Contents Unfunded Mandates: Know the Cost ...........................................................................................3 Unfunded Mandates: What is the Risk? .......................................................................................5 Unfunded Mandates: Fear or Fact................................................................................................7 Unfunded Mandates: What is the objective? ................................................................................9 Next Mandate: Ban Chlorine! .................................................................................................... 11 Its' the dose, not the substance ................................................................................................... 13 Why Chlorine? .......................................................................................................................... 15 Proposed Chlorine Ban to Enrich Greenpeace ........................................................................... 17 The Wildlands Project ............................................................................................................... 19 Wildlands Project: Implementation Strategy ............................................................................. 22 The Wildlands Project: The Watershed Approach ..................................................................... 24 The Wildlands Project: A Cure .................................................................................................. 26 Why are we scaring ourselves to death? .................................................................................... 28 From hysteria to absurdity ......................................................................................................... 30 Paranoid perceptions ................................................................................................................. 32 What is the truth? ...................................................................................................................... 33 Who should control land use?.................................................................................................... 34 Who knows best? ...................................................................................................................... 36 Burgeoning bureaucracies ......................................................................................................... 38 Stop the bloodsucking ............................................................................................................... 40 Civil war gathering.................................................................................................................... 42 The battle-lines are drawn ......................................................................................................... 44 Why a civil war is necessary ..................................................................................................... 46 Envirocrats: the federal foot soldiers ......................................................................................... 48 Why rebellion is brewing: Nature is not Divine ......................................................................... 50 Why rebellion is brewing: The Ecosystem Management Plan .................................................... 52 Why rebellion is brewing: Al Gore's gaggle of GAGs ............................................................... 54 Why rebellion is brewing: Global GAGs ................................................................................... 56
2 New World Order: ...and it is green ........................................................................................... 58 New World Order: ...in the USA ............................................................................................... 60 New World Order: ...Where humans fit ..................................................................................... 62 New World Order: ...Who runs it? ............................................................................................. 64 Beware the UN: Termites in the woodwork ............................................................................... 66 Beware the UN: Truth is the first casualty ................................................................................. 68 Beware the UN: How it all works .............................................................................................. 70 Beware the UN: Where are we headed? ..................................................................................... 72 Polluting the Free World: GAGs at work ................................................................................... 74 Polluting the Free World: GAGs, GATT, and the WTO ............................................................ 76 Polluting the Free World: America Under Siege ........................................................................ 78 Polluting the Free World: Pollution Control .............................................................................. 80 Sustainability: Why? ................................................................................................................. 82 Sustainability: What is it? .......................................................................................................... 84 Sustainability: Politically Correct - Personally Disastrous ......................................................... 86
3 Col 94-1 January, 1994 Unfunded Mandates: Know the Cost
By Henry Lamb Environmental organizations are quick to point to several polls taken in recent years that indicate Americans want a cleaner environment - even if it means higher taxes. Americans have gotten a cleaner environment - and it has meant higher taxes. Unfortunately, most Americans have no idea how much a cleaner environment costs, or how clean the environment is, or how much more it will cost to get the environment cleaner. Congress, driven by high-priced environmental lobbyists, has discovered a new way to oblige the "clean up at any cost" mentality in the environmental community: it is called unfunded mandates. Congress simply enacts a new law which requires a new, cleaner standard, and mandates that cities comply with the new law. Cities, then, must use local property taxes that otherwise would pay for police, fire, schools, and other local services, to pay for the cleaner environment mandated by Congress. Local officials have no choice but to raise local taxes. Congress gets a pat on the back for cleaning up the environment, and local officials face storms of protest for raising taxes. The Clean Water Act contains one such unfunded mandate called the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) section. The Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska was told by the Environmental Protection Agency that it should expect to spend less than $50,000 to apply for the necessary permit. Anchorage spent $1.5 million on the permit application and the cost of implementing the program cannot yet be calculated. This is money that would otherwise go to local services determined by locally elected officials. The city of Columbus, Ohio decided to see just how much money it was spending on unfunded mandates. A four-month interdepartmental study revealed that to pay for existing requirements between 1991 and 2000, the city would have to spend $1.6 billion. Anchorage projects compliance costs during the same period to be $429,936,737. These costs are based on laws now on the books. They do not reflect new laws for which regulations are not yet promulgated, nor do they take into account the cost of the proposed laws congress is waiting to enact. The Environmental Protection Agency now enforces more than 9,000 regulations and Congress is enacting new laws at a pace that required more than 60,000 pages of regulations last year. A new idea for America is to say "no" to Congress. Cities all across America are beginning to follow the example of Columbus and Anchorage and discovering just how much unfunded mandates are costing local taxpayers. If cities begin to separate the cost of unfunded mandates on local tax bills, on water bills, and on electric bills, local taxpayers will see just how flagrant Congress really is when it comes to passing the buck.
4 When Congress says "clean up the environment," and requires local taxpayers to foot the bill, and when Washington Bureaucrats decide how clean the environment must be, without any accountability to the local community, local taxpayers have virtually no say in how their tax dollars are to be spent. Sadly, unfunded mandates frequently waste local tax dollars that are vitally needed for other services. Because standards for "clean" are often set arbitrarily - without solid scientific bases - the cost of meeting those standards can be exorbitant. The Anchorage study indicated that capital and operating costs necessary to comply with unfunded mandates could reach nearly $20,000 per capita. A Stormwater Quality Task Force of the American Public Works Association reported: "...currently available stormwater management practices or technologies cannot achieve numeric water quality objectives...in the Clean Water Act, stormwater agencies will be held to a standard of performance that is not achievable." Yet non-compliance can result in fines of up to $50,000 a day and prison terms for responsible officials.
5 Col 94-2 January, 1994 Unfunded Mandates: What is the Risk?
By Henry Lamb A billion is a bunch - almost incomprehensible. Imagine spending $1000 a day, each and every day. It would take nearly three years to spend a million dollars; it would take 274 years to spend a billion dollars. How important is any three of the single dollar bills that constitute that billion? Michael J. Pompili is asking how important is 3 parts per billion of atrazine in drinking water. He compares 3 ppb to half an aspirin tablet dissolved in a 16,000 gallon railroad tank car. Pompili is an official of the city of Columbus, Ohio which will be forced to spend local taxes in the amount of $16 million initially, and then $2.4 million per year - just to meet the atrazine standard established by unfunded federal mandates. Why? What is the risk? Risk analysis is a mysterious game played by Washington rule makers. One criterion for measuring acceptable risk is the "one-in-a-million" chance of developing cancer in a lifetime, also known as the 10(-6) criterion. Originally, this standard was a screening level used as a guideline for measuring carcinogenic materials in animal tests under the 1958 Delaney Clause. In a paper presented at the 84th Annual Meeting of the Air and Waste Management Association, Dr. Kathryn E. Kelly said: "What the FDA intended to be a lower regulatory level of `zero risk' below which no consideration would be given as to risk to human health, many federal and state agency decisions somehow came to consider a maximum or target level of `acceptable risk.'" Kelly's research identified Nathan Mantel, a biostatistician at the National Cancer Institute, as the originator of the "one-in-a-million" criterion who said "...we just pulled it out of a hat." It is an arbitrary standard that has forced government and industry to waste untold billions of dollars in pursuit of standards of "clean" that are far beyond the bounds of reason. A handle on the risk analysis mystery begins to emerge when the standards are measured in terms of cancer deaths averted. Using the "one-in-a-million" cancer death in a lifetime standard, one can quantify the effectiveness of a 3 ppb standard for a contaminant in terms of how many people would get cancer at higher levels of the contaminant. The bottom line of all this risk analysis mumbo-jumbo is simply a way to measure the cost effectiveness of the standards as they relate to specific laws and regulations. The environmental clean-up laws and the regulatory standards they impose are designed to avert premature death that would otherwise occur without the law. Once a system of measurement is established, and the cost of the law known, then cost effectiveness can be measured. Here is a sample of the result taken from the Office of Management and Budget, expressed in cost per premature death averted: Aircraft cabin fire protection $100,000 Auto fuel-system integrity standard $400,000
6 Trenching and excavating standard $1,500,000 Asbestos ban $110,700,000 Hazardous waste disposal ban $4,190,400,000 Proposed Solid Waste Standards $19,107,000,000 Atrazine Drinking water standard $92,069,700,000 Each life saved by the atrazine drinking water standard is equivalent in dollar value to all the services provided by the states of: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont. Ridiculous? You bet! Nevertheless, Americans keep calling for a cleaner environment and Congress is eager to deliver in the form of unfunded mandates. The poor old tax payer keeps on paying because he has no idea of how much it costs or what he is getting for his money. It is time for new ideas - cost effectiveness in environmental regulations! It is time for science based, research-proven, reasonable standards for environmental clean-up - measured against other priorities as determined by the local community. It is time to apply common sense to environmental protection.
7 Col 94-3 January, 1994 Unfunded Mandates: Fear or Fact
By Henry Lamb Fear, not fact, drives the environmental protection machine in America. Typically, a new environmental law or regulation is conceived by some environmental organization, delivered to a friendly Congressman or agency bureaucrat for introduction, and then fanned into reality by a frightened public. Fear is the driving force behind virtually all of the hundreds of environmental laws and the thousands of resulting regulations. In media reports, the word "deadly" almost always precedes the word "dioxin." In the early 1980s, the entire town of Times Beach, Missouri was evacuated, at great cost to the taxpayers, because the town had been exposed to "deadly" dioxin. At the time, the American Medical Association adopted a resolution at a Chicago convention that said essentially that there was no scientific evidence that dioxin was a direct threat to human health. The Missouri director of the Division of Health said: "We've seen nothing to alarm us or to make us believe Missourians are feeling acute health effects." Long term studies of victims exposed to dioxin in industrial accidents in West Virginia (1949), and Seveso, Italy (1976), and eight other accidents, all came to the same conclusion: There is no evidence of adverse health-effects from the dioxin exposure. Fear, generated by sensationalist media, fed by press releases from the environmental organizations' propaganda mill, pressured the Environmental Protection Agency to buy all the homes in Times Beach and evacuate the town. The same scenario describes the banning of DDT. An extensive fear campaign, waged by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), resulted in seven months of hearings conducted by the EPA. The hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeny said: "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man...DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man...the evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT." Nevertheless, then EPA Administrator, William Ruckelshaus issued an order banning the use of DDT. Mr. Ruckelshaus was a member of the EDF at the time, and used his own letterhead to solicit donations for the EDF. The cost of the DDT decision, in dollars, death, and human suffering, is incalculable - and unnecessary - caused by public fear generated by environmental organizations. Asbestos was banned largely as the result of the same "fear instead of facts" scenario. Strong evidence points to the absence of asbestos as the first cause of the Challenger disaster. Even the EPA now admits that the banning was unnecessary. Alar, acid rain, ozone depletion, global warming - virtually all of the "great" issues on the environmental agenda - are fanned by fear, generated by one or more sponsoring environmental organizations. A new idea for America: demand facts before accepting propaganda and automatically
8 supporting the doom and gloom, sky-is-falling scenarios that have consistently been proven wrong. The granddaddy of all environmental fears is the fear of global warming. If the public can be convinced that the planet is indeed warming which will result in apocalyptic catastrophe, then any kind of new law can be enacted by simply inserting the phrase "...to reduce global warming." At least 62 bills were introduced in the 102nd Congress - to reduce global warming. Vice President Albert Gore said in 1986, "There is no longer any significant disagreement in the scientific community that the greenhouse effect (global warming) is real and already occurring; the resultant increase in temperatures will measure several degrees." Al Gore has continued this theme in his book, and in the Senate, and from his new position of power. But the scientific community says something different. The Policymakers Summary of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in July, 1990, says: "The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more." There is virtually no scientific evidence of climate change beyond normal variability. Still the public perception fanned by sensationalist media fed by the propaganda mills of environmental organizations, generate public fear to drive a whole new onslaught on unnecessary, unaffordable laws and regulations.
9 Col 94-4 January, 1994 Unfunded Mandates: What is the objective?
By Henry Lamb Pollsters frequently ask the question: "are you happy with the direction the nation is going?" During election years, and at other selected times, the result of this question is used to report public satisfaction or dissatisfaction with something. The question is meaningless as are the results. America has no specific objective. There is no overall national policy objective. National policy is always qualified with another word, such as "energy," or "economic," or "welfare," or "environmental." These policy qualifiers collide to such an extent that there is no overall policy objective. No one can be satisfied or dissatisfied with the "direction the nation is going," because no one knows where the nation is aiming. The absence of a predetermined objective presupposes an endless debate on how best to get there. The overall objective of our nation's policy was not a problem for our forefathers, the objective was survival. The need was immediate and real. As we approach the 21st century, however, the objective is different - but undefined. Many Americans assume the national policy objective is one that strives to achieve the highest possible quality of life for every American - but not everyone. A significant and growing number of Americans consider such an objective to be offensive, selfish, anthropogenic, and not worthy of consideration. Unfortunately, because those who assume have not really been paying attention, our great ship of state is rapidly turning away from concern for people and heading instead for an objective that sees people as the enemy, and their well-being or even survival, as an unimportant consideration. Spotted owls are obviously more important than the people of the northwest. Wetland preservation is obviously more important than the property rights of the owners. Asbestos abatement is obviously more important than school books for students. Obvious, because this is currently the policy direction of the nation. Those who assume that government policy exists to help individuals achieve the highest possible quality of life are sadly mistaken. The current policy direction of the nation is to preserve - not simply to protect - the environment. Biodiversity, global warming, and ozone depletion, are but a few of the new terms used to justify an escalating barrage of new laws and regulations designed to protect plants and animals - without regard for the impact on people. The Endangered Species Act specifically forbids economic consideration as a factor for listing a species. Wetland regulations specifically ignores the owner's right to control or use privately owned property. The Clean Air Act specifically rejects a $50,000 solution to acidic lakes and imposes a $50 billion tax burden on people. Such is the policy direction of the nation. A new idea for America is to identify the well-being of people as its highest overall policy
10 objective. Every new law and every new regulation should be evaluated in terms of its positive/negative impact upon people. This idea is not "politically correct" and will surely be criticized by the biocentric community that agrees with Dr. Charles Worster, founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, who says: "...people are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them, we need to get rid of some of them." A new idea for America is to realize that national policy no longer simply seeks to protect the environment, but to preserve biodiversity, which is defined in HR1969 introduced by John Bryant of Texas: "...the full range of variety and variability within and among living organisms and the ecological complexes in which they would have occurred in the absence of significant human impact...." There should not be a war between people and nature, but there is. Those who believe that man is nature's crowning achievement are being outmaneuvered in the national policy debate by those who believe that man is nature's worst enemy. The result is increasing taxes, increasing regulations, diminishing freedom, and diminishing economic vitality. The best idea for America: Wake up!
