CLIPPING: Peter foster on Maurice Strong

Thursday » May 19 » 2005

The prince of power

Peter Foster
Financial Post

May 19, 2005

Anybody suggesting that there is a vast left-wing conspiracy centred in the United Nations is usually written off as a right-wing crackpot. Most people are prepared to believe that the UN is corrupt and incompetent, but spare us all that stuff about black helicopters.

However, according to David Henderson, former chief economist for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the dangerous collectivist tides currently sloshing through both governments and executive suites have their origins down at Turtle Bay. Mr. Henderson is correct, but his story is Hamlet without the prince.

According to Mr. Henderson, the great psycho-wave of the past 35 years is "global salvationism." This quasi-religious belief has two ill-fitting articles of faith: environmental alarmism, and the assertion that Third World poverty is in some way due to the West taking more than its fair share of global resources. Both problems are alleged to require top-down global political solutions, including giant corporations accepting more "social responsibility."

The focus of this global master-plan is the bland but subversive notion of "sustainable development," that without extensive UN-administered government controls the world is going to Hades in a handbasket, due to man-made global warming, species extinction, resource depletion, pandemics, obesity. You name it.

Mr. Henderson has laid out his concerns in an excellent recent book, The Role of Business in the Modern World, and in a series of recent speeches (see excerpt at right). However, what Mr. Henderson’s plot lacks is a central character. Whom should it be? None other than Canada’s own Maurice Strong, the world’s best-connected doomster and inveterate promoter of a more powerful UN (which is, admittedly, something of a tough sell at the moment).

Mr. Strong has recently been in the news in connection with the oil-for-food scandal and for having employed his stepdaughter, against the rules, in a UN position. It seems extremely unlikely that Mr. Strong will be found to have been involved with illicit Iraqi oil, despite his business dealings with alleged Korean Saddamite Tongsun Park. There is a widespread misconception among those aware -- and suspicious -- of Mr. Strong that his public-service persona is somehow a cover for making money. Quite the reverse. Mr. Strong’s top priority has always been his self-professed socialist political agenda.

Mr. Henderson admits that he himself should have been more aware of the threat presented by the 1992 Rio Conference, which spawned Kyoto. But he notes that the global salvationist movement goes back to the early 1970s, and in particular to the UN conference in Stockholm in 1972. It is hardly coincidence that Mr. Strong happened to be the guiding light and chairman of both conferences. Mr. Henderson notes that the foundation of the United Nations Environment Program, UNEP, was a "landmark." Guess who created UNEP. Again, sustainable development emerged from the 1987 Brundtland commission, one of whose self-described "eminent persons" was Mr. Strong.

Mr. Henderson notes that the Rio conference was a major victory for the forces of global salvationism. What made it so important was the alleged new threat of anthropogenic global warming, which got the attention of governments, plus the fact that Rio’s powers-that-be allowed activist NGOs into the proceedings. Who let in the NGOs? Who has tirelessly worked to funnel government money their way? One guess.

Meanwhile, Mr. Henderson notes that organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development have been crucial in sucking the corporate sector into the salvationist movement. Mr. Strong has been a seminal figure in promoting both groups of "useful idiots."

Mr. Henderson notes that the UN International Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, is far from independent. Why? Because one of its institutional parents is the Strong-created UNEP. (Mr. Henderson has personal experience of the kind of rough treatment dealt out to naysayers. He has produced damning criticism of the IPCC’s economic assumptions, but has been insulted and dismissed for his pains.)

The trends described by Mr. Henderson have their ultimate roots in an almost universal failure to appreciate the strength and complexity of markets, combined with an elitist power lust -- wrapped up in moralistic posturing -- that seeks to exploit such ignorance. These are compounded by a tendency to conform with "conventional wisdom," particularly when it is promoted by governments, CEOs, NGOs and the UN.

It would be simplistic to suggest that Mr. Strong is the intellectual Svengali behind the whole current catastrophist/global-redistributionist agenda. However, he has played a key role in promoting it. His unique skills lie in his organizing ability and his acute political antennae, which have always guided him towards the strategies necessary to keep his ideological dream alive. Mr. Strong has always wanted to save the world. Mr. Henderson points out why global salvationism is such a bad idea.

© National Post 2005

Copyright © 2005 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher.

You are subscribed to the following Citizens Centre email lists: News Clippings - Environment To be removed from a list, go HERE. Change your email address or the lists you're subscribed to, go HERE.