Volume 2, Number 4 -- May 30, 1997
We at the Alabama Committee to Get US Out of the United Nations are often confronted with statements such as this lady is making. It is just such a response that the United Nations hopes will continue, for it knows if the masses ever came to understand the truth of what is happening they would insist on our getting out of this world organization.
Whether you realize it or not, many of the laws and regulations impacting on your life every day have their origins in United Nations conferences, conventions and treaties.
Every once in a while an article will appear in a local newspaper talking about some project the city or the county or the state is involved in. It will not identify the source of that project as the UN, but those familiar with what has been going on at UN conferences will be able to make the connection.
A recent article in The Birmingham News speaks about assessing fees or fines to help pay for pollution caused by rainwater runoff in Jefferson County. The citizens of many American cities are already seeing such assessments appearing on their water bills. The origin of this dates back to the original United Nations Earth Summit, from which most of our environmental protection regulations stem.
As we have said before on these pages, we are environmentalists ourselves. We believe we have a God given responsibility to be good stewards of His resources. But we also firmly believe those resources are here for man to use and enjoy, and we do not believe all life on earth is equal or has an equal right to earth's resources, as many of the environmentalists would have us believe.
The News article about the rainwater runoff pointed out that a 1993 EPA and environmentalistslawsuit relative to the Clean Waters Act was the trigger that started the ball rolling to charge you for the damage to the environment caused by rainwater.
If we look to the intent of the Congress that enacted the Clean Waters Act we will find no such empowerment. Bureaucratic regulations that far exceed Congressional intent have muddied the Clean Waters Act beyond recognition.
But the Clean Waters Act is just a single example of how the environmental crisis is being exploited to convince people they must give up their rights if they want to "save the earth." Laws are being passed and regulations written that give the government almost total control over what you may and may not do with your own property. All the bureaucrat needs to do to exert the government's right over your right is to show that there may be a potential threat to the environment. This can easily be stretched to cover almost any use you may wish to make of your property. The book Lost Rights by James Bovard documents numerous cases of how the environmental police have misused this power.
Another book, Saviors of the Earth?, by Michael S. Coffman, takes an in-depth look at the environmental movement and exposes it for the tyrannical tool it has become in the hands of the social-change engineers.
The rainwater runoff article in The News referred to the storm water pollution control as a federal mandate. We don't know exactly which law or which regulation gives the federal government the right to mandate such control, but we know there is nothing in the Constitution that grants it that authority. But then, the federal government long ago ceased consulting the Constitution as a basis for its actions.
The implementation measures for the rainwater runoff levy fees were worked out by a committee composed of business people, environmentalists, pastors, landowners, developers, lawyers, senior citizens and real-estate people. This gives the appearance that we all have a voice in what is happening. Actually, such committees will almost always include a so-called facilitator (in this case probably an environmentalist) whose job is to lead the committee to the desired result.
In industry this process is sometimes called "managing by consensus." A skilled facilitator has little difficulty in steering the group toward management's goal, which then becomes the group's goal and thereby enlists the group's efforts toward implementation, reducing opposition that might otherwise arise.
The end result of the rainwater runoff boondoggle is to create another bureaucracy with broad ranging powers to intimidate the citizens into complying with governmental mandates against pollution.
We do not have a cost estimate for the project, but whatever it is you know the taxpayer is ultimately going to pick up the tab. But this is only the cost of administering the program. The additional cost to industry and to individual homeowners who might be required to take corrective and remedial actions could make the program cost seem insignificant.
Another recent article, this one in The Atlanta Journal/The Atlanta Constitution, was quoting the Director of the Institute for Ecological Economics as saying, "the value of nature's 'ecosystem services' should be taken into account in contemplating projects that affect the environment, such as turning a parcel of land into a shopping mall.
"Developers might face a tax to make up for society's loss of service from the land they plan to use."
In other words, even if you own the land you will have to pay an additional "tax" to use it if some bureaucrat says your proposed use deprives others (animals as well as people) of some service the land provides in its natural state. Such a proposal may sound ridiculous to you. We assure you that it seems totally plausible to the social planners in the UN. It becomes just another weapon in their arsenal.
Another recent article that appeared in The Birmingham News announced that Birmingham would be hiring the same consultant who worked with Chattanooga to help develop it into a more "sustainable community."
Supposedly Birmingham and six adjoining counties will share in this project, and presumably split the $200,000.00 cost of developing it. Of course the taxpayer is the ultimate source of funding for any governmental project. Even when business and industry supposedly pick up a portion of the tab it's the consumer (taxpayer) who really pays.
