- Published: September 23, 2022
- Updated: September 23, 2022
- University / College: Université de Montréal
- Language: English
- Downloads: 8
Ask any school kid what happened in 1492. Columbus sailed the ocean blue, of course. What about 1776? You get the idea. Some events are important enough to be seen for centuries as turning points in history. What will future generations remember about 1992? Bill Clinton’s election? Hardly. They will remember an event that far too many Americans don’t even know occurred — UNCED, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. They won’t remember that UNCED was the largest environmental gathering in the history of the world; they will remember that Agenda 21was adopted by most of the world’s nations.
They will look at 1992 as the year the world agreed to balance future economic development with environmental protection, and empowered the United Nations to be in charge. Agenda 21 is the blueprint adopted to guide the balance. By the end of the century, Agenda 21 may well exceed the Bible as the sacred text around which global societies are organized. Already, its recommendations are being quoted like scripture by environmental missionaries sent out by Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), on missions much like Paul and Silas’ in biblical times. The plan is not to conquer the world, but to convert the world. The first step in converting any sinner is to make the sinner recognize his sins and feel a profound sense of guilt for them.
Salvation comes only by abandoning sinful ways and turning to the straight and narrow path of enlightened sustainability. It’s sinful to cut trees. It’s sinful to build a house outside the urban-sprawl boundary. It’s sinful to dig a ditch across a wetland.
It’s sinful to burn fossil fuel. It’s sinful to run over a kangaroo rat. It’s sinful to make a profit. It’s sinful to hurt someone’s feelings by outperforming them. This is the gospel that a generation of school children has been taught. It is preached every day from the bully pulpit in the White House. It is taught every day in our schools. It is amplified in movies, television, and magazines, and it is studied religiously by groups of GAGs across the country.
Verily, they say unto America, thou art a sinful nation! But if thou shalt repent, ye shall be enlightened. And with the enlightenment comes the salvation of sustainability. Yea verily, if thou shalt submit to the commandments of Agenda 21, thou shalt truly be saved from the eternal damnation of global warming, species loss, and biological degradation.
Woe be unto those who do not repent, for they shall wear to their graves the infamous label of “ right-wing extremist. ” The national conversion to sustainability is gaining momentum. It is fueled by tax dollars and foundation grants. It is coordinated by the top officials in the federal government through the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, created, incidentally, by executive order, not by the elected representatives of the people. So what? What’s wrong with trying to save the planet? Plenty.
In the first instance, the planet doesn’t need saving. It is the people who need saving from yet another “ enlightened” plan to save the world. That is not to say that there are no environmental problems. Nor can we ignore the incredible poverty that burdens half the world’s people. The question is, how do we most effectively solve the problems of both poverty and the environment? Agenda 21 is not the answer. The first lesson offered by America to the rest of the world is this: individual needs must be met by the individual in need.
The individual in need may meet his needs by the sweat of his own brow, or through voluntary agreements with others in projects of mutual benefit. To exercise this fundamental principle, each individual must have property, whether for life’s necessities, such as food and shelter, or for factory equipment, or for investment. America’s founders knew, understood, and cherished these principles, and wrote them into our founding documents. They have not changed, nor will they. It is nature’s law, and it applies to every species on earth, including humans. No amount of preaching nor social experimentation can change the laws of nature.
Agenda 21 aims to do just that. Agenda 21 seeks to remove from the individual the responsibility for survival, and place that responsibility squarely upon the United Nations. In order for the United Nations to provide “ security for the people,” so exhaustively described in Our Global Neighborhood and other U. N. publications, the United Nations must have the power to redistribute resources from those who have more than they need to those who have less than they need. When the wealth of the world has been more equally distributed, the United Nations must have the power to control the wealth that is created in order to sustain the balance. Wealth is created by converting natural resources to products that people need, or want. How can the U.
N. control natural resources? The Convention on Biological Diversity is an excellent beginning. The Convention on Climate Change, with the Kyoto Protocol, gives the U. N. the power to control the flow of fossil fuel energy to developed countries. Energy, of course, is required to convert natural resources to products.
These two international treaties, combined with the proposed Covenant on Environment and Development, does for Agenda 21 what has rarely been done for the Bible; it converts the commandments into enforceable law. Just in case the environmental revival fails to produce sufficient converts quickly enough, the growing body of international law will force people to live as if they have been saved, whether they want to or not. This consequence of Agenda 21 is not an event that will occur in the distant future; it is already upon us, and being enforced.
The only effective enforcement arm available to the U. N. so far, is the World Trade Organization (WTO). And it is working. Go into any WalMart, and you will see more Fuji film than Kodak, and Fuji is cheaper.
In Japan, all you can find is Fuji. In the few places where Kodak is sold, it is much more expensive than Fiji. The trade agreement that governs sales between the two film manufacturers in the two countries was not negotiated by the parties to the mutual benefit of each. The terms of trade were dictated by an appointed panel of judges, hand-picked by the WTO. Kodak suffers; America will do nothing about it.
A ski lodge in Vail, Colo. , built a road on its own land. Months after the road was built, the government discovered that the road crossed what was an occasional mud hole. The government said the mud hole was “ the waters of the United States,” and the landowner is liable for fines of up to $27, 500 per day for each day since the road was constructed. Another enforcement arm is growing: the International Criminal Court. It is for sinners. The gospel of sustainability calls for voluntary repentance and conversion. But woe be unto the sinner who is caught.
Even Dante could not have imagined a hell as painful as being targeted by the federal government as a “ right-wing extremist” caught in the act of committing an environmental sin. If there is a bright light on the horizon for heretics, it is the realization that by the time 1992 is recognized as the turning point for the reorganization of global societies, the structure will be near collapse. It took 70 years for the Russians to face the reality that socialism can’t sustain itself. China faced that reality in less than 50 years and is rapidly trying to find ways to let free markets operate — without setting people free. Cuba — well, enough said. The socialist philosophy upon which Agenda 21 is constructed has proven to be inadequate — over and over again.
The world should not be ubjected to it again, especially under the control of the United Nations. How, then, do we solve the world’s problems? It won’t be easy. But it won’t happen at all unless solutions are created, and agreed to, by the people who are affected.
Environmental problems should be solved by officials elected by the people who are affected, not by appointed international diplomats, and highly-paid executives of environmental organizations, meeting in luxury resorts around the world. The first step toward solving the problem of poverty is to get government out of the way. The next step is to allow individuals to own land and the resources it contains. Without the constraints government imposes, and with the opportunity land provides, individuals can, and will find ways to meet their own needs.
The pilgrims had nothing more. America’s beacon to the world should be the principles upon which America is built. Instead, America, through its appointed delegates to the U. N. , some of whom were formerly highly-paid executives of Green Advocacy Groups, is actually promoting Agenda 21, and surrendering America’s national sovereignty in the process. Those of us who have not yet been converted have very little time to stop the process.
If the rush to global sustainability (read: socialism) is to be stopped at all, it will probably take total withdrawal by the United States from the United Nations. The U. N. must be completely restructured and reorganized to be nothing more than a forum at which the nations of the world can meet to discuss their differences en route to reaching mutually beneficial voluntary agreements. Should the current policies continue for another eight years, our great grandchildren will likely see 1992 as the pinnacle of America’s prosperity.
We have started the downward slide. If we cannot stop it now, there may not be another chance.