Marc Morano, CNSNews.com
Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2002

The green group made the comments on the opening day of the international Earth summit, formally known as the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development.

"Instead of using the Earth summit to respond to global concerns over deregulation and liberalization, governments are pushing the World Trade Organization's agenda and re-branding it as 'sustainable development,'" said FoE spokesman Daniel Mittler in Johannesburg.

FoE, angry that the three governments are promoting free markets and free trade, are placing banners with the slogan "Don't Let Big Businesses Rule the World" at the summit.

But a critic of the green movement, Danish author Bjorn Lomborg, believes that the Earths's ecological problems are "best cured, not by restricting economic growth but by accelerating it."

The 10-day summit began at the Sandton Convention Center Monday, with South African President Thabo Mbeki calling on world governments to agree to a set of practical measures to improve the plight of humanity.

Mbeki called for translating "a dream of sustainable development into reality and bringing into being a new global society that is caring and humane."

According to Mbeki, sustainable development as outlined by the U.N. has been slow to happen.

"Sadly, we have not made much progress in realizing the grand vision contained in [U.N.] Agenda 21 and other international agreements," Mbeki told the summit participants.

Summit attendees were more optimistic of success, however.

Wayne Anderson of the World Student Community for Sustainable Development told CNSNews.com he believes participants "can find solutions and try and make a success out this summit" despite many areas of contention.

Australian delegate Jan Star agreed. "There seems to be a positive will to achieve something," he said.

'Environmentalists Are Wrong'

Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg is among those at odds with much of the Earth summit's agenda. Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," wrote an op-ed in the New York Times Monday declaring, "The environmentalists are wrong.

"The focus should be on development, not sustainability," Lomborg wrote.

Lomborg, once a committed member of Greenpeace, became disillusioned with the green movement because of what he considered its distortion of eco-science.

Lomborg said the dire ecological health of the earth that is being espoused by many delegates to the Earth summit is "not supported by the evidence."

Lomborg wrote that Earth's "resources have become more abundant, not less so."

In a direct jab to many of the summit participants who want to limit the economic prosperity of the West, Lomborg countered that the earths's ecological problems are "best cured, not by restricting economic growth but by accelerating it.

"Only when people are rich enough to feed themselves do they begin to think about the effect of their actions on the world around them and on future generations," he wrote.

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