Here’s a rather odd bit of UN-bashing from last Friday:
The United Nations Security Council is looking into forming a new environmental peacekeeping force to deal with potential conflicts caused by so-called “global warming.”
Er, really?
The “green police,” as some are calling it, would wear green helmets, rather than the blue ones currently worn by U.N. forces. James Taylor is senior fellow at The Heartland Institute, a non-profit group that works to discover, develop and promote free-market solutions to public policy problems. He speculates on how seriously this should be taken.
“Anytime that somebody is talking about raising a standing army, giving it weapons, militarizing the world … in a way that hasn’t been the case before, I don’t find that a laughing matter at all,” he explains. “And given the extremism of the environmental activists here in the United States and around the globe, that gives me great cause for concern, considering that the enemy that they say is destroying the planet is Western civilization and, more specifically, free-market nations such as the United States.”
Where is all this coming from? It’s true that the Security Council recently held a contentious debate on climate change, but I can say with 100% confidence that there was no talk of a standing army. But the Heartlanders aren’t just dreaming this up. Instead, their website points us to this story from the Guardian:
A special meeting of the United Nations security council is due to consider whether to expand its mission to keep the peace in an era of climate change. Small island states, which could disappear beneath rising seas, are pushing the security council to intervene to combat the threat to their existence.
There has been talk, meanwhile, of a new environmental peacekeeping force – green helmets – which could step into conflicts caused by shrinking resources. [Emphasis added.]
Hm, so this is a lefty fantasy as well as a right-wing one. What is the Guardian’s source for the claim? Answer: an op-ed over at the Huffington Post by Germany’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Peter Wittig. After offering a rather effective overview of the the security challenges deriving from climate change, Amb. Wittig notes that “there are governments that — in allusion to the ‘blue-helmet’ UN peacekeepers — are already calling for ‘green-helmets to close down coal-mines.'”
As far-fetched as the idea of “green-helmets” might sound, consider the tasks that the United Nations peacekeepers already perform today — e.g. emergency aid, development and recovery, state — and peacebuilding. Repainting blue helmets into green might be a strong signal — but would dealing with the consequences of climate change — say in precarious regions — be really very different from the tasks the blue helmets already perform today?
I’ve made a brief effort to track down the origin of the “green-helmets to close down coal-mines” quotation, but failed. Perhaps a better-informed reader can enlighten me. However, a close reading of Amb. Wittig’s op-ed reveals that he patently does not want to (i) forcibly shut any mines; (ii) create a green-helmeted environmental peace army; or (iii) destroy the free market or indeed the West. In fact, he specifically writes that “it is too early to seriously think about Council action on climate change.”
The Guardian story took the Ambassador’s allusion and converted it into an easy and misleading headline. The Heartland Institute simply swooped on the Guardian’s tale and spiced it up a little. And so a new anti-UN myth has been born.
