Flying down to Rio in June night sound like a “fun” summer interlude to George Bush, who must be eager to get away from it during this uncertain presidential campaign. But president Bush is not Fred Astaire, and he won’t dance to a happy ending if he lets himself be lured into attending the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) on June 1-12 in Rio de Janeiro.
The propaganda fingers of the media, the “greens,” and even the children’s cartoons are reaching out to try to entrap him. Mr. Bush will do himself, and our nation, a favor if he stays home and addresses the American voters instead of pandering to special-interest agitators who will never support him.
The UNCED conference, billed as the “Earth Summit,” is expected to attract the largest gathering of world leaders ever staged. The purpose of the Summit, they say, is to produce a globa1 response to the so-called “greenhouse warming” theory by negotiating and signing international environmental treaties that will affect the entire world into the 21st century.
The real result will be, of course, to set up yet another permanent international bureaucracy financed. by bleeding the American taxpayers and transferring the fruits of our labor to ungrateful, unproductive, Third World dictators and the political-military cliques that keep them in power. This is just another expensive sideshow of the New World Order.
Science does not support radical proposals to address global warming. Science does not even agree on whether warming is good or bad, and many believe that, by lengthening the growing seasons, it would enhance agricultural yields and increase the world food supply.
The Earth Summiteers say that one of their goals is to promote global energy conservation. But experience of the last half century proves that private property and a capitalist economy produce more energy sources and a better environment than central planning.
The United States is already a world leader in conservation and energy efficiency, whereas the countries managed by socialist bureaucracies and central planners are ecological disaster areas.
The real purpose of the Earth Summiteers is to limit growth by restricting energy sources, and then to distribute American wealth to the rest of the world. The Earth Summiteers envision themselves as a new international elite, spending the money American workers earn and apportioning the scarcity around the wor1d.
UNCED proposals, if adopted, would require the U.S. taxpayers to transfer payments to the governments of developing nations. At the same time, UNCED proposals would severely restrict our oi^/n economic growth.
UNCED promoters want a “carbon tax” that would cost $95 billion annually. This would also disadvantage us in comparison with our competitors such as France, which relies on fossil fuels for only nine percent of its electricity, using nuclear power for 78 percent.
Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) is at the forefront of the media onslaught to ensnare American policymakers into the Rio extravaganza. TBS’s “Save the Earth” campaign includes a video called “One Child — One Voice” for adults and a weekly cartoon called “Captain Planet and the Planeteers” for children.
“One Child — One Voice” has already aired once, is scheduled for re-airing in June, and is being widely distributed by video. It carries the message that the earth will end soon if people don’t stop polluting, and that America and other developed nations are guilty of committing environmental sins that threaten the rest of the world.
Captain Planet is an environmental “Superman” and the Planeteers are five children recruited by Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, when she awakes from a 100-year-old nap to discover the devastating effects 20th century people have had on the environment.
These “white hats” go on adventures to eliminate the bad guys: Hoggish Greedly, a pig-like human who lives to devour the earth’s resources; Looten Plunder, a capitalist who clear-cuts rainforests and extinguishes whole species; sly Sludge, the ultimate con man who dumps garbage and toxic waste into oceans, parks and backyards; and Duke Nukem, a deformed villain who spreads radioactivity with the glee of a mad scientist
In-addition to the television programs, TBS’s Save the Earth campaign has “action packs” that include environmental pledges, direct-action postcards addressed to President Bush, and an interactive computer network via the “Network Earth” Forum on CompuServe. These action packs will be distributed through a multi-level collaboration between TBS and local cable operators, environmental civic groups, by mail, and even door-to-door.
President Bush should recognize that the Earth Summit in Rio is just one more episode in the fantasy world of television. He should not try to play the role of Captain Planet, but should stay home and make plans to reduce taxes, regulations and bureaucracies in order to keep us a free people with an ever-growing economy.
