Apocalyptic Rent Seeking and the UN
Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy notes:
In 2005, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) predicted that there would be 50 million refugees in 2010 due to climate change. An enterprising reporter wondered what happened to UNEP’s prediction, and found that those areas UNEP claimed were most at risk have actually gained population. How did UNEP respond? According to Anthony Watts, UNEP tried to erase the evidence of its initial claim — without success. It seems folks at UNEP were unaware of Google caches.
Adler adds that the whole situation exposes the UN's incentives toward long-running movements focused on issues that "increase the institutional UN’s governance responsibilities, authority, legitimacy, and power" and " increase the amount of money that runs through UN mechanisms from rich countries to poor countries, with an administrative cut to the UN itself."
Apocalyptic rent seeking is a feature, not a bug, of the UN!
- Comment (3)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
Comments :
Re: Apocalyptic Rent Seeking and the UN
Great post. Wish this subject would get world-wide attention, as well as all crazy predictions that don't come true.
In Back to the Future Part II, Marty McFly travels waaaaaaayyyyy into the future...to 2015. Only 4 more years until my car gets a flux capacitor!
Apr '11
Re: Apocalyptic Rent Seeking and the UN
Mollie, Ross Conatser posted on this a few days ago as well here (and belated kudos to Ross for his hilarious post title!).
Re: Apocalyptic Rent Seeking and the UN
Charlotte,
Thanks for the link and I'm sorry I missed that great Palm Sunday post. The headline "50 Million Climate Refugees Saved or Created by the UN" is a gem.