UN calls for carbon taxes, digital IDs, censorship, tech regulation

United Nations policy briefs published last month call on member states to make significant globalist reforms as part of a larger, encompassing plan titled “Our Common Agenda”.

In March, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres published the first part of “Our Common Agenda”. He requested approval to implement, at will, a set of undefined protocols called an “Emergency Platform” in response to global catastrophes.

“I propose that the General Assembly provide the Secretary-General and the United Nations system with a standing authority to convene and operationalize automatically an Emergency Platform in the event of a future complex global shock of sufficient scale, severity and reach,” wrote Guterres.

Without defining the term “global shock” the UN chief invoked COVID-19 and the 2022 “cost of living crisis” as examples and warned that more global shocks — driven by factors such as “climate change,” cyberattacks, or events involving “biological agents” — are impending.

In two additional policy briefs last month, Guterres called for universal welfare, which governments should distribute to citizens according to their digital IDs. Those IDs, he said, should be linked to private bank accounts:

Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. Digital technologies may help to reduce leakage, errors and costs in the design of social protection programmes.

But the concept raises concern among opponents of digital ID — the successor to vaccine passports — because of the probability of government surveillance and totalitarian overreach.

For example, while a government can use a taxpayer’s digital ID to deposit money, it could also use it to lock their bank account if they haven’t paid their carbon taxes, another proposed reform by Guterres.

Speaking of the financial sector, Guterres said countries should impose “carbon pricing, fossil fuel taxes or other environmental taxes, or through direct regulations to prevent harmful activities, with fines and penalties larger than the potential profit,” said Guterrres.

The UN has been clear that “climate change” is its main preoccupation, which is why the report calls on governments to place “climate action at the heart of the operation of markets and economies.”

“Climate change and environmental sustainability need to inform all aspects of the international financial architecture. Climate- and environment- related standards and metrics should inform business, finance, investment, and financial regulation including standards set at the international level. Systemic coherence is between environmental standard setting and economic management is essential,” says the report.

This will lead to more “climate financing” from private corporations, though Guterres laments that companies are only spending billions per year on “fighting climate change” and not trillions:

In addition, amounts mobilized from the private sector by official development finance total between $45 billion and $55 billion per year, overwhelmingly in middle-income countries. This falls well short of the call by the World Bank in 2015 for financing “from billions to trillions”, raising questions as to the effectiveness of the current model for leveraging private finance. 

In the report Guterres also pushes governments to tightly regulate digital technologies the way cars, food and drugs are regulated. This includes requiring tech companies to have “ethics and safety teams” which will enforce the UN’s ethics guidelines:

[W]e must apply the same safe design approaches and standards that we use across physical industries – cars, food, pharmaceuticals and toys – to digital technologies and platforms. Developing a shared understanding of what constitutes physical and mental harm based on universal human rights, and aligning safety standards across regions, countries and industries, can help to build a global culture of digital trust and security. Ethics and safety teams cannot be optional: technology companies must invest in standing capacities for responsible development and risk management.

In fact, any technology that does not conform to the UN’s human rights framework should be prohibited:

Consider prohibitions on the use of technology applications whose potential or actual impacts cannot be justified under international human rights law, including those that fail the necessity, distinction and proportionality tests.

Such technology includes artificial intelligence, which Guterres says should be heavily monitored and regulated by governments.

In February, Guterres demanded that private companies who do not submit to the UN’s climate agenda be shut down.

“I have a special message for fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits. If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero, with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business,” he said. [emphasis in original]

The globalist leader made the remarks during a speech in which he laid out the globalist agenda for the year, which included prohibiting “harmful speech” and “misinformation”.

“We will call for action from everyone with influence on the spread of mis- and disinformation on the internet — Governments, regulators, policymakers, technology companies, the media, civil society,” Guterres said, invoking the Holocaust to support his call for speech regulation. “Stop the hate. Set up strong guardrails. Be accountable for language that causes harm.”