The final agreement, dubbed "The Future We Want," also contained a broad range of controversial statements. A reference to "Mother Earth" made it in, for instance, and governments reaffirmed that they would be "guided" by the principles of the UN while working for "good governance" at the international level with strengthened and more expensive UN institutions. The agreement also emphasized moving forward with implementation of Agenda 21 and past treaties--including more than a few that openly represent serious threats to property rights, liberty, and national sovereignty.

Increased government involvement in education and resource allocation appeared multiple times, including recognition that "fundamental changes in the way societies consume and produce are indispensable for achieving global sustainable development." Contraception and code terminology widely understood to mean universal access to legal abortion were also key. Environmental problems and poverty, meanwhile, will only get worse, at least if the agreement offers any sense of the future to come.*

The UN and supporters of its agenda may not have achieved all of their sweeping goals at the summit. But the document they did agree to and the hundreds of commitments ensured that the global government, antiliberty scheming will march on--at least for a while more.

The summit was about making the world more "sustainable." Of course, there are literally hundreds of definitions of that term. Critics, including prominent environmentalists, say "sustainability" has largely become meaningless--it can be whatever somebody wants it to be.

Every aspect of human life--lifestyles, opinions, behavior, education, health, consumption, production, agriculture, diet, law, taxation, industry, governance, and more--would have to be reshaped to conform to new international standards.

"Africa, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean share the common problems of population growth and increasing consumption," noted the UN, bizarrely attacking human beings and decreasing levels of poverty as "problems" to be salved.

The anti-human attitude was encapsulated by a poster in one of the main halls of the conference showing a doctor diagnosing a "sick" Earth. The diagnosis, according to the image: "You have humans," implying that humanity itself is a disease afflicting the planet.

* For more information on the final agreement, visit http://thenewamerican.com/rio-20/item/11929