International meetings in New York this week are drafting a treaty for UNCED, the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, scheduled to convene in Rio de Janeiro in June. This so-called Earth Summit is being promoted by environmental activist groups around the world and by certain political leaders. Untroubled by lack of scientific support for catastrophic global warming, they aim to impose a system of global environmental regulations in the name of saving the planet. The White House has so far refused to be stampeded; but with elections upon us anything can happen.
Why all this frantic activity leading up to the Earth Summit, which will bring some 40,000 participants to Brazil, with travel costs soon to exceed half a billion dollars? We are dealing here with a curious alliance of interest groups. Central planners and assorted utopians would like to place natural resources and even national economies under international con trots, preferably theirs. There are still many around who supported the failed Law of the Sea negotiations to set up an international regime for exploiting ocean minerals; they now see an opportunity to achieve their aim of global environmental controls under U.N. bureaucrats.
To be sure, there are many who are sincerely concerned about the future of the planet; they are the "foot soldiers" of the environmental movement. The "generals," however, seem more interested in salaries, personal power and perks. With budgets now surpassing $400 million a year collectively, the officers of these organizations spend their time traveling from conference to conference, extorting funds from industry, and--with the help of the media-- frightening the average American into writing those $10 and $20 checks that form the bulk of their support.
But UNCED covers more than just the environment. The "D" stands for "development," and to many in the Third World this means the New International Economic Order-which they failed to achieve 20 years ago through the U.N. General Assembly. Cynics then referred to the NIEO as a "scheme of transferring money from the Poor in the rich countries to the rich in the poor countries."
Third World klepotocrats now view UNCED as the vehicle to reconstitute this scheme under the guise of ecology. They call for industrialized nations, which currently contribute most of the carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, to impose a huge tax on all fuels, and then transfer the proceeds through an international authority to less developed countries. According to Department of Energy calculations, American consumers would end up paying twice as much for gasoline and electric power, a scheme guaranteed to stunt U.S. economic growth. But limiting growth has always been among the announced goals of radical environmentalists-even if the burden falls mainly on the poor.
We are seeing this struggle now on a small scale in the Northwest, where protection of 250 northern spotted owls will result in, by conservative estimates, the loss of 33,000 jobs. Another example is the controversial wetlands policy that permits the Environmental Protection Agency to remove private land from development without compensation-under the pretext that it has ecological value.
Influential politicians support UNCED, including such U.S. senators as Al Gore (D., Tenn. ). Majority Leader George Mitchell has just published a book, "World on Fire," that endorses both the global warming scare and the controls on energy use that UNCED hopes to impose on the industrialized countries. And it is the Senate that would ratify any international agreements resulting from UNCED.
The U.S. is certain to play the key role in the outcome of UNCED. The White House, to its credit, has resisted the example of Germany, Australia and other nations. They have announced specific targets for not just capping but reducing carbon dioxide emissions, by as much as 25% over the next decade or two, but have yet to detail their policies or the tremendous costs involved.
Pressure is mounting on the U.S. to exercise "leadership" by abandoning its present position; the U.S. currently calls for limiting the full "basket" of greenhouse gases, rather than only carbon dioxide, and avoids specific targets and timetables. Until recently, the U.S. point man was John Sununu, then White House chief of staff. As a scientist and engineer, he understood that the scientific climate data do not support the catastrophic warming theories.
Sam Skinner, the new chief of staff, will have to resolve the differences between alarmists within EPA and others, including Department of Energy officials and White House Science Adviser Allan Bromley, who have been urging a go-slow approach until a scientific basis has been more firmly established.
The key decision will focus on whether George Bush should attend the Earth Summit-as the democratic presidential candidates are urging. His presence in Rio would put his prestige and that of the U:.S. behind the rush to impose global controls on energy use that will have a calamitous impact on jobs, technological progress. and standards of living.