11 Col 94-1 February, 1994 Next Mandate: Ban Chlorine!
By Henry Lamb On February 1, Greenpeace issued a press release which "Applauds Clinton for strategy to phase out chlorine in U.S." In a direct inquiry, the EPA said, "Greenpeace had misrepresented what Clinton's plan calls for." Clinton's 200-page plan, according to the EPA, calls for a study to determine whether chlorine should be banned or not. The misrepresentation is a minor point in a parade of misrepresentations carefully calculated to impoverish the American economy, empower the green minority, and enthrone the environment as ruler of public policy. The effort to ban chlorine follows the well-rehearsed methods used by environmental organizations to wreak havoc on the economy with few, if any, benefits. The worn procedure still works: produce flawed, un-reviewed "scientific" studies that claim a cancer-causing link to the targeted substance; wage a well-orchestrated blitz in the sympathetic media, flood Congress with demands for a ban, scare the bejesus out of the unknowing public, and presto - another industry bites the dust before credible science has time to reveal the hoax. This formula was used to ban DDT. William Ruckelshaus, then EPA Administrator, later admitted that "it was a political decision." The Environmental Defense Fund led the DDT charge. DDT is gone. This formula was used to ban alar. The charge was led by the Natural Resources Defense Council. FDA Commissioner, Frank Young, said of the NRDC study: "...This is one of the worst instances of where statements were made without the benefit of scientific review." Alar is gone. Chlorine is just the latest victim in a long line of useful, beneficial chemicals targeted by the environmental elite. Greenpeace is leading the chlorine charge, with support from the usual clan. Washington Post writer, Malcolm Gladwell, was prophetic when he wrote in 1989 that scientists feared the environmental movement would be emboldened by their Alar victory, and move to ban other important chemicals. Chlorine provides direct benefits to every American, beginning with safe drinking water. A vast array of products depend upon chlorine in one way or another. It is now the goal of Greenpeace to ban chlorine. Their methods have become more sophisticated. It is not a coincidence that the Greenpeace Press Release appeared on the same day that the EPA announced the administration's plan for re-authorizing the Clean Water Act. They both occurred the day before a Senate committee began debate on the re-authorization. Neither is it a coincidence that Rep. Bill Richards (D., NM) has introduced a bill calling for "zero discharge" of chlorine into the nation's waterways, nor is it a coincidence that the EPA announced in January a
12 new Rule that identifies chlorine compounds as carcinogenic. The plan to ban chlorine appears to be well ordered, and is just now beginning to unfold. The EPA, the White House, and the media appear to be ready to run the cancer-scare-ban-the- chemical scam one more time. The EPA's proposed Rule on chlorine (S9FR1788, 1/12/94) refers to several studies in which laboratory mice developed tumors, or other problems, after being fed chlorine compounds. The logic is: if laboratory mice get cancer, the substance is carcinogenic therefore, it must be banned. It is precisely this logic and this procedure which prompted the NRDC to claim that Alar was a potent, cancer-causing, chemical. After the story had been broadcast repeatedly, the product was banned. When the scientific community reconstructed the studies used by NRDC, it was revealed that the doses fed to the laboratory mice were equivalent to an adult human eating 28,000 pounds of Alar-treated apples, each day, for 70 years. But, when the dosage was reduced to the equivalent of a mere 14,000 pounds per day, no tumors appeared in the lab mice.
13 Col 94-2 February, 1994 Its' the dose, not the substance
By Henry Lamb If the objective is to demonstrate a health risk from any particular substance, one must only increase the dosage until the desired result is achieved. Water, at a half-gallon per day, is perfectly safe. Increase the dosage by a gallon per day, and a serious health risk will be produced in short order. Cancer studies in laboratory animals can produce any result desired by the researcher, simply by increasing the dosage. Of course, this procedure should not be confused with science, even though such studies have been used to justify public policy. No public policy should be established until claims, especially by advocacy groups, have been reviewed by the independent scientific community. The strategy of Greenpeace, and other environmental organizations, to ban chlorine, is designed to steam-roll public policy through Congress without the benefit of independent, peer-reviewed science. The chlorine claims are going well beyond the cancer scare, and blaming chlorine for "hormonal toxicants". This newly-invented category of health threat is supposedly responsible for effeminate males, and several other sexual maladies, according to Janet Raloff in Science News. The claims, however, are not supported by scientific evidence. To the advocates of a chlorine ban, evidence is unimportant; results are all that count. A ban on chlorine would be devastating to the paper industry, and to the many other industries that use chlorine in processing. Less obvious is the attack on the beef and sheep industry. Dioxin is the natural by-product of burning any chlorine compound. By claiming increased dioxin levels in beef and other meat products, the green organizations hope to leverage their war against chlorine and meat consumption at the same time. Dioxin was the so-called "deadly" chemical that caused the evacuation of Love Canal in New York, and Times Beach, Missouri. Since the environmental scares were perpetrated, dioxin has been studied exhaustively, and found to pose no health risk other than chloracne, a mild, treatable skin rash, according to the American Medical Association. In Science Under Siege, Michael Fumento thoroughly exposes the exaggerated claims made about "deadly" dioxin. Those claims are being repeated by environmental organizations that are set on advancing their agenda despite the scientific facts, and despite the costs, and despite the sickness and suffering a chlorine ban would surely cause. Chlorine is the first defense against cholera and other water-borne diseases. As much as 85% of the existing pesticides require chlorine. The manufacture of prescription drugs is also heavily dependent upon chlorine.
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The banning of chlorine will deal a crushing blow to the economy, to industry, and to public health and safety. Ironically, it will make little difference in the environment. No act of Congress can ban the presence of either substance. Congress can ban only the benefits; the so- called dangers will continue as long as nature continues to function.
15
Col 94-3 February, 1994 Why Chlorine?
By Henry Lamb Why not chlorine? Chlorine is a perfect candidate to advance the green agenda. DDT, Alar, CFCs, are only a few of the most visible man-made substances to be successfully targeted for removal. With each victory, the green agenda advances. Once upon a time, the green agenda was set at the local community level where local citizens wanted a cleaner environment. Along the way, agenda setting was taken from the local communities, and is now a function of a narrow handful of people who met in plush board rooms, and fly from meeting to meeting in luxury befitting the highest-paid government officials. What is the green agenda? Power and money acquisition is the immediate agenda, resting on a broader view of a vague, pseudo-religious, ecotopian pipe-dream. Chlorine happens to be the target of choice for the well-exercised green muscle to once again rape the American people. The alar scare produced more money for the Natural Resources Defense Council in a few months than the apple growers, combined, made in a year. Greenpeace has made more money from its anti-whaling campaign, than the entire whaling industry has produced. Now, Greenpeace is posturing itself to cash in on the anti-chlorine campaign. The first step is to convince the public that chlorine is responsible for all manner of illness and death. Then comes labeling any dissenting voice as a self-serving, anti-environmental, capitalist pig. Next, appeal to a vulnerable public for money to fight the capitalist-fed Congress. Then, fly off to the Caribbean with Congressional cohorts to laugh about how slick the strategy works - again. Every time the strategy works, a little more of America slips irretrievably into history. Every time the strategy works, more people have to be hired by government to enforce the ban. More money has to be taken from individual citizens to pay the new and bigger government. The industries from which wages are produced shrink. Victory by victory, America is marching into oblivion. The handful of agenda-setters, meeting in their posh board rooms, exemplify the opposite of the eco-Utopia they say their policies espouse. For example, their demonstrated agenda would ban chlorine, CFCs, pesticides, fossil fuel, nuclear energy, and the cutting of trees. It would certainly appear that sincere proponents of such an agenda would walk to their meetings, which should be held in an ancient forest, where it would not matter that their clothes were made of leaves, and their dinners picked from bushes. Meetings would have to end at dusk, since even a campfire would expose them to the greatly feared, "deadly" dioxins. The highly romanticized pipe-dreams of the hypocritical green hierarchy are wearing a little thin
16 for the rest of us. For several years now, the environmental movement is measured by one unfounded scare after another. More and more Americans are seeing what Greenpeace and other environmental organizations have done with the billions of dollars they have received. Many people are weary of the web of regulations those dollars bought. Many people resent the chauffeured limousines and obscene salaries which are now the norm for the green agenda- setters. Many people are disgusted with the growth of government. Many, many people are searching for a better solution.
17 Col 94-4 February, 1994 Proposed Chlorine Ban to Enrich Greenpeace
By Henry Lamb Greenpeace's all-out campaign to ban chlorine is expected to produce millions of dollars in contributions. The campaign is following the same strategy that enriched the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) after the release of bogus reports that alar used on apples caused cancer. The NRDC paid a public relations firm, Fenton Communications, to arrange for their Alar report to be released on 60 Minutes and on the Donahue show. Fenton admitted that the campaign was designed so that revenue would blow back to the NRDC. On the Donahue show, a 900 number was used to sell a book. More than 90,000 copies were sold. A Fenton memo dated May 22, 1989, said a "modest investment by NRDC re-paid itself many-fold in tremendous media exposure and substantial, immediate revenue." The alar report later proved to be baseless. Truth and fact are not necessary to a successful campaign. Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace, told Forbes magazine "It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true. Greenpeace became a myth, and a myth-generating machine." One Greenpeace myth was exposed by Leif Blaedel, a prize-winning Danish journalist. In its film, Goodbye Joey, Greenpeace portrayed kangaroo hunters in gruesome scenes of torturous animal slaughter. Blaedel produced court records that proved the scenes were faked. The actors were caught and convicted of cruelty to animals. Court records showed they had been paid by Greenpeace. A similar Greenpeace myth was exposed by Magnus Gudmundsson. The Greenpeace fund- raising film, Bitter Harvest, depicted a seal hunter taking a baby seal from its mother and skinning it alive. Gudmundsson's charge that the scene had been faked by Greenpeace staffers was upheld after a long court battle. The 1992 decision in Norway confirmed that Greenpeace had deliberately falsified information in its film. Greenpeace collapsed in Norway after the decision. Membership fell from 15,000 to 35. Greenpeace chairman, Bjoern Oekern, resigned and confirmed Gudmundsson's findings, and that none of Greenpeace's money was used for "environmental protection." The current campaign to ban chlorine is based on undocumented claims of increased cancer risk and sexual dysfunction. The claims are another Greenpeace-generated myth designed to blow revenue back to the organization. Greenpeace cannot sustain its $157 million annual budget without claiming to fight a perpetual crisis of one kind or another. Paul Watson and Bjoern Oekern have confirmed what Blaedel and Gudmundsson have proved in court; if a crisis does not exist, Greenpeace has no problem manufacturing one. Greenpeace's power comes from its money. With five million members in 24 countries, each organization that uses the Greenpeace name pays a 24 percent royalty to the international
18 organization. The Forbes article reports that Greenpeace's fund-raising material regularly exaggerates with claims such as "We've already destroyed 94% of our whales," and "Half the world's shorelines have been destroyed." Nearly half of its members respond with money to these mailings. Greenpeace paid its fund-raising consultant $1.1 million in 1989 to solicit $31 million using these and other exaggerated mail claims. It is the same exaggerated claims that now threaten the entire chlorine industry.
19 Col 94-1 March, 1994 The Wildlands Project
By Henry Lamb "Our vision is simple:" says Dave Foreman, convicted eco-terrorist, "we live for the day when Grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to Grizzlies in Alaska; when Gray Wolf populations are continuous from New Mexico to Greenland; when vast unbroken forests and flowing plains again thrive and support pre-Columbian populations of plants and animals...." Foreman has been babbling about his ecotopian dream of converting North America to wilderness since before he founded Earth First! His dream is no longer eco-babble; it is a well- funded, nationally organized campaign called the North American Wilderness Recovery Project, and described in detail in a special edition of Wild Earth, the journal of Foreman's newest organization, the Genozoic Society. Editor, John Davis, says: Wild Earth exists in part to remind conservationists that in the long run all lands and waters should be left to the whims of Nature, not to the selfish desires of one species which chose for itself the misnomer homo sapiens. Does the foregoing [the plan] mean that Wild Earth and the Wildlands Project advocate the end of industrial civilization? Most assuredly. Everything civilized must go...humanizing of landscapes must stop now and be reversed." The centerpiece of the special edition is a strategy developed by Dr. Reed F. Noss, a research scientist for Idaho's College of Forestry, and Stanford University. According to Noss, the plan was prepared "...on contract with the National Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy," two of the richest and most respected environmental organizations in the world. Simply put, the Wildlands Project proposes to put humans in small urban islands within a wild continent. How much wildland is needed? Noss says 1000 grizzly bears are needed to sustain the species and he has determined that 1000 grizzlies need 242 million acres, or 378,000 square miles. That's an area larger than New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska combined. And that's for only 1000 grizzly bears. Noss says: "I suggest that at least half of the land area of the 48 conterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones...within the next few decades...assuming that most of the other 50 percent is managed intelligently as buffer zone." The Noss plan identifies large "core reserves" surrounded by "inner buffer" areas, which are surrounded by "outer buffer" areas, which are all connected by "inter-regional corridors." He says: "Eventually, a wilderness network would dominate a region ...with human habitations being the islands." Buffer zones, according to Noss, should be managed for the wildlife to insulate the area from human uses. "In many cases, private lands will need to be acquired and added to national forests and other public lands in order to serve as effective buffers."
20 As preposterous as this plan may sound to ordinary, hard-working Americans, it is no longer the pipe-dream of an eco-zealot. Peter Kostmayer introduced the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA), which was co-sponsored by several Congressmen. This bill established a bioregion, a "core reserve" as Noss calls it, with buffer zones and connectors that reached from Wyoming to Canada. Kostmayer was not reelected, and the bill has not yet been adopted. The Wilderness Act was adopted in 1964, after nine years of effort by wilderness advocates. The law set aside nine million acres forever as wilderness. Since then, an annual series of bills have been proposed, and now, more than 90 million acres have been set aside as wilderness. Dozens of bills are now under consideration that would designate even more land as wilderness. The Wildness Project may sound "wild" to most Americans, but it is a plan that is being implemented throughout the country by hundreds of organizations. And Congress appears only too willing to oblige.
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22 Col 94-2 March, 1994 Wildlands Project: Implementation Strategy
By Henry Lamb The Wildlands Project seeks to convert half of the land area of the lower 48 states to wilderness, and the other half to "intelligently managed" buffer zones which separate "islands" of human habitation. The project is described in detail in a special edition of Wild Earth, the publication of the Genozoic Society, created by Earth First! founder Dave Foreman. "We are concentrating on the big picture," Foreman says, "vast landscapes untrammeled and unencumbered by industrialization." In his description of an Adirondack wild region, editor John Davis provides insight on intelligent management: "Far from diminishing the economy, declaring the park a motor-free zone could create thousands of jobs: closing roads, dismantling dams, removing exotic species, packing in food and supplies for the remaining residents, monitoring water quality, reintroducing extirpated species, guiding birdwatchers, and such." For years, these ideas were dismissed as ecobabble; today, they are being systematically implemented. The strategy was developed by Dr. Reed Noss, funded by the National Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy, and is moving forward steadily. The Noss plan calls first, for "reconnaissance," defined as "field inventory." Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt has issued Secretarial Order 3173 creating the National Biological Survey (NBS). Congress appropriated $65 million for the project, even though the enabling legislation was apparently killed by property rights protection amendments. Babbitt has said the NBS is his highest priority which he will implement without legislative guidelines. The next step is control and intelligent management of the land, which according to Dave Foreman means: no grazing, no logging, no mining, road closures, and no off-road vehicles. Government already owns 40 percent of the land. More than 700 organizations similar to The Nature Conservancy are buying or acquiring land as rapidly as possible, much of which is resold to the government at a profit. The private land that remains is subject to ever-expanding government control. Grazing, logging, mining, and off-road recreation is being systematically eliminated on federal lands. The Endangered Species Act, prolific propaganda produced by environmental organizations, particularly by the National Audubon Society, and third-party law suits filed by environmental organizations, are pushing people and "industrial civilization" off government lands. Private lands are controlled by a maze of environmental laws. It is the objective of the Wildlands Project to squeeze people off private land onto "islands of human habitation." Using the Endangered Species Act, wetland regulations, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Heritage Corridors Act, park expansion, growth management, greenlining, buffer zones and an array of
23 other federal, state, and local regulations, landowners are already at the mercy of the biocentric wildlands advocates. To stifle the political backlash from property rights advocates, the wild earth crowd has devised an insidious strategy.
