August 25, 2003
Okay, so this guy comes up to you and swears he's got the inside scoop on what's going to happen over the next 30 years. You figure you can cash in big-time, because this guy is a multimillionaire, has rubbed shoulders with Presidents, Prime Ministers, movie stars, the whole power structure thing. With the inside information he's about to give you, you're going to be on easy street.
He pulls out his crystal ball, gazes into it, and here's just a little of what he tells you will occur: It is January 1, 2031, and central authority has broken down in 32 more nations. India has long since disintegrated. The European Union has collapsed. Again. What had been called Russia is just a bunch of city-states and regions run mostly by warlords. Oh, by the way, there have been massive forest fires in Siberia that have destroyed towns, cities, and industries there. Nine more countries in Latin America have reverted to military dictatorships.
In the U.S., a President has been assassinated, and the new one is even more "politically impotent, with effective power increasingly concentrated among the extremists who now control Congress in concert with the military and the FBI."
Are you with me so far? I mean, this is one heck of a crystal ball and so filled with interesting news about the future. I know you are just dying to hear all about the environment and, let me tell, you, it's the pits!
There have been "unprecedented extremes of weather." Florida is--I kid you not--under water, and the lowlands of the Carolinas are lagoons. Most of California is totally devastated, particularly since the "Great Earthquake of 2026."
Did I mention there's been a drought in the U.S. Great Plains area and Canada too? It's been going on for seven years. The Colorado River "long since stolen from the Mexicans by California" is now only a trickle.
The summer's heat wave in 2030 was so bad it closed down Washington, DC. In fact, "deaths from heat-related causes exceeded a hundred thousand" but bad weather makes for bad news. Take, for example, the way "refugees are even entering North America from the north, stumbling over the polar icecaps, perishing in their hundreds." (The good news is that the polar bear population has topped one million. Just kidding!)
Things are no better in Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Water as far as the eye can see, millions dead. Whole South Pacific Islands have disappeared. Come to think of it, at least 100 million have died in China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other Asian nations. Yup, things have really gone downhill since 2001. And in only 30 years!
Ironically, drinking water is worth more than oil in 2031, but, then again, a barrel of oil costs $50. And guess what? The one country that is doing well is Germany. Yes, it turns out that the Germans have elected someone who, like Hitler, granted himself emergency powers, "giving him total authority." Now, all the good Germans are working together "for the common good and share equitably in both the sacrifices and the benefits achieved through a total mobilization of citizens to deal with their problems." Why, old Adolf himself couldn't have said it better.
Now, here's where it gets really interesting. This multimillionaire soothsayer puts his crystal ball away and leans forward. In a tone of the most sincerity, he asks you if everything he's told you is "just a sour fantasy, the dismal fiction of a doomsayer?"
What's your answer? Do you think this scenario is accurate? Everything above came from a new book, "Where on Earth are We Going?" by Maurice Strong, the organizer of the 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit, and a senior advisor to the United Nations and World Bank.
What's useful about this memoir, by one of the most influential figures in the global environmental movement, is his belief, shared by the movement's true believers, that the earth is on the brink of chaos. Global warming, right around the corner, will drown whole nations, devastate the coasts of all nations, bring about plagues, and rival the Bible itself for the horrors that will occur if…if we don't do exactly what Maurice wants us to do.
You see, the problem is our "industrial civilization." It's going to require "some very fundamental changes…" What are they? You can read about them in Agenda 21, and all the other lunatic reports and books about the earth that have been produced by the United Nations and people like Maurice Strong. Essentially, if you thought the Dark Ages were fun, you will love the "fundamental changes" that the Greens have in mind.
In 1990, I created The National Anxiety Center as a clearinghouse for information about scare campaigns. They were, and are, the proliferating efforts to frighten people, not just in America, but worldwide, into accepting the idea that the earth is facing an environmental Armageddon for which the only answer is a global government. It's being put together right now by an army of faceless, unelected bureaucrats in the United Nations and their fellow travelers, the "non-governmental organizations" who would also share power.
No more United States of America. No more Great Britain. No more Sweden, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, or Russia. No more France, Kenya, Nepal, Bermuda, or Tunisia, Just one big family, all being run out of the United Nations by people who don't have to worry about being elected by anyone. One huge redistribution of wealth from the industrialized Western nations to the under-developed nations of the world in order to end their poverty. And then everyone will be happy, right?
This is the classic Communist scenario. When Communism failed in Russia, as it will in China and everywhere else it is imposed by force, people discovered that only free markets, competition, and a lot of really hard work, coupled with a legal system that protects private property, generates wealth and the higher living standards that come with it.
You don't get much distribution of wealth if some despot is running your country with the help of his family and close friends. You get, oh, say, Indonesia under Suharto. Cuba under Castro. Iraq under Hussein. Or just about any nation on the continent of Africa. It's a long list.
Let's thank Maurice Strong for publishing his memoir, for giving us a tiny look at what a very wealthy, very well-connected, very dedicated crackpot can do once he is totally convinced the world is coming to an end.
"Ecological destruction is a sign of the imbalance in the way our industrial civilization sets its priorities and governs itself." Those of us who see him for the lunatic he is are, in his view, members of "the paranoid right." Indeed, everything others and I have written over the past years about the Greens and the United Nations are just "the deluded and paranoid ravings of the Western far right." Strong's predictions of what life will be in 2031 are, of course, not paranoid ravings.
Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at the Internet site of
The National Anxiety Center.