But not all the people who came to Jo'burg expected sushi and caviar. There
were many smaller NGOs that operated on a shoestring. Some of their members
scrimped and saved to make a pilgrimage to the World Summit. For them, it was a
religious revival meeting to top all others. They came to hear secular
incarnations of Billy Graham condemn the sins of the world — many of which
are the work of American multinational corporations. There was a lot of talk of a
new "earth charter" that would bind all the creatures of the world — human
and nonhuman — together in happiness and harmony.
Like all religious
revivals, it was a festive occasion. There was a genuine sense of the coming
together in Jo'burg of people from every nation. For true believers in the
environmental credo of "sustainable development," the feeling of camaraderie was
a powerful elixir.
Yet no one at the summit seemed to have any idea what
"sustainable development" means. Almost every activity in the world today —
from chemical manufacturing to setting aside forest reserves — has attached
"sustainable" to its mission statement. It is the secular substitute for good and
evil; the language of old-fashioned moral judgment is out of style these days,
but a new language of "sustainable" and "unsustainable" has taken its place.
As religions go, modern environmentalism is closest to old-fashioned
Calvinism. That is probably why it resonates so well in northern European
countries where the Protestant Reformation first took hold. A group of Swedish
NGOs issued a formal statement declaring that "increased consumption" was the
greatest threat to the future of the world.
Germany — the birthplace
of Martin Luther — had the largest presence of any country in the exhibit
areas. The think tank of the German Green Party, the Heinrich Boll Foundation,
receives $35 million per year in public funds. The Foundation offered nonstop
seminars and put out the most widely read manifesto; the "Jo'burg-Memo" found
that the central issue facing the world today is "changes in lifestyle, in the
concepts of consumption and production, and in the understanding of individual
and social purpose." A key part in the necessary religious revolution of the
future would have to be played by "institutions of learning and faith."
It
was a strange combination — kleptocratic leaders of impoverished nations,
staid international bureaucrats networking with their counterparts from around
the world, and true believers in a perfect — a "sustainable" — world to
come. All of them, to be sure, came to Jo'burg to party in their own fashion.
They would have been better off staying home. There was nothing there to
suggest that anything had been learned since the Rio summit ten years ago that
offered the prospect of a better outcome. The words "central planning" were
virtually never uttered but that is what it was all about: planning the future of
the world in one large convocation, as if that could actually be done.
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