Maurice Strong and the Collapse of Industrialized Civilizations
By Duane Lester, All American Blogger
Originally Published on April 30, 2008
Originally Published on April 30, 2008
In 1990, a small, round faced Canadian described a scenario to a reporter. He envisioned a small group of world leaders concluding that the rich countries were the “principle risk to the Earth.” This group then created a plan to get the rich countries to “sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment.” When the rich countries refused, the group decided “the only hope for the planet” was for the industrialized civilizations to collapse. He pondered, “Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Two years later, he helped lay the foundation for the Kyoto Protocol at the Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro. His name is Maurice Strong, and he would love to see America collapse.
Who is Maurice Strong?
Billionaire Canadian Maurice Strong is a man of profound influence. He’s the “Michelangelo of networking,” “an international traveling salesman with buts [sic] of paper in his pocket” and described as “a cross between Rasputin and Machiavelli.”
Life and Times: Maurice Strong
He is known as the “Godfather of the international environmental movement” and the “architect of the Kyoto Protocol.” Both of those are ironic titles for a man who started out in the oil business.
Strong traveled Africa in the 1950s, creating a network of service stations for Dome Petroleum and recruiting locals to man them. In the 60s, he took Ajax Petroleum, renamed it Canadian Industrial Gas & Oil Co., and turned it from almost busted into an oil giant. In 1975, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau started a state-owned gas company. Strong accepted the position as president of Petro-Canada.
While his private sector resume is impressive, it is his public sector experience that is shaping environmental policy today. While he was dabbling in oil, he was also starting his political career. In 1966, Strong led the Canadian International Development Agency. After four years of that, he went to the United Nations.
In 1972, Strong was the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden. Later, he was executive director of the UN Environmental Program.
He has had other positions of influence at the United Nations, including “commissioners of the World Commission on Environment and Development, set up as an independent body by the United Nations in 1983″ and senior adviser to secretary-general Kofi Annan [see Men Who Run the World].
Journalist Elaine Dewar interviewed Strong and wrote about him in her book Cloak of Green. She writes:
“He could raise his own money from whomever he liked, appoint anyone he wanted, control the agenda.”
“He told me he had more unfettered power than a cabinet minister in Ottawa. He was right: He didn’t have to run for re-election, yet he could profoundly affect lives.”That “unfettered power” led to his role in creating the Kyoto Protocol.
“An agreement reducing their impact on the environment”
In 1990, Maurice Strong gave an interview to WEST magazine, where he described how he envisioned the Earth being saved:
“Each year the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Hundreds of CEO’s, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather each February to attend meetings and set the economic agendas for the year ahead.
“What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment? Will they do it? Will the rich countries agree to reduce their impact on the environment? Will they agree to save the earth?
“The group’s conclusions is ‘no.’ The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilization collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”Two years after making that statement, Strong laid the foundation and helped in the creation of the Kyoto Protocol. According to Wikipedia, “The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the international Framework Convention on Climate Change with the objective of reducing greenhouse gases that cause climate change.” Another way of saying that is “an agreement reducing their impact on the environment.” What has been the result of the agreement? “The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change.”
Japan, Italy and Spain face payments of as much as $33 billion combined for failing to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as promised under the Kyoto treaty …
Spain faces a $7.8 billion cost, and Italy and Japan each may owe about $13 billion, based on estimates by their governments and the current price for permits.It seems the rich countries are up to their necks in fines, while the developing countries don’t have to worry about caps on emissions. Sound familiar?
If the United States were to sign the treaty, it is expected to have disastrous results:
…according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, [ratifying Kyoto] could cost the economy $400 billion per year, raise electric utility rates by 86 per cent, hike the cost of heating oil by 76 per cent, and impose a permanent “Kyoto gasoline tax” of 66 cents per gallon. In total, each U.S. household would have to spend an extra $1,740 per year on energy. WEFA, an economic information and consulting firm, reports that 2.4 million jobs would be lost and manufacturing wages cut by 2.1 per cent.Kyoto is actually destroying Europe’s economy. Strong, however, is not concerned with the success of the world’s economy. In fact, it seems that is part of the plan. When an economy grows, greenhouse gases tend to grow with it. Strong knows this and says:
“Economic growth is not the cure, it is the disease.” (Unless we are talking about Strong’s economic growth.)He’s used environmentalism to make a lot of money.
“A socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology”
In the 1990s, Al Gore heaped praise on a company called Molten Metal Technology, Inc. This company, a hazardous waste management firm, claimed to have a new technology, “a promising adaptation of steelmaking chemistry to create a closed-loop system for turning industrial wastes into chemical feedstocks.”
Gore’s hype helped the company’s stock jump to $35 a share. After receiving over $25 million dollars in federal grant money from the Department of Energy, the DoE figured out that the techonology was a bust. It simply didn’t work.
Maurice Strong ran Molten Metals, and when the federal government decided to stop handing out grants, he and the other corporate officers sold off $15.3 million in personal shares of stock. The stock dropped to $5 soon afterward, but Strong had already made his money.
Today, Strong is on the Chicago Climate Exchange board of directors. The CCX “is North America’s only and the world’s first global marketplace for integrating voluntary legally binding emissions reductions with emissions trading and offsets for all six greenhouse gases.”
The more global warming gets hyped, once again by Al Gore, the more green technology is worth. So while Strong may be “a socialist in ideology,” he is definitely a “capitalist in methodology.”
The architect of Kyoto has made millions off of environmentalism, but still finds himself unable to pull America into the snare. But he has a plan for that also. In 2006, he described what he thought was necessary to keep the green movement alive… fear.
Speaking of the environmental movement post-2012, the year Kyoto expires, Strong laid out a vision for what he thinks it will take to keep the green movement alive in the hearts of world governments:
"What we really need are massive incentives for the right kind of behaviour," Strong explained at one seminar to an audience of roughly 400. "Economic incentives, but also moral incentives, ethical incentives, psychological incentives… fear."
"Political leaders cannot go far beyond what their constituents are prepared to accept, nor can those who are negative be more negative than what their constituents are willing to support," notes Strong, acknowledging that democratic solutions have their limits.
"So, politics really responds to public movements. If you look at the great movements in history, the abolishment of the slave trade and all that, they didn't start with individual policies from governments. They were forced on them by people's movements. And that's the same with the environmental movement. "
Later, he adds: "And remember: the communist revolution was a people's revolution."Maurice Strong would not shed a tear at the collapse of the American economy or our way of life. He has stated before that “current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”
In other words, the demise of the American way of life is necessary for the survival of the Earth. This perspective poses little threat from a normal environmentalist. In the hands of the “Michelangelo of networking,” “an international traveling salesman with buts [sic] of paper in his pocket” and “a cross between Rasputin and Machiavelli,” it is an all too real threat to America.
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