Kofi Annan’ s Climate Cocktail Dinatoire in Geneva

In case anyone’s lost track of Kofi Annan, it’s time for a reality check. During his final year as self-styled “Chief Diplomat of the World” at the UN, he kept intimating that he aspired to a humble retirement tutoring young girls in farming techniques in rural Africa. It hasn’t worked out that way.

Fresh from collecting yet another prize spun off by a UN-centric universe in which one of the chief activities seems to be giving each other awards (this one from the Central European University in Budapest, founded by Mark Malloch Brown’s former landlord, George Soros, who was on hand June 19 to share the stage) Kofi Annan will be hosting a “high-level” forum this Tuesday and Wednesday in Geneva. The theme is “Climate Justice.” The guest list features the usual roster of “leaders from all sectors of society and from around the globe” — all, that is, except anyone who might vigorously disagree with the endless redistributionist schemes in which Kofi Annan & pals figure as the sacred arbiters of who gets what. (And, due to the vicissitudes of fate and that Oil-for-Food indictment issued last year in the U.S. Southern District, Benon Sevan — whom Kofi Annan once hand-picked as a natural for this sort of exercise — is unlikely to leave his native Cyprus to attend the Geneva festivities).

The event will include an evening “boat cruise and cocktail dinatoire on Lake Leman,” , courtesy of the Swiss government — the same Swiss government that has made available to Kofi’s foundation a deluxe villa next door to the UN’s palatial complex in Geneva (and the same Swiss government which enjoys quite a job mill on the back of the ever-expanding UN empire, retiree projects and affiliates). Perhaps such amenities are necessary to offset the heavy labors of fashioning rationing schemes for the planet — especially as ordinary taxpayers wake up here and there (check out the astounding graphic linked in this June 9 Wall Street Journal online piece by Pete Du Pont) to the reality that such schemes would cost trillions, and are far less likely to tame the world’s weather than to crash the global economy. That is a scenario in which the poorest people of the world would be well and truly and — yes – sustainably devastated, while Kofi & Co., gazing at the Swiss sunset over cocktails while cruising Lac Leman and crafting “Climate Justice,” would be among the least vulnerable. Nice work, if you can get it.