Donna Laframboise has a posting on the sheer scale of the World Wildlife Fund (cross- posted at wattsupwiththat). No longer a small cuddly charity it has global revenues of €524m, 5,000 staff and a presence in 30 countries.

This is Part 1. What will part 2 bring? Might I guess that it could be on future ambitions?

Might I suggest that Donna Laframboise will direct us to pages 26 & 27 of the 2010 Annual Review (Page 14 on Google Docs)? WWF is celebrating its’ 50^th Anniversary, so naturally it will look ahead.

The Section is “WHAT WE WILL ACHIEVE“. There is no “might” or “by supporting others”. It is what WWF will achieve on their on.

The first is mild and a laudatory objective, well-within their remit.

By 2022 “the number of tigers in the wild has doubled from just 3,200 in 2010.”

That is great and why many support the WWF, along with saving pandas and polar bears. Although, they might need to persuade others, like the Indonesian and Indian Governments, to do most of the work. Next is a bit more ambitious.

By 2030 “the amazon’s land and freshwater ecosystems are properly conserved, so they’re no longer under threat.”

A bit more ambitious, but short of funding thousands of armed environment enforcement officers to police over a million square miles of Brasil, Peru, Columbia, Bolivia and Venezuela, along with the necessary legal powers this may not be achieved without some assistance. Sovereignty issues spring to mind.

By 2020 “Through energy efficiency, sustainable management of natural resources and emissions cuts, China’s economy is growing within the capacity of one planet.“

Now, unless this is meaningless guff, China will make actual cuts in their emissions through the actions of WWF (not the UNIPCC). Currently the Chinese government has said it will grow their emissions by less the nation’s growth rate. With 10% growth, it means the current plans are for China’s emissions will more than double from 2010 levels and still meet the targets. An actual cuts would mean closure of new coal-fired power stations, closing the airports, denying hundreds of millions the prospect of car ownership, covering the area in windmills and a drastic reduction of growth to maybe 2-3%. This could only be achieved by a coup d’etat followed by a government as brutal as Mao Zedong or Josef Stalin in their primes. But the biggest one is.

By 2050 “Global Greenhouse gas emissions have been cut by 80% compared to 1990 levels”

This is the biggest ambition by far. Since 1990 greenhouse gas emissions has increased substantially. So the level of cuts in little more than a generation is immense. There is no global agreement in place, nor is there likely to be. Even if there were an agreement, it cannot be achieved without vast human suffering (here & here). To impose a reduction not just in growth, but in living standards as well, would require a highly repressive global regime, the like of which the world has never seen. There are three possible scenarios

1. WWF has advanced plans underway for World Domination

First it will take over the UNIPCC (where it is already highly influential). Then it will organise a coup d’etat in China. It will then use this as a springboard for world domination.

2. The WWF has a vastly overblown sense of its’ own importance

The WWF has been taken over by a bunch of climate extremists who have lost a true perspective on reality.

3. The WWF does not internally check its’ major annual report

Which means that the longer reports WWF produces on climate change, (the famous grey literature on UNIPPC AR4) are probably not checked as well. WWF therefore needs to clean-up its act if it is to be taken seriously as an environmental organisation.

One might notice an ascending order of likelihood in the scenarios 🙂