The Diabolical, Green Sustainability Scam
By Gina Miller
AmericanClarion.com
Sustainable governance map (Credit: Martin Thoma)
Last week, steam shot out of my head as I read an e-mail press release that came here to the radio station. It was followed a day later by a glowing story in our local newspaper. It was the proud announcement of an award from the U.S. Green Building Council being given to a housing development in our Mississippi Gulf Coast city of Ocean Springs. Apparently this new housing development has met all the criteria to be praised as “green” and “sustainable,” and an example of so-called “smart growth.”
What’s wrong with that? Well, just everything. And, what makes me see red in these kinds of “green” stories is the fact that all across our nation, all the way down to the local village level, the people who lead our cities and states have bought the so-called “sustainable” agenda hook, line and sinker. Either they are ignorant of what it represents, or they agree with the tyrannical scheme. A third possibility, and a common one, is that they have accepted federal taxpayer money “grants” for their cities, in which case the federal government owns them and can force the detestable “sustainable” shackles on their communities.
What am I talking about? I am talking about the Constitution-busting theft of private property rights and heavy-handed control of our way of life. Now, with all the current turmoil in our Republican primaries, the insanity across the Middle East and the ongoing, three-year flood of criminal activity by the Obama administration, the topic of dwindling private property rights may seem a bit bland in comparison, but please don’t tune out. This is every bit as important as the next power-grabbing outrage and attack on our freedoms.
To understand this, we must look into the beginnings of this movement and discern what it is all about. This has everything to do with the despicable hoax of man-caused global warming, but the global warming lie is just a part of the sorry deal. It goes all the way back to the United Nations with its Agenda 21 racket, and it dates back to the mid-1980s, and even before. It could be argued that Republican President Nixon was one of the early shills for this movement when he created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1973, an agency which today has become a terrible force that guzzles private property rights like a thirst-crazed man gulps water.
This is a subtle and stealthy scheme, because it is couched in nice-sounding platitudes by which many people are deceived, as they will ask, “What’s wrong with those noble goals?”
It’s a long story to tell, and there is a ton of educational information out there on this diabolical scam, but I will try to distill for you an overview. From Henry Lamb’s valuable resource website Sovereignty.net is an introduction to “sustainable development.”
From that report,
“The term ‘sustainable development’ emerged from the 1987 report of the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission), entitled Our Common Future. The term has no legal definition. It means simply ‘…to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,’ according to the Brundtland Commission report.
The idea of sustainable development gained momentum from the UN’s 1992 Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro. Maurice Strong was the Secretary-General of the Conference. Strong also headed the first such conference in 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was also a member of the Brundtland Commission. Shortly after the 1992 event, Strong created an NGO (non-government-organization) called Earth Council, whose purpose was to coordinate the efforts of all nations to achieve sustainable development through the creation of national councils on sustainable development.
The Rio Conference produced three major documents: The Convention on Biological Diversity; The Framework Convention on Climate Change; and Agenda 21. Agenda 21 is a ‘soft law’ policy declaration, or Action Plan; the other two documents are legally binding international treaties.”
Since its beginnings, the “sustainable development” movement has infected our entire nation. President Bill Clinton really got the ball rolling in the United States when he signed an executive order creating the President’s Council on Sustainable Development in June of 1993.
In a nutshell, the purposes of the “sustainable development” agenda are to limit people’s ability to use their own land as they see fit, to severely curtail people’s energy consumption, and to cram people into metropolitan centers (stack ‘em and pack ‘em) while prohibiting development outside of “approved” land areas, what these “smart growth” Einsteins call “suburban sprawl,” as if land development is a bad thing. The agenda aims to corral people into such close quarters that they will be encouraged to walk everywhere they go instead of drive those evil cars.
We see the rotten fruit of this movement all around us, from the dangerous, radio frequency-emitting “smart meters,” to low-volume flush toilets, to so-called “energy efficient” appliances (which only means they don’t work nearly as well as they used to), to the hideously ugly, tiny cars rolling around on the streets. Green building codes are another sign, and believe it or not, the explosion of bike and walking paths all over the place is yet another sign of the movement.
When you hear terms like “smart growth,” “comprehensive planning,” “sustainable communities” and “visioning,” understand that these are communist code terms that are about nothing more than government control of land use, robbing us of our individual rights and freedoms, and redistributing our wealth to the federal government and to “developing” nations.
In Henry Lamb’s Freedom 21 publication, Mr. Lamb explains,
“The goals of sustainable development amount to a complete transformation of American society. Sustainable development embraces education, economics, and social justice, as well as environmental issues. Once the new collaborative decision process has been established, it can be used to develop policy in all these issue areas. Whenever public policy is developed by government-funded advocacy groups, administrators, or bureaucrats, there can be no accountability to the people. Private property rights are eroded and individual freedom evaporates.
Advocates of government control of land use have exerted their influence since long before the term ‘sustainable development’ was first uttered. The 1976 U.N. Conference on Human Settlements uses the raw language: ‘Government control of land use is therefore indispensable.’ By 1992, the advocates of government control had learned that words matter, and rather than use words such as ‘government control of land use…’ they coined terms such as sustainable development, smart growth, and sustainable communities.
It matters not what euphemism is used to shield the reality of government control. Sustainable development, smart growth, and sustainable communities all describe a government-controlled society.
Every time a public policy requires a private citizen to ask permission from government, another expression of freedom is destroyed.”
This is a broad rundown of the complex and detailed issue of the environmental whacko, “sustainable development” agenda, and it is important that we make an effort to become informed by studying the extensive amount of materials available on the Internet and elsewhere. The good news is that more and more people are becoming aware of this sinister movement and are working tirelessly to inform leaders at the local, state and federal levels. Tea Party groups are doing a good job of this, including our own local South Mississippi Tea Party, which has a special section on its website for Agenda 21 information and has hosted Agenda 21 educational events.
As with most issues in life, ignorance is our greatest liability. An uninformed citizenry is an enslaved citizenry. We must embrace the knowledge we need to combat these communistic efforts to rob our freedoms. The sustainable movement has infested the entire nation, and beating it back will take a massive effort. There is a ton of money and power involved in pushing this radical agenda, and when community leaders cannot resist the handout of federal taxpayer money grants, they place their whole area under the iron thumb of the tyrannical “green” movement.
Politicians on both sides of the political spectrum have embraced this movement. In the story with which I opened this broadcast, one of our Republican Senators, Roger Wicker, was the one who presented the “green” award to the Ocean Springs housing development. He should know better, but apparently he does not.
A good place to start reversing this communist “sustainable” movement is in our local city councils and planning commissions. Many of these elected and appointed officials are ignorant of what these issues mean, and they need to be taught. As with other freedom-robbing initiatives of the communist Left, if we do nothing it will continue to grow ever more powerful.
I will close with another quote from Mr. Lamb’s Freedom 21 report,
“The current attack on America’s freedom is not with bombs and bullets from foreign tyrants. It is from an internal enemy of freedom that is just as vicious and much more sinister. America is a nation created expressly to defend and protect the freedom of its citizens. Any system of government that replaces that freedom with government control is an enemy.
Sustainable development, as defined in Agenda 21 and the documents published by the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, cannot exist without government management and control. To the extent that local, state, and federal government yields to the demands of sustainable development, freedom is diminished. To the extent that local, state, and federal government rejects the principles of sustainable development, freedom is advanced.
The only power on earth sufficient to constrain a government out of control is the determination of an informed, involved, and inspired electorate, exercised at the ballot box.”