“The
common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to
unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of
global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit
the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and
it is only through
changed attitudes and behavior that they can be
overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself."
-
Club of Rome
The First Global Revolution
The
environmental movement has been described as the largest and most
influential social phenomenon in modern history. From relative
obscurity just a few decades ago it has spawned thousands of
organisations and claims millions of committed activists. Reading the
newspaper today it is hard to imagine a time when global warming,
resource depletion, environmental catastrophes and 'saving the
planet' were barely mentioned. They now rank among the top priorities
on the social, political and economic global agenda.
Environmental
awareness is considered to be the mark of any good, honest, decent
citizen. Multi-national companies compete fiercely to promote their
environmental credentials and 'out-green' each other. The threat of
impending ecological disasters is uniting the world through a
plethora of international treaties and conventions. But where did
this phenomenon come from, how did it rise to such prominence, and
more importantly, where is it going?
While researching for
these articles, and during my academic studies, I have come across
many references to the The
Club of Rome
(CoR), and reports produced by them. Initially I assumed that they
were just another high-level environmental think-tank and dismissed
the conspiracy theories found on many websites claiming that the CoR
is a group of global elitists attempting to impose some kind of one
world government.
However, as I have struggled to untangle
the convoluted web that is the Global Green Agenda, I have been
amazed that the same names keep appearing as the authors of binding
international agreements, as the organisers of key summits and
conferences, and as the most vocal proponents of new systems of
governance. A core group of very influential leaders appear to be
working in unison to implement a far-reaching global agenda.
When
I searched for links between these men, who keep appearing in nearly
every area of global environmental politics, I discovered that they
were all members of the Club of Rome. Now extraordinary claims, like
a global conspiracy, demand extraordinary proof. But this conspiracy
is hidden in plain
sight.
They make very little attempt to hide their real agenda. On this
website I try to use quotes and excerpts as much as possible and let
the reader reach their own conclusions.
So, what exactly is
the Club of Rome and who are its members? Founded in 1968, the CoR
describes itself as "a group of world
citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity."
It consists of current and former Heads of State, high-level
politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists,
economists, and business leaders from around the globe.
The
Club of Rome subsequently founded
two sibling organizations, the
Club
of Budapest
and the Club
of Madrid.
The former is focused on social and cultural aspects of their agenda,
while the latter concentrates on the political aspects. All three of
these 'Clubs' share many common members and hold joint
meetings and
conferences.
As explained in other articles on this website it is abundantly clear
that these are three heads of the same beast. The CoR has also
established a network of 33 National
Associations.
Some
Current Members of the Club of Rome triad:
Al
Gore
– former VP of the USA, leading climate change campaigner,
Nobel Peace Prize winner, Academy Award winner, Emmy winner, lead the
US delegations to the Rio Earth Summit and Kyoto Climate Change
conference, largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate
Exchange.
Javier
Solana
– Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, High
Representative for EU Foreign Policy.
Maurice
Strong
– former Head of the UN Environment
Programme, Chief Policy Advisor to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of
the Rio Earth Summit, co-author (with Gorbachev) of the Earth
Charter, co-author of the Kyoto Protocol, founder of the Earth
Council,
devout Baha’i.
M.
King Hubbert
–
originator of the 'Peak
Oil' theory
that claimed oil production would begin to decline rapidly after the
year 2000.
Mikhail
Gorbachev
– CoR
executive
member, former President of the Soviet
Union, founder of Green Cross International and the Gorbachev
Foundation, Nobel Peace Prize winner, co-founder
(with Hidalgo) of the Club of Madrid, co-author (with Strong)
of the Earth Charter.
Diego
Hidalgo
– CoR executive
member, co-founder (with Gorbachev) of the Club of
Madrid, founder and President of the European
Council on Foreign Relations
in association with George Soros.
Ervin
Laszlo
– founding member of the CoR, founder and President of the Club
of Budapest, founder
and Chairman of the World Wisdom Council.
Anne Ehrlich – Population Biologist. Married
to Paul Ehrlich with
whom she has authored many books on human overpopulation. Also a
former
director of
Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club, and a member of the UN's
Global Roll of Honor.
