by Glenn Beck
The “Vancouver Declaration” released at this conference focused on what has become a familiar theme to environmentalists: justice and equity.
Recognizing also that the establishment of a just and equitable world economic order through necessary changes in the areas of international trade, monetary systems, industrialization, transfer of resources, transfer of technology, and the consumption of world resources, is essential for socio-economic development and improvement of human settlement, particularly in developing countries.
So now we understand that “equitable” is not just an empty catchphrase; it means that the wealthy countries (i.e., America) must do whatever is necessary, including transferring their resources (i.e., money and technology) to developing countries. More important, the Vancouver Declaration was one of the first to really target land use as a cause of the world’s problems. In fact, a close reading of the following excerpt makes it clear that this was more of a declaration of war on capitalism than it was a declaration about human settlements:
[Land] cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice.
Inefficiencies of the market. Concentration of wealth. Social injustice. These terms should send shivers down the spines of anyone who cares about capitalism and true individual freedoms.
Unfortunately, these anti–free market, anti-American views of the world continued to grow and fester over the years after Vancouver. There were more meetings, more summits, more declarations and action plans and pronouncements—but all of it was really just a preview of the main event: the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the very place where Agenda 21 was first unveiled.
WHAT IS AGENDA 21?
Let’s start with the way the UN itself defines the Agenda 21 program right on the cover of the publication:
Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.
That last part is essential to understand as a strong case can be made that almost everything a human being does impacts the environment in some way. From what we eat, to how we get around, to where and how we build our homes, to how we heat and cool those homes—it all “impacts on the environment” in some way.
And that’s exactly the way the UN wants it.
At its core, Agenda 21 is all about control. Control over land, natural resources and, ultimately, entire populations. It seeks to control the air (via regulations on carbon emissions), ground (via regulations on “sustainable development”) and sea (via environmental regulations). In that way, Agenda 21 is a lot like a war plan. As all good generals know, once you take control of the skies and seas, the ground war can begin—and there is very little that the enemy can do to stop you.
Unsurprisingly, the language and objectives of Agenda 21 are the culmination of every Marxist/progressive fantasy developed over the last hundred years. From education to transportation to food and water, there is literally no area of life that Agenda 21 does not attempt to regulate and control in some way.
Agenda 21 also does not try to hide the fact that achieving its goals will require major sacrifice. In fact, all of that talk about “equality” from previous meetings gave way to a very stark assessment that was included right in the Agenda 21 Preamble:
The developmental and environmental objectives of Agenda 21 will require a substantial flow of new and additional financial resources to developing countries in order to cover the incremental costs for the actions they have to undertake to deal with global environmental problems and to accelerate sustainable development.
It’s clear from that excerpt that the true objectives of this plan is to redistribute wealth on a global scale. If developing countries are going to receive a “substantial flow” of resources then it’s natural to ask where those resources are coming from. The answer, of course, is that the money will come from the developed world—America, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, etc. And while those behind the scheme claim that these resources will help bring the Third World up to the First, the reality is that it is designed to work the other way around.
APPLYING AGENDA 21
Agenda 21 is extraordinarily wide-ranging and complex and therefore should be read in its entirety to fully understand how it attempts to reach into nearly every part of life. However, there are a couple of key areas worth pointing out here because they specifically relate to our story.
Land Use
The idea that private land ownership is evil and results in concentration of wealth and social injustice has not gone away. In fact, it is a central theme of Agenda 21 (although the planners smartened up and were not quite as overt about it as they were in the Vancouver Declaration).
Objective 7.28. The objective is to provide for the land requirements of human settlement development through environmentally sound physical planning and land use so as to ensure access to land to all households and, where appropriate, the encouragement of communally and collectively owned and managed land. Particular attention should be paid to the needs of women and indigenous people for economic and cultural reasons.
In other words, everyone must have access to land. That, of course, is impossible, which is why the phrase “communally and collectively owned and managed” is used. According to those behind the plan, land, as a “finite resource,” cannot be left in the hands of private owners.
In our story this idea is played out to its extreme end. If there are no private owners of land, or if large populations must be moved so that land can be reforested or rewilded,1 then where does everyone go?
Sustainable Development
Another key concept of Agenda 21 is something called “sustainable development.” Like most progressive ideas, it sounds nice, but the concept is pretty insidious. The idea is that Mother Earth will only have a chance to survive if we shrink the economy, put land into government hands, and highly regulate the use of our natural resources.
