In the run up to the next Earth Summit to be held in Rio in June of this year, the global leviathan that is the United Nations bares its teeth. A continuing stream of publications is pouring down from every corner of the transnational community, in essence calling for global governance of the environment as well as a stark reduction in the global human population. These two items are very much intertwined, according to the growing pile of UN papers flying from the supranational tree, all basically stating that the first is necessary in order to facilitate the latter.