Sustainable Development: Maurice Strong

Sustainable Development, Agenda 2030, and the Great Reset (full series)
Sustainability | Origins | ESG and Social Credit Scores
Bad Economics | Maurice Strong | UN History

Who Was Maurice Strong?

Maurice (pronounced “Morris”) Strong, a Canadian who became wealthy in the oil industry, was probably the most influential driver behind the entire sustainability movement. Though his name is not well known outside of UN circles, he practically invented “sustainability” and was behind much of the UN-driven environmental movement. His roles included:

• Secretary-General, UN Conference on the Human Environment (1972 Stockholm conference)
• Founding Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
• Foundation Director, World Economic Forum
• Co-Chairman, Council of the World Economic Forum
• Senior Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
• Senior Advisor to World Bank President James Wolfensohn
• Commissioner, World Commission on Environment and Development
• Secretary-General UN, Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)
• Chairman the Earth Council
• Commissioner, Commission on Global Governance
• Member, Club of Rome
• Board member, United Nations Foundation
• Board member, International Institute for Sustainable Development
• Chairman, World Resources Institute

These are but a few of Strong’s activities. He died in 2015, but his influence remains. In an obituary on the World Economic Forum website, WEF founder Klaus Schwab described Strong as his mentor and credited him with elevating the WEF to the prominence it enjoys today:

He deeply incorporated the World Economic Forum’s mission of improving the state of the world into everything he did. He was a great visionary, always ahead of our times in his thinking. He was my mentor since the creation of the Forum: a great friend; an indispensable advisor; and, for many years, a member of our Foundation Board. Without him, the Forum would not have achieved its present significance.[1]

Another tribute called him, “the founding giant of the global environment movement.”[2] This is important because Strong made no bones about his radicalism. He described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.”[3] And many of his views are becoming mainstream political narratives. For example, Strong explained in a 1991 UNCED report:

Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, ownership of motor vehicles, golf courses, small electric appliances, home and work place air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.[4]

Strong went even further. In the 1992 pamphlet “Stockholm to Rio: A Journey Down a Generation,” he suggested that nations would have to surrender sovereignty to global dictates:

The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security. [emphasis added][5]

In a 1990 interview, Strong discussed an idea for a novel he had. He tells the reporter:

The World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over a thousand CEOs, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set economic agendas for the year ahead. With this as a setting, he then asked:

What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? . . . So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about? [emphasis added]

He continued:

This group of world leaders form a secret society to bring about an economic collapse. It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists. They’re world leaders. They’ve positioned themselves in the world’s commodity and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock exchanges and computers and gold supplies, a panic. Then they prevent the world’s stock markets from closing. . . . The markets can’t close. The rich countries . . . [Strong makes a slight motion with his fingers as if he were flipping a cigarette out the window.][6]

The reporter recognizes that this is not mere fantasy, writing: “I sit there spellbound. This is not any ordinary storyteller. This is Maurice Strong. He knows these world leaders. He is, in fact, co-chairman of Council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it.”[7]

Strong tells him, “I probably shouldn’t be saying things like this.”[8]

Strong was instrumental in founding, advising or supporting numerous organizations, and joined the boards[9] of many, among them:

• Aspen Institute
• Bretton Woods Committee
• Commission on Global Governance
• Earth Charter
• International Institute for Environment and Development
• International Institute for Sustainable Development
• International Union for the Conservation of Nature
• Rockefeller Foundation
• University for Peace
• World Wildlife Fund[10]
• World Economic Forum
• World Resources Institute

In 2005, Strong was embroiled in Iraq’s oil-for-food scandal, which ensnared top UN officials, including Kojo Annan, son of then Secretary General Kofi Annan.[11] Strong denied any involvement. He evaded investigation in the oil-for-food scandal, with the UN claiming he was in the Dominican Republic, ill, and unavailable for interviews.[12] Shortly thereafter he left the UN and moved to China, but remained involved in shady UN dealings.[13]

The Great Reset

The WEF has not suggested the world should collapse, but Klaus Schwab has repeatedly stated his call for global governance in one form or another, using crises to justify its need. In 2020 he used the pandemic to advocate for a “Great Reset” of capitalism. Citing what he claimed was a looming depression following the COVID lockdowns, he said:

To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.[14]

With that, the WEF launched the “Great Reset Initiative” to guide “the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons.”[15]

While they have been working assiduously to achieve the great reset through all the means discussed in this paper, they have not yet succeeded, though they are well on the way. But some form of crisis, be it “climate change,” the pandemic, or whatever, has been the vehicle to urge the UN agenda on the world. This year is no different. In 2023, WEF members have predicted a “catastrophic global cyber attack” likely to occur in the next two years.[16] “This is a global threat, and it calls for a global response and enhanced and coordinated action,” said Jürgen Stock, INTERPOL secretary-general.[17]

Will this be another unforced error or manufactured crisis, like the global COVID shutdown the WEF advocated? A large-scale cyberattack is indeed a possibility, given the state of world hostilities. But the question is, who would carry it out? It would likely be a UN member nation, and we can probably guess who—e.g., China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran. And yet Klaus Schwab has expressed his admiration for the “Chinese model” as the government of the future.[18]

