The Climate Change Industry and the Religion of Green

We are so lucky that Al Gore’s “true planetary emergency” did not take place. He predicted it ten years ago at the Sundance Film Festival where his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” premiered.  It was the result of an environmental crusade he embarked upon that would make him a billionaire, a Nobel Prize and a Golden Globe winner  – “Educating the masses that global warming is about to toast our ecology and our way of life.” http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2006-al-gore-does-sundance

His dire predictions that the planet will be flooded, islands will be swallowed up by the melting of the glaciers, and the planet will roast did not happen.  The surface temperatures have increased in some areas thanks to El Nino, a natural event, not because of anthropogenic CO2, the gas of plant life. 

Dr. John Christy, Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama Huntsville, is quoted:  http://whatssupwiththat.com/2015/12/19/uah-un-climate-change-goal-new-trend-analysis-shows-were-there-now/

“The fastest warming place on Earth over the past 37 years has been in the Arctic Ocean north of the Svalbard archipelago, where temperatures have been rising 0.5 C (about 0.9 degrees F) per decade. The fastest cooling spot was over the eastern Antarctic near Dome C. Temperatures there have been falling at the rate of 0.41 C (about 0.74 degrees F) per decade.”

According to Dr. Roy Spencer, the global-average warmth during El Nino is caused by the solar energy but also by the vertical circulation of the Pacific Ocean basin.  http://drroyspencer.com/2016/01/what-causes-el-nino-warmth/

“The short answer is that, during El Nino, there is an average decrease in the vertical overturning and mixing of cold, deep ocean waters with solar-heated warm surface waters. The result is that the surface waters become warmer than average, and deeper waters become colder than average. The opposite occurs during La Nina.”

Non-scientists confuse weather events with climate and base their decision to support the anthropogenic global warming theory now termed climate change on “consensus science” which would be a derisive designation if the stakes were not so expensive for humanity. Consensus means agreement of opinion; science is based on fact, not opinion. Data seem to contradict supporters of the climate change industry but it does not slow down their rabid assault on civilization. Real scientists, labeled deniers and skeptics, are marginalized, ridiculed, fired, and even made subjects of inquiries resembling witch hunts.

Cashing in billions and trillions on weather and on climate that has been changing for millennia, on fear of planetary Armageddon, is just one aspect of the nefarious Agenda 21, a document signed in 1992 by 178 countries, including the United States, whose linchpin is Sustainable Development, controlling almost every aspect of business activity and human existence, now expanded into Agenda 2030, as some dubbed it “Agenda 21 on steroids.”

The fact, that Congress has not ratified the 40-chapter document, has not stopped every administration since to implement Agenda 21 through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who received grants from the federal government and then distributed those funds around the country to entice them to accept and implement Agenda 21 at the state and local levels.

Destroying capitalism and rearranging life in accordance with the dreams of elitist one world bureaucrats, rewilding the planet and reintroducing grey wolves, high-rise mixed- use buildings with tiny apartment living, population control, replacement of cars with light rail and biking, elimination of suburbia and of private property is truly the plan behind Agenda 21. Its environmentalist “useful idiots” supporters have not bothered to read the ample document released under the aegis of United Nations.

I wrote about the transformation of U.N.’s Agenda 21 into Agenda 2030 and explained the core goals of this lengthy document. http://canadafreepress.com/article/75315

Man has not been responsible for climate change over the millennia; the Vostok ice core samples have proven that; nor was man responsible for the Little Ice Age in the Middle Ages that had caused famine and death due to shortened food growing seasons and freezing temperatures that even affected Napoleon’s unprepared army in Russia. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.html
 

John Kerry told the crowd at COP21 conference in Paris that global warming is junk science yet they are still going to fleece us with the fake climate change industry fees and taxes.

“The fact is that even if every single American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels out of their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what, that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.  If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions, it wouldn’t be enough. Not when more than 65 percent of the world’s pollution comes from the developing world.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAtiygrbTSg
 

As the planet did not cooperate to deliver the global warming they had hoped for, the radical environmentalists renamed it climate change – and it is a very profitable industry of renewables, carbon swaps, solar panels, biofuels, and wind turbines.

Even though the billionaire father of the global new world order Agenda 21, now renamed Agenda 2030, the Canadian Maurice Strong, passed away on November 27, 2015, there are important supporters who have picked up the fleecing torch of “climatism,” a potential cash cow worth trillions of dollars.  

