by Warren Duffy
The television news coverage of America’s first “Earth Day” ended and the networks returned to reporting about the ongoing Vietnam War, the trial of the demonstrators who disrupted the Chicago Democratic National Convention and the incredible news about America’s brave Apollo 13 astronauts. The following day we arrived at the radio studio to compare notes and agreed; the organizers of “Earth Day” were obviously pursuing an agenda for this “new environmental movement” with national and international implications most of us never imagined.
Enter the United Nations (U.N.). In 1971, within a year of the first Earth Day, this organization picked up the environmental flag and organized the first “International Earth Day”. “Pollution is an international problem that requires an international solution”, they claimed. After all, smoke from an industrial smoke stack in Mexico doesn’t stop at the U.S. border. Once that smoke gets caught in the jet-stream, it is capable of depositing pollution anywhere in the world. The U.N. stressed that the nations of the world must join together in the new global environmental movement to clean up the debris of modern-day industrial pollution. And to accomplish that task, no matter what the cost, everyone on this planet must cooperate. So, we have collected a few of the first dots in our quest to discern how the simple celebration of the first “Earth Day” by America’s counter culture evolved into the environmental agenda of today. Over the past 40 plus years, there has been quite a metamorphosis.
Up until 2009, the United Nations had become the biggest promoter of the “Global Environmental Movement”. It was then they decided to very quietly change the name of their International Earth Day celebration to “International Mother Earth Day”. Any old counter-culturist will tell you, Mother Earth is a code name for the worship of the goddess Gaia, a strange subterranean cult that reverences the mythical goddess of creation. Today, at this annual U.N. celebration, they begin by honoring the goddess Gaia with the beating of Native American drums, the chants of Buddhist holy men, the pipe playing of Asian musicians and the dances of African tribes. All of that would strike a happy chord for us counter-culturists of the 60s and 70s. We loved Buddhist meditation, embraced African folk dancing and beautiful Asian pipe music. And though we liked Ravi Shankar’s sitar music, Mother Earth and the goddess Gaia were a bit much for our crowd.
In the early 70s, we gave up life in the crowded and polluted cities of America and became “back to the earthers”. We formed communes throughout America, with some very large ones in Tennessee and Kentucky. Voluntarily, we wanted to live close to nature and unplug from the constant drone of advanced civilization. But today, the new environmental movement does not embrace those desires in the same way.
Today’s global environmentalists are demanding the global population (especially the voracious American consumers) to leave the rural lands, return to the cities, walk, ride bikes or use public transportation to lower our dependency on fossil fuel. We must depend on windmills and solar panels to keep our complex civilization moving forward. We must all learn to live like the Amish and return to a much simpler lifestyle.
The global elitists proclaim none of us need live in a power-gobbling, 2500 square foot private home. If we are truly environmentally conscious, we can pare down to an 800 square foot apartment, one stacked on top of the other, and all located within walking distance of a nearby public transportation stop. By doing all of this, (we are assured by the smirking new environmentalists), life will be good.
In fact, as this environmental movement has advanced into the new century, the economy, especially in California where my wife and I live, has turned very badly.
“Environmentally sensitive” politicians and venture capitalists learned there were huge profits to be made in a wide variety of California’s “green energy” schemes. Windmills were among the first to be introduced, but these mammoth, garish skeletons of steel, fiberglass, and cast iron have not only tainted the pristine beauty of the land, but are found to be massive bird killers that includes hundreds of the Gold and Bald eagle species.
Today, the California deserts, once off limits to any kind of development and patrolled by armed agents of the federal Bureau of Land Management, are home to massive solar power plants. When seen close up, the size and scope of these gargantuan solar plant operations boggle the mind.
As aggressively and environmentally sensitive was the government’s search for ways to replace fossil fuels and reduce air pollution, there began bio-fuel experiments of adding ethanol to gasoline. However like so many government programs, the “law of unintended consequences” soon raised its nasty head. The new ethanol was made from corn, corn that could have otherwise been used in the food supply. Perhaps, the most under-reported news story of the 1990s was the “tortilla riot” in Mexico. Here folks took to the streets protesting the high price of corn tortillas; still the basic food staple for the majority of Mexicans.
After investing billions of government dollars, corn ethanol was quietly abandoned in California to create new ethanol made from the stalks of sugar beets. Unfortunately, California doesn’t produce enough beet sugar for the 27 million vehicles registered in the state, but the state government had a solution. They can purchase and import beet sugar stalks directly from Brazil! Did you get that?
In order to produce the “new” ethanol for their new grade of gasoline, California will redistribute our wealth to our neighbors in Brazil so we can buy beet sugar stalks and clean up those pesky greenhouse gases and solve the problem of “Global Warming”. It is indeed interesting that as state and federal bureaucrats dried up California’s lush farmlands by diverting water to save a tiny fish, the “Delta smelt”(that, according to radical environmentalists, was near extinction), they have taken away the livelihood of local farmers and workers who could have provided the very beet sugar our state is now outsourcing to Brazil.
As our dots connect, you must admit, they make perfect nonsense.