“Our Common Future,” a report issued by the UN World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, five years before the Rio conference, attempted to define the term:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
If you think about that definition, you start to realize something: if you can’t do anything that might “compromise” the ability of future generations to meet their (unknown) needs, then there’s really not all that much you can do. Want to cut down some trees to clear the way for a new home? Sorry, those trees help cleanse the air of CO2—future generations need them. Want to put up a fence around your yard? Sorry, that might prevent the free flow of wild animals and have unintended consequences on the future. Want to keep your home at 68 degrees in the summer? Sorry, that will pull too much energy from the grid. And on and on it goes.
There are countless ways in which the government could implement the objectives of Agenda 21. Some, like “rewilding,” would be far too radical to implement all at once, so the objectives are instead broken down into smaller goals. Once public opinion on a matter has softened enough (see my book The Overton Window for a primer on exactly how that happens), the government is able to push farther and introduce new ideas that, years earlier, would’ve immediately been rejected by the public.
In the meantime there are plenty of smaller ways that government and associated private groups can impact our lives and promote the core objectives of Agenda 21. For example, so-called smart meters are being installed at an increasing rate in homes around the country. These meters give the government—and, in some cases, non-elected bureaucrats—the power to monitor individual home energy usage. If the grid is under duress then officials can change a home�
��s temperature, or shut off their air-conditioning altogether. It’s all for the greater good.
Regulation is another area where the government can easily begin to promote some of these objectives on a national level. C.A.F.E. fuel-economy standards, for example, force automakers to change the way they build cars. Price, features, and sometimes even safety (cars with better fuel economies are often lighter and don’t hold up as well in major accidents) are all sacrificed in order to meet a standard that may or may not have a meaningful impact on anything. Ford Motor Co., for example, is switching from steel to aluminum next year in its F-150 tucks, despite knowing that lives will likely be sacrificed to fuel-economy standards.
The Precautionary Approach
This principle can essentially be defined as “guilty until proven innocent.” More specifically, it means that in a situation where something might cause harm to a person or to the environment, the burden of proof is on the person contemplating the action.
This approach is referenced in Agenda 21, Chapter 22.5(c), in regard to the storage or disposal of radioactive waste near the “marine environment”:
[M]aking, in the process of consideration, appropriate use of the concept of the precautionary approach . . .
Why is this a big deal? Because it turns our entire legal system on its head in favor of an international standard. Think about it like this: if you dump a cup of coffee into the ocean and our government were to prosecute you, they would have to prove, using scientific evidence, that you had willfully damaged the environment. However, using the precautionary approach, it would be up to you to prove that no damage was possible.
By turning the entire system around, all kinds of prosecutions that may have been too expensive or complex to consider now become possible. Companies, and possibly individuals, around the world would be forced to spend time and money defending any action that some national or international regulator took issue with. It’s a profound change that would have far-reaching impacts on nearly every area of life, not the least of which being that all of the expenses related to these prosecutions would have to be passed along to consumers.
ALL POLITICS ARE LOCAL
One of the things that really differentiates Agenda 21 from other major environmental programs is its heavy reliance on local governments. One of the primary groups facilitating this effort is the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI).
Headquartered in Bonn, Germany, ICLEI offers training and support to municipalities that want to enact Agenda 21’s programs. This large but relatively unknown network has managed to raise private funds (George Soros’s Open Society Institute gave ICLEI a $2.1 million grant in 1997) and has subsequently embedded itself into cities and counties all across the country.
According to the ICLEI USA website:
ICLEI USA was launched in 1995 and has grown from a handful of local governments participating in a pilot project to a solid network of more than 600 cities, towns and counties actively striving to achieve tangible reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and create more sustainable communities. ICLEI USA is the domestic leader on climate protection and adaptation, and sustainable development at the local government level.
Austin, Texas, is one of the hundreds of local governments that have seemingly been mesmerized by ICLEI propaganda. Prior to a council vote on some Agenda 21–friendly initiatives, John Bush, a member of “Texans for Accountable Government” (TAG), delivered a succinct presentation on ICLEI and Agenda 21 that attempted to appeal to a traditional Texas value—land ownership. He said:
Among the stated objectives of Agenda 21 is the “re-wilding of America” under the Wildlands Project. This project would remove human beings from over half of the land in America and deem these areas core wilderness zones. Regardless of where your family farm once was, human beings will not be allowed to set foot in these areas. There would also be highly controlled and monitored buffer zones around these areas where travel would be severely limited.
