Liberty or Sustainable Development?
Chapter
5: A Closer Look at Sustainable Development
Sunday, August 10, 2008
By Michael Shaw
Freedom Advocates
In Santa Cruz we began to expose these ideas to the citizenry by taking
the issue of Sustainable
Development Agenda 21 to the councils that were implementing it.
We would routinely encounter mockery, “Oh, you conspiracy theorists!”
Well, they don’t do that any longer because it’s become
quite evident when you look at the United
Nations own website. There you see that Agenda 21 and Sustainable
Development is a program being implemented by the international political
machinery.
Here is the United Nations home webpage for Sustainable Development/Agenda
21.
The Earth Summit for Agenda 21 was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This
conference formally unleashed Agenda 21 on the world and the USA.
I sat on “Santa Cruz Local Agenda 21” committees in the mid
90’s. There were a lot of crazy ideas present:
•
Mother Earth’s surface wasn’t to be scratched by tractors
or anything hoofed,
• Human beings were to be concentrated into human
settlement zones,
• Transportation systems were to limit human
mobility,
• Educational systems were to focus on the environment
as the central organizing principle.
All aspects of life were covered. There were committees on:
• Agriculture (communal),
• Bio-diversity ‘protection’,
• “Sustainable Development” education,
• Energy restructure and limitations on energy
use,
• Government housing also known as “affordable
housing,”
• “Population control” initiatives,
• Public health,
• “Social” justice,
• Transportation (trails and rails),
• Jobs - government managed assignments,
• And a “viable economy” - centrally
managed.
I attended some of these meetings at the request of some people who told
me that I needed to understand what was going on. I came back and I
said, “This is craziness. This is so silly. Agenda 21 has no chance
of taking effect.”
Well, I was wrong. In early 2001, councils and committees began popping up
all over Santa Cruz County. They ranged from ‘watershed councils’
for every small dabbling creek to ‘fire safe councils’ which
were in fact directed by the federal Department of Interior.
Fire chiefs were manipulated and used to impose a county wide ‘habitat
conservation’ program.
This would keep some land owners from walking on their property during the
mating season of the red-legged frog or long-toed salamander. Homeowners
associations were suddenly changing their by-laws. They eliminated Robert’s
Rules of Order and turned to ‘Stakeholder’ and ‘Consensus’
forms of governance.
“Visioning” sessions were held. The newspaper, a compliant partner in this dynamic, began to propagandize the benefits of reshaping County infrastructure.
People were to become less reliant on cars as tax dollars were to be
directed away from roads and toward rails and trails. Dense, heavily
subsidized and government designed, controlled and managed housing was
to be built along mass transit corridors.
On further investigation, it was discovered that in 1997 the County Board
of Supervisors had quietly accepted the provisions of local Agenda 21
as a guide for local policy making. Looking a little more deeply, we
found that in 1990, Santa Cruz had passed what was then called The Decade
of the Environment (Measure C). This read exactly as did the Rio Accords--which
were not released on the world until two years later!
So we see that Santa Cruz has been a laboratory for the Sustainable
Development dynamic for a long while. Santa Cruz is now feeling
the real consequences of Sustainable Development intervention. We have:
• Massively high housing prices;
• Intolerable road traffic;
• Timberlands ready to burn but which by law
cannot be managed (cut) by their “owners.”
• County farmers, farming rich fertile soil sitting
over a huge aquifer and adjacent to a veritable rain forest, had their
groundwater taken from them.
• The groundwater theft was part of a program
to collectivize their farm land in furtherance of ‘sustainable’
goals.
• Only long, expensive litigation has preserved
local farmer’s right to use their water rights.
Agenda 21 is a global land use, education and population control program. It
is now rapidly advancing in every city, town, county and state of the
United States.
Maurice Strong, a Canadian oil billionaire, was the Secretary General to the
United Nations 1992 Conference on the Environment and Development. This
conference is better known as The Rio Earth Summit. Most of us heard
about the Summit at the time, but few knew of the details. This is when
Agenda 21 - Sustainable Development was unveiled to the world.
In addressing the assembly, Secretary General Strong said the following:
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle
class (meaning average Americans) involving a high meat intake, the
use of fossil fuels, appliances (refrigeration), air conditioning and
suburban housing are not sustainable.”
• How could anyone take that seriously! It’s bizarre.
• If we don’t take it seriously, we will
all wake up one day and realize our loss of liberty!
Liberty! or Sustainable Development is a 13 Chapter serial adaptation of the
transcript of Michael Shaw’s opening speech from the video: Liberty
or Sustainable Development. Michael Shaw is President
of Freedom Advocates.org. He can be reached at Shaw@FreedomAdvocates.org.
Chapter 1: Understanding Liberty ----
Chapter 2: The Decay of Liberty – An Illustration ----
Chapter 3: Defining Sustainable Development ----
Chapter 4: Liberty or Sustainable Development? ----
Chapter 5: A Closer Look at Sustainable Development Part A----
Chapter 6: A Closer Look at Sustainable Development Part B----
Chapter 7: Sustainable Development’s
Land Use Element ----
Chapter 8: Rooting
Sustainable Development in the USA----
Chapter 9: A Healthy Planet and
Individual Liberty are Inseparable----
Chapter 10: Reinvention
of Government - Part 1----
Chapter 11: Reinvention
of Government - Part 2----
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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