UN Slows Anti-Plastic Crusade, NGOs Cry Foul

Green groups are mad they can’t force their agenda through the United Nations

Whether you know it or not, environmental activist groups are increasingly dictating how you live. They file costly lawsuits that force safe products off the market; they infiltrate regulatory agencies and punish productive companies; and they use international organizations like the United Nations (UN) to force their unpopular agenda on a world that has little interest in radical green causes.

These NGOs dominate the public discourse around chemical safety and environmental protection because they have largely rigged the regulatory process at every level. When their influence is even moderately curtailed, they protest incessantly, declaring that all stakeholders are being denied the opportunity to participate in environmental policy discussions.

A characteristic example of this rhetoric appeared in the headlines late last month. “Groups say they’re shut out of global treaty talks on plastics pollution in Bangkok,” the Associated Press (AP) reported on August 20. 

At issue was the UN’s ongoing effort to negotiate a worldwide treaty to reduce plastic waste. Industry, activists, scientists and other stakeholders routinely participate in UN treaty negotiations. But in this case, only people who belong to a national delegation or were chosen as one of two dozen invited technical experts were allowed to join in.

The rationale behind this decision was simple: the substance of the treaty–how plastic chemicals might be regulated and how the treaty could be financed–should be drafted by experts, with other stakeholders providing input later this year before the global agreement is finalized. It’s not unprecedented for technical experts to meet amongst themselves during the treaty process, though AP clearly explained why this approach still irked the environmental groups:

“Many of the groups voicing concerns about the [closed negotiations] have advocated for a strong treaty, one that limits how much plastic is produced and eliminates toxic chemicals in plastics, rather than one that only deals with plastic waste. At such a critical stage in the process, if there are not enough people in the room in Bangkok who want a meaningful treaty, it could set the stage for a weaker document, leaders at the International Pollutants Elimination Network said.” (our emphasis)

Put simply, the NGOs aren’t defending stakeholder engagement. They fear the UN member states won’t cave to their goal of capping plastic production unless they are in the room cajoling them to do so. 

Despite the objections outlined in the billionaire-funded AP story (more on that below), this is a positive development at the UN. Environmental groups have historically used intergovernmental negotiations to impose harmful chemical regulations on countries that otherwise wouldn’t accept them. The less influence NGOs have on these global talks, the better off the world will be. 

NGOs: punish industry, destroy capitalism

The primary objective of the UN's plastic treaty negotiations is to develop a comprehensive, legally binding agreement to reduce plastic pollution. If the treaty is going to serve that purpose, it’s essential to have governments, industry representatives, and scientific experts consider all the risks and benefits of global plastic regulation. 

Environmental groups, cynical and ideological to the core, are narrowly focused on fringe outcomes, in this case the eventual elimination of plastic. For instance, many high-profile environmental groups see the UN treaty as a means of advancing an outright ban on single-use plastics regardless of its economic and social consequences. These are concerns that impact people all over the world, which means governments must address them before finalizing a treaty. 

But as members of an openly anti-capitalist environmental movement, the NGOs don’t care that eliminating single-use plastics will increase food waste, greenhouse emissions, and raise food prices to levels poor countries can’t afford to pay. Their goal, as The Firebreak has documented extensively, is to punish industry and replace our mixed market economy with a global bureaucratic system managed by Marxist technocrats. We know what kind of results that command-and-control system produces: poverty and starvation.

By excluding green groups from this critical stage of the negotiations, member countries could shift the treaty away from radical policies like plastic production caps and focus on more helpful proposals. As an example, the UN could promote the implementation of better waste management in developing countries. Inadequate trash disposal is the biggest contributor to plastic pollution globally, with more than two-thirds of plastic waste produced by developing countries. The issue is readily addressed with existing infrastructure the West already utilizes, yet the NGOs have zero interest in such a practical solution.

Blocking novel technologies

Limiting NGO influence on the negotiations also offers the UN an opportunity to advance incredible recycling technologies, such as waste recovery programs built around genetically engineered microbes that literally eat plastic. Not only would this innovation keep plastic out of the environment, it would turn commonly disposed items like beverage bottles into the raw materials for other useful products. One company in Spain just started construction on a biorecycling plant that employs this technology and is scheduled to begin operating next year. 

The NGOs jeopardize this progress because they have a long history of killing technologies that fall outside their rigid ideological frame. There may be no better example than the green lobby’s effort to bully developing countries into banning GMOs. By capturing the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) negotiations, activist groups effectively passed legislation in multiple nations simultaneously. One scientist from Mexico spelled out how devastating this adversarial activism has been in developing countries:

“... [E]nvironmental groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Third World Network, RAFI and others have employed a number of strategies to influence the … Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, namely lobbying government officials and fomenting public pressure on the UN. 

This anti-GMO agenda was always a bizarre and inappropriate framing of the conference, but it was … sold to Africans and delegates from other developing countries as an international effort to protect their rich biodiversity … Yet countless people continue to suffer and die needlessly as a result of the arbitrary and unscientific restrictions forged at the UN.”

The NGOs take a similarly adversarial stance on plastic, namely that advanced recycling techniques are unacceptable because they “generate hazardous wastes, toxic air pollutants, and greenhouse gasses,” as the billionaire-funded activist group Beyond Plastics alleges. Those claims are patently false, but that’s of no concern to the activists. If they can dominate the negotiations, they get to decide what’s true.

Complicit reporters

The problem is magnified because the media refuses to scrutinize the environmental lobby’s motives. NGOs that exist to fight pollution oppose technologies that could help eliminate pollution, yet no enterprising journalist wants to ask why. It would be a difficult situation to explain except for one fact: the same wealthy foundations that fund environmental activist groups also support the media, including the AP. Here’s the disclaimer the outlet published below its coverage of the UN negotiations:

Perhaps this is why AP’s primary concern about the plastic treaty negotiations was that environmental groups were “shut out of the talks.” Foundation funding has morphed the Associated Press and other news organizations into hired guns that bolster environmentalist causes. 

Conclusion

Nearly everything environmentalists say about plastics is a lie. These materials expand access to nutritious food, clean water, and life-saving medicine—and they do all this with a smaller carbon footprint than alternative materials. The NGOs have no justification to attack plastics, and they have absolutely no business trying to strong-arm the UN into backing their extremist agenda.

For all its faults, and they are many, the United Nations has done the world an important service by putting a roadblock in front of the green lobby. It’s a powerful reminder that environmental groups can and should be restrained.