Dec. 21, 2021 (EIRNS)—This is an extended version of an article appearing in issue No. 51 of the EIR Strategic Alert Service weekly newsletter.
On Dec. 13, Russia vetoed a UNSC resolution on “climate security” which would have been the first step in establishing a global climate police. India also voted against while China abstained. In motivating the vote, Russian UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that the resolution would have empowered the UNSC with assessments and decisions that belong to scientists and that blaming climate change for all problems would have whitewashed responsibility for underdevelopment, wars, and terrorism.
The draft resolution was introduced by Niger and Ireland after a two-month period of discussions at the UN, including an open debate at the UNSC Dec. 9 that focused on the situation in the Sahel. Typically, the drying out of Lake Chad has provoked a fertile ground for terrorist recruitment, but nobody in that debate said that a solution to the crisis in the Sahel is there: the famous Transaqua water-transfer scheme from the Congo basin, a project that was approved by all member countries of the Lake Chad Basin Commission but since than has stalled.The debate at the UNSC makes it clear that at least three nuclear powers, and even some African countries, oppose such a solution. Instead, social conflicts, migration, and terrorism are given as inevitable consequences of climate change, and they can only be managed through outside military intervention.
Correctly, Ambassador Nebenzia said that Russia is against “establishing a new track of UNSC activities that asserts a generic automatic link between climate change and international security, thus turning a scientific and socio-economic problem into a political issue. Draft resolution’s provisions that suggest making this link the”central component" of UN conflict prevention strategies and mandates of peacekeeping and special political missions are fraught with a wide range of consequences."
“What a graceful idea it was to blame greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the Sun and the Moon, for everything, while also shifting the responsibility to the developing states themselves,” the ambassador said.
Making fun of those countries that adopt such ideas, Nebenzia quoted the great Russian poet Alexander Puskin who, in a poem about a person who was very much in love, has him saying: “Ah, it is easy to deceive me!… I long to be deceived myself!” “Perhaps, many of the countries in need who look forward to receiving donors’ assistance have a somewhat elevated image of their prospective saviors,” he said.
As we have previously exposed, the plan of the British-centered oligarchy is to use military power to enforce climate policies and prevent development (see SAS 40/20). The discussion at the UNSC in the last two months, as Niger and Ireland were preparing their draft resolution, has been accompanied by discussions and recommendations at George Soros’s International Crisis Group. https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/can-un-security-council-agree-climate-security-resolution
The issue was addressed in a side event at the Glasgow COP26 entitled “Climate, Peace and Stability: Weathering Risk Through COP and Beyond” on Nov. 2. Chaired by Munich Security Conference head Wolfgang Ischinger, the event prominently featured NATO secretary general Stoltenberg and British defense secretary Ben Wallace. “As defense ministers, … we will have to deal with the consequences of a failed climate change policy, if that happens,” Wallace said. “Without security we won’t have the mitigations we want to deliver to take on the effects of climate change and to reduce warming to 1.5 degrees.” NATO countries should develop strong partnerships, sometimes with non-traditional partners, to make sure that they deliver security and resilience around the world… part of the solution is defense going out and [creating] resilience." https://weatheringrisk.org/en/event/climate-peace-and-stability-weathering-risk-through-cop-and-beyond
Reflecting on the implication of the Dec. 13 vote, the pro-Greta Thunberg International Peace Institute wrote that “countries that want to see stronger language on climate-related security risks in country-specific resolutions might well face more resistance, and new language on concrete operational action seems less likely in this atmosphere.” [ccc]