24 Col 94-3 March, 1994 The Wildlands Project: The Watershed Approach
By Henry Lamb Dr. Michael Soule is the chair of Environmental Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Wildlands Project. He says: "The key is thinking big, both in space and time." Soule describes property rights and wise-use advocates as "enemies of the land." His strategy is to avoid toe-to-toe combat with landowners by becoming partners with them in the "planning process." He suggests bringing the owner of an important tract of land into the planning process and allowing the owner to continue his land use, but to encourage him to consider donating the land to a conservancy after his death. Soule points at the tax benefits that might be offered as incentives. Gary Snyder is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. His contribution to the Wildlands Project suggests that the watershed, with "...watershed councils, become the building blocks of a continent-wide bioregional/ecosystem governance." It is not a coincidence that both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Soil Conservation Service have adopted the "Watershed Approach to comprehensive integrated resource management." A watershed is defined by elevation and gravity. It is the area drained by a common water outlet. Every watershed is a part of a larger watershed. Thousands of watersheds comprise a river basin. The watershed is the basic hydrologic unit. Ecosystems and bioregions are defined by watersheds. It is now official EPA and SCS policy to define the watershed as the basic planning unit for "comprehensive integrated resource management." It is not a coincidence that the first step in the planning process is to identify a watershed council. Participants on the watershed council are identified as "stakeholders," which are defined to be government entities, environmental organizations, industry, and interested individuals. Watersheds do not respect city limits or county lines. Watersheds frequently cross state boundaries and may encompass several government entities, hundreds of industries and thousands of interested individuals. The watershed approach fails to define how the councils are to be formed, what authority they will have, or exactly what they will do, or who will be in charge. The watershed approach clearly sets the stage for a collision between local government interests and federal authority. And it provides a forum for bringing selected landowners into "the planning process." For the last two years, the EPA has worked to control resource management at the watershed level. Without a law to prescribe it, the EPA has wrangled its way administratively to exert the regulatory authority to control resource use, period. Led by the EPA and the Department of Interior, the federal government has become the facilitator for the Wildlands Project. The Wildlands Project is coordinated nationally, but implemented at the local, watershed level, by hundreds of environmental organizations. Typically, the watershed council is loaded with
25 environmental organizations and "interested individuals" who are functionaries of environmental organizations. The watershed council, as Gary Snyder suggests, can be the building blocks on which the nation is turned over to the grizzly bear. In Deep Ecology, Gary Snyder says: "There are now too many human beings and the problem is growing rapidly worse.... If man is to remain on earth, he must transform the five-millennia long urbanizing civilization tradition into a new ecologically-sensitive harmony-oriented wild-minded scientific/spiritual culture. Nothing short of total transformation will do much good."
26 Col 94-4 March, 1994 The Wildlands Project: A Cure
By Henry Lamb Dave Foreman is the primary force behind the Wildlands Project. He is probably quite sincere when he says in his book, Confessions of an ECO Warrior: "An individual human life has no more intrinsic value than does an individual grizzly bear life." Or, when he says: "We can see that life in a hunter-gatherer society was on the whole healthier, happier, and more secure than our lives today as peasants, industrial workers, or business executives." Dave Foreman is sincerely wrong! The ultimate goal and logical end of the Wildlands Project is to strip industrial technology from civilization and return society to its pre-agricultural condition of cave-dwelling tribes that must be real eco warriors just to survive. Value is a human concept. Nothing has value until a human assigns it value. If Dave Foreman wishes to assign equal value or ultimate value to a grizzly bear, that is his prerogative. He cannot, however, assign value for anyone other than himself. He may, however, persuade other people to subscribe to his system of values. And he is. Tragically, far too many people refuse to think about the conflict of values until the consequences of Dave Foreman's value system emerges as the Endangered Species Act which prevented California residents from clearing a fire break around their homes. Or until the Clean Water Act prevents a landowner from plowing his pasture. Or until a Growth Management Act prevents a businessman from expanding his business. The cure for the Wildlands Project is simple: wake up! Dave Foreman's ecobabble has permeated the federal government, and America, not because it is a new, dynamic, righteous, idea, but because decent, hard-working people have not bothered to look behind the slick television programs, or challenge the twisted, unfounded news reports. Actions have consequences. For twenty years, Foreman and his biocentric zealot cronies have been at work. The Wildlands Project is one of the consequences of their actions. If those who believe that the value of human life is superior to that of a grizzly bear or a cockroach continue to do nothing, Foreman's value system will prevail. If those who believe that life today is better than it was when tribes of people lived in a hunter-gatherer society continue to do nothing, Foreman's value system will strip automobiles, TVs, electricity, and food from the rest of us. The cure for the Wildlands Project is simple: take action! Band together with others who celebrate human life, and strive to make it better through the technology created by human brain power. Get in the face of local and federal decision makers and say no to expanded federal control. Say no to stupid ideas and unsubstantiated claims of
27 environmental disaster. Say yes to politicians who champion individual freedom, free enterprise, and property rights for individuals. The ultimate cure for the Wildlands Project is really simple. America has already designated more than 90 million acres as wilderness, exactly as prescribed by the Wildlands Project. Every person who supports the project should be provided free transportation to the wilderness area of his choice - and forbidden to return to civilization.
28 Col 94-1 April, 1994 Why are we scaring ourselves to death?
By Henry Lamb John Stossel challenged green orthodoxy in his April television special "Are we scaring ourselves to death?" For the first time, millions of Americans were exposed to the truth about environmental myths that have caused Congress to enact costly, unnecessary laws and regulations. The resounding conclusion from the Stossel presentation is "yes," we are scaring ourselves to death - unnecessarily. The question here raised, is why? The best way to find an answer to the "why" question is to look at who benefits from the scare syndrome. The first major incidence of public policy by public hysteria can be traced to the ban on DDT in 1972. Led by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the popular media fanned a fire of hysteria into a public assumption that DDT caused all manner of health problems in man and wildlife. The result: William Ruckelshaus issued a ban on DDT. Was the ban necessary? No. Did the scientific community agree that DDT was dangerous? No. Was the DDT ban issued to appease political pressure? Yes. Ruckelshaus admitted that the ban was a political decision. He neither attended the hearings nor read the transcripts in which scientists emphatically agreed that DDT should not be banned. Who benefited from the DDT ban? It certainly was not the hundreds of thousands of people who died from malaria after the ban was issued. It was not the people who had to find and pay for new, more expensive insecticides. It was the EDF who used the DDT scare to generate millions of dollars from a hoodwinked public. It didn't take long for other green organizations to learn the technique: create a frightening scenario, feed it to the popular media, solicit unsuspecting citizens for money to lobby Congress, and laugh all the way to the bank. A few green organizations have built vast financial empires using this technique. Greenpeace has generated far more revenue from their "Save the Whales" campaign than the whaling industry has from harvesting whales. The National Wildlife Federation directs its $90 million per year budget from a $40 million building in Washington. The green organizations that promote the scare tactics are the ones who benefit. The people who respond with money are the victims. Not only do the contributors unwittingly pay the $200,000 salaries of green organization leaders, they ultimately pay higher taxes and other costs resulting from new legislation. The instigators of the scare are the only ones who benefit - everyone else pays the bill. Money is the primary reason why we are scaring ourselves to death. There is also another reason: there are some people in this world who sincerely believe that the world would be a better place if there were no humans in it. These people are not only willing to deceive, but actually destroy people and the technology that supports human populations. These biocentric folks have been largely discounted as lunatic fringe factors of the green movement.
29 For years, organizations such as Earth First!, the Animal Liberation Front, and others, have been burning billboards, spiking trees, and destroying research labs. But no one has considered theirs efforts to be anything but overzealous idiocy. Their efforts, however, have taken a more respectable route and are now having serious impact in Washington. The Wildlands Project, advanced by Earth First! founder Dave Foreman, is being implemented through several wilderness bills. Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt has opened a National Biological Survey Office to count every bug and plant in America - as stipulated in the Wildlands Project proposal. The lunatic fringe of the green movement has moved indoors and combined with the money-grubbing efforts of the mainstream greens, the American public is being scared to death - for the benefit of a very small minority.
30 Col 94-2 April, 1994 From hysteria to absurdity
By Henry Lamb The Northern spotted owl is the most famous endangered species in the world. Since 1988, the owl has claimed more newspaper space and TV news time than any other protected species. The owl has displaced as many as 30,000 loggers, devastated communities, and doubled the price of wood products adding an estimated $5,000 to the cost of a new home. Two of the nation's most prestigious green organizations, the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club, announced in 1986 that the spotted owl was teetering on the brink of extinction with only about 1500 pairs in existence. They claimed that 3000 pairs were necessary to insure survival of the species. Despite claims by loggers and professional foresters that the green estimates were too low, the owl was listed as an endangered species and millions of acres of forest land were preserved for their habitat. A major absurdity of the Endangered Species Act is the absence of any requirement that the target species actually be endangered. All that is required to list and protect a species is a nomination by an interested party (Audubon, Sierra, or any other green group) and the Fish and Wildlife Service can take over without any peer-reviewed scientific evidence or outside confirmation of the allegation that a species is, in fact, endangered. The spotted owl is not endangered, nor has it ever been endangered. Continuing studies have counted thousands of pairs of spotted owls in old growth, new growth, and nesting within 30 feet of well-used logging roads. As many as 10,000 pairs have been identified. Now, even David Wilcove, a biodiversity expert with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) admits: "It appears the spotted owl population is not in as bad a shape as imagined 10 years ago, or even five years ago." Too bad. The forests are still closed - forever. The loggers are still out of work. The price of wood products is still doubled, and the owl is still listed as endangered. Absurd! Green groups in California have taken protection of the mountain lion well beyond the absurd. In 1990, they promoted Proposition 117, a ballot initiative which banned sport hunting of the lion. The fine print in the initiative authorized the expenditure of nearly a billion dollars to buy wetlands and habitat for the lion. It doesn't matter that the lion is not endangered. In fact, according to the California Department of Fish and Game, the lion population has exploded to more than 5,100 animals, the most dense population of big cats in North America. In 1971, there were only four reported attacks by lions on livestock. since the ballot initiative, the attacks have soared to more than 200 per year. The reports include a 9-year-old boy in Santa Barbara and a 10-year old girl in San Diego. Last month, the body of Barbara Schoener was found mauled, with claw marks and animal hair, on a jogging trail in El Dorado County. "There were signs that she had struggled and that her body had been dragged," a sheriff's deputy said.
31
Green organizations have learned that what is necessary to achieve their biocentric objectives, is to create a public perception that a species is endangered - whether it is or not - and the public will approve almost any measure to protect it. Green organizations have learned that when they create a public perception that a substance is dangerous - whether it is or not - the public will approve almost any measure to ban it. Green organizations have become masters of creating public perceptions to achieve their own agenda. Science, cost, and common sense have become victims.
32 Col 94-3 April, 1994 Paranoid perceptions
By Henry Lamb Public policy turns on paranoid perceptions. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) instigated public paranoia about DDT. DDT was banned. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) instigated public paranoia about alar. Alar was banned. The list of public policies produced by paranoid public perceptions has grown to include asbestos, PCBs, CFCs, Dioxin, and a host of other useful, safe, beneficial substances. But the paranoid perceptions continue. "Cancer-causing" was once enough to instill public paranoia. Green groups have used the "cancer-causing" wolf cry so frequently it no longer has the effect it once had. Green groups who must instill fear to justify their endless solicitations have been forced to manufacture even more dramatic scare scenarios. The global warming scare was dreamed up to serve a wide range of political needs. Any issue that could be linked to global warming would surely meet with public approval. After all, who could oppose any regulation designed to prevent global disaster? Temperatures were supposed to rise five to eight degrees, melting the polar ice caps and raising the sea level to wipe out coastal cities. Crop lands were supposed to turn to desert and catastrophic storms were supposed to ravage the globe. This paranoid perception was created by green groups that blame a variety of human activities. Using fossil fuel, cutting trees, and even raising cattle - all are said to be causes of the alleged global warming. The problem is, like most green instigated perceptions, the entire global warming scenario is bunk. The planet is not warming beyond normal climate variations. The actual scientific, well-documented record shreds the global warming fabrication. Even Al Gore now uses the term "climate change" more often than "global warming." We may be about to see another flip-flop. The same people who preach global warming, just fifteen years ago, were predicting a new ice age because of man's use of fossil fuel, tree cutting, and cattle raising. Unhappy with the results of the global warming scare, even with the onerous ozone hole myth, the green groups found a new scary scenario. This time they found a chink in society's cynical armor. There is no spot more vulnerable than sexuality. Sure enough, a University of Florida researcher told a Congressional Committee that "there is not a man in this room that is half the man his grandfather was."The testimony was a part of a month-long circus staged by Greenpeace, the NRDC, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to promote the Greenpeace proposal to ban "all uses of chlorine." If the green groups can create the perception that chlorine causes penises to shrivel, chlorine will be banned. Never mind the absence of supporting scientific evidence. Never mind that there is no reliable substitute for disinfecting the public water supply. Never mind that chlorine is an essential ingredient in prescription drugs and crop protection products. Never mind that the industry employs 1.3 million people who bring home a $31 billion annual payroll. If the public becomes paranoid about this latest manufactured perception, another industry will needlessly bite the dust and public policy will once again be set by a paranoid perception.
33 Col 94-4 April, 1994 What is the truth?
By Henry Lamb Death may be the only irrefutable truth in the experience of life, although there is a strong case to be made for taxes. Aside from death, and possibly taxes, all else is speculation. What appears in the newspapers, magazines, books, on television or radio, is at best, what someone believes to be true at the moment. At worst, what you see or hear is what someone wants you to believe to be true. What you choose to believe is just that - what you choose to believe. It may or may not be true. Few people have the time, inclination, or resources to verify or confirm the massive stream of information that bombards us daily. If we hear the same story two or three times from reputable sources, we tend to accept the story as truth and move on. That is simply the reality of modern life. Green organizations exploit that reality. For years, the popular media has eagerly publicized any story supplied by the major green organizations. Was there an American anywhere outside the Northwestern forests who doubted that the spotted owl was endangered? The Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service all declared that the bird was teetering on the brink of extinction. America believed their story. Was the story true? No. But it has taken five years to get the popular media to publish stories that conflict with the powerful green organizations. Sadly, the time lag between the well-publicized fabricated story and the publication of the truth allows the enactment of laws and regulations that constrict both economic activity and individual freedoms. Where free speech is prized, the responsibility for truth falls not upon the speaker, but upon the hearer. There is no law that compels Greenpeace to be truthful in its press releases. There is no law that compels the media to verify the truth of the stories they publish. Nor should there be. The responsibility for ascertaining the truth rests squarely upon the hearer. How then, can an individual expect to know what to believe and what to reject? It may be cynical, if prudent, to believe nothing until you have to. Accept information from all sources with skepticism and hold it in abeyance until it becomes necessary to make a decision about it. When it becomes necessary to believe or reject a particular story, try to discover other points of view. Examine the credibility of the source. For example, the NRDC gave us the Alar scare, which proved to be baseless. Any story about pending doom from them would have to be examined in the light of the accuracy of their last doom and gloom story. How credible can the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society be, when their published reports about the spotted owl were so ridiculously inaccurate? The decision to believe or reject a particular story or a collection of stories should be forced by every election. If your vote is cast for a candidate whose beliefs are different from your own, it really doesn't matter what you believe.
34 Col 94-1 May, 1994 Who should control land use?
By Henry Lamb Since the end of WWII, the primary force behind the American economy, and the primary political objective, has been the prevention of the spread of Communism. The under-thirty crowd cannot remember the "domino theory" which held that when a country falls to Communism its neighbors will also fall, like dominoes falling in sequence. The threat of Communism instilled fear in every American. Communism meant absolute government control. In Communist countries, the government owned the land and decided, through central planning, what crops would be planted, who would work in the fields, what products would be produced, and the price people would pay. To Americans, Communism appeared to be a horrible way to live, even with the promise of womb-to-tomb care by the government. After nearly fifty years of fighting the threat of Communism, America saw the system falter and fall under its own weight. Ironically, even as the statues of Lenin were literally crumbling, America enacted laws and adopted policies to achieve precisely the same result threatened by Communism. A Communist take-over would certainly result in the loss of private land ownership and individual property rights. Federal policies, with no help from the Communists, are removing land from private ownership as fast as possible, and taking functional control over private land it does not own. Whether privately owned land is transferred to government through a Communist take-over, or through Section 404 of the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act, the result is the same - government control of the land. Driven by large, anti-property rights groups, national public policy has shifted completely away from the Constitutional presumption of private ownership of land, to a presumption of federal land use control. Governments already own 40 percent of all land in the United States, and are acquiring additional lands through purchase, perpetual easements and confiscatory enforcement actions. Land not yet in government hands is controlled by authorities granted in a long list of so-called environmental protection laws. Every year, a new crop of legislation and regulations are adopted to further extend the reach of government control of private property. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is rapidly positioning itself to be the nation's land use control agency. Vice President Gore's reinvention of government scheme is melding several agencies into a gigantic central planning/enforcement machine that is better described as the Environmental Police Agency. In what the EPA calls its "ecosystem protection policy," the agency is rapidly moving to take absolute control of every square inch of land in America. The policy is established at a priority level equal to the protection of human life. The policy is based on administrative decrees, Executive Orders, interpretation of international treaties, expanded use of regulatory authorities, and specific new legislation targeted to "eliminate the gaps" in its legislative authority.
