The UN Has a Better Idea for Combating Climate Change

The UN Habitat for a Better Urban Future convened the World Urban Forum (WUF9) in Malaysia in February 2018. The broad focus of the Forum is on “sustainable urbanization”. The document which provides the focus for this effort is the “Quito Declaration of the New Urban Agenda”.

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) sent a delegation to the UN Habitat III meeting in 2016, at which the Quito Declaration of the New Urban Agenda was developed and adopted. CFACT partially summarizes the contents of the Quito declaration as follows:

• Regulating businesses to change their profit-motive operations to ones “based on the principles of environmental sustainability and inclusive prosperity …” (i.e. socialism)
• A commitment to promote “international, national, sub-national, and local climate action … consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change.”
• Creating new rights to government housing and redistributed wealth.
• The establishment of a “UN-Habitat multi trust fund … in support of sustainable urban development, to be accessed by developing countries.”
• Expanding “sexual and reproductive health-care services.” (i.e., population control)
• Using cities as a vehicle to transfer great wealth from tax and ratepayers to "green energy" corporations that make no meaningful difference to the climate.

While the US has been a party to these proceedings in the past, it appears unlikely that the current US Administration would be supportive of any of the objectives listed above. The Administration has focused on easing regulations on businesses. The US has begun withdrawal from the Paris Accords and is obligated by US law to withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Administration has shown no inclination to establish new “rights” to government housing or to redistributed wealth. The US has already ceased funding the UN Green Climate Fund and would appear unlikely to commit to funding a UN Habitat multi-trust fund. The Administration has also halted funding to the UN for “sexual and reproductive health-care services” through the UN Population Fund.

The previous US Administration might well have found such programs admirable, but the current Administration would likely find them anathema. The UN maintains its focus on the various aspects of global governance, though still using existing government structures as their vehicle. However, it is unlikely that this approach would achieve the objectives the UN has set, leading ultimately for a push toward global governance through the UN.

A recent study published in the journal Nature, “A Good Life for All Within Planetary Boundaries” amplifies some of the issues regarding cities and sustainable development as follows:

"We apply a top-down approach that distributes shares of each planetary boundary among nations based on current population (a per capita biophysical boundary approach)...If all people are to lead a good life within planetary boundaries, then our results suggest that provisioning systems must be fundamentally restructured to enable basic needs to be met at a much lower level of resource use."

This is clearly an agenda of imposed socialism and should be anathema to all free people.

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” --Winston Churchill