In my previous post, I had reported on what were the latest and greatest results from a United Nations (UN) sponsored survey of the world’s priorities.
Readers may recall that “Action taken on climate change” had garnered a mere 1.7 million votes i.e. it was the very bottom of the list of respondents’ sixteen possible choices:
This bottom of the list position is where “Action taken on climate change” has been since I first stumbled across this survey, circa June 2013.
Those who chose to cast their ballots were told that (inter alia):
the era of making decisions about global issues behind closed doors with little citizen involvement was coming to an end.
And no less a personnage than UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, had issued a press release in which he had declared that this “incredibly rich source of information about what people want” would be:
[…]shared with Mr. Ban, his High-level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and world leaders.
[…]
Yesterday, Mr. Ban met with four youth volunteers who are capturing communities’ development priorities and called on the public to make a difference on the issues that impact their lives the most.
These inputs, along with those from across the UN system and beyond, including the outcomes of consultations going on worldwide and the voices of businesses, academia and the scientific community, will feed into the work of the Panel, which will present its report in May**
** Presumably in May 2015, although no year was stated. Yet a few days ago, my mouse and I had stumbled across:
The largest ever global citizen consultation on climate and energy. On June 6, beginning at dawn in the Pacific Islands and ending at dusk in the West Coast of the United States, citizens around the world took part in the largest ever public consultation on climate change and energy. [my bold -hro]
You can probably take your pick as to whether or not there were 97 countries participating as per this video (Warning: this 12+ minute video comes equipped with commercials and subtitles!)
or 104 whatevers as per the pic in the following tweet:
Here’s a link to the English version of the survey. One thing I will give them credit for is that for each of the questions, covered by the five themes (of which three pertained to “climate”), “Don’t know / Do not wish to answer” was an option!
I haven’t taken the time to download and review the results, yet. And I may not even bother:-) But I’d certainly like to know the math that was used which led the powers that be at the UNEP to conclude that the views of 10,000 people from (presumably) 97 countries supercede – and are more deserving of far more hype and mention than – those of over 8 million people worldwide.
Wouldn’t you?!
The View From Here 
Nit picking, but they reference 10,000 citizens, 97 DEBATES and 76 countries.
Feel free to “nit pick” away, Captain Dave! Can’t quite recall where I got the “97 countries” from. It may well have been from my first discovery of the site (sometime in the past week, before they actually proffered any data or explanatory verbiage) – hence my use of the parenthetical “presumably”!
But I do know that I didn’t pull it out of thin air :-) However, your “97 debates and 76 countries” strongly suggests that they seem to have “redefined” the word “global”. Even from the context of the 193 “countries” the UN claims as “member nations”, “76 countries” is not exactly what I would describe as “worldwide”. Ergo, the validity of the results of this “survey” may well be … well, worse and far less than we thought!
As an aside – and for the record (at least for today’s record!) – my mouse and I decided to attempt to d/l their purported “raw data” as advertised at:
http://climateandenergy.wwviews.org/results/ :
where “here” is a hyperlink to: http://climateandenergy.wwviews.org/download-results/
Perhaps at some point, that link will actually take one to a page where one can “download” the results in .csv format (as advertised somewhere on the site!). But, alas, not today! Or at least not for me ‘n my mouse!
It would certainly be interesting to know, though, how they might have arrived at their “10,000” participants because in trying out their web-based available data interface, approximately 8,500 was the maximum no. of respondents!
Amazing, eh?!
The UN is surely taking a leaf out of the EU’s book, here – if you ask a question and get the wrong answer, ask it again or ask it in a different way or ask some different people until you get the right answer. In the EU, for instance, the Lisbon Treaty could not come into force until it was ratified by all member states. Ireland foolishly gave its citizens a referendum on the subject, and the answer was a “no”, which was clearly incorrect, so there had to be a second referendum in order to yield the correct “yes” answer.