Practically everything Maurice Strong stated about our future, both in his fantasy book idea and on his very public platforms, has been incorporated in the WEF agenda one way or another. For example, while Klaus Schwab never actually said we will eat insects and like it or that we’ll own nothing and be happy, the WEF did post articles saying all these things. One piece is titled, “Why We Need to Give Insects the Role They Deserve in Our Food Systems.”[19] NPR obliged with an article titled, “Your Ancestors Probably Ate Insects. So What’s Bugging You?”[20] And we will eat less meat if Klaus has his way. In 2016 the WEF posted an article and an embedded Facebook video predicting how life will be in 2030. These are the exact words from the video:[21]

“You will own nothing and be happy.”
“Whatever you want you’ll rent, and it will be delivered by drone.”
“The US won’t be the world’s leading superpower.”
“A handful of countries will dominate.”
“You’ll eat much less meat.”
“A billion people will be displaced by climate change.”
“We’ll have to do a better job of welcoming and integrating refugees.”
“There will be a global price on carbon; This will help make fossil fuels history.”

The video also mentioned future tech, like 3-D printing of human organs and travel to Mars to keep things upbeat. But the WEF will have no hand in those things. Its role is strictly political and dedicated to UN Agenda 2030. Who will be the “handful of countries who dominate”? If the U.S. loses world dominance, our enemies—those with the military power to do so—will take its place. So we will have China, which gave us the pandemic, and Russia, which gave us the war in Ukraine, and a few more thugs overseeing things. Strong would approve.

In the next installment, the socialist aspect of sustainability and indeed every UN agenda must be understood in the context of the UN’s creation.

[1] Klaus Schwab, “Maurice Strong: An Appreciation,” Weforum.org, November 29, 2015, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/11/maurice-strong-an-appreciation/.

[2] Anita Gordon, “A Tribute to the Founding Giant of the Global Environment Movement,” World Bank Blogs, December 8, 2015, https://blogs.worldbank.org/climatechange/tribute-founding-giant-global-environment-movement.

[3] AZQuotes.com, “Maurice Strong,” Accessed January 5, 2023, https://www.azquotes.com/author/14256-Maurice_Strong.

[4] Larry Bell, “Let’s Be Very Clear Mr. Kerry: No Scientific Evidence of ‘Dangerous’ Human Climate Influence Exists,” Forbes, February 24, 2014,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/24/lets-be-very-clear-mr-kerry-no-scientific-evidence-of-dangerous-human-climate-influence-exists/.

[5] AZQuotes.com, “Maurice Strong,” https://www.azquotes.com/quote/595340.

[6] Daniel Wood, “The Wizard of Baca Grande,” May 1990, 10, https://vdocuments.site/maurice-strong-wizard-baca-grande-1990.html.

[7] Wood, “The Wizard of Baca Grande.”

[8] Wood, “The Wizard of Baca Grande.”

[9] Lee Duigon, “The High Priest of Humanism: Meet the UN’s Maurice Strong,” Chalcedon, March 22, 2004, https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-high-priest-of-humanism-meet-the-uns-maurice-strong.

[10] Matthew Ehret, “The Birth of a Global Nation: What Makes a Modern Rhodes Scholar?,” Strategic Culture Foundation, August 13, 2020, https://strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/13/birth-global-nation-what-makes-modern-rhodes-scholar/.

[11] Sharon Otterman, “IRAQ: Oil for Food Scandal,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 28, 2005, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/iraq-oil-food-scandal.

[12] CBC News, “Strong Denies Part in UN Oil-for-Food Scandal,” April 19, 2005, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/strong-denies-part-in-un-oil-for-food-scandal-1.540516.

[13] Fox News, “At the United Nations, the Curious Career of Maurice Strong,” January 13, 2015, https://www.foxnews.com/story/at-the-united-nations-the-curious-career-of-maurice-strong.

[14] Klaus Schwab, “Now Is the Time for a ‘Great Reset.’” World Economic Forum, June 3, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/now-is-the-time-for-a-great-reset/.

[15] World Economic Forum, “The Great Reset,” September 21, 2020,

https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/.

[16] Athena Mallis, “A Catastrophic Global Cyber Attack Could Happen in the Next Two Years: World Economic Forum,” Digital Nation, January 19, 2023, https://www.digitalnationaus.com.au/news/a-catastrophic-global-cyber-attack-could-happen-in-the-next-two-years-world-economic-forum-589902.

[17] Spencer Feingold, “Experts at Davos 2023 Call for a Global Response to the Gathering ‘Cyber Storm,’” World Economic Forum, January 18, 2023, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/cybersecurity-storm-2023-experts-davos23/.

[18] Bradford Betz, “World Economic Forum Chair Klaus Schwab Declares on Chinese State TV: ‘China Is a Model for Many Nations,’” Fox News, November 23, 2022, https://www.foxnews.com/world/world-economic-forum-chair-klaus-schwab-declares-chinese-state-tv-china-model-many-nations.

[19] Antoine Hubert, “Why We Need to Give Insects the Role They Deserve in Our Food Systems.” World Economic Forum, July 12, 2021, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/why-we-need-to-give-insects-the-role-they-deserve-in-our-food-systems/.

[20] Paul Chisholm, “Your Ancestors Probably Ate Insects. So What’s Bugging You?,” NPR, July 16, 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/16/628989973/many-of-our-ancestors-ate-insects-so-what-s-bugging-you.

[21] Ceri Parker, “8 Predictions for the World in 2030,” World Economic Forum, November 21, 2016, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/.