In 1976 Maurice Strong was the head of the newly created Petro-Canada, advised the gas industry, and made billions in oil and carbon trade-offs. He was alleged to have been a member of the Board of Directors of the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange, “the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emissions registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.”

Fox News called Maurice Strong the “godfather of the environmental movement,” the founding director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi.  It is interesting that China was the place where the “self-declared, life-long socialist” chose to live for a while and die, in “one of the world’s biggest producers of industrial pollution, [which] has been profiting from the trading of carbon emission credits – thanks to heavily politicized U.N.-backed environmental deals engineered by Strong in the 1990s.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/02/08/at-united-nations-curious-career-maurice-strong.html

The whole agenda pushed by the U.N. hurts the interests of the American people. Congressman Mike Rogers (R-AL) has introduced a bill to restore U.S. sovereignty and withdraw U.S. from the U.N., a corrupt organization dubbed the “dictators club.” The bill, titled The American Sovereignty and Restoration Act of 2015 (H.R. 1205), faces an uphill battle as Congress seems unwilling to make and pass laws that represent the interests of the American people. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr1205/text

In Siskiyou County, the fifth largest county by land mass in California, on the Oregon border, ranching has kept the area unspoiled but the environmentalists have decided to reintroduce the grey wolf, endangering 45,000 people and the ranchers’ herds of cattle grazing freely on the land. The city residents believe that the introduction of “majestic predators howling in some distant corner of their state” is romantic. Nobody really understands that rewilding at the expense of humans  is one of the goals of Agenda 21. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article51700790.html

Andrea Hutchinson transformed herself from a housewife and mother to agricultural activist in Canton, Oklahoma, where her family homesteaded in Dewey County in 1893, after hearing many horror stories of farmers fighting to keep their farms, property rights, and their land under the assault of “visioning committees,” environmentalist NGOs, and U.N. Agenda 21’s ICLEI operatives who have infiltrated boards of supervisors and zoning boards across the country.  She wants her family to be able to continue the ranching tradition.  The stories she heard ranged from “drones, abuse of the EPA, to threats of Endangered Species destroying livelihoods.”  http://www.hpj.com/archives/concern-over-agenda-turn-cattlewoman-into-agricultural-activist/article_ca963ae3-5227-5f17-821c-4acaa37472e0.html?mode=jqm

In a period of natural drought, Save the American River Association advocated that “retiring and curbing water rights for 300,000 acres of contaminated land farmed in the San Joaquin Valley would cost approximately $1 billion” in compensation to farmers, “a reasonable price to pay to stop the poisoning of California’s environment” and it “would free up 455,000 acre-feet of water annually.” Would this “contaminated land” in San Joaquin Valley, asked Katy Grimes, be the 600 farms along I-5 that produce $1 billion worth of food each year? These are not unsustainable crops, retiring them is a war on agriculture, on our ability to feed Americans. http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article52319970.html

It is interesting that the water “rationers” are considering such drastic measures when, according to California officials, wet weather added 6.4 billion gallons of fresh water to Lake Tahoe (2 inches) and new snow is at “136 percent of normal levels.” The snowpack was measured in Sierra Nevada at 54 inches. http://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/ca-snowpack-136-of-normal-how-will-water-rationers-spin-that/?utm_source=CAPoliticalReview.com&utm_campaign=2909021a1f-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b855a22bd3-2909021a1f-302742409

Destroying farms and taking as many out of production as possible, endangering food production and survival, would help achieve another goal of Agenda 21 – depopulation. We seem to have exceeded the planet’s “carrying capacity.” Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in 2015 that the entire global warming hoax was designed in order to destroy capitalism. “Really, we should make every effort to change those numbers [population] because we are already, today, exceeding the planet’s planetary carrying capacity,” Figueres claimed.  This is an outrageous statement, particularly when we look at the low fertility rates in the developed world, way below replacement values. http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2015/04/27/un-official-we-should-make-every-effort-to-depopulate-the-planet-2/

Once suburbia is destroyed and the land given back to wilderness, the population will be moved into high-rise, mixed-use micro apartments, stacked and packed, ranging from 150-360 square feet, mostly smaller than the average hotel room. It is like sticking people into closets. Promoting living in Mega Cities, Christiana Figueres praised the high-rise living because renters can grow their food on terraces, collect rainwater on the roof, and get their electricity from solar panels on balconies/roofs. What can possibly go wrong with such an unsustainable scenario? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seDpS2QEoNw

Speaking at the anti-COP21 climate summit in Paris, Dr. Istvan Marko, professor at Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and co-author of The Bankruptcy of Climatism,  said, “All conclusions being reached by the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] are actually flawed conclusions.” The dogma of “climatism” is perpetuated in spite of ample evidence to the contrary because governmental research grants come with strings attached to this fake religion of anthropogenic global warming.