Hassan
bin Talal
–
President of the CoR, President of the Arab
Thought Forum, founder of the World
Future Council,
recently named as the United Nations 'Champion
of the Earth'.
Sir
Crispin Tickell
– former British Permanent Representative to the United Nations
and Permanent Representative on the Security Council, Chairman of the
‘Gaia Society’, Chairman of the Board of the Climate
Institute, leading British climate change campaigner.
Kofi
Annan
– former Secretary General of the United Nations. Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate.
Javier
Perez de Cuellar
– former Secretary General of the United Nations.
Robert
Muller –
former Assistant Secretary General of the United
Nations, founder and Chancellor of the UN
University of Peace.
The
Dalai Lama
– The 'Spiritual Leader' of Tibet. Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate.
Father
Berry Thomas
–
Catholic Priest who is one of the leading
proponents of
deep ecology, ecospirituality and global consciousness.
David
Rockefeller
– CoR
executive
member, former Chairman of Chase
Manhattan Bank, founder of the Trilateral Commission, executive
member of the World Economic Forum, donated land on which the United
Nations stands.
Steven
Schneider
– Stanford Professor of Biology and Global Change.
Professor Schneider was among the earliest and most vocal proponents
of man-made global warming and a lead author of many IPCC
reports.
Bill
Clinton
– former President of the United States,
founder of the Clinton Global Iniative.
Jimmy
Carter
– former President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate.
Bill
Gates
– founder of Microsoft, philanthropist
Garret
Hardin –
Professor of Human Ecology. Originator of the
'Global
Commons'
concept. Has authored many controversial papers on human
overpopulation and eugenics.
Other
current influential members:
(these
can be found on the membership lists of the COR (here,
here,
and
here), Club
of Budapest,
Club
of Madrid and/or
CoR
National Association
membership
pages)
Ted Turner – media mogul, philanthropist,
founder of CNN
George Soros – multibillionare, major
donor to the UN
Tony Blair – former Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom
Deepak Chopra – New
Age Guru
Desmond Tutu – South African Bishop and
activist, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Timothy
Wirth – President of the United
Nations Foundation
Henry
Kissinger – former US Secretary of State
Harlan
Cleveland – former Assistant US
Secretary of State and NATO Ambassador
Barbara Marx
Hubbard – President of the Foundation
for Conscious Evolution
Betty
Williams – Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Marianne
Williamson – New Age 'Spiritual Activist'
Robert
Thurman – assistant to the Dalai Lama
Jane Goodall
– Primatologist and Evolutionary Biologist
Juan
Carlos I – King of Spain
Prince Philippe of
Belgium
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands
Dona Sophia
– Queen of Spain
Karan Singh – Former Prime
Minister of India, Chairman of the Temple
of Understanding
Daisaku
Ikeda – founder of the Soka
Gakkai cult
Eduard
Shevardnadze – former Soviet foreign minister and President
of Georgia
Richard von Weizsacker – former
President of Germany
Martin Lees – CoR
Secretary General, Rector of the UN University of Peace
Ernesto
Zedillo – Director of The
Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
Frithjof Finkbeiner – Coordinator of the Global
Marshall Plan
Franz
Josef Radermacher –
Founder of the Global
Marshall Plan
Vaclav
Havel – former President of the Czech Republic
Hans
Kung – Founder of the Global
Ethic Foundation
Ruud
Lubbers – United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees
Mary Robinson
– United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights
Jerome Binde – Director of
Foresight, UNESCO
Koïchiro Matsuura – Current
Director General of UNESCO
Federico Mayor –
Former Director General of UNESCO
Tapio
Kanninen – Director of Policy and
Planning, United Nations
Konrad Osterwalder –
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations
Peter
Johnston – Director General of European Commission
Jacques
Delors – Former President of the European Commission
Domingo Jimenez-Beltran – Executive Director of the
European Environment Agency
Thomas Homer-Dixon –
Director of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Toronto
Hazel
Henderson – Futurist and 'evoluntionary
economist'
Emeka Anyaoku – former
Commonwealth Secretary General, current President of the WWF
Wangari
Maathai – Nobel Peace Prize Laureate,
founder of the Green
Belt Movement
and
many more….
