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Listening to the local news on the radio recently, I heard a report about how newly
elected Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz plans to save $8 million by, among
other things, merging the “Office of Sustainability” with the Department of
Environmental Protection and Resource Management.
According to the story, “The new agency will be renamed the Department of
Environmental Protection and Sustainability….”
No, unfortunately not. We’re from the government and we’re here to help.
Montgomery County’s says: “To live sustainably, one strives to meet the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs (my emphasis). People living sustainably recognize the fundamental and
inextricable interdependence between the economy, the environment, and social equity,
and work to promote each to the benefit of all.”
Oh wonderful!
Howard County’s Office of Environmental Sustainability has similar blather. I didn’t look
further, but you get the idea.
A curious coincidence perhaps, but these humble county governments’ definitions of
“sustainability” look amazingly similar to the UN definition:
Of course it is no coincidence.
This definition was first articulated in a 1987 report of the United Nations World
Commission on Environment & Development titled “Our Common Future.” (See p. 24.)
This has come to be known as the Brundtland Commission. It was chaired by Gro
Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s socialist former Prime Minister, who also served as vice-
chair of the Socialist International.
It is worth mentioning here that Carol Browner, President Obama’s Energy and
Environment Czar, also served on the Socialist International’s Commission for a
Sustainable World Society, although her name was stripped from the masthead the
minute she got that appointment. Why?
Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human
settlements, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and
subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership
is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and
therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major
obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. Social
justice, urban renewal and development, the provision of decent dwellings-and
healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the
interests of society as a whole.
Emphases are mine. The last sentence makes clear that land must be controlled by
government.
But it doesn’t stop there. “Sustainable Development” has become the buzzword for a
strategy under development since at least the early 1970s to completely control every
aspect of our lives, including resettling entire populations. For example, the 1976
U.N. Conference on Human Settlements called for population redistribution:
In 1992, an initiative titled “Agenda 21” was proposed at the U.N. sponsored
Conference on Environment and Development, (the “Earth Summit”), held in Rio De
Janeiro, Brazil. It states:
Thank you, George H.W. Bush. However, Agenda 21 was not ratified by the U.S. Senate
President Clinton then defied the Senate’s will by signing Executive Order 12852, which
created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and got the ball rolling.
Thank you, Bill Clinton!
While we all would like to assure natural resources are properly preserved for current
and future generations, the U.N.’s prescriptions require that nations
accept their definitions of “sustainable” and their recommendations for how to
accomplish their goals. And it is all simply naked communism.
Marxism has only survived because of Marxists' ability to package and repackage the
same odious ideas in flowery or obscure language. Consider the following phraseology.
Everything in quotes comes directly from UN sustainability documents:
“Social Justice” assures the right “to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by
society and the environment” = equal distribution of wealth = communism.
“Social Justice” assures that “every worker/person will be a direct capital owner” =
dictatorship of the proletariat = communism.
“Sustainability” means that “individual rights will have to take a back seat to the
collective." How about that? Individual rights don’t matter, and as you should know,
“collective” = communism.
All States and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of eradicating
poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in order to
decrease the disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the
majority of the people of the world.(Emphasis added.)
Under the guise of “saving the earth” the socialists have explicitly demanded
redistribution of income. What a surprise.
Agenda 21's Millennium Development Project calls for “developed countries,” that’s you
and me folks, to donate 0.7 percent of GDP every year. Lest 0.7 percent of GDP sound
like a small number, for this year it equates to $103 billion, an amount that would fund
the Departments of State, Justice and Energy, as well as the entire Legislative and
Judicial branches of the U.S. government. Alternately, it could fund the Departments of
Homeland Security, Interior and Housing and Urban Development! Take your pick.
(Source: Office of Management and Budget).
And that is just the camel’s nose under the tent. Be sure, it will only increase. But why
do it at all? How have our other efforts worked out for them?
Currently, the United States contributes the largest share of any nation to the U.N.
Budget. We provide the largest contribution to the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank, and every other similar organization. We provide billions in loans, subsidies
and grants to other nations through separate programs within multiple federal agencies
and offer private loans subsidized or guaranteed by the government. Has that had a
noticeable impact? Seems everyone just hates us all the more!
So, not only is this very anti-American body of foreign, unelected bureaucrats
attempting to dictate practically every aspect of our lives, we are footing the bill.
At the Copenhagen Global Warming summit last year, Gordon Brown, British Labor
Party leader and Prime Minister from 2007-2010 said:
For 60 years we have measured our progress by economic gains and social
justice. Now we know that the progress and even the survival of the only world
we have depends on decisive action to protect that world. In the end, without
environmental stewardship, there can be no sustainable prosperity and no
sustainable social justice. (Emphasis added.)
The citation comes from a self-consciously pompous website titled “Make Wealth
History,” run by two college-age brothers, who claim that:
Socialists everywhere and always see life as a zero sum game: if someone is wealthy,
he must have taken it from the poor; if we are rich today, it must follow that
future generations will be weaker. Current generations greedily sap our resources,
leaving less for the future. The sustainable development crowd has transformed this
complaint into public policy, using the alarming specter of "Anthropogenic Climate
Change" to force the issue.
We have exposed the greenhouse gas myth for the fraud it is, but their entire argument
is fatally flawed. The most salient feature of a market economy is its ability to grow and
adapt as market conditions change. When any resource becomes scarce, its price
increases. This creates a multitude of responses: producers seek new sources of supply,
engage in research to find alternatives, or invent methods of using the resource more
efficiently. The market accomplishes this smoothly, quietly and without large
disruptions, unless government gets involved to manage it.
The clear implication is that this is wasteful and unfair. We should only be consuming 5
percent. Going from 25 percent to 5 percent is an 80 percent reduction. What happens
to the countries supplying those goods when we reduce our consumption by 80
percent? Do they magically get a wealth transfer? No. Their economic decline will be
cataclysmic.
During the Great Depression, U.S. GDP declined by 27 percent. World industrial
production fell 31 percent as a result. Worldwide calamity ensued, culminating in World
War II. What would happen if we reduced GDP by 80 percent?
As it stands, the sustainability crowd want to see carbon-based energy usage reduced
by 80 percent. That goal was incorporated in the Cap and Trade bill that thankfully has
not yet been enacted. Not quite the same as reducing GDP by that amount, but certain
to cause a catastrophic decline in living standards nonetheless. Some analysts have
even said that "planned recession" is the only way to reduce "greenhouse gasses"
enough to make a difference.
If any true environmentalists understood this plan, they would be fleeing for their lives.
It will ruin economies and cause widespread hardship. And we have plenty of evidence:
every country that adopts the socialist/communist model so far has become an
environmental disaster area.
But that is the intention, because socialism's true objective is power - to the exclusion
of everything else. And while the sustainability agenda will certainly destroy world
economies, in the process of doing so it will hand absolute power to the people
promoting it.
Using the Marxists' deceptive language, the sustainability agenda has insinuated its way
into government right down to the local level and is now firmly entrenched.
The good news is that this is something local tea party activists can focus on and may
well be able to stop before it is too late. But make no mistake, that hour draws near.
Tomorrow: Agenda 21: Globalist Totalitarian Dictatorship Taking Over a Town near You.
Understanding_Sustainable_Development.pdf Bytes
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James Simpson is a freelance journalist, businessman and former White House budget
analyst.. His writings have also been published on Big Government, Big Peace,
Emerging Corruption, American Thinker, Washington Times, WorldNetDaily, FrontPage
Magazine and Right Side News, Soldier of Fortune and others. His blog is Truth &
Consequences.