Marko said, “It is almost like a religion, you know, you have the original sin, the original sin is carbon dioxide, and the one who committed it is the human being. So we all have to repent.”

In his speech at the summit, “The Nostradamuses of Climate Change and Their Erroneous Prophecies,” Dr. Marko repeated what all thinking humans already know, CO2 is the gas of plant life and our oxygen. “The worst thing that can happen is decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.” Greenhouses add more CO2 in the air because their plants thrive on carbon dioxide.

Thanks to CO2, “there is a greening around the world.” According to Dr. Randall Donohue, findings of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU) revealed that during 1982-2010 an eleven percent increase in “CO2 fertilization” has increased the foliage in arid areas of Australia, North America, the Middle East, and Africa. http://phys.org/news/2013-07-greening-co2.html

All this “climatism” is not about saving the planet, “It’s the slow erosion of your own individual liberty, that’s what is at stake with COP21.” He stated that for half the annual cost of the Kyoto Protocol ($150 billion), people in the third world could have running water, electricity, food, and education. http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/22232-at-anti-un-climate-summit-scientist-slams-alarmist-religion

Would it not be better to solve real problems instead of chasing problems that do not exist, creating a profitable climate change industry while enabling the U.N. bureaucrats to live a lavish lifestyle, jet-setting around the world to promote their hoax?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Private Property Rights Under Attack By Comprehensive Land Use Plans

Humans have always desired to own a piece of land that could be passed on to their heirs. Once they acquired property for homestead or farming, men labored on their land under the assumption that it was theirs to keep in perpetuity.

If you ask the government, land belongs to the proprietor as long as the required taxes are paid in full each year and the government does not confiscate the property through eminent domain or deem it environmentally endangered and in need of protection. If you ask progressives, land belongs equally to everyone and nobody should be allowed to “own” anything, it should be communal property.

The painful lesson in communal property (communism) at Jamestown has been forgotten or never learned. When people worked the land together, some worked harder and some were lazier, yet everyone ate the same. The entire settlement almost starved to death. The following year, when the communal property was divided into individual parcels, everyone prospered.

Humans understood then that individual freedom and cooperation on smaller scale are much more successful than domination by a few in an exclusively government-run society.

The idea of Sustainable Development that emerged in 1987 from a conference by the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, seemed innocuous. It was defined as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It sounded lofty except for the nagging questions: who decides what the needs are, how are they going to parcel out the needs, how are they going to implement them, and who will police the decision-makers?

This call to Sustainable Development became the blueprint of a myriad of rules and regulations incorporated in the 1992 document called Agenda 21 signed by 179 nations at the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. This 40-chapter document addresses every aspect of human life, not the least of which is property.

According to Henry Lamb, Bill Clinton’s creation of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (Executive Order #12852, June 29, 1993) “was responsible for instilling sustainable development consciousness throughout every agency of the federal government,” using enormous grant powers. These “vision” and “challenge” grants were given to state and local governments, to NGOs such as the American Planning Association, Sierra Club, and to HUD, DOE, and EPA to develop and implement community plans around the nation.

County-wide or region-wide plans by the years 2020, 2025, or 2030, contain 129 “visions” included in eight categories. These visions were developed at the first Glades County, Florida visioning meeting in February 2, 2006.  They are eerily similar to the recommendations in the Agenda 21 document and in any sustainable development pamphlets. (Henry Lamb, Sustainable Development or Sustainable Freedom? pp. 5-6)

-          Preserve natural environment

-          Save/improve the wetlands

-          Restrict development in sensitive areas

-          Sustainable agriculture and farming

-          Comprehensive resource preservation

-          Never compromise wetlands or wildlife

-          Preservation of scenic views

-          Designation of scenic highways

-          Development should be clustered

-          Rural village concept

-          Smart growth planned developments

-          Increase density, increase walkability

-          Impact fees that limit mobile homes

-          Zoning should encourage infill

-          More codes to be enforced

-          Conservation easements on agricultural land

-          Sidewalks, bike paths, and walking paths

-          Multi-use trails and corridors that are landscaped

Villages, towns, and cities developed as the result of the wishes of the people in a free market. Then local zoning ordinances were developed based on existing land use, initiated by the land owners who, from time to time changed the zoning designations. Such changes were only made by locally elected officials, balancing the wishes of the landowners with the rights of other constituents.