Consider President Barack Obama’s Economic Stimulus package introduced almost 40 years after the first Earth Day. It underwrote dozens of those pipe-dream, green-energy and supposedly greenjob-producing projects that many, after a few short years, have gone bankrupt.
We are now left to wonder, in a world supposedly so sophisticated and well informed by the incredible advances in information technology, how could all of this happen? How could the world fall for a litany of nonsensical, environmental about-to-happen catastrophes? How could we be convinced that some nifty computer projections could somehow accurately forecast the weather for the next hundred years? How could we be convinced to dramatically change the way we live, all in the name of saving the planet? How could a seemingly gullible international media simply ignore scientific analysis that says any theory must be reproduced in a laboratory under controlled conditions before we can accept it as being true?
Like me, you probably watch the local weather forecast on the nightly news. Often, the weather personality is the comic relief between the news and sports as he or she explains, in front of their “green board”, those confusing high and low pressure systems that will dominate our local weather patterns for the next 5 or 7 days. We are warned of a coming storm, put on “Storm Alert” and told to fill the sand bags, stock up on water and buy extra batteries. Then the storm limps through, nothing much happens and the embarrassed weather forecaster tries to explain the storm simply did not materialize as predicted.
Now, compare that scenario to the crazy world of environmentalism. We are told by a cadre of supposedly world-class scientists, relying on nothing but ‘garbage in-garbage out’ computer models, they can predict what the weather will be like not only in our local communities, but in the entire universe for the next 90 years! Weather forecasters can’t accurately predict a storm for tomorrow, but environmental science can predict weather from 2012 to 2099?
The mainstream media bought into the environmental agenda years ago and they have successfully convinced a gullible public that “the science is settled”. Any scient
ist worthy of his white lab coat and “pocket protector” will tell you, “The science is never settled.” Scientific theory is constantly scrutinized by even some of the theories we accepted long ago as true. One great example is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. His theory was tested and eventually corrected because it contained a bit of faulty math.
Domestically, the new environmental “alarmism” began with President Nixon’s Clean Air Act of 1972. From this legislation, a monstrous new federal bureaucracy was created known as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Among many environmentally driven projects, the agency created a list of “Endangered Species” that were threatened with extinction if not protected by law.
The list expanded greatly from the 1970s when saving the wolves and whales was our foremost concern. When the “Snail Darter” was added to the list, many began to wonder what the EPA was really protecting. Today, the “Endangered Species” list includes 10,801 names beginning with the Abbot’s Boobie to the final entry the Zuniga Dark Rice Rat.
The EPA also regulated the Federal Government’s oversight for the protection of a list of “endangered” wetlands, once called swamps. Next came the “Environmental Impact Reports” (EIR’s) demanding before any construction project began on public or private land, the impact on “Nature” had to be investigated with particular emphasis on protecting “Endangered Species”. Once the burdensome paperwork was filed with the government, an environmental organization would hire attorneys to file lawsuits that delayed building projects for years.
To the environmentalists of today, nothing is sacred, not even our light bulbs. The “Green Tsunami” creators have convinced the federal government that the old and inexpensive light bulbs must be replaced by new, expensive, “environmentally friendly” light bulbs made in Mexico. “Out with the old and in with the new”, at any cost, is the environmental tidal wave of the future.
The federal, state, county and local government will fix all of our environmental problems by simply taking charge of all of our energy, the way we live, the way we travel and the way we illuminate our homes. And no one dare object to their environmental agenda lest they be labeled a “deny-er” or a “flat earth-er”, or an “obstructionist”, a “simpleton” or worse.
But today as these new environmental programs are gaining ground, many are taking a second look and reconsidering all they’ve been told the past four decades. They are revisiting the claims of impending disasters and the long list of proposed government solutions to regulate their lives. For those of us who were there for that very first and very innocent, “Earth Day”, the environmental movement has certainly come a very long and frightening way.
CHAPTER 2
THE UNITED NATIONS: A WORLD BODY SEEKS A CAUSE
As I alluded to in the last chapter, the driving force behind the new environmental movement is the United Nations, the organization that developed historically as a natural outgrowth from Word War II. After so many had died in combat and President Harry Truman ordered the release of the atom bomb to end the war in the Pacific, the threat of a “mushroom cloud” hovering over an American or European city was enough to motivate the post-war generation to create a new international organization to replace the non-functioning League of Nations. Theoretically, as long as there was a forum for peace operating somewhere in the world, mankind would never again choose war.
The words “United Nations” were first used by President Franklin Roosevelt on January 1, 1942, as a united pledge by world governments to continue the battle against the three major WWII enemies Germany, Italy and Japan. In 1945, representatives from 50 nations gathered in San Francisco to draw up a United Nations Charter that was ratified and signed by a majority of world countries. The United Nations first convened on January 10, 1946, but the idealism of the world’s peace-niks was quickly shattered by the reality of the U.N.’s first major international crisis.
At midnight on May 14, 1948, the Provisional Government of Israel proclaimed the new State of Israel as a homeland for Jews who had been the target of Nazi extermination during WWII. Just twentyfour hours after Israel had been declared an independent country, neighboring Arab nations that objected to U.N. recognition of the fledgling Israeli state, invaded the country without warning. The U.N. was powerless to stop the warfare that spilled across international borders.