35
The EPA's internal planning documents list what the agency perceives as "barriers" to be overcome. Among those barriers, are: "the primacy of local authority," and the lack of "influence over local governments." The EPA defines ecosystems as the unit for protection, regardless of political boundaries or private ownership. Ecosystems are further defined by watersheds within an ecosystem which are the basic unit for planning and regulatory enforcement. The policy calls for stepped-up "multi- media" enforcement which means that the EPA will coordinate simultaneous enforcement attacks on a geographic area (a watershed or ecosystem) by several agencies to enforce clean air, clean water, land use, waste disposal, and any other regulations that may be handy. There can no longer be any doubt that the federal government intends to be the absolute authority for land use, with the EPA designated as the agency to inflict the federal will. Had the Soviet Union been able to take over America, as envisioned by Premier Kruschev in the 1950s, it is unlikely that they would have been any more effective in transferring control of private land to government than has been accomplished by the green-inspired bureaucracy.
36 Col 94-2 May, 199 Who knows best?
By Henry Lamb Green groups and federal bureaucrats who have moved national policy to the brink of total federal land use control are no doubt sincere in their belief that only the federal government can adequately plan appropriate land use. "Appropriate" land use, however, is subjective and can reflect only the values of those people who happen to be in charge at any point in time. Currently, appropriate land use is defined as "no use." Virtually any use of land is systematically opposed by green organizations and a bureaucracy designed to challenge and prevent any activity that disturbs nature. It would be equally wrong to place land use authority in the hands of a bureaucracy headed by people whose values did not include the need for conservation of natural resources. What is wrong is giving any bureaucracy authority for land use control - especially a federal bureaucracy. It is beyond the comprehension of any bureaucracy to even imagine that free people working in a free market economy could build a prosperous, environmentally responsible society without government command and control. The irrefutable fact is that government command and control ultimately ends in economic and social collapse. Free people working in a free market economy is the only way to achieve a prosperous, environmentally responsible society. Free people, operating in a free market economy, appear as the ultimate manifestation of chaos to bureaucrats. Bureaucrats exist to insure orderly movement toward a predetermined goal. Any activity outside the procedures prescribed by the bureaucracy is considered to be subversive. Bureaucracies, inherently, assume that whatever goal they have set is the best possible goal for society. History disproves that notion. The collapse of the Soviet Union should be ample proof. Bureaucracies within the federal government also supply plenty of examples of the ultimate ineptness of bureaucratic rule. The current objective of federal bureaucracies to control land use is a complete reversal of the federal bureaucracies of the last century. The fact is, that no bureaucracy has, or can hope to have, the wisdom to manage society. On the other hand, when left alone, free people can and will build a prosperous, environmentally responsible society. It may appear to be chaotic, to some, but ultimate, ongoing success is guaranteed. There will be abuses along the way. There will certainly be inequities along the way. In a free society, those abuses and inequities are self correcting. In a bureaucratic structure, there are more abuses and inequities, which are systemic and tend to multiply in direct correlation to the growth of the bureaucracy. Rather than systemic self-correction, as is the case in a free society, correction comes in the form of total collapse. Always. Who knows best how to use the land and its resources? The individuals who own the land. Who knows best how to care for the land and its resources? The individuals who own, and must earn a living from the land. Certainly, individuals who hold conflicting personal objectives will collide in their use of land and resources. The process of colliding objectives is seen throughout nature. In every ecosystem, different species collide as they pursue their respective objectives.
37 Different members of the same species collide as they pursue their individual objectives. But somehow, without the benefit of any bureaucracy, they resolve their conflicts. Free people, operating in a free market economy, will also collide as they pursue their respective objectives. That process is called competition. Some businesses will fail, others will prosper. Some individuals will prosper, others will fail. Such is the law of nature. Neither Congress, nor any bureaucracy will ever repeal this fundamental law of nature. They can only distort and delay its implementation. Free people who abuse their land and natural resources will quickly discover that it is in their own self interest to find conservation and cultivation techniques to extend their prosperity. When the organizing principle of any society is personal freedom, prosperity is the inevitable outcome. When any other principle is a higher priority, prosperity and social progress is thwarted.
38 Col 94-3 May, 1994 Burgeoning bureaucracies
By Henry Lamb Government is the fastest growing industry in America. It produces nothing, sells no product, provides no service, has no shareholders, makes no profit, and has grown ten times faster than the population during the last hundred years. Why? We have let the burgeoning bureaucracy convince us that government is necessary to protect us. When Hitler, the Japanese, or the Soviet Union were threatening to invade America, we needed protection in the form of a collectively financed and centrally organized military. As those threats disappeared, why did the defending bureaucracy not also disappear? A bureaucracy, like any other living creature, has an innate instinct to survive and prosper. Unlike any other living creature, a bureaucracy doesn't have to earn its living. It simply has to attach itself to an indefensible or unwitting host. The federal bureaucracy attached itself inextricably to American society on February 3, 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. We gave the bureaucracy the authority to suck our blood. What began as a single-digit tax rate has now soared to more than 60 percent of the national income. Governments now collect more than 40 percent of the national income in direct taxes, and require that we spend an additional 20 percent of national income to comply with various regulations that have been imposed to protect us. The bureaucracy is burgeoning. There is no shortage of blood, from the bureaucracy's perspective, and there is no shortage of evils from which the blood donors must be protected. Every time a new social evil is identified, a new crop of bureaucrats are employed to enforce the rules designed to protect the donors. In recent years, the bureaucracy has created, or allowed to be created, the perception of social evils that do not exist - in order to expand their reach and protect their existence. Nowhere has the growth of government been more visible than in the Environmental Protection Agency. Nowhere has the perception of evil been so flagrantly created and flaunted as justification for widening the bureaucratic base. The cure is worse than the disease. Take chlorine for example. Zillions of dollars (blood) are being extracted from taxpayers (donors) to protect society from the perception that chlorine may cause a variety of social evils. The absence of chlorine in public drinking water supplies will definitely cause widespread disease and death. In South America, 8,500 people died from cholera in three years when chlorine was removed from drinking water supplies. A chlorine ban, however, will keep thousands of bureaucrats busy writing and enforcing a new regulation. Those of us who have to pay the bill do not have the option of choosing whether or not we want the government's protection, we are forced to take it and pay for it whether it is needed or not. As long as the bureaucracy has the power to dictate what it will protect us from, it will continue to find, or manufacture the perception of, some social evil to justify its own existence and expansion.
39
There is a point of diminishing returns, and the American economy is getting perilously close to that point. Those of us who live in the real world are already spending more than 60 percent of our income to support the bureaucracy. The percentage of our income it takes to support the burgeoning bureaucracy creeps upwards with every new law and regulation. Congress is the place where bureaucrats and protection advocates convene in a feeding frenzy to authorize new ways to extract ever increasing blood from the rest of us. Universal health care alone, will take an additional five to ten percent of our income. Sadly, the only way bureaucracies can grow, is from the loss of personal freedom. As the bureaucracies continue to bloat, free people are transformed into pawns who function only to feed the burgeoning federal bureaucracy. Only when there is no more blood to extract, will the bureaucracy come tumbling down.
40 Col 94-4 May, 1994 Stop the bloodsucking
By Henry Lamb We can't have it both ways. On the one hand, there is a national uproar about exorbitant taxes. On the other hand, there is a national uproar demanding that government do something about health care, crime, pollution, open spaces, wilderness and park expansion, welfare, jobs, population control, and a laundry list of special objectives. The best action government can take to achieve all the special objectives is to get out of the way. Herein lies the fundamental political conflict: let government be responsible for all the special objectives - and continue the incessant bloodsucking, or end the bloodsucking and let people fend for themselves. Many people consider dependence upon government programs to be social progress. During the recent gun control debates, banning assault weapons was presented as the responsibility of a civilized society - to reduce crime. Those who argued that a fully armed society would reduce crime were cast as uncivilized primitives. The fact is, of course, that weapons bans affect only the law abiding citizens. Criminals - and the government - will have any weapons they want. A fully armed society may well be primitive - but it is an effective way to reduce crime. It may appear to be primitive to end welfare, unemployment benefits, Medicare and Medicaid, and the myriad other programs administered by government. In reality, such a move would solve many of the social and economic ills that plague the nation. It has taken fifty years for government to weave its web of social entrapment and for those who are dependent upon it, a sudden correction would be brutal. Correction of government's over- regulation does not have to be sudden. It has to be stopped, and systematically dismantled. Universal health care may be the issue that awakens enough people to force the government to end its bloodsucking. It is inconceivable that a free people who cherish free enterprise would seriously consider letting the government nationalize one-seventh of the entire economy in one fell swoop. In view of the government's atrocious record of administering virtually every program it has undertaken, it is inconceivable that free people would consider letting the government administer health care. The cost of health care got out of control in the first instance because of government's intervention, regulation and administration. To stop the bloodsucking, free people must accept the fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch, or free health care, or free welfare, or free unemployment benefits, or free clean water, or free anything. We have to pay for it all. We are now paying about 60 cents of every income dollar for the government to deliver the lunch. If we continue present policies, much more of our income will be taken. If we say no more bloodsucking, and begin to dismantle the bureaucracies of government, we may choose from an
41 extensive menu of services offered by free people operating in a free market economy. If we stop the bloodsucking we'll have the money to buy them. The bloodsucking can be stopped only by sending to Washington a crop of Congressmen who believe, as Thomas Jefferson believed, less government is the best government. We who want the bloodsucking stopped cannot be silent or idle. Only when the bloodsucking stops and government programs are dismantled can we expect to see improvement in either long term economic or social trends.
42 Col 94-1 June, 1994 Civil war gathering
By Henry Lamb A civil war, unlike any in history, is gathering across the American Landscape. This war will not be fought with guns and bayonets, but with laws, resolutions, court decisions, regulations - and ballots. At stake is the supreme authority of the federal government. There is neither question nor argument about the limits of authority imposed upon the federal government by its creators. Jefferson's greatest fear was that the federal government would eventually ignore the 10th Amendment, and usurp the "...powers reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In 1821 he said: "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." Jefferson's fears were well founded and his words prophetic. The federal government has far exceeded the authorities granted to it by the Constitution. So flagrant and so widespread is the abuse of federal power that individuals and institutions from one end of the country to the other are seeking ways to halt the growth of federal tyranny. Environmental laws and regulations adopted to "protect the public interest" ignored the rights of private property owners, and were, with few exceptions, unchallenged by the property owners. Emboldened by their successes, the federal government began to expand their regulatory power to require cities and states to enforce federal standards. As long as the federal government paid the cost of new regulations, cities and states generally complied. But when the federal government could no longer pay for its regulatory appetite, it continued to enact new regulations and required the cost to be paid by cities and states. Led by the Cities of Columbus, Ohio and Anchorage, Alaska, cities and states began to rebel under the banner of no unfunded mandates. Under Clinton administration bureaucrats, states are required to pay the cost of abortion in certain cases. When this policy shift hit the fan, outright rebellion broke loose. After receiving a directive from the federal government, the Governor of Pennsylvania fired off a letter to the President which said "This directive would require me to disregard a validly enacted state statute...I have no intention of following it." In a similar case in Colorado, a federal judge ruled that Colorado must pay for abortions even though the State Constitution forbids it. At issue is this: when state and federal law collide, which law is supreme? Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled in favor of the federal government and
43 eroded the rights of the states reserved by the 10th Amendment. As a practical matter, the federal government routinely threatens to withhold highway, education, Medicaid and other funds, from any state that squawks about enforcing federal law. In the last five years, grassroots organizations have sprung up all across America in protest of excessive federal regulations that deprive individuals of their property rights. Now that the federal government is flexing its muscles and depriving cities and states of their rights, civil war is not only more likely, it is inevitable. In some states, the paramount issue is federally mandated abortions. In Florida and California, it is federally mandated welfare benefits to illegal immigrants. In the West, it is federally mandated land and water use. In the Midwest, it is a host of federally mandated clean air, clean water, and other environmental regulations. In recent years, mandates have spewed forth from Washington with little regard for cost or benefit. America is fed up.
44 Col 94-2 June, 1994 The battle-lines are drawn
By Henry Lamb The civil war that is gathering across American is not about geography or race; it is about power: is the federal government the supreme authority, or is the federal government simply an agent of the individuals and the states that created it? The battle lines are not only drawn, but declared. Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and John Chafee (R-RI) have written a letter to President Clinton asking him to revoke an Executive Order (12630) issued by President Reagan which provides a measure of protection for private property owners. Chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee, Norman Mineta (D-CA), has written a "Dear Colleague" letter urging members to resist the "unholy trinity" which is defined to be: property rights, regulatory cost/benefit analyses, and opposition to unfunded mandates. Similar letters have been sent to members of Congress from virtually every major green advocacy group. The League of Conservation Voters (formerly headed by Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt) threatened to withhold political support from Congressmen who vote for "unholy trinity" issues. The National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club are among the dozens of organizations that unleashed a barrage of letters to Congress urging opposition to any bill that would protect property rights, require regulatory cost/benefit analyses, or oppose unfunded mandates. On one side of the battle field are the green advocacy groups, their congressional supporters, and an administration firmly dedicated to regulating everything from band-aids to building permits. On the other side are hundreds, if not thousands of grassroots organizations, and a growing number of local and state officials who are sick and tired of unrestrained, often unreasonable, and unnecessary federal regulations. Citizens groups, and local and state officials have lobbied in vain, urging Congress to put the brakes on the regulatory propensities of the federal government. Now, new strategies are in the works. The Legislature of the State of Colorado has adopted a resolution which says "The State of Colorado hereby claims sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the United States Constitution." The State of Arizona has appropriated a million dollars to create a "Constitution Defense Council." Seventeen other states have similar legislation under consideration, all seeking to limit the power of the federal government.
45 Utah Governor, Mike Leavitt, has laid out an ambitious plan that could consolidate the anti- federal sentiment and force the federal government back into the cage created for it by the Constitution. Leavitt is lobbying both the National Governors Association and the Conference of State Legislatures to endorse and support the idea of convening what he calls a "Conference of States Summit." The purpose of the summit will be to craft a proposed Amendment to the Constitution. If 75% of the states participate and approve a proposed Amendment, it will be advanced to Congress for their adoption. If Congress fails to adopt the Amendment, the states then may exercise the option of convening a constitutional convention. Leavitt is not just talking. He presented his plan to a conference of state legislators in Phoenix, Arizona. He has secured support from several governors and several state legislatures. He plans to convene the summit in October of 1995, well before the Presidential election. Nationally syndicated columnist Walter E. Williams says: "If Congress persists, states should call out the National Guard, and private citizens should organize militia to serve eviction notices to federal agencies in their states charged with the responsibility of violating the 10th Amendment." Civil war is on the horizon.
