Erik Lindberg@ErikLindy
Maurice Strong, the Canadian oilman who became a UN diplomat (1929–2015), is often seen as the key figure behind the global warming or climate change movement we know today. It’s not just a natural scientific awakening, but rather a carefully crafted story about climate change that was intentionally created through UN organizations he either started or had control over. The goal was to push for more control over countries, share wealth more evenly between rich and poor nations and limit industrial activities—often under the guise of “sustainable development.”
Strong’s influence is all over the system that supports today’s climate efforts.
- He was the Secretary-General of the important 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm—the first big global meeting to focus on environmental issues as a shared responsibility. This directly led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with Strong as its first Executive Director. UNEP became the main force behind global environmental policies.
- As UNEP’s head, he organized the first international expert meetings on climate change, setting the stage for seeing it as a common global threat.
- In 1988, UNEP (with his influence still strong) teamed up with the World Meteorological Organization to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the group whose reports shape global policies, agreements and huge financial commitments.
- He was Secretary-General of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (UNCED), which produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the foundational treaty for the Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agreement, and all subsequent COP meetings. Rio also launched Agenda 21 and the "sustainable development" paradigm that ties environmental limits to economic controls.
Strong openly viewed environmental crises as vehicles for larger political transformation. He lamented the difficulty of overriding national sovereignty for "global environmental cooperation" and suggested that lifestyles of the affluent middle class: high meat consumption, fossil fuels, air-conditioning, suburban homes were "not sustainable." In a widely cited 1990 hypothetical scenario, he mused about world leaders concluding that rich countries posed the principal risk to Earth and needing to sign agreements reducing their environmental impact. This has been framed by critics as a blueprint for engineered economic contraction.
His connections raised eyebrows about his true intentions. He was linked to the Club of Rome (known for its Limits to Growth ideas), the Rockefeller connections, the World Economic Forum and the Earth Charter initiative (where he worked with leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev). Strong’s own statements and actions suggest he views ecological limits as a shared threat that could bring people together under new leadership, possibly needing stronger governments that aren’t so dependent on elections when big environmental decisions need to be made quickly.
Some people believe this was more about political economy than climate science. The IPCC was set up to focus mainly on human (CO₂-caused) factors, which might have overlooked natural changes. Early predictions, like the UNEP claims that countries would be wiped out by sea-level rise by 2000 or that 50 million people would become climate refugees by 2010, didn’t pan out, but the system kept growing. Strong’s involvement in scandals like the UN Oil-for-Food program (where he went to China to avoid being investigated) and his background in the oil industry make it seem like he’s acting hypocritical: someone who made money from fossil fuels is now trying to create systems to limit them.