Two years later, June 25, 1950, a Korean civil war began. Five days later, United States ground forces were dispatched to stop the Chinese-backed north from over running the democracy in the south. Instead of restoring the peace, the U.N. recruited an army from the nations of the world to fight the Communist invaders, ironically calling them the “Peacekeepers”.
In 1960, a controversial debate involving Russian dictator, Nikita Khrushchev, disrupted the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly by the ruler’s unrelenting and contemptuous thumping of his shoe on the table in front of him. Since then, a steady stream of dictators and political malcontents have marched to the podium in the great marble hall of the New York City headquarters to rant and rave, usually spewing insults to the United States and/or Israel, while drawing standing ovations from many of the U.N. members.
When the U.N. became aware of a complicated and divisive war in Vietnam, they chose to remain unengaged. It began less than a week after Japan surrendered to end World War II. Communist guerilla leader Ho Chi Minh led an uprising that threatened the stability of the French colony in Indo China. France flew a body of well trained paratroopers into battle to end the rebellion; however, the conflict grew until finally the Chinese government sent troops and weapons to support Ho’s revolt. Under President Kennedy, the United States joined the fighting (first as “advisors”), until young Americans were later drafted into military service and ordered into a warzone to fight the communist invasion of South Vietnam. As the war raged on and intensified, it became more unpopular with Americans back home. Finally in 1973, the last contingency of American troops was withdrawn. Two years later, the President of South Vietnam proclaimed the national surrender to the Northern Communist Regime and again, the U.N. sat idly by, ineffective.
Various and assorted other “hot spots” continued to erupt around the world. There was outbreak between tribes in Africa, fighting among white settlers in South Africa and the native population to end “apartheid”. In South America, communist dictators rose up, ran their course in office, then were overthrown by bloody rebellions. Once again the U.N. offered little help.
Perhaps the most dangerous threat to global stability came in the early 1960s when the two major powers of the world stood toe to toe, ready to slug it out in a nuclear confrontation. When Russia military bases were established in Cuba, complete with missiles that could easily reach the U.S. mainland, America president, John F. Kennedy, confronted the possibility of a nuclear war. The U.N. did nothing to help.
Obviously, keeping Global Peace was a United Nations failure. It was necessary the organization seek a single, global, unifying issue to validate their existence.
First, they tried Women’s Rights, but one third of the member nations do not believe women have fundamental rights. Then the concept for the U.N. to eradicate colonialism was introduced. But colonial powers like Britain and France were already in the process of ending colonial rule, leaving the U.N. once again impotent.
Freedom of the Press was another issue proposed, but one opposed by dictators that firmly believed in a controlled media. Migrants’ issues were suggested and the idea went nowhere. Abolition of slavery was introduced as early as 1949, yet, sex slavery continues more than six decades later and, in many cultures, children are treated as family slaves and begin working at a very young age to support their family.
Finally, one issue emerged that offered global government possibilities—a “new environmental movement” led by a feminist-socialist from Norway, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland. After studying medicine at Harvard, she returned home and became a physician in the staterun health care system. When the U.N. stag
ed its first International Earth Day in 1971, Dr. Brundtland was appointed to a newly created post in the Norwegian government and became the country’s first Minister of Environmental Affairs. Dr. Brundtland’s political philosophy emerged simultaneously when she was elected as vice president of Socialist International. Her career in politics blossomed and she was eventually elected not once, but twice, to serve the people of Norway as their Prime Minister.
Dr. Brundtland became an international force to be reckoned with and an extremely powerful player on the world stage. She convinced the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Javier Perez de Cuellar, to establish a new U.N. organization, “The World Commission on the Environment and Development”. So powerful was her personal leadership, the new commission became known internationally as “The Brundtland Commission”.
With an international U.N. team behind her, Dr. Brundtland created what was perhaps the most influential environmental document of the 1980s, one that would set the agenda for the U.N.’s new international environmental movement. The 415-page report titled “Our Common Future” not only outlined a global assault on many of the world’s major health problems, but for the first time included environmental issues as an international cause for health concerns.
The complex, new document laid the groundwork for the first comprehensive United Nation’s “Earth Summit” held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, chaired by Dr. Brundtland’s long time cohort of her Brundtland Commission, Canadian businessman Maurice Strong. After serving as the Chairman of the Board of a large oil conglomerate, Petro-Canada, Strong became a very wealthy man. Brundtland and U.N. Secretary-General Cuellar appointed Strong to serve concurrently as Under-Secretary General of the entire U.N. global organization and to the post of Special Advisor to the Secretary General.
Strong combined his new global status, his friendship with Bruntland and his belief in the U.N. as a global organization to create the foundation for programs using environmental issues as the international problem that needed a peaceful U.N. solution. As Strong’s personal wealth continued to grow, he and wife, Hanna, bought a large country estate in Vermont they named “Shelburne Farms”. The family retreat was not far from the U.N. offices in New York City which also gave Hanna a perfect gathering spot for her “New Age” friends.