46 Col 94-3 June, 1994 Why a civil war is necessary
By Henry Lamb After acquiring a building permit from local government, and site approval from the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation, Ocie Mills dumped 19 loads of building sand on a sixty-five-foot building lot in preparation for building his son a home. Both Ocie and his son (because the son's name was on the deed) were sentenced to 21 months in a federal prison for polluting the "waters of the United States," under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Few people outside the family paid much attention. Green advocacy groups hailed the conviction in the press. Most people were convinced that Ocie must have done something wrong, people don't go to jail in America just for putting dirt on their own property. A federal regulator superseded local and state government to impose upon a private citizen a definition of "waters of the United States," that was not established by Congress, but by bureaucrats and green-group initiated law suits. At least five other people have gone to jail and literally thousands of individuals have been prevented by the same regulations, from using their land. The Audubon Society and the Sierra Legal Defense Fund petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the northern spotted owl as an endangered species. Loggers' protests that the owl was plentiful and in no way endangered, fell on deaf ears. Eleven million acres of prime timber were given to the owls, more than 6,000 acres for each known owl in the area, and families and towns were left with no work, no income, no future. Although Clinton's timber summit restored a few acres for logging, the area is essentially off-limits to people for any reason. The Audubon Society's report, on which the decision to list the owl was based, said that 1,500 pairs were necessary to sustain the species, and that the species was on the brink of extinction. Newsweek writer, Gregg Easterbrook says in a soon-to-be-released book, that research has proved that the owl was never endangered, that surveys now indicate the presence of as many as 10,000 pairs of owls. The conclusion is supported by several other scientists. Nevertheless, the owl is officially "endangered" because the federal government says it is endangered. Just as Ocie Mills' high and dry building lot was "waters of the United States," because the federal government said it was "waters of the United States." A graduate student in California, coached by an advisor to Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt, produced a report that said the California gnatcatcher was endangered. Immediately, the Natural Resources Defense Council petitioned to have the bird listed as endangered. Babbitt quickly shut down all economic development on 400,000 acres of Southern California. The same area, ironically, where the NRDC had been fighting a new proposed highway system. Federal judge, Stanley Sporkin has ruled that the gnatcatcher is not endangered, based on the shabby evidence that was used to justify the listing. Secretary Babbitt, and his green advocacy groups, intend to overturn the judge's ruling. The gnatcatcher was listed, not because it was endangered, but
47 because the federal government needed an excuse to impose its will on local and state governments, and the individuals who live in Southern California. A civil war is necessary because the federal government has ignored the pleas of individuals and the demands of local and state governments. The federal government continues to spew forth laws, regulations, interpretations, and procedures that have grievous impact on individuals and on local government. The American people are fed up, sick and tired of federal arrogance, and they intend to stop it, one way or another. Green advocacy groups, and government agencies, tend to paint those who oppose their programs, as anti-environmental, and dismiss their objections. That strategy has worked, until the last few years. Since the rise of the new administration, government has managed to insult and offend Constitutional values cherished not only by 5th Amendment property rights advocates, but also by the 2nd Amendment advocates, pro-life advocates, the health and business communities, local and state governments who are staunch 10th Amendment advocates, and now with Al Gore's "clipper chip" scam, the entire community of 1st Amendment advocates. So-called "public interest" groups such as the green advocacy groups and Ralph Nader's Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) underestimate the breadth and depth of the rising anti-federal government sentiment. Though shots are unlikely and unnecessary, a revolution is afoot.
48 Col 94-4 June, 1994 Envirocrats: the federal foot soldiers
By Henry Lamb In his 1981 book, Theft, David A. Witts refers to a "sodomistic union" of environmentalists and bureaucrats which occurred during the Carter administration. He says the marriage produced a surplus of government and a shortage of production. It also produced the hybrid we call "envirocrats." Congress should commission a study to determine how many federal policy makers and regulatory enforcers have moved into government agencies directly from a green advocacy group. Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt, moved to Washington directly from the top spot at the League of Conservation Voters. His Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife is George Frampton, former President of the Wilderness Society. OMB's Deputy director, Alice Rivlin, was Chair of the Wilderness Society. Scientific Advisor to the Department of Interior is Thomas E. Lovejoy, a former official of the World Wildlife Fund. Rafe Pomerance, of the World Resources Institute, is now Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. The Administrator for Policy Planning at EPA is former Sierra Club Legislative Director, David Gardiner. The list goes on and on, and these are just the people who are in policy-making positions. Where do you suppose they get their foot soldiers? The top of the green heap is not Bill Clinton; it is Al Gore. In exchange for his joining the ticket, Clinton gave Gore authority over the environment. His new authority was felt immediately by the appointment of his former assistant, Carol Browner, as Administrator of the EPA. Nothing happens at EPA that Gore does not want to happen. Whatever Gore wants to happen at EPA, happens. Gore also exercised his authority by getting Clinton to sign the Biodiversity Treaty produced by Earth Summit, which George Bush refused to sign. Al Gore has carefully built the entire regulatory army, from commanders, to the foot soldiers, with dedicated, trained, motivated - envirocrats. Public policy is no longer hammered out in Congress by representatives elected by people who work for a living. It matters very little what Congress does or says. The envirocrats devise the policies they wish to impose, and with the force of law, they impose it. Wetland policy is an excellent example. The Clean Water Act does not include the word "wetland." It was designed to prevent pollution of "navigable" waters of the United States. In a rain storm at high tide, a toy boat could not be navigated on the ground for which Ocie Mills spent nearly two years in jail for polluting with building sand. Congress had no say in the matter. Babbitt's National Biological Survey Bill (HR1845) was withdrawn from further consideration when an amendment was added that required envirocrats to get permission from land owners before entering private property to count bugs. Babbitt simply set up an office in the Department
49 of Interior and is proceeding with the survey without congressional authority - and without regard for the rights of private property owners. Day by day, the envirocrats take firmer control of the federal government. Green advocacy groups, funded in part by federal grants and legal fees collected from the government and private industry from third-party law suits, continue to plunder the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is no longer accurate to refer to the envirocratic dictatorship as a "federal" government. There is little similarity between the federal government created by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and the boys, and the arrogant, all-intrusive bureaucracy that now claims and exerts the authority to do and say whatever it takes to justify its self-appointed role of "protecting the public interest." Americans hate war. We avoid it as long as possible. But when it is no longer possible to avoid, that is, when it gets close enough to affect us personally, we take up arms and go. There are enough people now who have been affected personally by the new envirocratic regime, that an army is mobilizing. The weapons do not include bullets; but we are stockpiling ballots. Boot camps have sprung up across the land in the form of grassroots organizations. Generals are being elected and strategies are being formulated. Fire-fights have broken out across the land, but the real invasion is yet to come: watch the events between the 1994 and 1996 elections. Civil war is gathering!
50 Col 94-1 July, 1994 Why rebellion is brewing: Nature is not Divine
By Henry Lamb Most people want little more than a home where their family is safe and secure, a meaningful job that provides for life's necessities, and to be left alone to pursue happiness as they see fit. For nearly 200 years, America was the place where people could satisfy their wants and desires. No more. No home is safe from either criminal or government intrusion. Meaningful jobs are evaporating and with them the incomes required to meet life's necessities. Increasingly, the opportunity to pursue happiness is either too expensive or illegal. What has happened to America? In the last 30 years, America has experienced a shift in fundamental values more dramatic than the reformation, the renaissance, or the emergence of monotheism. For nearly 200 years, human life was held to be the supreme value which guided individual actions and national policies. No more. Now, "nature" is the supreme value that guides the actions of many, if not most, individuals and most certainly guides our national policies. Anthropocentrism, as an organizing principle, has given way to biocentrism. The Wilderness Act of 1964 was the first biocentric law. Congress thought it was setting aside nine million acres so future generations could see the wilderness our forefathers had to conquer. The law, in fact, was the first step in the biocentric objective to restore wilderness to all the earth. Wilderness areas have increased ten-fold since 1964, and continue to increase with every Congress. Wilderness areas are not preserved for future generations. They are by law, off limits to humans; they are preserved for nature, for biodiversity, for non-human species. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 added another layer of biocentric legislation. The law requires that threatened or endangered non-human species, as determined by the federal government, be saved regardless of the cost or impact on the human species. The law gives 6,000 acres of prime timber land to each pair of spotted owls while evicting humans from their homes, their jobs, and their communities. A parade of biocentric laws and regulations have marched out of Washington and invaded the human habitat across America, leaving people devastated in its wake. Nature is now the supreme value, to be preserved at all cost. Humans are now the villains. Washington is tired of attacking humans one law at a time. A new plan is about to be unveiled that will put humans in their place once and for all: Al Gore's Ecosystem Management Plan. A Department of Interior Working Document says: "In all ecosystem management activity humans are to be considered as a biological resource." Humans are now officially considered to be of no greater value than any other biological resource. A fundamental tenet of biocentrism is the belief that all life forms have equal intrinsic value. The cockroach, the AIDS virus, the rattlesnake, all are equal in value to humans in the biocentric mind. With the adoption of Al Gore's Ecosystem Management Plan, biocentrism will become the official organizing principle
51 of the federal government. Through this reorganization, or "reinvention" of government, the federal government will take absolute control and active management of every square inch of land in America. The Ecosystem Management Plan explicitly defines ecosystems by biological boundaries without regard to political boundaries or private ownership. In his book, Earth in the Balance, Gore says that preservation of nature must become society's organizing principle. He is organizing the federal government to preserve nature without concern or regard for the cost or suffering humans must bear. The Ecosystem Management Plan is not a new law. It has not been proposed or debated in Congress. Gore, and his new regime of biocentric envirocrats, cannot risk Congressional debate and public awareness. The new plan will be authorized by an Executive Order, which is already drafted, scheduled for issuance before September 30, 1994. The plan will be implemented through a new bureaucratic structure already in place and functioning. Biocentrism is now the fundamental value guiding American public policy.
52 Col 94-2 July, 1994 Why rebellion is brewing: the Ecosystem Management Plan
By Henry Lamb Al Gore is the brightest light on the Democratic horizon. His presence on the ticket is seen by many pundits as the reason Democrats won in 1992. It is widely assumed that Gore will take over the reins of leadership when Clinton moves on. Gore was on the ticket because Clinton gave him authority over the environment. While Clinton may be stumbling in both foreign and domestic policy, Gore has not missed a step in reinventing environmental policy. He launched the "National Performance Review" and made a spectacular press display of "reinventing" government. He promised to "streamline" and make government more efficient. He did not say how. The "how" is now coming to light. He warned in his book just what his new organizing principle of "preserving the earth" meant. He said: "Adopting [this] principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action - to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system." As Commander-in-Chief of the environment, Al Gore is doing everything he promised in his book. The National Performance Review produced a model Ecosystem Protection Plan from the Environmental Protection Agency. Gore created a White House level Ecosystem Management Task Force headed by Katie McGinty. The Task Force consists of Assistant Secretaries from 12 federal agencies. Its task is to oversee the work of a new superstructure called the "Interagency Ecosystem Management Coordinating Group (IEMCG)." The IEMCG consists of policy makers from 20 federal agencies that will implement the Ecosystem Management Plan as set forth by Executive Order. Two documents reveal the magnitude of the Ecosystem Management Plan, one produced by the Environmental Protection Agency, the other by the Department of Interior. The key features include: humans are to be considered as a "biological resource;" ecosystem protection will assume a priority equal to the protection of human health; implementation is to be pursued by Executive and Secretarial Orders, expansion of rule making authority, interpretation of international treaties, multi-media (simultaneous) enforcement of regulations by all agencies, and new legislation to "eliminate the gaps" in administrative authority; ecosystems are to be defined by biological boundaries without respect to political jurisdictions or private ownership.
53 The plan has been underway since Gore took office. Actually, the plan has been underway since well before Gore took office. He has simply made it the official policy of the United States. The idea has been bubbling in biocentric literature for years. Dr. Reed F. Noss, a wildlife ecologist from the University of Florida, gave the idea substance in a plan he wrote under contract with the National Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy. The Noss plan was published in Earth First! founder, Dave Foreman's Wild Earth. With a grant from the Hati Foundation for Deep Ecology, he distributed 75,000 copies. The first step in the Noss plan is a national biological survey. It is not a coincidence that on April 22, Gerry L. Studds (D-MA) introduced the Biological Survey Act of 1993 (HR1845). The bill raced through committees until it ran into two amendments. One amendment required federal bug counters to secure written permission from land owners before counting bugs, and the other required information gathered by federal bug counters to be made available to property owners. These amendments made the bill unacceptable to the biocentric ecosystem managers. The bill was withdrawn. The biological survey was not. In September of 1993, Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt, created the National Biological Survey (NBS) by "Secretarial Order." By March of 1994, the NBS had a budget of $167.2 million, 1850 employees, 13 research centers, more than 60 cooperative research units, and 100 field stations. Gore said he would use "every tactic and strategy" available, and he is doing it. The National Audubon Society helped to pay for the original Noss study. The National Audubon Society's chief lobbyist, Brooks Yeager, is now the Department of Interior's employee in charge of implementing the Ecosystem Management Plan. In fact, many of the federal policy makers who are now implementing Gore's reinvented government were hired directly from Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) who have been promoting and lobbying for ecosystem management.
54 Col 94-3 July, 1994 Why rebellion is brewing: Al Gore's gaggle of GAGs
By Henry Lamb Bruce Babbitt left his job as head of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) to become the Secretary of the Department of Interior. The LCV was created in 1970 as a Political Action Committee (PAC) by Friends of the Earth. Their function is to promote the election of biocentric candidates. In 1990, the contributed more than $250,000 to House and Senate candidates. They also publish the voting record of legislators to identify those who vote "correctly" and those who do not. While President of LCV, Babbitt wrote a League Scorecard in which he said: "We must identify our enemies and drive them into oblivion." Among the LCV's Board of Directors are two who now hold important positions in Gore's reinvented government: Rafe Pomerance, who was also Senior Associate for Policy Affairs at the World Resources Institute, is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources; David Gardiner, who was Director of Legislative Affairs for the Sierra Club, is now the Assistant Administrator of Policy Planning and Evaluation at the Environmental Protection Agency. George Frampton is the Assistant Secretary of Interior for Fish and Wildlife. He comes directly from the Presidency of The Wilderness Society, founded in 1935 by avowed socialists Robert Marshall, Benton MacKaye, and Aldo Leopold. The Wilderness Society drafted the Wilderness Act of 1964 and led the lobbying efforts of several GAGs until it was adopted. The Wilderness Society is a prime mover of the Ecosystem Management Plan which has been working to convert 26 million acres of mostly privately owned northern forest land to wilderness. The Society's former President is now a top official in Gore's reinvented government which is building public policy on biocentric beliefs. The Society's former Chair, Alice Rivlin, was selected as Deputy Director of the Budget, and has now been named to succeed Leon Panneta as Secretary of the Treasury. Brooks Yeager, formerly chief lobbyist for the National Audubon Society, is now Director of Policy Analysis for the Department of Interior and coordinating DOI's Ecosystem Management Task Force. Thomas Lovejoy is the Scientific Advisor at the Department of Interior. Lovejoy comes from the World Wildlife Fund. Of the Ecosystem Management Plan, he says: "[We] will map the whole nation...determine development for the whole country, and regulate it all...." Former World Resources Institute President, Gus Speth, and Vice President, Jessica Tuchman Matthews have been recruited to implement their biocentric ideas as official U.S. policy. Speth represents the White House on the United Nations Development Programme, and Matthews is Deputy Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs. John Leshy, Solicitor for the Department of Interior, comes directly from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Gore has surrounded himself with people who have a long, well documented history of biocentric advocacy. His book, and his actions, are a confession of his conversion from Tennessee Baptist, to global biocentric. He has opened the doors of government to the very organizations responsible for the laws and regulations that are crippling America by converting
55 our government from one created to protect human rights, including the right to own and use property, to a government that places the needs of non-human species above the needs of people. He has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to "preserve nature" in the full biocentric belief that only government has the wisdom and power to "manage" all biological resources - including people. What Gore has already done to our government will cause inexcusable pain and suffering to this generation. What he is doing on the global scene may be treasonous. Former Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO) represents the United States at the United Nations on environmental matters. Wirth was elected to the Senate in 1986, largely due to contributions from the LCV. His voting record in the Senate won him the appointment to the UN. There he speaks for the Unites States, but he answers to Al Gore. International treaties, developed through the UN superstructure, supersede the U.S. Constitution in authority. Treaties already adopted, and several currently under development, can render the United States helpless and subject to the whims of a global biocentric leadership.