In this case, we have 8 million people worldwide incorrectly placing climate change at the bottom of the list. How could this be? (Sadly, it is likely that these were not true global citizens – or perhaps they were simply innocent dupes of the Elders of Exxon, Illuminati or other shadowy force for evil.) No matter, the correct answer needed to be found in time for COP21 – and by a spontaneous miracle of global unity, it was! :-)
If during the course of the last 20 years or so the UNEP (and/or the EU) had not succeeded in increasing the numbers of the willingly-gullible – who so readily succumb to supporting and/or spouting the mantra of the week, day or hour as propagated by the arms, elbows, hands fingers etc of those two bodies, particularly on the “climate” and/or anti-Israel fronts – then perhaps we would not be in this ever-deepening morass of political ineptitude.
To some extent, I blame Obama and his army of dedicated writers/followers for leading this descent. While our own legislators and wannabes should know – and behave – better, his “success” has unfortunately spawned far too many equally inept imitators.
And on a somewhat related note … I was just skimming the latest and greatest from the UN’s quasi-official rapporteur, Maurice Strong’s IISD, where I found such gems as:
Amazing, eh?!
Re the IISD’s SE4ALL Bulletin, I liked:
“She [Reema Nanavaty] called for half of the funds provided by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to be directed to supporting women in producing services that expand access to clean energy for all.”
I’m curious about how that would work in practice – where would those billions of dollars actually end up?
There’s a bulletin from 2014, too:
http://www.iisd.ca/energy/se4all/2014f/html/crsvol181num7e.html
“The Holy See said true sustainable energy for all requires a “radical” paradigm shift in behavior and view of the economy and development, and called for prioritizing energy consumption and distribution on the basis of justice and solidarity.”
So: energy rationing, based on “justice and solidarity”… What could possibly go wrong with that idea?
It is certainly challenging to imagine how these movers and shakers will apply “justice and solidarity” to (what we currently know as) “energy consumption and distribution”.
But one never knows in the ever-changing language of UN-speak … someone, somewhere along the line might have … uh … redefined any and/or or all of the above terms;-)
They intend using this nonsense to take control of our energy in Paris in December. The carbon tax will provide an independent income stream that will fund UN activities without reference to State funding and the controls that brings.
We are about to witness a large step up in UN activism as they ration our energy and food. Unfortunately not enough people are concerned about this Hilary.
Coming soon is a global bank transaction tax that will also accrue to the UN making them even more independent and giving them a lot more information about the activities of the global population.
What a pity it is that so many people will welcome this extension of UN power.
Keitho, while I do not share your dire predictions regarding the actual outcomes of the December deliberations in Paris, I don’t doubt that there will be many loud – and ill-informed – voices calling for such outcomes.
Not to mention yet another rather thinly disguised attempted power-grab on the part of the UN under the “climate change” mantra – which (IMHO) is increasingly being rolled into the even foggier and less defined “sustainable development”.
But at the back of my mind is the big question: where on Gaia’s green earth do these people think all the trillion$ will be coming from?!
That being said, I very much doubt that we would be seeing/hearing an ever-increasing number of such ignorant voices (cf Shukla et al, most recently) calling for the silencing/sentencing of those of us on the truly skeptical side of the great divide if our ranks were as (relatively) minimal as they were prior to Climategate.
To my mind those who welcome such extensions of UN power are primarily those who’ve been “brainwashed” by the UN and its ever-increasing army of NGOs. And while I don’t dispute that those numbers are alarmingly increasing, I have to live in hope that we who belong to the silent and not so silent majority will ultimately prevail, and that more of our democratically elected governments will come to their respective senses – preferably by completely withdrawing from the UN and letting it collapse under the weight of its word-salads and debts.
But that may be too much to hope for, at least in my lifetime!
P.S. I was somewhat encouraged by Lomborg’s recent views e.g. his Hear the voices of those who aren’t at the summit
“But at the back of my mind is the big question: where on Gaia’s green earth do these people think all the trillion$ will be coming from?!”
