Rockefeller – Controlling the Game (20 page)

The stated purpose of SEI was to bring politics and science together to implement the defined goals for a sustainable development. Its goal was thereby directly political and the science was mainly used as leverage for realising the desired political ambitions.

SEI has primarily been funded by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), multilateral and bilateral organisations, NGOs, and – right from the start – the Rockefeller Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The first year RBF donated $215,000 dollar to SEI for the organising of conferences with climate scientists and policy experts, in collaboration with Environmental Defence Fund and the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government.
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During the coming decade (with the support from the Rockefellers foundations and Nelson’s son Steven Rockefeller), SEI, Gordon Goodman, and the American Tellus Institute would produce scenarios for how a future ideal society could be designed and function. The goal was to create a planetary civilisation with a global consciousness – One World! 

7. THE GREAT TRANSITION

Global climate change is one of the emerging transnational threats to peace, justice, and sustainable development that have moved closer to the top of the international security agenda since the end of the Cold War. Like other cross-border challenges—crime and terrorism, infectious disease and the strains of gross economic inequity—its management will require collaboration and social innovation at all levels of human activity. (Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Annual Report, 1998)

TOWARDS A UNIFIED WORLD

A
t the dawn of the new decade, the Cold War had just ended. The fear of a nuclear holocaust had subsided.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund with David Rockefeller Jr. as its president, now started funding programs and activities in Eastern Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the East should now be reintegrated with the West. Effective management of the earth's resources was on the agenda and climate change was reaffirmed as a top priority
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The efforts were coordinated with Rockefeller Foundation, whose president, Peter C. Goldmark Jr., had been involved in RBFs One World Programme. On the RF board (1989–98) we also find Peggy Dulany, founder of Synergos and sister of David Junior. It was time to launch the Great Transition towards a planetary civilisation and create new commandments for a new world order.

Beyond Interdependence

In 1991, the Trilateral Commission published its report,
Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World's Economy and the Earth's ecology
. The title indicated its message. The report was a direct sequel to the
Brundtland Report
and written by its main author, Jim MacNeill, together with Dutch management professor and Minister of the Environment Pieter Winsemius and Japanese political scientist Taizo Yakushiji.

Beyond Interdependence
presented a global action plan for realising the objectives drawn up in
Our Common Future
. The report, with foreword by David Rockefeller (founder and chairman of the Trilateral Commission) and Maurice Strong, stressed the importance of fully implementing a number of goals before 2012. These goals included a series of global conventions on animal species, forests, chemicals, the atmosphere, the oceans, and fresh water. This would result in a final global agreement.

As the environment was a global concern, the report recommended international laws and institutions for dealing with environmental problems, initially in the form of a World Environment and Development Forum (WEDF) which would function as a forum for world leaders and provide leadership, guidance and support to the UN system. This Council would have an annual meeting to assess progress and propose appropriate further action. WEDF was intended to be the highest platform for policy development and coordination of climate action.
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IPCC would provide additional scientific assessments and policy analyses. As consensus around the climate was building, this council could be developed into an Earth Council, with a much stronger mandate to make decisions and enforce regulations.

In 1989, the Hague Declaration (with 24 signatories) had called for a new international institutional authority that could preserve the Earth's atmosphere and fight global warming.
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Beyond Interdependence
also predicted that national sovereignty would become limited due to the common environmental problems and the ongoing economic integration. Climate change was said to challenge old forms of governance, and global cooperation was presented as essential for addressing the problem.
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The action plan recommended that a number of organisations be used to reach the targets, besides the UN organisations, including the World Bank, IMF, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and various philanthropic foundations. If the existing organisations failed to deliver results, new super-coordinated ones would be formed.

The policy process could be controlled through coordination of research and data collection, drafting of policy proposals, distribution of resources to organisations, and by pressing “free riders” to join the club. These recommendations were based largely on Pieter Winsemius’ management theories from McKinsey & Company.
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The plan was included in the Trilateral Commissions’ project for reshaping the future political architecture in Europe, the U.S., and the rest of the world. This was right in line with the Rockefeller family’s vision of global interdependence.

The 1992 Rio Conference

June 3–14, 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit) was held in Rio de Janeiro, almost exactly 20 years after the Stockholm Conference. Again Maurice Strong was as Secretary-General and also led the conference committee, with Jim MacNeill as advisor.

The Rio conference had been well prepared. In accordance with the Trilateral Commission's suggested action plan, Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 1991 began funding a number of organisations in order to create an international response and to ensure that all nations represented at the Rio conference would have a clear understanding of the need to limit emissions of greenhouse gases.

