The tab for U.N.’s Rio summit: Trillions per year in taxes, transfers and price hikes
By George Russell
Published April 20, 2012
FoxNews.com
The upcoming United Nations environmental conference on sustainable development will consider a breathtaking array of carbon taxes, transfers of trillions of dollars from wealthy countries to poor ones, and new spending programs to guarantee that populations around the world are protected from the effects of the very programs the world organization wants to implement, according to stunning U.N. documents examined by Fox News.
The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23, and which Obama Administration officials have supported, is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything—or, as one of the documents puts it, "a fundamental shift in the way we think and act."
Among the proposals on how the “challenges can and must be addressed,” according to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:
--More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, in the name of fostering “green infrastructure, ” “climate adaptation” and other “green economy” measures.
--New carbon taxes for industrialized countries that could cost about $250 billion a year, or 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product, by 2020. Other environmental taxes are mentioned, but not specified.
--Further unspecified price hikes that extend beyond fossil fuels to anything derived from agriculture, fisheries, forestry, or other kinds of land and water use, all of which would be radically reorganized. These cost changes would “contribute to a more level playing field between established, 'brown' technologies and newer, greener ones."
-- Major global social spending programs, including a "social protection floor" and "social safety nets" for the world's most vulnerable social groups for reasons of “equity.”
--Even more social benefits for those displaced by the green economy revolution—including those put out of work in undesirable fossil fuel industries. The benefits, called “investments,” would include “access to nutritious food, health services, education, training and retraining, and unemployment benefits."
--A guarantee that if those sweeping benefits weren’t enough, more would be granted. As one of the U.N. documents puts it: “Any adverse effects of changes in prices of goods and services vital to the welfare of vulnerable groups must be compensated for and new livelihood opportunities provided."
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2.....hikes/#ixzz1sbIi9UwC
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