The “comprehensive planning” required by sustainable development in Agenda 21 is initiated by a coalition of international organizations such as ICLEI (International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives) who decide in their “visioning consensus” how and where everyone should live.

ICLEI infiltrated over 600 county and local governments in the U.S. who became members of this organization that recently changed its name to ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA to avoid the stigma of an international organization meddling in American zoning affairs. http://www.icleiusa.org/

The top-down unelected government develops comprehensive master plans that form “urban boundary zones.” Municipal services such as water, sewer, fire, and police protection are not provided beyond these zones. The comprehensive master plan serves the purpose to create “sustainable communities,” the vision of the globalists who created Agenda 21.

It is not a coincidence that “every county’s comprehensive master plan contains the same elements, the same goals, the same processes,” spelled out in Agenda 21. Citizens participate in local visioning meetings and consensus-building stakeholder meetings under the false promise and understanding that they do have input in their communities. In reality, the decisions have been made for them in advance.

Henry Lamb said, “Such comprehensive land use plans adopted by government gives the government, not the owner, the superior right to decide how the land may be used.” Elected officials were convinced by “the promoters of sustainable development that private property rights are not as important as the proposed benefits of sustainable development, individual freedom is not as important.” (p. 23)

The first lawsuit filed on October 15, 2013 against Agenda 21 promoters is the lawsuit against the comprehensive plan called Plan Bay Area. The legal challenge was launched by the Post Sustainability Institute/Democrats Against UN Agenda 21 and Freedom Advocates, spearheaded by Michael Shaw and Rosa Koire. http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/lawsuit-against-a21.html

Alleged violations include:

-          Plan Bay Area violates voter-approved urban growth boundary ordinances, “nullifying these boundaries by restricting development to very small locations in just some cities”

-          Plan Bay Area “violates the 5^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by taking property rights without just compensation”

-          Plan Bay Area “violates the 14^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause” (Priority Development Areas land owners will receive permits 80 times more than owners outside of the PDA)

-          Plan Bay Area “permanently strips all development rights from rural properties in the nine county Bay Area, effectively taking conservation easements on all rural lands without paying for them”

-          Plan Bay Area “restricts development rights within the Priority Development Areas,” limiting construction to mixed-use, high density Smart Growth development.

“Plan Maryland” is a statewide blueprint of land use that maintains 400,000 acres as agricultural or forest land and spares it from development in the next 20 years. Governor O’Malley’s executive order allows development only in “approved” growth areas along the Baltimore-Washington corridor. Homes on two-acre plots with septic system were deemed urban sprawl. Homes built within city limits on half-acre plots in range of sewer hookups were not deemed urban sprawl. I discussed this comprehensive land use plan in my best seller book, U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy. http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy/dp/0615716474/ref=sr_1_1/181-0010595-4429868?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393867105&sr=1-1&keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy

The comprehensive plan for Baldwin County, Alabama, called Horizon 2025, was rejected by the Baldwin County Commission as a “massive land grab.” Additionally, Gov. Robert Bentley signed a law forbidding policies connected to Agenda 21, barring any private property confiscation without due process. This decision drew strong criticism from the Smart Growth proponents who used psychological “projection” to paint Americans who are discovering the truth about Agenda 21 as right-wingers who see “smart” environmental planning as an “Agenda of Fear.”

In the fishing community of King Cove Alaska, an 11-mile gravel trail connecting the Aleut community to a life-saving airport has been denied by the Department of Interior Secretary Jewell because the road would jeopardize the waterfowl. “The people of King Cove want a small road through what was their backyard,” using less than 1 percent of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.  But giving up refuge land would be a bad precedent. “I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,” said Sec. Jewell.

Residents of Riverton, Wyoming (pop. 10,000) found out in horror one day that the EPA had given their town to an Indian reservation. Their deeds of trust could be tossed unless the Indian reservation recognized them. The EPA declared Riverton part of the Wind River Indian Reservation, nullifying a 1905 law passed by Congress. http://freepatriot.org/2014/01/08/epa-takes-entire-town-away-wyoming-gives-indians-disenfranchises-american-citizens/

A WWII veteran in New York is fighting local government attempts to confiscate his grocery store via eminent domain in order to open a municipality-owned market.

