The World Wildlife Fund is using ordinary Mexicans as pawns in a geopolitical chess game.
Two weeks ago I blogged about how the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – the uber wealthy multinational lobby group – has been badgering Mexico to pass extreme climate legislation.
That country, I pointed out, is beset by urgent problems. Drug cartels are out-of-control there, with a thousand murders a month thought to be connected to them. Horrific violence, mass graves, kidnappings, and dismembered bodies are commonplace in some parts of that country.
Moreover, Mexico’s current national government is winding down. Three months from now a new president will be elected (the current one, having served six years, must step aside). Any impending new climate legislation should surely be an election issue.
But the WWF doesn’t think ordinary Mexicans deserve a chance to reject this legislation. It has been pressuring the outgoing government to take action now. And, according to a WWF press release dated two days ago, it may have prevailed (backup link).
The headline declares: New law makes Mexico a climate leader. But it isn’t quite a done deal. The House of Representatives has passed the legislation, but Senate approval is still required. As the WWF acknowledges, near the bottom of the press release,
The Mexican climate law has just one more review, in the Mexican Senate, before it becomes law. In WWF, we’re crossing our fingers, and getting ready to celebrate Mexico for providing all of us with inspiration and leadership.
I have no insight into the internal workings of the Mexican government, so I’m in the dark as to what’s likely to happen next. But it’s important to note that the WWF finds it inspiring that ordinary people will be denied an opportunity to hear the strengths and weakness of this legislation debated during an election campaign. Ramming through extreme legislation in the final months of a government’s tenure is the WWF’s idea of leadership.
How extreme is this legislation? The WWF admits that only one other country – the UK – has passed so comprehensive a law.
It also admits that 40% of the Mexican population “lives in poverty.” In other words, while millions of children are going to bed hungry, the WWF has been distracting Mexico’s government from doing the sorts of things that might fill their bellies. It has been working hard to persuade Mexico’s rulers that becoming the second member of “an elite global club” is more important.
Why is the WWF targeting Mexico? The press release is rather bald-faced on this point – so it can then beat up on Mexico’s neighbours:
If Mexico is doing this, WWF just has to ask why its North American neighbours – the US and Canada – can’t do the same. The US is the world’s 2nd biggest emitter and Canada is the 7th. By any definition they are prosperous countries. Yet Canada’s federal government in particular has turned its back on the Kyoto Protocol, is promoting high carbon, high impacts tar sands, and is ignoring its national wealth of renewable energy. And the US still lacks anything close to a climate law, a national law on renewable energy, or even a federal law that limits emissions.
Yep, as far as the WWF is concerned, this is all about geopolitics. The WWF is playing an international chess game. Ordinary Mexicans are merely pawns in that game. The WWF has no problem saddling a poor country whose shaky institutions are already crippled by drug violence with an unusually strict climate law – if that law can then be used to berate other nations.
A few days ago Tom Fuller authored a brilliant blog post in which he condemned the past 20 years of climate campaigning by groups such as the WWF. Fuller describes himself as a lukewarmer – in his view human-produced carbon-dioxide emissions are an environmental concern. He thinks we should be developing alternative energy strategies. Nevertheless, he describes the anti-global-warming campaign as a soulless one run by people whose antipathy for their fellow man has long been palpable:
Everything that the climate consensus team has done in the past 20 years has contained.fundamental errors in thinking and strategy – from GreenPeace [sic] telling us they knew where we lived to No Pressure videos blowing up school children. There are thousands of examples that could be brought forth to show that their strategy had no human heart and no mechanism for enlisting participation – their goal was forcing opponents into silent submission instead. This 20-year war was fought at a soulless, corporate level, with campaigns designed and implemented by the media masters and mistresses of large environmental NGOs.these people showed an appalling lack of humanity. [links inserted by me]
Exactly. What the WWF is currently doing in Mexico is utterly soulless. It demonstrates an appalling lack of concern for the 113 million living, breathing people who currently reside there.
One of the WWF’s biggest weapons is shame. It clearly intends to try to shame the US and Canada into following Mexico’s lead. Yet all of the above makes it clear that the WWF itself has no shame. It’s fully prepared to sell poor people down the river for its own ends.
The WWF isn’t a collection of newborn lambs and fluffy bunny rabbits. It is a power broker on the international political stage. And now it’s gunning for Canada.
So here are a few questions my fellow Canadians should ask themselves in the coming months when our mainstream media tells us that the WWF thinks we need to emulate Mexico:
- If this kind of sweeping climate legislation is such a good idea why hasn’t Switzerland – where the WWF’s head office is located – passed such a law?
- Why hasn’t Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, or Sweden?
When the WWF gets through persuading all those nations to follow Mexico’s lead, this Canadian might be willing to take its views seriously. But not a minute before.
read Tom Fuller’s (guest) blog post here
see his climategate book here (Kindle edition here)
See my later blog post, Mother Mexico and the Jackals