56 Col 94-4 July, 1994 Why rebellion is brewing: Global GAGs
By Henry Lamb Just as Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) have invaded the federal government, so too, have they invaded and taken control of the international arena. Forbes magazine reported in November, 1991, that Greenpeace paid "at least a half-dozen" small, poor nations to stack the International Whaling Commission (IWC) so Greenpeace could dominate the Commission's policies. But domination by GAGs of the international decision making process is much more pervasive than the IWC. The international decision-making structure reads like a recipe for alphabet soup. The top echelon of authority is centered in four organizations: United Nations (UN), World Bank (WB), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Each organization has sub-organizations and working groups assigned to specific responsibilities. All have potential impact on America and all are influenced, or are dominated, by GAGs. Of immediate concern is UNEP, the United Nations Environmental Programme. UNEP was founded by Maurice Strong in 1976. Strong is an avid biocentrist. At the opening ceremonies of UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development), which he chaired in Rio de Janeiro in June, 1992, he said: "We must transform our attitudes and values, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature." His reference to "Divine Nature," was not a casual remark. He has a Babylonian Sun God Temple on his Colorado ranch, built by William Thomas, founder of the Lindisfarne Association which promotes theosophical nature worship. Strong also chairs an international GAG in Costa Rica called the "Earth Council," and another GAG in Rome called the "Sustainable Development Task Force." Strong created the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). This group of carefully selected scientists and NGOs (non-government organizations), most of which are GAGs, was instrumental in developing the Climate Change Treaty which was signed at UNCED. Although President Bush was able to soften much of the treaty language before he signed it, the treaty still binds the U.S. to the theory of Global warming, a theory unsupported by scientific evidence. UNCED produced four other important international documents: a treaty on biodiversity, the Earth Charter, Agenda 21, and a treaty to protect the world's forests. Bush refused to sign the biodiversity treaty because it required the US to ignore patent and copyright protection of intellectual property and the "free" transfer of technology to developing nations. Bush was bitterly criticized by Al Gore, who had Bill Clinton sign the treaty shortly after taking office. The treaty is now before the Senate for ratification. Gore says that "...an entirely new generation of international treaties and agreements aimed at protecting the environment" are essential to save the planet, even if those treaties ignore the protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
57
The Earth Charter and Agenda 21 establish the framework for the redistribution of wealth through the U.N. Developed nations are to be taxed (for consuming too much) and the money is to go to underdeveloped nations so they will not have to develop their natural resources. The documents provide for an international police force to monitor environmental compliance and enforce the treaties. France's representative to UNCED, Michel Rocard, said: "It is necessary that the community of nations exert pressure, even using coercion...sanctions, boycott, even outright confiscation." The world is casting off its historic appreciation of the value of human life and adopting a biocentric, religion-like belief in the value of nature. Al Gore is in charge of the transformation in America and the world's leading biocentric missionary. Americans are already suffering as a result of the ascendancy of biocentrism and the suffering will only get worse as "nature" assumes its inevitable "Divine" status. When government uses its power to pursue any purpose other than the purpose for which it was created, oppression of its citizens is the inescapable consequence. In America, government was created to protect the "unalienable rights" of the human beings that created it, not the imagined rights of cockroaches, rats, trees, ecosystems, or even "Divine Nature."
58 Col 94-1 August, 1994 New World Order: ...and it is green
By Henry Lamb The "New World Order" is upon us. It is not a military order. It is not an economic order. It is a religious/political order, and it is green. In the Summer of 1992, there was a big hoopla about the so-called "Earth Summit," or the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), in Rio de Janeiro. An international treaty on climate change, and another on biological diversity were offered to the world community. The United States signed the climate change treaty, but refused to sign the treaty on biological diversity. After the election, however, President Clinton reversed the U.S. position and signed the treaty. Both treaties are now being implemented. Few Americans have any idea how the treaties will affect their lives. Both treaties are simply statements of principles and objectives. Nothing is set in stone, except the procedure for implementing the treaties. Each participating nation designates a person or delegation to participate in what is called a Conference of the Parties (COP)." The COP meets at least twice a year to plan exactly how the treaties are to be implemented. The participating nations are bound to whatever the COP decides to do. The treaty on biodiversity, officially known as Conventions on Biological Diversity, sailed through the Senate on August 8, pushed by incredible pressure from Vice President Al Gore and a gaggle of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs). Little matter, though, the treaty has been the basis for extensive government reorganization for the last two years. Several new terms are beginning to appear in the media and in government: Ecosystem Management, Interagency Ecosystem Management Coordinating Group (IEMCG), Sustainable Development, Appropriate Technology, Sustainable Agriculture, President's Council on Sustainable Development, Protected Areas, Bioregions, Connectivity, National Biological Survey, Gap Analysis Program, and Restoration. These new terms have enormous implications for every American. For example, restoration of an ecosystem, means restoring an ecosystem to its natural biodiversity as it appeared before the impact of human beings. Connectivity refers to corridors of wilderness that connect restored ecosystems and bioregions. Appropriate technology means park your car and ride a bicycle - or mule. Never has the world been confronted with such a widespread, well-funded, magnificently organized, initiative to impose a minority value on the entire world's population. The value being promoted around the world is biocentrism, the belief that all life has equal intrinsic value. To put it bluntly, biocentrism is the belief that human life has no greater value than the life of a cockroach or the AIDS virus. In fact, the most strident proponents of biocentrism see human beings as a cancer on the earth. Dr. Warren Hern, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and chairman-elect of the American Public Health Association's planning section, is quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle, as saying "The human species has become a malignancy, an eco-tumor that is growing out of control and devouring its
59 host, Earth." No longer is this sentiment confined to the lunatic fringe of the extreme GAGs. It is becoming the official doctrine, and the philosophical basis of national policy. An EPA document on Ecosystem Management says ecosystem (biodiversity) protection will assume the same priority status as the protection of human health. A Department of Interior document on Ecosystem Management says that "all ecosystem management activities will consider human beings to be a biological resource." Consistent with the Conventions on Biological Diversity adopted at Rio in 1992, the federal government is degrading the value of human beings to a status equal to bugs, and such principles as property rights, checks and balances in government and national sovereignty are all victims of the new paradigm - biocentrism.
60 Col 94-2 August, 1994 New World Order: ...in the USA
By Henry Lamb Since Al Gore assumed the Vice Presidency, he has been reorganizing the federal government around the principle he passionately described in his book, Earth in the Balance: saving the planet from humans. He is responsible for imposing the New World Order on America. The New World Order means total government control of the human beings who are destroying the planet. A new feature of American Government is the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). Co-chair of the Council is Johathan Lash, President of the World Resources Institute. The Executive Director is Molly Hariss Olson, formerly of Greenpeace, Australia. Other members include: John Adams, Natural Resources Defense Council, Bruce Babbitt, former head of the League of Conservation Voters, Jay Hair, President of the National Wildlife Federation, Fred Krupp, of the Environmental Defense Fund, Michele Perrault, President of the Sierra Club, William Ruckelshaus, former EPA Administrator who banned DDT, John Sawhill, President of The Nature Conservancy. This is the Council that will make both regulatory and legislative policy recommendations that carry the weight of the Office of the President. Feeding recommendations to the PCSD is an organization called BIONET, which consists of more than 120 Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs). Sixteen specific recommendations were supplied by BIONET to the PCSD at its Chicago meeting on July 22. Among the recommendations are: development of a national biodiversity strategy and action plan as required by the Convention on Biological Diversity; expansion and reform of protected areas; and new regulatory authority for implementing the Biodiversity Convention. The action plan is already in place. It is called the Ecoysystem Management Plan. Without any Congressional debate or legislative authority, Vice President Gore has reorganized the federal bureaucracy around the Ecosystem Management Plan. The Ecosystem Management Coordinating Group (IEMCG) is a new, super-bureaucracy which consists of 20 federal agencies, all focused on actively managing ecosystems. There is not a square inch of land in America that is not in an ecosystem; the federal government is now structured to actively manage it all. Authority is expected to be conveyed by Executive Order before September 30, 1994. The objectives of the Ecosystem Management Plan are to protect biodiversity, restore ecosystems to their natural (pre-human) condition, and to expand protected areas (wilderness), and to connect wilderness areas with corridors of wilderness so biological diversity (except humans) can roam freely across the continent. The entire concept is based on the principle of "Sustainable Development," which is blandly defined to be development that uses resources at a rate less than can be reproduced by nature.
61 What is left open to interpretation is exactly what rate is "sustainable" and what is not. For example, there are substantially more trees in America today than there were at the turn of the century. Still, GAGs contend that logging must be stopped. Nutria are overrunning Louisiana. Still, biocentric animal rights' groups contend that they should not be harvested for fur. "Sustainable" is a relative term that is not easily quantifiable. Therefore, "sustainable" will be whatever the government says is sustainable. How this new Ecosystem Management Plan affects the sustainability of human beings is not as important as the sustainability of non-human biodiversity. Throughout the documents and the accompanying literature, the protection of biodiversity will require dramatic changes in the lifestyles of humans, even to redefining "fundamental legal concepts." The proponents of biodiversity protection have an incredible vision of human civilization on earth characterized by pre-industrial technology, communal, if not primitive, concentrations of people who have neither occasion, permission, nor the means to travel beyond their immediate habitat.
62 Col 94-3 August, 1994 New World Order: ...Where humans fit
By Henry Lamb They don't. Humans who live the 20th century western lifestyles have no place in the New World Order. Dramatic changes are ahead. Maurice Strong says that sustainable development in the New World Order "...demands nothing less than an eco industrial revolution, not some comprehensive patching-up of our old political and economic systems...a major cultural transformation-a reorientation of the ethical, moral and spiritual values which provide the primary motivations for human behavior. Maurice Strong presided over the first UN Conference on the Environment in 1972. He was a founder of the United Nations Environment Programme. He presided over the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). He is also a co-founder of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the Club of Rome, both of which are international Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) that are driving the sustainable development agenda. Strong also owns a ranch in Baca Grande, Colorado which is a fountainhead of the New World Religion. The ranch has monasteries, devotees of the Vedic mother goddess, shamans, and a temple to the Sun God. The religion he promotes worships nature in the belief that human enlightenment is achieved by becoming one with nature. It is this nature-induced enlightenment that produces truth that transcends science. It is this enlightenment, for example, that provides the "truth" of global warming, despite 300 years of actual records that prove the opposite. It is this religious enlightenment that provides the "truth" that "we are witnessing the greatest extinction of species since the period 65 million years ago when dinosaurs disappeared," despite the fact that science can count all the known extinctions that have occurred this century on one hand. It is this nature-religion-induced "truth" that has led to the international policy that "...lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to avoid or minimize [environmental] threats." In the New World Order, biodiversity is God. People who interfere with, or degrade biodiversty are the enemy. The Quiche tribes of Guatemala or the Penan of Malaysia are offered by Judi Bari, Earth First! activist, as examples of appropriate human lifestyles. Sustainable development advocate John Davis, who also edits the Cenozoic Society's Wild Earth, says that 26 million acres of private forest lands in the Northeast should be taken over by the government and declared to be "motor-free" and no guns or cows should be allowed. He says this will create thousands of jobs for people "packing in supplies" to the remaining residents. People are not welcome in the New World Order. There are too many people, according to Strong, and the biocentric world leadership. The United Nations has scheduled a major world conference on population control to be held in Cairo in September. The carrying capacity of the
63 earth, according to Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, is between two and six billion people, depending on how much we each consume. World population is now 5.5 billion and expected to be between eight and 10 billion in 20 years. Ed Lytwak, of the Washington-based Carrying Capacity Network, says that in order to achieve sustainable development, "it may be necessary to reduce the U.S. population to between 50 and 70 million," from its present population of 260 million. This "enlightened" notion that population must be reduced could explain the current campaign by GAGs to ban all uses of chlorine. Chlorine, of course, is the disinfectant that prevents cholera and other water-borne diseases that recently reduced the population of Rwandans significantly. These ideas are so bizarre that most normal people reject them as nothing more than environmental lunacy. These ideas, however, are embedded in the international treaties on biodiversity and climate change, they are embedded in the administration's Ecosystem Management Plan, they appear in legislative proposals, and they are being systematically taught to our children through the schools and the media in a relentless campaign funded largely through the Environmental Grantmakers Association and the resources of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs).
64 Col 94-4 August, 1994 New World Order: ...Who runs it?
By Henry Lamb The enlightened elite run the New World Order. Maurice Strong is one of the more visible leaders. The New World Order is not yet securely in place. The structure is being formed and the ultimate goal and the major forces moving toward it are becoming more visible every day. The theme of the Intergovernmental Committee of the Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Nairobi last June, provides insight into the structure of the New World Order. Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme said the theme of the conference was "One Earth, One Family." She said "Nature knows no frontiers, no territorial borders, it does not recognize any North-South divide or East-West distinction. It belongs to no-one in particular for it belongs to all." She told the conference that the Convention on Biological Diversity was "a major political breakthrough and an unprecedented conceptual advance," leading to a paradigm change that "would basically mean a change and restructuring of the world itself." The structure envisioned by the leaders of the New World Order is World Government. Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) told the Swedish Royal Academy on April 27, 1994, "The 50th anniversary of the United Nations next year provides a unique opportunity to restructure and revitalize the UN...to prepare them for the vastly increased role they must have as the primary multi-lateral framework of a new world order." According to Strong, "The world still lacks an enforceable legal and governance system." And what is required, is "a massive reorientation of current budgets, subsidies, fiscal and economic policies to provide positive incentives for sustainable development, and new innovative approaches to resource transfer." The restructured and revitalized United Nations is envisioned to be the ultimate world governing authority and the mechanism through which the world's resources would be fairly and equitably distributed. Both the treaty on Biological Diversity and on Climate Change give this authority to the UN. In his speech to the Swedish Royal Academy, Maurice Strong compared running the New World Order to running a corporation. He said that if the earth were "Earth Incorporated," the corporation would be "in the process of liquidation, headed for bankruptcy." The officers and directors of the "Earth Incorporated" would necessarily have to impose severe restructuring to avoid depleting the corporation's assets (biodiversity). This metaphor suggests that Strong sees the UN as "Earth Incorporated," and its officers and directors with the authority to impose whatever restructuring it deems necessary. The metaphor breaks down seriously with very little analysis. Strong ignores the fact that people buy shares in a corporation voluntarily and the shareholders elect their board of directors. Should the officers
65 displease the shareholders, the directors are held accountable. Strong's vision of "Earth Incorporated" has none of these basic protections for the shareholder. Strong's remedy would impose the will of the officers and directors on all people - who have no recourse. In all the literature and discussion on Biodiversity, climate change, and the New World Order, there is a conspicuous absence of discussion about free enterprise, the concept of private ownership, individual ingenuity and creativity, and individual freedom. References to these proven principles of human advancement are negative, they are seen as obstacles to be overcome in pursuit of reverence for biodiversity. The New World Order, as described in biocentric literature and in official U.S. and United Nations Documents, is a vision of a glorified, world-wide bureaucratic dictatorship, headed by the enlightened elite who are accountable to no electorate, but have the power to tax and redistribute wealth to achieve their interpretation of "fair and equitable." The enlightened elite, of course, get to keep whatever portion they choose. The enlightened elite will not suffer from the restructuring of the world. For example, Dowdeswell has scheduled the first Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to take place November 28 through December 9 at Nassau, The Bahamas. The enlightened elite will lounge in the Nassau sun at taxpayers expense while they make their plans to impose their biocentric New World Order on the rest of us.
66 Col 94-1 September, 1994 Beware the UN: Termites in the woodwork
By Henry Lamb Most Americans are ambivalent toward the United Nations. Knowledge of UN activities tends to be limited to the occasional news broadcast reporting a peace-keeping action in some distant land. The UN is seen to be a place where diplomats from all over the world meet to discuss disagreements. A few notable accomplishments obscure the very real activities that threaten to subjugate all the governments of the world, including the United States. Speaking to the Swedish Royal Academy in Stockholm last April, Maurice Strong said: "The 50th anniversary of the United Nations next year provides a unique opportunity to restructure and revitalize the UN and its system of organizations and agencies, to prepare them for the vastly increased role they must have as the primary multi-lateral framework of a new world order." Maurice Strong is a founder of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), a founder of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and served as the General Secretary for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Standing alone, Strong's words might be dismissed as wishful thinking on his part. But in the context of world events, his words take on an ominous prophetic quality. It is not the UN Security Council, nor even the General Assembly that create a threat to American sovereignty. It is the UN "system of organizations and agencies," working tirelessly, like termites behind the facade of a noble house, eating away the structures of national sovereignty, democracy, and individual liberty. Few Americans have any idea of what goes on behind the facade of the United Nations. The celebrated 1992 UNCED, or the so-called "Earth Summit," attracted the heads of state from more than 100 nations, and drew an estimated 80,000 people to Rio to confront the world's "environmental" problems. The conference didn't just happen. Years before the event, it was visualized in the minds of a tiny handful of biocentric thinkers. They included Maurice Strong, and the leaders of the Worldwatch Institute, World Resources Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly the World Wildlife fund). These Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) remain the driving force behind UN environmental activity through its network of NGOs (non-government organizations). The purpose of UNCED was to get the nations of the world to adopt an "Earth Charter," a non- binding statement of 27 principles designed to solve the global "environmental" problems. It is instructional to realize the "environmental" problems to be solved were not identified by the world's scientific community, but by the international GAGs that conceived the conference. In 1984, Lester Brown's Worldwatch Institute published its first annual State of the World report.
