Environmentalists are incensed that many of the developed nations, led by the U.S. are promoting free markets and free trade. They are placing banners with the slogan "Don't Let Big Businesses Rule the World" at the summit. To environmentalists, wealth is somehow "the root of evil behind environmental problems, when in reality, all evidence is to the contrary," claimed  Chris Horner of the think tank Competitive Free Enterprise in Washington, D.C. Horner notes that the only solution to environmental woes is a wealthier planet. "Wealthier is healthier and cleaner."

The U.S. is firing back at the environmentalists. U.S. AID Administrator Andrew Natsios accused environmental groups yesterday of endangering the lives of millions of famine-threatened Africans by encouraging their governments to reject genetically modified U.S. food aid. "They can play these games with Europeans, who have full stomachs, but it is revolting and despicable to see them do so when the lives of Africans are at stake," Mr. Natsios said in an interview.

"They are using big-time, very well-organized propaganda the likes of which I have never seen before" in 12 years of American-led famine-relief efforts, said Mr. Natsios, who could not persuade the Zambians to accept U.S. food aid. "The Bush administration is not going to sit there and let these groups kill millions of poor people in southern Africa through their ideological campaign," Mr. Natsios said on the sidelines of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

In spite of the strong possibility of massive famine in Zambia, environmentalists have been intensively lobbying Zambia, Mozambique and other regional states not to take genetically modified U.S. corn. Major research studies in the past several years has shown the corn is safe, but the environmental groups say it could cause dangerous mutations if it grows alongside the local varieties.

Without any research to back them up, environmentalists have also told Zambian and other African leaders that it could endanger the health of those who eat it. Zimbabwe has refused modified U.S. corn on the grounds that farmers might plant some of the seeds, which might cross-fertilize with the country's native corn. In turn, this would jeopardize the country's future food exports to Europe, which only allows a handful of genetically modified crops.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 13 million people face starvation in southern Africa, with up to 300,000 dying in the next six months. This does not seem to concern environmentalists, however. Prior to the start of the World Summit, one environmentalist claimed, "There is a lot of quality to be had in poverty." He also claimed that electricity is "destroying" the cultures of the world's poor." Most people, especially Americans, do not realize that environmental leadership do not understand the anti-human, anti-civilization goals of environmental leadership.

Gar Smith, editor of Earth Island Institute, publisher of much of the environmental literature, "The idea that people are poor doesn't mean that they are not living good lives," Smith said. "I don't think a lot of electricity is a good thing. It is the fuel that powers a lot of multi-national imagery," Smith said. According to Smith, electricity can wreak havoc on cultures. "I have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity," he said.

Environmentalists destroy the environment as well as people. Dr. Kelvin Kemm, a nuclear physicist in South Africa who is affiliated with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) in Washington D.C., said that Greenpeace gave the Government of Botswana $600 million to no longer kill elephants. The ban on hunting allowed the elephant herd to become over populated, which caused the trampling and destruction of the elephant's habitat and the starvation of thousand's of elephants.

This elitist, god-playing mentality is common amongst environmentalists. Bjorn Lomborg, former Greenpeace member and activist, says that they are wrong, sometimes with deadly consequences. He conducted a multi-year study and concluded that 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 writes that "resources have become more abundant, not less so." The earth'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."

"Mr. Bush, it would seem, had best learn when to nip outrageous, mendacious rhetoric in the bud before he nurtures it by his silence," Horner said. "Barring such leadership ... the U.S. faces a grim future in this community and among easily led peoples everywhere."

Read more about the dangers of UN sustainable development and how the earth's citizens and environment are better served through individual freedom, free market enterprise, and property rights in "Freedom 21, an Alternative to Agenda 21."