The concept of
'environmental sustainability' was first brought to widespread public
attention in 1972 by the Club of Rome in their book entitled The
Limits to Growth.
The official summary can be read here.
The report basically concluded that the growth of the human
population, and an increase in prosperity, would cause an ecological
collapse within the next hundred years:
“If
the present growth trends in world population, industrialization,
pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue
unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached
sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result
will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both
population and industrial capacity.”
“It is possible to alter these growth trends
and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability
that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global
equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of
each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal
opportunity to realize his individual human potential.”
“The overwhelming growth in world population caused
by the positive birth-rate loop is a recent phenomenon, a result of
mankind's very successful reduction of worldwide mortality. The
controlling negative feedback loop has been weakened, allowing
the positive loop to operate virtually without constraint. There are
only two ways to restore the resulting imbalance. Either the birth
rate must be brought down to equal the new, lower death rate, or the
death rate must rise again.”
“The
result of stopping population growth in 1975 and industrial capital
growth in 1985 with no other changes is that population and
capital reach constant values at a relatively high level of food,
industrial output and services per person. Eventually, however,
resource shortages reduce industrial output and the temporarily
stable state degenerates.”
“Man
possesses, for a small moment in his history, the most powerful
combination of knowledge, tools, and resources the world has ever
known. He has all that is physically necessary to create a totally
new form of human society - one that would be built to last for
generations. The two missing ingredients are a realistic, long-term
goal that can guide mankind to the equilibrium society and the
Human Will to achieve that goal.”
“Without
such a goal and a commitment to it, short-term concerns will generate
the exponential growth that drives the world system toward the limits
of the earth and ultimate collapse. With that goal and that
commitment, mankind would be ready now to begin a controlled,
orderly transition from growth to global equilibrium.”
So
as you can see the even back in 1972 the Club considered modern
industrial society to be completely unsustainable. They state that
even if population was frozen at 1975 levels, and industrial activity
at 1985 levels, then the earth’s ecosystems would still
ultimately collapse. The CoR has not changed these views in the
slightest, in fact, in the last three decades their warnings have
become increasingly more urgent and alarmist. They call this imminent
collapse the ‘World
Problematique’
and their proposed solution the ‘World
Resolutique.’
The
Limits to Growth is considered to
be the most successful environmental publication ever produced and
propelled the Club of Rome to its current position of an
environmental thought-leader and a major consultant to the United
Nations. It has been translated into more than forty languages and
sold more than 30 million copies. Throughout the 1970s and 80s the
concept that humanity was irreparably damaging the earth gained
credence and facilitated the formation of mainstream and activist
environmental groups.
All meetings of the CoR are held
‘behind closed doors’ and no public records are kept.
However the Club does produce many ‘discussion
reports’
that can be found on its website. The United Nations contracts
the Club of Rome to prepare ‘Policy Guidance Documents’
which it uses in formulating its policies and programmes. A quick
search for Club of Rome on the UNESCO
publications
site reveals 250 documents. There are many other documents
there authored by CoR members. As many high ranking UN officials are
actually CoR members, this is like a man asking himself for advice,
and then agreeing with that advice. Not very objective! Various UN
organisations also hold joint
conferences
with the CoR.
Twenty years after the Limits
to Growth the CoR published another major report that
became an instant best-seller. In The First
Global Revolution the Club of Rome claimed that the time
to act had run out. It was now or never. Delay in beginning
corrective measures will increase the damage to the world ecological
system and ultimately reduce the human population that will
eventually be supportable. They also stated that that democratic
governments were far too short-sighted to deal with the
‘problematique’ and new forms of governance are urgently
required.
In order not too violate any copyright protection I
will not reproduce the text of the book on this site. However, it is
permissible for me to quote a brief excerpt in the context of this
wider discussion. The complete text
can be read and searched online at Google Books (update - as of Aug 2008 Google has removed access to large sections of their online copy!?).
As you read the following quotes, from pages 74-75 of the report (first ed.), please remember the names of the
leaders listed above. This is not some quirky little cult. This is
the stated
agenda of the
leaders of the environmental movement:
“This
is the way we are setting the scene for mankind’s encounter
with the planet. The opposition between the two ideologies that
have dominated the 20th century has collapsed, forming their own
vacuum and leaving nothing but crass materialism.