What the article failed to point out is that these programs are part and parcel of Agenda 21, a Global Plan of Action that came out of the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. A plan of action that calls for local governments to join in partnerships with the United Nations.
The article also failed to point out that consultants such as will be hired for this effort more often than not serve as "facilitators" who will ensure that a desired "consensus" is reached by the planning committee, as we pointed out a bit earlier.
Were such planning sessions only happening in the United States we could properly assume they were the outcome of our own concerns for the environment, but we see a worldwide rash of such programs. The United States is actually a little late in working them in. (Refer to our comments on Region 2020 and visioning.)
Canada is well ahead of us in their compliance with the UN agenda. "The Sustainable Communities Resource Package" from the Ontario Round Table on Environment and Economy describes the "visioning" process that is generally the first stage in developing the various programs.
Basically, this visioning process asks the planning group a series of questions designed to get them thinking in a particular mind-set. They are to respond to such questions as:
The second stage is for the group to compare and discuss the answers to these questions. Then someone (most likely a facilitator) will lead the group through consensus-building exercises designed to pull together the similar answers and weed out answers that may be divisive.
The next stage is to commit the êvision statementí to writing. It will define the "preferred" future direction and encapsulate the prevailing community values and community issues of overriding concern.
There is also an International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). Founded in 1990, the Council's mission is to build and serve a worldwide movement of local governments to achieve and monitor tangible improvements in global environmental conditions through cumulative local actions. It is a membership association whose members include more than 250 cities, towns, counties and their associations around the world.
The idea is to bypass national governments when national implementation seems implausible or impractical.
Chapter 28 of Agenda 21 calls on local governments to establish "Local Agenda 21s." To this end, ICLEI launched a global initiative to assist local governments in planning and implementing Local Agenda 21 processes.
Local governments, in partnership with their residents and local businesses are taking action.
We see, as some parents have been noticing for some time, a concerted effort to instill in school children a sense of crisis concerning the environment. You may recall the sense of confidence you placed in your teachers in your early school years. They were the authorities, they knew more than your parents did. If the sense of crisis can be instilled in the young (as has been being done for the last 20 years, at least), this can be the hub on which the rest of the environmental agenda is built. Children who learn these lessons at an early age tend not to question their basis in fact later on.
Local Agenda 21 campaigns are well under way in much of the world. In Australia, Bolivia, China, Denmark, Finland, Japan Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom, 1,487 local governments -- representing 82% of the reported total -- have established Local Agenda 21 planning efforts. In Brazil, Columbia, Greece, Ireland, Malawi, Peru, South Africa and the United States, Local Agenda 21 campaigns are just now getting under way. ICLEI findings highlight the importance of national Local Agenda 21 campaigns to the implementation of Agenda 21.
As of April 1, 1997, the following Local Agenda 21 campaigns are under way:
You will again note the absence of any state designations on the above list.
If you are one who believes that United Nations' activities are not impacting on your life, then you must believe that all 24 of the above listed sites suddenly decided they needed to move in the same direction at virtually the same time -- shortly after 1,487 local areas in other countries moved in that direction. Whether or not you approve of the actions these communities are taking, it is, or should be, very scary that a non-elected body of bureaucrats is exercising this kind of power over the actions of so many people around the globe. And they are doing so with most of those people (especially those in the U.S.) being totally unaware of just where the directions are from.
The underlying principle of Agenda 21 is "Sustainable Communities." What is not made obvious to the American public is that most of America's cities and towns are deemed to support "unsustainable" life styles as defined by the framers of Agenda 21.
If one looks only on the surface of these proposals they appear quite plausible, even desirable. Once one begins to look deeper, he finds the long term goals will eliminate private property ownership as we have known it, will vastly reduce the standard of living we have enjoyed in America and most of Western Europe, will siphon off the wealth of the wealthiest nations in efforts to raise the standard of living for third world nations and will eventually replace our republican form of government with the socialism/communism so dear to the hearts of the social planners, who seem to believe men and ants are equal life forms and should live more like ants than like men.
STOP THE NEW WORLD ORDER!
The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Psalm 24:1
If the "Green Earth" advocates were asking us to return to biblical admonitions and apply God's instructions to our habitats, we would be happy to comply. But as we see it, they are simply using our past careless concern for God's creation as a means to destroy our liberties and usurp God's place in the lives of men.