Bush’s short argument against the proposal was immediately followed by a unanimous 7–0 vote adopting the plans.
And Austin is far from the only city to have gone down this path.
Syracuse, New York, is laying out Agenda 21 plans to control local property and make urban “sprawl” a thing of the past through the “Onondaga County Sustainable Development Plan.” Much of the language used in this plan (i.e., “Sustainable development today pays dividends well into the future”) seemingly comes directly from Agenda 21.
Despite being functionally bankrupt, California refuses to drop plans for an enormously expensive high-speed-rail project. This project is the brainchild of a sustainable growth group called America 2050. (One contributor to America 2050 is the “Surdna Foundation,” a group whose “[E]nvironmental work is grounded in an understanding of the interplay between the environment, the economy, and social equity.”
California is also hoping to make detached housing a thing of the past. A recent piece in the Wall Street Journal (“California Declares War on Suburbia”) explained how the Golden State wants half its population to move into Agenda 21–style high-density urban housing:
The Southern California Association of Governments wants to require more than one-half of the new housing in Los Angeles County and five other Southern California counties to be concentrated in dense, so-called transit villages, with much of it at an even higher 30 or more units per acre . . . The campaign against suburbia is the result of laws passed in 2006 (the Global Warming Solutions Act) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and in 2008 (the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act) on urban planning. The latter law, as the Los Angeles Times aptly characterized it, was intended to “control suburban sprawl, build homes closer to downtown and reduce commuter driving, thus decreasing climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.” In short, to discourage automobile use.
A similar issue is discussed by Stanley Kurtz in his book Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities:
President Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them . . . Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation. To this end, the president has already put programs in place designed to push the country toward a sweeping social transformation in a possible second term. The goal: income equalization via a massive redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities.
The city of Hailey, Idaho, has set a goal of reducing their carbon emissions by 50 percent (over 2001 levels) by the year 2050. Would the mayor of small-town Hailey (population 7,960) ever have considered slashing his town’s economy in half without the guidance and advocacy of the ICLEI? How many other small towns are considering the same kind of drastic actions?
Speaking of carbon emissions, Barack Obama has targeted the coal industry with Agenda 21–style regulations. Prior to the 2008 election he gave an interview to the San Francisco Chronicle detailing his overall approach to coal:
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted . . . .
Phil Kerpin recently wrote a story for FoxNews.com that revealed just how effective this strategy has been:
[T]he U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a shocking drop in power sector coal consumption in the first quarter of 2012. Coal-fired power plants are now generating just 36 percent of U.S. electricity, versus 44.6 percent just one year ago. It’s the result of an unprecedented regulatory assault on coal leaving us all much poorer.
WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE
Towns and cities across the country are beginning to use the language of Agenda 21—in some cases without even knowing it. The Planning Board of Kingwood, New Jersey, recently recommended the following change to the town’s Land Development Ordinance:
The Township Committee’s desire to preserve and enhance the undeveloped rural lands situated along the Route 12 Corridor in such a manner that will maintain and reinforce the Township’s rural character and existing scenic views and vistas . . . .
The preservation of “existing scenic views and vistas” is classic Agenda 21–speak and can be found in many other city land-use statements. Consider Scandia, Minnesota’s statement, which is also soaked in Agenda 21 clichés:
The Guidelines will be used by the City to review new developments proposed under the “Open Space Conservation Subdivisions” language of the Zoning Ordinance. The existing ordinance language allowed for a density bonus as an incentive to encourage projects that demonstrate “Preservation of priority scenic views as identified by the City, especially as viewed from public roads and property.”
Countless other cities and towns are using the same kind of vocabulary in legislation and proposals: Tacoma, WA; Torrey Pines, CA; Charleston, SC; Rancho Palos Verdes, CA; Dacula, GA; Hemet, CA; Oakland, CA; etc. Others, like Davis, CA, list almost every Agenda 21 goal in their city plan. Many of the biggest enthusiasts of these concepts undoubtedly have no idea about their socialist origins.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
There is good news. Since Agenda 21 relies so heavily on local governments for its acceptance and implementation, individuals have successfully been able to halt its progress.
The key is education. People who educate themselves on the real objectives of Agenda 21 usually turn into serious critics of it. But while awareness about Agenda 21 seems to have increased significantly in recent years, there is still much work to be done. Many local officials—even well-meaning ones—are completely naïve as to what, and who, they are really up against.