I think we’re all missing the point here. Mere money is nothing compared to the collective willpower of “everyone” on Planet Earth! All it requires is a massive feel-good campaign and we will just… make it so!
I was about to shred some envelopes yesterday, when I noticed that some of them had “The Global Goals For Sustainable Development” stamped on them, as part of the postmark, and they seem to have been part of this campaign:
http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2015/09/03/global-goals-campaign-2015.html
On that web-page, here’s a quote from Richard Curtis (he of “No Pressure” splatter-video fame, you will recall):
‘Speaking about the ground-breaking collaboration Richard Curtis, founder of Project Everyone, said “The Millennium Development Goals halved extreme poverty across the world. The new Global Goals for Sustainable Development give us the opportunity to end it for good. There’s no point in going half way. By making the Global Goals famous we can give them their best chance of working around the world – and help make us the first generation to end extreme poverty, the most determined generation in history to end injustice and inequality, and the last generation to be threatened by climate change.”’
So it wasn’t really boring, grubby stuff like trade or capitalism that had much to do with halving extreme poverty in the world, it was the Millennium Development Goals that did it!
When I followed your link above, Alex, I could not believe my eyes! Talk about a (practically unheard of) massive “feel good” campaign driven by the scientifically ignorant!
P.S. Don’t remember seeing this video yesterday when I visited this den of the feel-gooders galore, but – for the record:
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
Why the powers that be at the UNDP chose not to use their YouTube channel for this particular video, is left as an exercise for the reader!
Although it is perhaps worth noting that – unlike some previous videos from the UN – this particular video is accompanied by all “upbeat” boom-booms, i.e. no doom-dooms;-)
P.P.S. Just tested the above link, but it doesn’t seem to work :-( Let’s try another that they offer:
http://bcove.me/lkqwo1h3
If this doesn’t work, just go to the page suggested by Alex, above … with any luck, this video might still be there!
The fact that neither of us had any inklings that this “biggest ever collaboration of campaigners, artists, sports stars, performers and companies” was going on until some time after the supposedly crucial 7-day period, I think speaks volumes. :)
http://bcove.me/lkqwo1h3 works OK. There is a massive push from all directions in preparation for Paris.
The “Social Good Summit” was part of the multi pronged attack, with many of the same names as above, like Richard Curtis.
http://mashable.com/sgs-2015speakers/#
Social Good Summit 2015 Speaker List
NEW GOALS. NEW POWER. NEW TECHNOLOGY. #2030NOW
The list includes such luminaries as Victoria Beckham and Charlize Theron, (Actress & Activist United Nations Messenger of Peace). The UN big hitters were present in abundance, including his nibs, Ban Ki Moon, with stalwarts such as Gro Harlem Brundtland, Achim Steiner, Helen Clark.
The UK’s former PM and his wife are now on the UN gravy train, Sarah Brown, Global Education and Health Advocate. Husband Gordon is UN Special Envoy for Global Education. He still pretends to be an MP for the salary.
I forgot Julia Gillard, Global Partnership for Education which you blogged about recently and Madeleine Albright. The same names pop all over the place.
Thanks, dennis. Colour me very surprised (not!)
If nothing else, never let it be said that the UN – and its ever-increasing multiplicity of arms, elbows, hands and fingers etc. does not wildly succeed in its practice of the noble art and artifice of “recycling”!
One also wonders how they could possibly have achieved such “success” without the wonders of the web, onto which they appear to have glommed but not glistened – in the last few years.
But I suppose this is in keeping with the UN’s “tradition” of (with sincere apologies to the great Tom Lehrer) “Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect”!
Don’t you think it would be an interesting exercise if a credible interlocutor were to interview some of these recycled luminaries in “real time” to see if they have any knowledge whatsoever of their “appointments” to these (for all we know) virtual insta-bodies of the ludicrously-named kind?!