67 More than 100,000 copies were distributed and the MacArthur Foundation awarded Brown a $250,000 "genius grant." The report began a steady stream of environmental propaganda which focused world-wide attention on the problems they identified. Independent scientists challenged and discredited most of the assumptions of gloom advanced by the international GAGs. But carefully rehearsed repetitions of the doom and gloom scenarios, hammered relentlessly throughout the world by the media, called the concerned and the frightened to join the deceivers in Rio. The chief concerns of the UNCED were global warming, and biodiversity. In the 1970s, Stephen Schneider, Carl Sagan, and Paul Ehrlich were among the loudest spokesmen advancing the idea that the earth was entering a new ice-age as the result of pollution. In the 1980s, they joined the Lester Brown crowd proclaiming that global warming would bring catastrophic calamity to the planet. In 1987, two years before the famous Senate hearings on global warming, Rafe Pomerance, a Senior Associate with the World Resources Institute, wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "We know that enough pollution has been put into the atmosphere already to warm the Earth from 1 to 4 degrees...." Rafe Pomerance is now the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health, and Natural Resources. He has preached the "global warming" gospel despite the fact that independent scientists have confirmed that global temperatures have fluctuated less than one-half degree in the last 300 years, well within the range of normal variability. And that in fact, during the last half of this century, when so-called greenhouse pollution has been greatest, global temperatures have actually declined.
68 Col 94-2 September, 1994 Beware the UN: Truth is the first casualty
By Henry Lamb Worldwatch Institute's State of the World report said in 1989, that 20 million acres of Amazon jungle had been cleared in 1987 alone. Independent satellite analyses revealed that the Worldwatch claim was a four-fold exaggeration. Worldwatch, and other Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) produce a steady stream of propaganda with little regard for scientific fact or truth. One Worldwatch newsletter begins: "Mass Extinction Has Started: An unprecedented biological collapse has begun worldwide..." followed by wild, undocumented claims of world-wide species extinction. The truth is that, 99.9 percent of all species that have occupied this earth in its 3.5 billion years, were dismissed into extinction by nature, long before humans entered the picture. Run-away species extinction, like the global warming theory, is a product of computer modeling which is not supported by the actual scientific record. Worldwatch says in another newsletter: "...the world is experiencing a massive slowdown in the growth of food production..." which can no longer keep pace with population growth. The truth is that food production is at an all time high with the US Department of Agriculture paying farmers to take land out of production. Worldwatch says that the world water supply is being used faster than its is being replaced, and pollution is ruining what water is available. Their newsletter points to the recent cholera epidemic in Peru as evidence to support their claim. The truth is that not a single case of cholera had been reported in the region this century until the cholera epidemic broke out after local officials heeded the advice of GAGs and quit using chlorine to disinfect their water supplies. After nearly 9,000 cholera deaths, chlorine was reintroduced as a disinfectant, and the epidemic brought under control. Truth and scientific fact seem to have little meaning to the GAGs that drive the United Nations organizations and agencies. Theo Colburn of the World Wide Fund for Nature initiated the idea that chlorine caused shriveled penises, a story designed more to frighten the world into banning chlorine than to impart scientifically verified truth. Never mind that the absence of chlorine in Peru is known to have killed thousands of innocent people. An unending stream of horrible predictions initiated by the international GAGs, and willingly amplified by an advocacy media, produce the climate and the inclination for people to assemble in international conferences to seek solutions to alleged problems. Of course, it is the same GAGs who are on hand with ready solutions. During the years that preceded the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), GAGs were conducting smaller conferences around the world, developing the agenda, and the documents to be advanced at the UNCED. One such conference
69 produced the Montreal Protocol which ultimately resulted in the premature ban of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons). By the time the conference date arrived, the international GAGs had created the problem in the world media, written the solutions they wanted to achieve into the conference documents, and generated world-wide media pressure on world leaders to take immediate action. The strategy is incredibly successful. UNCED produced the Convention on Climate Change, which the United States signed, and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which went unsigned until President Clinton moved into the White House. UNCED also produced "Agenda 21" which established the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to receive funds from developed countries, it also established the principle of "sustainable development," and an array of other frightening principles. Most important, UNCED established the procedure for imposing the philosophy of the leadership of the international GAGs on the rest of the world, while expanding their own power to control its implementation and enforcement.
70 Col 94-3 September, 1994 Beware the UN: How it all works
By Henry Lamb Once the world is aware of a crisis manufactured by the international Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), the foot soldiers are mobilized to begin the conference process. The global conference is designed to focus world-wide attention on the problem, adopt the "soft-law" to address the problem, and kick-off the campaign to translate "soft-law" into binding treaties. "Soft law" is a statement of principles that have no legal authority. "Soft-law" is usually written in words with which few can disagree. For example, "sustainable development" is defined in "soft-law" to be development that requires less natural resources than can be replenished by nature. Who could disagree with that idea? Reality, however, can mean no chemical fertilizer or pesticides, no tractors, no transport of food products to distant markets. It can mean whatever the COP says it means. The COP is the Conference of the Parties charged with implementing a particular Convention. After the "soft-law" comes the Convention, or treaty. Specific provisions of the "soft-law" are extracted and written into an international treaty. When the treaty is ratified by enough countries (30 in the case of the Convention on Biological Diversity), the treaty becomes international law, legally binding on all the parties. The genius of the GAG procedure is this: The Convention itself is a rehash of the principles and objectives of the "soft-law." The teeth are put into the treaty after it is ratified by the Conference of the Parties. At the first meeting of the parties to a new Convention, the first order of business is the selection of the Conference of the Parties. Each party appoints a member to the COP, which then establishes the "Protocols" or the specific requirements, to which each participating nation is already legally bound. Should the United States, for example, dislike a protocol, too bad. Under the provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United States would have only one vote - the same power that every other nation has. The COP can impose virtually any requirement it wishes upon the participants. Disputes are settled by either a five member commission, or by the International Court of Justice. Once a Convention is ratified, it is law. And that law supersedes all other domestic law, including local ordinances and state law, with a string of precedents that go all the way back to Missouri v. Holland in 1920. The Convention on Climate Change is progressing rapidly. The COP has begun its regular meetings and the language issuing forth is becoming more strident. The Convention on Biological Diversity will hold its first COP meeting in November in Naussau. Fortunately, at this writing, the United States, will participate as an observer unless the Senate ratifies the treaty before then. But these existing Conventions are just the beginning. Next on the GAG agenda is a Convention on Sustainable Development. Slightly further back in the procedure is a Convention on Poverty, and another on Population Control, and another on
71 Women. Each Convention requires a COP and an administrative staff to implement the protocols the COP dictates. The staff is an agency of the United Nations. UN organizations and agencies are proliferating at an alarming rate. The United States still pays the bulk of the costs. These developing Conventions have the United States paying the salaries of people from all over the world who are working diligently to impose the philosophy of international GAGs on America. Throughout all these Conventions, and the hype that generates them, there is a distinct anti- American theme. Moreover, there is a distinct anti-democracy theme. There is an unmistakable anti-capitalism theme. There is an ever-present and ever-growing, one-world-government theme. Virtually all the documents talk about fair and equitable distribution of resources. All the documents talk about taking wealth from the developed countries and giving it to the undeveloped countries. All the documents talk about the overconsumption of the developed countries as the cause of starvation in the less developed countries. All the documents promise an end to these injustices through the UN's implementation and enforcement of proliferating international Conventions.
72 Col 94-4 September, 1994 Beware the UN: Where are we headed?
By Henry Lamb The rampant growth in international Conventions, treaties, and agreements, is leading the United States into the quicksand of biocentric collectivism. Carefully worded documents loudly proclaim inviolability of national sovereignty - in the bold type, but steal it away again in obscure, ill-defined provisions. More light is cast on the "New World Order" by the supporting documents than by the treaty documents. Miguel Lovera, of the Netherlands Committee for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), assembled several essays written by participating NGOs (non- government organizations) involved in advancing the Convention on Biological Diversity. Ashish Kothari, of the Indian Institute of Public Administration recommends a protocol that will mandate: a) sustainable land management which relies on the natural productivity of the soil (no commercial fertilizer); b) biological pest control; c) basing agriculture on local natural and cultural conditions; and d) curbing the monopolistic hold of private corporations. Kothari says that such a protocol is "the best possible option to forge a legal regime dealing with these issues." Ian Fry, of Greenpeace International, suggests a protocol on forestry which would prevent problems caused by: "poor national planning, poor land use planning, inequitable land ownership, lack of protected areas, inadequate control of alien species, inadequate standards for allowable cuts, and inappropriate pricing." Fry wants the COP (Conference of the Parties) to control these aspects of forestry. Ranil Senanayake, of Kenya, says: "Humankind is just beginning to wake from the dream of technological immortality to the reality of life as a biological organism. Future management needs to accept these realities and give them intrinsic value. A management system has to be designed to meet the biodiversity objectives "at the landscape scale." Isabelle Meister, another Greenpeace representative, recommends the COP develop a protocol to regulate biotechnology and genetic engineering on an international basis. Should this protocol emerge, and it probably will, an agency of the UN will actually regulate business activity in the United States - if the Convention is ratified. Simone Bilderbeek, another voice from the IUCN, recommends "full cost accounting" which is an arbitrary tax on resource use. The tax is to discourage consumption and to generate money for undeveloped countries. "Full cost accounting," and "cost internalization" are new phrases used to obscure the socialistic principle of taking from the rich to give to the poor. These are only a few of the recommended protocols for the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Also being circulated among the NGOs and the GAGs, are a variety of recommendations to strengthen the UN's enforcement authority and capability. Recommendations include trade sanctions, fines, and outright confiscation.
73 Where are we headed? It is increasingly clear. We are headed toward a central world government that arrogantly presumes the wisdom to "manage" the entire world, its people, and all biodiversity. The current crop of world leaders is not the first to assume such high-minded idiocy. Should they succeed in imposing their biocentric will upon the rest of the world their adventure will inevitably end, as has every other experiment in collectivism - in the ash heap of historic failures. But, like every other experiment in collectivism, not until the adventure inflicts incalculable pain and suffering upon its subjects, bankrupts its economy, and devastates the environment.
74 Col 94-1 October, 1994 Polluting the Free World: GAGs at work
By Henry Lamb It sounds so innocent: "Each contracting party shall... (a) establish a system of protected areas...." This is one of the many requirements of the Convention on Biological Diversity the United States Senate is being asked to ratify. What a "protected area" is, exactly, will be defined by a Conference of the Parties - after the treaty is ratified. Treaty strategists know what a protected area is. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the World Resources Institute (WRI), are the three international Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) driving the biodiversity paradigm. They are driving civilization back to the dark ages. Worldwide, 6.3 percent of the land is already locked up in protected areas, according to the Global Biodiversity Assessment. In the United States, 12.6 percent is protected. This lock-up has occurred without a treaty. The treaty authorizes massive additions to the protected areas, which will forever be off limits for human use. The largest protected area in the world is Africa's Kruger Park which is 10,000 square kilometers. The WWF is proposing a Panda reserve in China which will lock up 29,000 square kilometers. The new reserve will protect an area in China larger than California, Texas, and Oklahoma combined, and they have just begun to implement the treaty. The protected areas are called "bioregions" and they will be connected by corridors at least a mile wide so Pandas may move freely without interference from humans. The protected area includes 40,000 square kilometers of prime agricultural land which will be forever forfeited to the Pandas. Moreover, the people living in the designated bioregions or the corridors are being relocated. The WWF says that those people who can't find another place to live "...will have to go to work for eco-tourism, making handicrafts or other cottage items to sell to tourists. People will not be allowed to continue to use the habitat forests for fuel or other uses." The WWF trains the guards for the protected areas. Along the China-Russia border, another 300 mile stretch is being evaluated by Ecologically Sustainable Development, Inc. (ESD), a U.S. firm, for designation as a bioregion. The area is the size of New England (60 million acres) which includes a critical section of the Trans- Siberian Railroad and five to ten million acres of prime agricultural soil. The area is needed to protect the Siberian tiger. ESD's project is funded by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR), a GAG which gets its money from the Rockefeller Foundation. ESD will produce a land use plan, with the advice of the WWF, which will be the basis for all land use in the bioregion. NCUSCR Director, Elizabeth Knup, says "we must help them realize that the two countries are one ecosystem." The project will block all development on a rail system now in progress, and a water system to provide irrigation, and all other development except "...projects which are
75 sustainable and ecologically beneficial," as defined by the ESD plan. In Argentina, the Secretary of Natural Resources and Human Environment, Maria Julia Alsogaray, signed a contract with the Army which will change the Army's mission to one of "defending the environment," according to an October 19 press report. Alsogaray's husband is the president of the Argentine chapter of the WWF. The world is being taken over by international GAGs, funded by giant foundations, operating through the United Nations' maze of agencies and organizations, supported by National GAGs such as the National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, and dozens of others. National governments, including the U.S. government, appear to be eager to let the GAGs dictate land use policies which feature international planning, international control, and international enforcement. The innocent system of protected areas required by the Biodiversity Treaty is not innocent. It provides the legal foundation for the death and burial of the concept of free markets and free people. It is already happening around the world. Treaty strategists are livid that the Senate failed to ratify the treaty in the 103rd Congress. They will be back to try once again to claim their biggest prize - America.
76 Col 94-2 October, 1994 Polluting the Free World: GAGs, GATT, and the WTO
By Henry Lamb The preamble to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Charter pledges "optimal use of the world's resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development." Article V requires the WTO to make "appropriate arrangements for effective cooperation with other intergovernmental organizations...and non-government organizations" (GAGs-Green Advocacy Groups). The WTO is the result of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations recently in Uruguay. A full page ad in the New York Times, April 15, 1994, says the WTO is "The third pillar of the New World Order, along with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund." It is the mechanism through which other treaties will be enforced. Far from promoting free trade, the WTO will be an obstacle, designed to regulate trade among nations. The 124 participating nations have agreed to lower existing tariffs in exchange for the surrender of national sovereignty to this new world order. The WTO can decide that any American law, federal, state, or local, constitutes an unfair trade practice, and require America to change its law or face permanent fines or other economic penalties and trade sanctions. A study by the U.S. Business and Industrial Council of the voting record in the U.N. of the 124 participating nations reveals that 83% of the nations vote against the U.S. position on the majority of the issues. Under the WTO Charter, the U.S. would have one vote, the same as Bangladesh or Morocco, no veto, and yet, America would be expected to pay as much as 20% of the costs. Moreover, the tariff reductions would immediately cost the U.S. between $12 and $14 billion, and another $30 billion during the second five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Clinton/Gore Administration wants Congress to approve this new pillar of the New World Order. Buried deep within the 4,000-page enabling legislation are complex license fee provisions that will result in cash rewards in the range of $200 million for the Washington Post and the Atlanta Constitution. Both newspapers are important to the administration's agenda and to the 1996 election. Few people realize the impact that the New World Order can have on their daily activities. The United Nations, with its burgeoning bureaucracy of Conventions and agencies, is developing laws and regulations that govern land and resource use, virtually all development, population control, poverty, and even the status of women. The WTO is being structured to regulate, and thereby govern, trade among the nations of the world. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are already in position to effect the redistribution of wealth in the world. Should the Clinton/Gore Administration hand over American sovereignty to the New World Order, the freedoms defended by the blood of every previous generation will be lost. American sons and
77 daughters will have died in vain. So-called "progressive" politicians, of whom Al Gore is King, claim that these international agreements are necessary to "save the planet." National sovereignty and the individual's right to own property are said to be obsolete ideas, overwhelmed by the need to reduce consumption, save endangered species, prevent global warming, and the need to equalize the benefits of resource use among the undeveloped nations of the world. In the mind of the so-called "progressive," these goals can be achieved only through the wisdom and authority of government, one government with global authority - the New World Order. Under the New World Order, America is not viewed as a beacon of liberty, but as a ravenous over-consumer of natural resources. America is not seen as a nation to be emulated, but as an economic aggressor to be emasculated. Proponents of the New World Order are out to constrain and ultimately control America.
