By Henry Lamb
Three NGOs (non-government organizations) drive the global environmental agenda, including the global warming agenda. They are: the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN); the Worlwide Fund for Nature (WWF); and the Natural Resources Institute. These three NGOs are listed in the June, 1999 report of the Global Environment Facility, as either "Executing Agency," or "Collaborating organization," on 45 projects around the world, totaling $840,027,000.
There's big bucks in the environment business.
The IUCN includes in its membership, 111 government agencies, among which are: the U.S. State Department; the Department of Interior; the Department of Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Each department of government pays a separate membership fee in excess of $50,000 per year, and signs an agreement that they will not execute policies that are in conflict with those of the IUCN. Additionally, the IUCN counts among its members, 731 Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) that include The Nature Conservancy; the Sierra Club; the Environmental Defense Fund; and most of the more familiar names in the United States.
A former President of the IUCN, Shridath Ramphal, graduated to become co-chair of the Commission on Global Governance. A former Director of the National Wildlife Federation, Jay Hare, graduated to become the President of the IUCN, and then moved on to take his seat on the President's Council on Sustainable Development.
The Natural Resources Institute produced Gustave Speth, who after serving a term on Clinton's transition team, went on to head the United Nations Development Program. Speth's policy analyst at NRI, Rafe Pomerance is still a high-level official in the U.S. State Department.
The inmates are running the asylum! And they are getting paid handsomely to do it.
The influence of these three NGOs on both international and national policy is immeasurable. The tax dollars they are getting is measurable, if it can be found. The nearly $1 billion that flowed through the GEF is only a small portion of the total dollars extracted from tax payers by the government, and then turned over to GAGs to promote hype and hysteria to justify more programs to solve problems they dream up. In the language of the U.N. this is called "awareness building and outreach."
The money that GAGs get from government is not easy to track. Aside from grants and contracts awarded to favored green groups that are almost impossible to track, there are pass-through arrangements that rarely are identified. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sponsored a Joint Expert Meeting in the Netherlands in early 1999. The expenses of the meeting were paid for, in part, by the EPA. A report of the meeting circulated at the Bonn global warming talks, reveals that certain NGOs were invited, and their expenses were paid out of the budget for the meeting.
The IUCN is the granddaddy of all the NGOs. It was created in 1948 by the same Julian Huxley who founded UNESCO. The IUCN spawned the WWF in 1961, which then helped create the Natural Resources Institute in 1982. The three organizations, with their GAG affiliates, have come to dominate the environmental agenda and are now implementing their agenda through governments at every level.
Frank Loy, Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, and head of the U.S. Delegation to the global warming talks, has been on the board of directors of the Environmental Defense Fund since 1981, serving as its chair from 1983 to 1990. He also served on the board of the League of Conservation Voters, whose former President, Bruce Babbitt, now heads the Department of Interior. George Frampton, now chairman of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, was President of the Wilderness Society.
The list goes on and on. The people who are now in positions of power to implement the policies developed by NGOs were once the executives of the NGOs whose policies they are now implementing. They are also in positions of power to give tax dollars to the NGOs of their choice, to fund the propaganda activity required to make their policies acceptable.
It is an ingenious scheme. Trusting citizens tend to accept what the government, or what the United Nations says, not realizing that the people who are doing the talking are the same people who previously ran the various GAGs. For all practical purposes, the United Nations, and the Clinton White House, provides a cloak of ambiguous legitimacy to a radical, highly-questionable, if not downright fraudulent, global environmental agenda.
How can the U.N., or the White House, dismiss out of hand the mounting scientific evidence that challenges the very existence of global warming? It's simple; they must. They must ignore the science, and, moreover, they must discredit any and all skeptics. Otherwise, the gravy-train could be derailed. If ordinary citizens who fork out the tax dollars ever realized that their hard-earned bucks are being used to perpetuate a process that need not exist, a bunch of bureaucrats could be looking for a job.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty International.