Through a series of carefully planned meetings and publications, this informal network worked to increase public awareness about climate change. Among beneficiaries were Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) which received funding to develop Climate Network Europe (now Climate Action Network, CAN). This project coordinated activities for 30 associations involved in the climate issue in the European Community. Environmental Defence Fund, Woods Hole Research Center, and World Resources Institute also received the funding to provide leadership, disseminate information and arrange seminars in the United States, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and developing nations.
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The foundation for this second environmental conference had been laid by the
Brundtland Report, (1987)
the Trilateral Commission’s
Beyond Interdependence
, and the new Club of Rome report
The First Global Revolution
, with its famous quote:

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 behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself. (
The First Global Revolution,
1991)
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In the foreword to
Beyond Interdependence
, David Rockefeller stated that sustainable development was the only viable alternative to the doomsday scenarios painted by the Club of Rome.
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According to David and Maurice Strong, mankind had no other choice but to submit to the dictates of a global stewardship.

Our essential unity as peoples of the Earth must transcend the differences and difficulties which still divide us. You are called upon to rise to your historic responsibility as custodians of the planet in taking the decisions here that will unite rich and poor, North, South, East and West, in a new global partnership to ensure our common future. (Maurice Strong, in the opening speech of the Rio Conference 1992)
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The Rio summit resulted in the
Rio Declaration,
based on the
Stockholm Declaration
, and the adoption of a global action plan, Agenda 21, to achieve a sustainable development.
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This would later evolve into the highly important Agenda 2030.

The summit also resulted in the unilateral treaty United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aiming at preventing harmful anthropogenic impact on the climate system, through CO
₂
reduction measures.
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With the signing of this framework, one of the Trilaterals’ goals – which RBF had worked for behind the scenes – was reached.

Bill Clinton and Jay Rockefeller

After winning the presidential election 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton moved into the White House, with Al Gore as Vice-President and Warren Christopher as Secretary of State (all TriCom members).

These three would play important roles in continuing the agenda laid out by George H. W. Bush. Both Bill and Al were good friends with Senator John D. ‘Jay’ Rockefeller IV. In his early career Clinton had received financial support from Winthrop Rockefeller’s step daughter Ann Bartley.

Clinton grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Winthrop was Governor 1967–71 and would himself have that position twice.
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Bill and Jay had become friends when the both served as Governors during the 1970s and Jay became one of the first to support Bill’s presidential candidacy.
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Right at the time of the U.S. intervention in Bosnia, the Clintons spent their vacation with Jay and Sharon Rockefeller at their farm in Jackson Hole and met other family members such as Laurance.
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As Senator, Jay, who had funded his own political campaigns, had also campaigned for the position as Vice-President but found himself beaten by his old friend Al Gore. He still thought Al was “rock-solid”, the smartest man in the Senate, and gave him his full support.

Pocantico Conferences

Through the continued good relations with the White House the Rockefeller family, via RBF, now led by Jay’s cousin Abby Milton O’Neill, continued its endeavours to create the world they desired. The challenge for RBFs board of directors was to “start modelling the practical options” which would form the basis for protocols on climate and biological diversity. This meant developing strategies for speeding up the process and enhancing the capacity of NGOs for the implementation.
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RBF support for SEI/Climate Action Network continued, now including the coordination of environmental NGOs (ENGOs) to support the creation of an international climate protocol for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
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RBF also sponsored Media Trust Natura Inc. to issue newsletters for Climate Action Network, coordinated and directed by Environmental Defence Fund (EDF) and Michael Oppenheimer.
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This gave RBF direct control over the message issued to all ENGOs in the network.

The support for climate change action grew ever stronger from the environmental organisations and the theory was not questioned by them. The grassroots in these ENGOs were most likely unaware who was pulling the strings.

In 1994, another conference on climate change was held at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Pocantico Conference Center outside New York City. It gathered representatives from academia, conservation organisations, and governments, as well as multilateral corporations and organisations. Participants came from the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa. The meeting focused on developing strategies for mitigating climate change and on promoting international cooperation and resulted in the pamphlet “Turning Up the Heat” written by the German environmental activist Konrad von Moltke (1941–2005).
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RBF also offered their Pocantico Center to the Ford Foundation for its Independent Working Group on the Future of the United Nations, working with the challenges faced by the United Nations, including recommendations on how the organisation could be reinforced.
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RBF also funded SEI for the education of the public in preparation for the upcoming first Climate Convention (UNFCCC) meeting, COP1, in Berlin 1995. The climate issue was now getting more firmly anchored with decision makers, academia, the business community, and among bureaucrats.

Club of Budapest

In 1993, the Club of Budapest was founded by Ervin László, as an international spiritual and cultural sister organisation to the Club of Rome. The visions of a global consciousness had been a focus for László since 1978 when he, during a discussion with Club of Rome founder Aurelio Peccei, presented the idea of initiating an informal association of creative people.