78 Col 94-3 October, 1994 Polluting the Free World: America Under Siege
By Henry Lamb When armies in Iraq move South, America mobilizes. When Germany went berserk, America arose and squashed the twisted idiocy Hitler preached. When the Soviet Union set out to turn the world red, America stood up and insisted the world be red, white, and blue. Now, a new foe has emerged preaching a new green gospel that is polluting the free world and fading the stars and stripes from the fabric of America. Freedom in America is under siege. The enemy is not a nation, or a demented dictator; it is an idea. It is not a new idea, but it comes in new garb. It is the idea that the source of life is nature which must be reverenced in ceremony dictated by its priesthood. Its worshipers kneel before gaia, sing hymns to biodiversity, and inflict the ceremony of "sustainable use" upon the heathen humans. Seventh graders study the Prentice Hall textbook Life Science, which teaches the James E. Lovelock principle of gaia: "Gaia is Mother Earth. Gaia is immortal. She is the eternal source of life. She does not need to reproduce herself as she is immortal. She is certainly the mother of us all, including Jesus...Gaia is not a tolerant mother. She is rigid and inflexible, ruthless in the destruction of whoever transgresses. Her unconscious objective is that of maintaining a world adapted to life. If we men hinder this objective we will be eliminated without pity." Gaia gives the world its biodiversity, and sustainable use is the ceremony that conforms human behavior to her proper worship. Sustainable use and free markets are incompatible. Sustainable use and free people are mutually exclusive. Sustainable use means that somebody has to decide what activity is, and is not, sustainable. Whoever makes those decisions exercises the power of control over the rest of the people. The rest of the people, who are required to conform their behavior to sustainable use, are no longer free, but subjects of the new green trinity: gaia, biodiversity, and sustainable use. It is this new green trinity that has America under siege. In classrooms, in the media, and in Washington, freedom is being polluted by the gospel of the GAGs (Green Advocacy Groups). America has been the bastion of freedom in the world. It is the freedom of individuals in America that has lifted the world out of bondage to disease, poverty, and early death. No government, no priesthood, no treaty, no GAG has ever advanced civilization; only free people, free to exercise their creative energy, have advanced civilization. Control of people, whether by governments or priesthoods, restricts individual freedom, and inevitably reverses human progress. America threw off the shackles of a controlling king and has rejected efforts to control the world by Hitler, the USSR, and Sadam Hussein. But the new enemy is an ambiguous, shadowy target,
79 dressed in the seductive garb of endangered species, wilderness areas, nature preserves, wetlands, safe drinking water, biological pest control, and sustainable use. The new enemy has been winning virtually every battle, and now has the entire world, including America, under siege. The implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity will be a massive net around the world, constraining the activities of free people. Additional nets, in the form of additional treaties, are being woven now to further encumber the freedom of human beings. Once the treaty-nets have encircled the world, free people will be enslaved. Americans try to avoid war. But once an enemy is clearly perceived, free Americans have never tolerated a threat to their freedom. Free Americans have fought to the death to preserve their freedom. And even now, those free Americans who have recognized the magnitude of the threat posed by the green trinity are fighting to defend the freedoms that remain. The struggle is to awaken the uninformed before they are ensnared.
80 Col 94-4 October, 1994 Polluting the Free World: Pollution Control
By Henry Lamb It is not a difficult question. The world's pollution problems, as well as the regulatory pollution of the world's economy can be controlled by a heavy dose of freedom. The nations of the world that have the cleanest environment are the nations that have the strongest economies. The nations that have the weakest economies suffer environmental degradation, population growth pressures, and dictatorial governments. To control the pollution in the world, we should be promoting less government, not more. We should be promoting more freedom, not less. Individual freedom, and the free enterprise those freedoms spawn, promise what appears to be unregulated chaos. The vision of an unregulated society is anathema to the one-world- government proponents. The idea of people doing whatever they want makes the leaders of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) cringe, and regulators fear for their jobs. Yet, free people doing whatever they want, is the only way to assure survival of the species and of the planet. Central planning, central management, and central control will not destroy the human spirit, or the planet. But it will reverse progress and plunge the planet into an era of darkness, suffering, pain, and premature death, unparalleled in human history. It is ironic that the GAGs and the international bureaucracies they control want ecosystems and bioregions to be preserved in their natural state, while at the same time requiring humans to exist in a totally unnatural state - under the control of a central authority. Human beings must be free. History of the human race on this earth is a record of individuals struggling to be free from the constraints placed upon them. First, nature placed severe constraints on people. Individuals found ways to remove those constraints. Then stronger people, and then governments, placed constraints on people. For thousands of years, individuals struggled to find ways to remove those constraints. America, created not by governments, nor GAGs, but by struggling individuals, achieved a new plateau of freedom for individuals. The result of that individual freedom was a new prosperity never before imagined in human history. That prosperity is just a glimpse of a future that is available to all peoples of the world - if individuals are free to discover and pursue it. Freedom - individual freedom - is the only power on earth equal to the task of "sustainable use" of the planet's resources. No GAG, no government, no group of bureaucratic biologists can determine what is appropriate activity for human beings. Only individuals, operating within their sphere of need, opportunity, and ability, can determine what is appropriate. The process may appear, and indeed, may be chaotic. But the result is proven progress and unparalleled prosperity. Will there be abuses when the interests of free people collide? You bet. But in a free system,
81 abuses are self-correcting. In a regulated system, abuses are more frequent, more severe, become institutionalized, are defended by the abusers, and inevitably result in collapse of the system. It took 70 years for the Soviet system of centralized management to collapse, but collapse it did. A world-wide system of centralized planning, management, and control may take more than 70 years to collapse, but collapse it will. It is an unnatural condition to impose upon human beings and human beings will not forever be caged by a king, a dictator, an army, or a New World Order. America has a heavy responsibility to the rest of the world. That responsibility is not simply to pay the bill for protection from military aggressors, nor to simply pay undeveloped nations to remain undeveloped, nor to pay tribute to the New World Order. Our responsibility is first to defend individual freedom from every foe, internal or international, GAG or government. Then our responsibility is to demonstrate how individual freedom translates into ideas, products and services that break the shackles of slavery to survival, to governments, and to the unknown. Freedom is America's most important export. The New World Order should be dismantling international bureaucracies and promoting cultural and economic exchange among individuals and individual companies. Better yet, the New World Order should be whatever free individuals make it, without interference from GAGs, gurus, or governments.
82 Col 94-1 November, 1994 Sustainability: Why?
By Henry Lamb Sustainable use, sustainable development - sustainability - is the new organizing principle around which government agencies, educational institutions, and world governments are restructuring. Why? Lester Brown, head of the Worldwatch Institute says: "Massive food shortages will develop over the next 40 years as a population explosion outstrips world food supply." These words, written in August, 1994, sound much the same as the words written by Paul Ehrlich in 1968: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Noel Brown, a Regional Director of the United Nations, told the "Voices of the Earth" Conference in Boulder, Colorado last July: The global environmental crisis is, indeed, dire. The crisis is the result of human- created problems ranging from deforestation, rising ocean levels and ozone depletion to wars, rapidly-increasing population and poverty [which] have been documented in a doomsday report issued by the United Nations." Because the world is going to hell in a hand basket, according to the UN doomsayers, we must reorganize the entire world around the principle of sustainability. Whoa. Wait one minute. What environmental crisis are they talking about? The environment is getting better, not worse. Surplus food storage is a much greater problem than food shortages, except where local dictators steal it. Paul Ehrlich's predictions of starving millions is, in retrospect, ridiculous exaggeration that never came to pass. The picture painted by the current doomsayers is equally ridiculous exaggeration that is at odds with observable fact. Those who can remember the belching smoke stacks and coal-fired train engines of the 1940s and 1950s know that the air is certainly cleaner now than it was then. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that total emissions into the air decreased by 33.8% between 1970 and 1990. Particulate matter released into the air decreased by 60.5% during the same period. Not a single river has caught fire since the Cuyahoga River in Ohio burned in 1969. The first National Water Quality Inventory was conducted in 1973. Dr. Myrick Freeman reported that 96% of the nation's waterways were fishable then. EPA reports reveal continuing improvement every year since. Water in America is safer and cleaner than in any other nation on earth. Contrary to the claims of population fear-mongers, population growth rates have declined globally since the 1960s, from 2% to 1.4%. Starvation is hardly the cause of declining
83 population growth. Ronald Bailey, author of Eco-Scam, says that only a tenth as many people died of starvation between 1950 and 1975, as died during the last quarter of the 19th century, despite the fact that the world's population had nearly doubled. Incidentally, virtually all agriculture, resource use, and development in the 19th century, precisely fits the modern descriptions of sustainability. Deforestation is said to be a crisis that is causing the greatest species loss in 65 million years. The fact is, according to a 1993 report issued by the U.S. Forest Service, every year since 1952, forest growth has substantially exceeded harvest. Wooded acres have grown 20% in the last 20 years. The annual growth in wooded acres is three times greater than in 1920. In 1992, less than 1% of National forests were actually harvested. There are more trees in America today than there were 100 years ago. The oft-cited species loss used to justify sustainability and the need to protect biodiversity is based on computer model projections. Actual species known to have vanished in the last 100 years are rarely listed. It is a very short list (fewer than 100 according to many estimates) compared to the thousands of new species identified during the same period. No one knows how many species there are. No one knows how many species become extinct or how many new species emerge. Everyone knows, however, that the process has been going on since the beginning of time, and that no man-made law is going to stop the process. If the world were in such a "dire" environmental crisis, Why is the population growing, albeit at a declining rate? Why has life expectancy continued to increase - from 70.8 to 75.4 years, between 1970 and 1990. Why do all the actual, scientific records say the environment is getting better, not worse? Because the environment is getting better, despite the doomsayer's claims to the contrary.
84 Col 94-2 November, 1994 Sustainability: What is it?
By Henry Lamb "Sustainability" is an ambiguous term that can be used by those who wish to judge the activity or behavior of others: acceptable behavior is sustainable; unacceptable behavior is not sustainable. Section 10 of the Global Biodiversity Assessment says flatly that "current agriculture is not sustainable." Oh, really! American agriculture has not only sustained a population that has more than doubled this century, it has also provided food for much of the rest of the world. American agriculture is one of man's most successful achievements. American agriculture provides a greater quantity, and a broader variety of healthy, nutritious food, with less labor on fewer acres of land than ever before. Nevertheless, the National Wildlife Federation condemns agriculture as the most environmentally destructive industry, and the international environmental community has condemned "current" agriculture as unsustainable. Sustainability advocates contend that current practices cannot meet the growing demand for food. Such a claim ignores the obvious fact that current agriculture has more than met the world's growing demand for food, it has constantly decreased the price of food (in constant dollar terms). The only obstacle to America's continuing ability to meet the demand for food is government interference. Sustainability applies not only to agriculture, but to every facet of human life. Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the 1992 Earth Summit, says that air-conditioning, convenience foods, processed meats, suburban homes, and the American life style, are not sustainable. Vice President, Al Gore, says that the automobile is the greatest single threat to sustainability. If what America is now doing is not sustainable, what is? Legal documents, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, are careful to avoid defining what is sustainable. The specific definitions are left to the Conference of the Parties. There is plenty of evidence, however, which specifies sustainability. Sustainable agriculture uses no man-made fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, no hybrid seed stock or live stock, and only low-input technology is considered to be sustainable. Low- input technology means technology that requires no fossil fuel. In other words, it's a mule, horse, oxen, wife, or kids. The Global Biodiversity Assessment describes "traditional" agriculture as the sustainable ideal. "Traditional" is described as communities of indigenous (primitive) people who raise their own food without the influence of modern technology. "Traditional agriculture" sounds very much like American agriculture in the 19th century - described in 21st century eco-speak.
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Literally, the concept of sustainability means that natural resources may not be used at a faster rate than they can be renewed by nature. At first glance, it appears to be a prudent concept. The kicker is - renewed by nature. It takes nature millions of years to make a barrel of oil, a ton of coal, or a cubic foot of gas. In less than a century, we have used resources that took millions of years to produce. Fossil fuel energy cannot be used at a "sustainable" rate. Ironically, as long as free market forces prevail, we will never run out of oil, coal, or gas. During the Carter oil crisis in 1978, we were told that world oil reserves were 648 billion barrels which would last only 29.2 years. Today, after 16 years of rising consumption, known reserves stand at 991 billion barrels. Other possible reserves, such as the one under the Arctic Natural Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), have never been tested. Coal and gas reserves will last at least two centuries at current rates of consumption. But that's not the point. Some day, theoretically at least, fossil fuels will be depleted. Long before that happens, free market forces will force alternative energy sources into existence. Ethanol is an alternative fuel that is renewable. It is not yet economically feasible. As fossil fuel resources become scarce, the law of supply and demand will force prices up. Simultaneously, technology will drive down the cost of alternative energy sources, and consumers will switch to the energy source that is most cost-effective. Free market forces will - as they have for the last two-hundred years - take care of sustainability. Government intervention in free market forces is a far greater threat to sustainable use of resources than any free market use.
By Henry Lamb To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations next year, the Global Vision Corporation is producing a series of 100 60-second television spots promoting "sustainability" as the only solution to global problems. The project is funded by UNICEF, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Television Trust for the Environment, Peace Child International, and the Center for our Common Future. The first ten spots will be broadcast by satellite to 500 million homes in 100 countries during the international Social Summit, in March, 1995. The series will preach doom-and-gloom propaganda, and promise salvation through one-world government. Maurice Strong, founder of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Secretary General of the 1992 Earth Summit, has now formed The Earth Council, an NGO (non- government organization). Costa Rica gave the new organization a home and $500,000 to get started. The purpose of The Earth Council is to monitor governments and multinational corporations for compliance with the biodiversity treaty and other "sustainable" activities. The Earth Council's membership is a who's-who of the world's "sustainable" elite, including Robert S. McNamara, former Secretary of State and former President of the World Bank. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is building coalitions among "environmental, consumer, and farming organizations that have united around sustainability," according to Sustainable Ag Week. The Iowa Legislature has created the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. (Aldo Leopold is the author of A Sand County Almanac which calls for a new land ethic that includes land, rocks, flora and fauna in the community of life). The new Minister of Agriculture in England, William Waldegrave, has announced plans to pay subsidies only to farmers who practice "sustainability." The international community of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) are conducting no less than 12 major conferences around the world during the month of November, leading to another major treaty on sustainability. The President has created a special Task Force on Sustainable Development that includes the heads of several major GAGs and cabinet level officials. Sustainability is politically correct, and the term is permeating our government, our educational institutions, and the media - even though its meaning and implications for American life, are seldom discussed. Maurice Strong has identified air- conditioning and single-family homes, among other values, as unsustainable. Current agriculture, automobiles, industrial technology in general, and energy and chemical production in particular, have all been identified as unsustainable by the Global Biodiversity Assessment and other international authorities. Few Americans can remember "the good old days" before air-conditioning, before automobiles, before plastic and the many other miracles of chemical production. Few can remember plowing behind a mule, hoeing endless rows of corn (most of which was for the mule), spirals of fly- paper hanging from the ceiling to trap disease-carrying insects, coal-oil lamps and kerosene cook
87 stoves. Who wants to remember the outbreaks of polio and cholera that crippled entire communities? Why should we want to remember, or return to, the good-old days of sustainability? It is the expressed objective of the sustainability concept to reduce American consumption, affluence, and the capacity to produce wealth. The sustainability concept is built upon the assumption that American prosperity comes only at the expense of the rest of the world. "Equitable distribution of resource benefits" is the eco-speak language used to promote the Marxist policy of taking from the rich to give to the poor. Throughout the world, Americans are seen to be rich, obscenely rich. America's wealth has been the object of envy by those who tried to take it by force. The sustainability initiative also seeks to take America's wealth. Not by military force, yet. Take it they will, if they can, by instilling guilt and fear through politically correct propaganda. Individual Americans who have worked to achieve some measure of comfort and security are the target. It is they who will suffer the sting of sustainability.