Some local governments confiscated land under eminent domain in order to preserve it. Most famous is the seizure of 572 acres in Telluride. The owner wanted to develop the land along the San Miguel River. The town set the land aside as open space. The confiscation by the state Supreme Court was upheld on grounds that overcrowded mountain towns need to preserve their recreational and natural assets.

Andy and Ceil Barrie may lose 10 acres near Breckenridge, Colorado because they ride an ATV on a 1.2-mile mining road from their 3-bedroom home in a subdivision to the 10 acres they purchased surrounding a hundred year old cabin in the middle of the White River National Forest. Summit County is using eminent domain to preserve open space instead of the usual economic development. (Becket Adams)

In 2012 the EPA threatened Lois Alt, a chicken farmer from West Virginia, with $37,500 fine every time it rained on or near her property. The fine, mandated under the Clean Water Act, was levied because “storm water near her farm would come in contact with dust, feathers, and manure before entering a local waterway.” High levels of nitrogen were found in the chicken waste which could also threaten the water supply.

Property rights can be taken away under the guise of protecting the environment. American Policy Center identified cases of such abuse.

-          Mud puddles become wetlands that must be protected

-          Improving land by planting trees, bushes, filling a ditch with dirt, or building a fence can result in arrest and fine of the property owner under the Clean Water Act

-          Building on one’s land can be blocked

-          If the area is deemed wetland, the owner can no longer use it or sell it

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill, the Defense of Environment and Property Act of 2013 (S 890), which would attempt to reign in the EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, agencies of our federal government that infringe on Americans’ private property. The bill is in the Committee on Environment and Public Works. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s890/text

In Virginia, the House passed SB 578 on February 26, 2014. The Senate bill, sponsored by Senator Obenshain, had already passed unanimously, entitling landowners to compensatory damages and reasonable attorney fees when successfully challenging a local land use decision based on an “unconstitutional condition.”

“When property owners run up against City Hall, it doesn’t always seem like a fair fight,” said Obenshain. “No matter what the merits of a property rights challenge, any property owner at odds with local government feels like David taking on Goliath.”

Once the governor signs it, SB 578 will discourage localities from abusing their authority by imposing unconstitutional restrictions on the property owner’s ability to use his/her land.

Private property must be guarded as priceless freedom.  Land owners should reject the sustainable development idea that only government can protect nature, air, soil, water, open spaces, and the poor. All societies run by totalitarian governments have severe environmental degradation, little or no private property and misuse of resources, a chasm between the haves and have-nots, and no hope for the future of individual citizens.

 

Agenders and Right Wing Conspirators

A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, “Is the UN Using Bike Paths to Achieve World Domination?” by Andrew Cohen, drew my intense attention. It was not because I particularly cared for the author’s writings. It was his vitriolic description of people who oppose ICLEI and the United Nations-driven “sustainability initiatives” regarding land use in the United States as “right wing conspiracy theories,” promoted by “Agenders.” 

Cohen calls ordinary American citizens who oppose the UN Agenda 21’s goals “Agenders,” people who object to “sustainable land uses” not on the merits of the plans themselves but on the basis that they are “beyond the realm of mainstream political thought.” In progressive language, “mainstream” is what they believe in and wish to impose on the rest of society because they are smarter and we are the dumb masses who can be manipulated by a Gaia-worshipping environmentalist minority.

Cohen continues, “the loudest argument is the most bizarre…a vast international conspiracy, orchestrated by the United Nations, which would ultimately result in international domination over the way Americans both live and breathe.” He paints the majority of Americans as Agenders who are not interested in sanitation, biodiversity, “sustainable growth,” renewable energy, and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. According to Cohen, Americans want their constitutional rights “to rape the land, foul the air, dirty the water, and sprawl development wherever the hell they feel like it.”

Aside from the direct insults, Cohen does not mention the numerous bankrupted renewable energy companies such as Solyndra, Evergreen Energy Inc., Beacon, Ener1, Amonix Inc. that squandered billions of taxpayer dollars while failing to deliver any affordable renewable energy to American households.

The author misrepresents the intents and goals of UN Agenda 21, as well as the role of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) at the local and state governments in terms of rezoning of private land in the U.S. In his view, we are no longer a “Big Sky Country,” we are now a “Big Lie Country” because we have become aware, informed, and are fighting back, stopping some of the UN Agenda 21 driven initiatives around the country.