It is a law
of Nature that any vacuum will be filled and therefore eliminated
unless this is physically prevented. “Nature,” as the
saying goes, “abhors a vacuum.” And people, as children
of Nature, can only feel uncomfortable, even though they may not
recognize that they are living in a vacuum. How then is the vacuum
to be eliminated?
It would seem that humans need a common
motivation, namely a common adversary, to organize and act
together in the vacuum; such a motivation must be found to bring the
divided nations together to face an outside enemy, either a real
one or else one invented for the purpose.
New enemies
therefore have to be identified.
New strategies imagined, new
weapons devised.
The common enemy of humanity is man.
In
searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that
pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and
the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by
human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and
behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is
humanity itself.
The old democracies have functioned
reasonably well over the last 200 years, but they appear now to be in
a phase of complacent stagnation with little evidence of real
leadership and innovation
Democracy is not a panacea.
It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits.
These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may
sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead.
The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s
problems do not always allow elected representatives to make
competent decisions at the right time.”
So,
long before Global Warming became a well known issue Al Gore and his
Club of Rome colleagues stated that they would use the threat of
global warming to unite humanity and "set
the scene for mankind's encounter with the planet."
In the same way that shamans and sooth-sayers in medieval times used
their advance knowledge of when eclipses would occur to control and
terrify their followers, they would use a natural phenomenon as their
'enemy' to achieve their objectives. But then they state that
although Global Warming would be presented as the initial enemy, the
real enemy of humanity would be portrayed as man himself. I am
already noticing how frequently the terms climate change and
overpopulation are being uttered in the same breath.
Having
discovered that all these influential environmental leaders were
associated with the Club of Rome I set about reading all the reports,
lectures and speeches on their website as well as the reports
commissioned by the UN. I was amazed to find that they lay out their
entire agenda for anyone who has eyes to see. Exactly the same
themes, concepts and phrases are repeated continuously throughout
their publications. They are full of references to 'imminent
collapse', 'dying planet',
'our mother Gaia', 'wrenching
transformation', 'united global
society', 'global consciousness',
'new forms of governance' etc.
They truly intend to bring about the world's First
Global Revolution.
The
Kosmos
Journal provides
perhaps the best insight into their worldview. This Journal was
founded by the Club of Rome in partnership with with several of its
sibling organizations. As described in my article, The
Green Web,
the CoR has established a network of supporting organizations, each
focussing on a different aspect of their agenda. The Kosmos Journal
contains many articles written by CoR members. The basic premise of
their worldview is:
"Modern
industrial civilisation is fast outstripping the Earth's natural
regenerative and life-supporting capacity..."
"At
current rates of resource depletion and environmental degradation a
near complete collapse of ecological integrity will occur within the
next 100 years..."
"Gaia, our Mother, who nutured
humanity for countless millenia within her womb of evolution, is
dying..."
“A small window of opportunity now exists
to transform humanity into a sustainable global interdepedant society
based on respect and reverence for Earth..."
"A
radical change from the current trajectory is required, a complete
reordering of global society..."
"Humans only truly
unite when faced with a powerful external enemy..."
"At
this time a new enemy must be found, one either real or invented for
the purpose..."
"Democracy has failed us, a new
system of global governance, based on environmental imperatives, must
be implemented quickly..."
Gaia,
Global Warming, and Global Governance are intricately entwined,
if one truly believes in Gaia, and that she is being fatally harmed
by the current system, then a new system of global governance and
control would appear to be the only answer. Global Warming provides
the ideal 'enemy' to bring about this objective. It is easy for these
global elitists to talk about sacrifice, wrenching transformation,
population control and halving the use of fossil fuels but the
implications are truely horrendous.
Even if you think this is
all nonsense I would ask you to at least read these
quotes and excerpts,
and think about the implications of their agenda. Everyday I am
amazed at how quickly things are changing. It is coming hard and
fast. It's almost like reading a book and then watching the
television adaptation, except that this adaptation is not a movie -
it's on the evening news. As Al Gore said in the closing sentence of
his statement after he won the Nobel Peace Prize ... "This
is just the beginning."