Adopted by a United Nations General Assembly Resolution on 25 September 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is composed of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 specific measurable targets. The Agenda is a plan of action supposedly to end poverty, empower women, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all people worldwide. Paragraph 18 insists that the SDGs and its associated 169 targets ‘are integrated and indivisible’.

Even a perfunctory review of the Resolution reveals that the document constitutes a lengthy enumeration of motherhood statements which, however, in the woke-infested world of today, could unleash many harmful intended and unintended consequences for the world. One of its most contentious provisions is Goal 13 which deals with ‘urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’. This Goal directs nations to ‘Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning’.

As all Goals are integrated and indivisible, it is appropriate to also refer to paragraph 24 where it is stated that:

We are committed to ending poverty in all its forms and dimensions including by eradicating extreme poverty by 2030. All people must enjoy a basic standard of living including through social protection systems. We are also determined to end hunger and to achieve food security as a matter of priority and to end all forms of malnutrition. We will devote resources to developing rural areas and sustainable agriculture and fisheries supporting smallholder farmers, especially women farmers, herders and fishers in developing countries particularly least develop countries.

It is instructive, considering that the Agenda’s Goals and targets are ‘integrated and indivisible’, to unravel the relationship between ‘climate change’ action and ‘food security’. The importance of demystifying this relationship is even more relevant in view of the stated commitment in the 2030 Agenda to undertake ‘urgent action on climate change’ to make ‘fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services’. In this context, we will argue that Goal 13, which imposes an obligation on signatories to combat climate change, itself causes or contributes to famine. Specifically, the argument will consider whether the goal of zero emissions by 2050, and the achievement of food security can coexist, even if private business strategies were aligned with the Agenda’s SDGs.

The 2030 Agenda states that ‘Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time’. It also warns that due to climate change, ‘The survival of many societies … is at risk.’ There is an obviously apocalyptic tone to such a call for urgent action to radically transform the world: ‘We may be the last to have a chance of saving the planet,’ the document claims. Thus, in its Goal 13, entitled Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, this Resolution talks about the implementation of climate change measures through ‘national policies, strategies and planning’.

The 2030 Agenda goes on to declare that ‘national parliaments through their enactment of legislation and adoption of budgets,’ are responsible for the ‘effective implementation of our commitments.’ The leaders who signed this Resolution are ‘determined to address decisively the threat posed by climate change’. ‘The global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible international cooperation aimed at accelerating the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions and addressing adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change,’ the document states.

In its goals and objectives, there is a pledge by signatories to implement, in their respective nations, a ‘supremely ambitious and transformational vision,’ which includes the application of supposedly ‘climate-sensitive’ technology. Due to such policies inspired by the 2030 Agenda, we are now being warned about possible global famine that could be caused by weather events and natural disasters. This is an ironic development, considering that paragraph 24, cited above, imposes an obligation on signatories to end ‘hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations … to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round’.

The Dutch government recently released a statement that attempts to divert the attention of the local public from its own extreme anti-agricultural policies, claiming that ‘because of climate change, poor harvests, armed conflict, and population growth, the danger of famine is increasing’.

In the United States, where the Agenda is implemented as a climate change policy, farmers can no longer find enough nitrogen chemical fertilisers to grow their crops. The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions has also led to the considerable collapse of the current energy system. Accordingly, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently released a disturbing report that essentially warns the American public about the inevitable food shortage.

Many other countries, including Canada and Germany, are presently pursuing a similar globalist agenda, reducing nitrogen in the environment by at least 30 per cent. Joshua Phillip, an investigative reporter and recognised expert on asymmetric hybrid warfare, reports that nitrogen reduction policies and trends to restrict chemical fertilisers in most countries around the world will inevitably lead to food shortages, such as what happened in Sri Lanka in the spring of 2021. The Sri Lankan President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, banned the import of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, forcing farmers to convert to organic farming, essentially ‘overnight’. As a result, food production in that country collapsed and the economy went into free fall. Kenny Torella, commenting on the President’s decision, reported that:

Runaway inflation reached 54.6 per cent… and the South Asian country is now headed toward bankruptcy. Nine in 10 Sri Lankan families are skipping meals, and many are standing in line for days in the hope of acquiring fuel.

The agrochemical ban caused rice production to drop 20 per cent in the six months after it was implemented, causing a country that had been self-sufficient in rice production to spend $450 million on rice imports – much more than the $400 million that would’ve been saved by banning fertiliser imports.

The production of tea, Sri Lanka’s literal cash crop – it’s the country’s biggest export – fell by 18 per cent. The government has had to spend hundreds of millions on subsidies and compensation to farmers in an effort to make up for the loss of productivity.

Food shortages in that country were exacerbated by policies based on the 2030 Agenda. Such policies have resulted in rising interest rates, price inflation, and excessive environmental regulations that, combined, have created very serious problems for the agrarian and livestock sector.

The cult of environmentalism fiercely promoted by the 2030 Agenda constitutes one of the main causes of hunger now and in the future. Of course, ‘running out of food’ is not something that occurs by chance or cannot be avoided. It is the unrelenting threat of global warming and environmental damage that drives governments to implement such irresponsible programs.

In this regard, on September 25, 2015, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Australia, joined 193 leaders and ministers from around the world at the United Nations in New York to endorse the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As a consequence, Australia is now supporting all these initiatives associated with the Agenda, including extreme climate change policies and renewable energy policies. Hence, it should come as no surprise that Australian governments across all its jurisdictions have embraced the idea that global warming is happening, that humans are to blame, and that doing something drastic about it is in the best interests of the country.