He continues to demonize “Agenders,” the “Tea Party crowd,” and their disdain for large government.” The majority is against big government not because it is our tradition as Americans to be self-sufficient and independent but because Glenn Beck, a former Fox News star, told us, “Sustainable development is just a really nice way of saying centralized control over all human life on earth.” Apparently, we are so simple-minded; we cannot think for ourselves or stand up for less government control when we see it.

To defend his argument that we are not intelligent, Cohen uses the La Plata County, Colorado as an example of “why smart professionals don’t want to be in government,” and as a “reminder of how much damage the Tea Party has wrought upon even local government.” Following his logic, then only dumb non-professionals comprise our government.

In La Plata County, Colorado, a “diverse, 17-member working group had the ambitious “vision” to rein in sprawl, encourage bicycling and public transportation, protect agriculture and promote sustainability.” “Responsible stewardship” of Mother Earth failed in this case because of pressure from “Agenders.”

Cohen sees “Agenders” as opponents of “sustainable growth” who will be able to “succeed all over the country in scuttling such plans without having to make a coherent, substantive argument against the actual initiatives contemplated in the plans.” He sees most Americans as unwilling to “cut back on pollution, the dangerous misuse of land, or just plain old-fashioned over-development.” Again, a minority of “progressive” Americans knows best what is good for America and what bogus science it presents to the rest of us.

I would like to make several coherent, substantive arguments against “sustainable growth” driven by UN Agenda 21 presented in Rio in 1992.

James  Gustave Speth, chairman of President Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality, head of the World Resources Institute, member of President Clinton’s transition team, and head of UN Development Program said at a conference called “Rio +5 meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1997:

            “Global governance is here, here to stay, and, driven by economic and

              Environmental globalization, global governance will inevitably expand.”

Global governance was defined in the 1999 UN Human Development Report: “The framework of rules, institutions, and practices that set limits on behavior of individuals, organizations, and companies.”

Global governance can be further defined as those policies created by non-elected bureaucrats from international institutions that “limit the behavior of individuals, organizations, and companies.” (www.freedom21.org)

Government control of land use is a fundamental principle of global governance. The rules of global governance limit the behavior of individuals, organizations, and companies before the community understands what is happening. Many in Congress support the principle of global governance.

Signed in 1992, Agenda 21 is not a Treaty; it is a soft-law document of 40 chapters with recommendations covering every facet of human life. The recommendations have been implemented mostly administratively with little Congressional input; however, some have been included in legislation.

Federal agencies, EPA in particular, developed and awarded “visioning” grants to communities and to the American Planning Association. The “visioning” process at the local level was usually initiated by a local planning agency, a non-government agency (NGO) or ICLEI. The International Council on Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is the international NGO created by the United Nations two years before the 1992 Rio conference, in order to advance the concept of “sustainable development.”

“Sustainable development” is a plan of action for bike paths, walkways, greenbelts, conservation areas, high-density areas, urban boundary zones, and other buzzwords that “progressive” environmentalists have developed.

The 1976 UN Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver declared government control of land use as “indispensable.” The same document recommended government mandates for population redistribution to accommodate the needs of biodiversity.

We are familiar with the Wildlands Project and its map of protected land areas required by the Convention on Biological Diversity: Core reserves (roadless areas), Corridors (extensions of reserves, several miles wide), and Buffer Zones (gradation of human use). Dr. Coffman showed this map to the Senate.

Farmers often sell some of their land to finance retirement to city dwellers who want to commute because they do not want to endure the chaotic city life. “Government control of land use enforced through comprehensive land use plans, deny farmers the right to sell their land to city dwellers because of an urban boundary zone, or greenbelt, or conservation area designation, or because of ‘unjust compensation tax.’”(www.freedom.org)

My response to “progressives” is that we do know the truth, we do have cogent arguments and we would like to preserve our freedoms while protecting the environment in a manner that does not fundamentally alter our way of life or rob us of our property and sovereignty to the benefit of UN third world nations who have devised such transformative plans for Americans without our approval.

 

The United Nations cannot govern us because it contradicts our historic system of freedom and self-governance. Government is not the source of our individual rights; rights cannot be given or denied to us by a benevolent government in the interest of the community.  Our Creator is the source of our unalienable rights.