Within this context, there is no doubt that Australia’s notorious Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023, when adopted, may well strengthen the application of the official narrative around the ‘settled science’ of climate change. In fact, the draft Exposure of the Bill lists ‘harm to the Australian environment’ as one of several opinions to be classified as worthy of a free speech ban!

The theory of climate change is based on the belief that rising CO2 levels increase the temperature of the atmosphere. Despite this degree of terrifying environmental alarmism, and monumental government spending to curb ‘carbon emissions,’ historically, temperature rises have often preceded high CO2 levels, entirely destroying this theory of cause and effect. The fact is that the world has always warmed and cooled, and the anthropomorphic theory of global warming contradicts what we know historically to be the case.

Carbon dioxide is essential for all life on Earth and is favourable for nature. According to the late Professor David Bellamy OBE, an eminent botanist and conservationist in the United Kingdom, carbon dioxide is the world’s most important airborne fertiliser. According to him, ‘Global warming is a largely natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.’ Over millennia, plant and animal life thrived a hundred million years ago, when CO2 levels were much higher than they are today. And yet, the Earth did not overheat.

Models are therefore wrong to predict that by shutting down our essential fossil fuel industry, the Earth’s temperature can be controlled to within one or two degrees. Still, the Australian government has pledged to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050 and to reduce those emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels over the next seven years. Similarly, each Australian state has set interim emissions reduction targets by 2030. For example, Western Australia has pledged, over the next five years, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent below 2020 levels.

However, the ‘science’ of climate change is far from an exact and incontrovertible science. Just to give this example, a total of 1,878 leading scientists and practitioners have jointly signed the World Climate Declaration, an official document that entirely dismisses the existence of a climate crisis and insists that carbon dioxide is highly beneficial to the Earth. Among the signatories of the Declaration are two Nobel laureates – physicist John Francis Clauser of the United States and Norwegian-American Ivar Giaever. Along with other renowned scientists who have signed the Declaration, they point out that the Earth’s climate has varied since it existed. Since ‘The Little Ice Age’ did not end until 1850, ‘it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.’ The Declaration confidently states that carbon dioxide is actually ‘essential to all life on Earth’ and ‘is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide’. They conclude that ‘there is no climate emergency … there is no cause for panic and alarm’.

Be that as it may, the Australian government is determined to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050 and to reduce those emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels over the next seven years. In focusing on this effort, the government may have succumbed to the manipulation of the masses by the media. For example, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) indicated that, according to data collected by its Vote Compass, Australians have singled out ‘climate change’ as the most pressing issue of our time, and that ‘many are seeking answers about what policies each party has on one of the most pressing issues of our time’.

Now, as mentioned earlier, carbon dioxide is an essential ingredient of life on Earth: humans, animals, plants, and insects only recycle a small fraction of carbon dioxide compared to carbon in its multiple forms emitted by natural causes. Carbon dioxide comes from the Earth’s interior at a rate regulated by the solar and cosmic cycles in which the planet orbits. The thin, solidified skin tenses and cracks under gravitational and electromagnetic forces to release heat and carbon-rich material into the oceans and atmosphere.

Nevertheless, the United Nations (UN), an organisation that has failed abysmally in its primary objective of maintaining peace on Earth, have fostered an unfounded fear of carbon dioxide, a clean, non-polluting by-product of burning hydrocarbon fuels (particularly fossil fuels). This scaremongering has been accomplished by providing children with misinformation via the education system, and the unqualified support of the media, and governments.

Going back to the 2030 Agenda, this Resolution states a concern about the supposed ‘significant gap between the aggregate effect of parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with having a likely chance of bolding the increase in global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, or 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels’. Claims like this suggest that governments are able to control the global average temperature to less than 1.5 degrees by limiting human recycling of a gas essential to life. Obviously, this must be subjected not only to rigorous scientific analysis, but also to simple common sense.

On September 8, 2022, as mentioned above, Australia passed legislation to reduce carbon emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2050. This disastrous legislation for the national economy continues the demonisation of coal-fired power plants in Australia. It reveals its proponents’ zealous belief in the power of renewable energy. However, coal has been responsible for making the lives of Australians liveable since the early 19th Century. This is poetically illustrated in Jeannie Gunn’s classic novel We of the Never Never, published in 1908. It is a story of the Australian outback in difficult pioneering times. She described the difficult existence on earth before coal-fired power plants provided the cheap and abundant energy that has since enriched the lives of people in the city and countryside.

To conclude, the 2030 Agenda is a plan to ‘save’ the planet from the effects of climate change. Obviously, the document also includes other projects that are equally as destructive to society, such as a veiled call for radical feminism, unrestricted abortion and transgenderism. The idea is to make mankind embark on a collective journey to facilitate the imposition of totalitarian governance on the world.

Mankind needs to wake up to these apocalyptic fallacies contained in the United Nations 2030 Agenda and resist all efforts to impose their dystopian goals on us. And, as argued in this paper, the most promising way to achieve this is to point to the internal inconsistency between ‘climate change’ and ‘food security’. While both are essential aspects of the Agenda, they cannot coexist together. ‘You won’t own anything, and you’ll be starving!’

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Augusto Zimmermann is professor and head of law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education and served as associate dean at Murdoch University. He is also a former commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia. 

Gabriël A. Moens AM is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Queensland and served as pro vice-chancellor and dean at Murdoch University. 

Zimmermann and Moens are the authors of ‘The Unlucky Country’ (Locke Press, 2024), available at https://lockepress.com/product/the-unlucky-country/

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