Read the Freedom 21 Alternative at http://www.freedom21.org/alternative/

	Freedom 21	Agenda 21
Prin- ciples	Based on the principles of John Locke and individual rights that form the basis of the U.S. Constitution and private property rights. Focuses on self-government where all men are created equal and have equal opportunity. Administered by a minimum of government.	Based on the principles of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the "general will" (public good) as defined by the state (UN and NGOs). All people supposedly share equally in the wealth. Administered by command and control governance that will ultimately harm people and the environment.
	Power to make decisions primarily in the hands of the people thereby encouraging risk-taking. The only laws needed are those to enforce the golden rule (often described as common law) that no person can conduct activities that cause harm to another person or their property. Creativity to find new and better ways of doing things is encouraged by minimal regulatory structure.	Power to make most decisions primarily in the hands of government and bureaucrats. Breeding ground for government corruption and arbitrary and capricious enforcement of ever expanding regulations. Stifles creativity to find new and better ways to do things because production and activities are limited by one-size fits all regulation, supposedly designed to protect the environment..
	Establishes and protects private property rights which allows the creation of needed capital for impoverished nations and provides the only proven way to eliminate poverty. It is why capitalism works in Western nations and doesn't within centrally controlled nations.	Minimizes property rights to only those allowed by the state to reduce risk of possibly harming the environment. It places nature's perceived needs ahead of man's real needs. By controlling property rights there is little ability to generate the capital needed to reduce or eliminate poverty.
	Encourages protection of asset value of privately owned property because of pride of ownership and the mandatory need to maintain environmental health for continued production or use. Private property rights have generally helped, not harmed the environment in Western nations. Only those environmental features that are owned in common (air, rivers, public lands, etc.) have been harmed by pollution or misuse.	Invokes the Law of the Commons where property is held in common by the state through deed or regulation. No one person, family or organization has a vested interest in protecting the property for the benefits it can provide. Unless command and control regulation forces compliance with ever expanding laws to protect the environment, damage to the environment always results because there is no incentive to protect the environment..
	Depends on free markets with minimum of regulations to create incentives to maximize efficiencies of production through creativity and entrepreneurship.	Depends on controlled markets by government to achieve predetermined social and environmental goals based on precautionary principle which stifles creativity and entrepreneurship.
People	As poverty stricken citizens are allowed to establish value in property for production and collateral purposes, their hidden wealth will provide the basis for future wealth and permit them to move out of poverty and into the mainstream economy and world trade.	Corporate investments from developed nations may slowly increase the wealth of the nation, but in general those in greatest poverty will not benefit since most corporate profits go to corporate headquarters in the West.
	Human population will likely limit itself to a maximum of 9-10 billion people, then decline to 6-7 billion as increasing wealth in impoverished nations creates an incentive for smaller families.	Human population will increase to 10-11 billion people or more because poverty cannot be eliminated. The only means of population control will be by command and control government programs to force fewer children.
Land Use	Land use by citizens of any nation necessarily changes biodiversity. Change in biodiversity, however, does not make land use bad. It changes the mix of age classes, species and structural components of biodiversity, but not in a way that necessarily harms ecosystem health. Biodiversity typically benefits from man-caused disturbance utilizing scientifically proven management techniques. Many European nations have intensively managed their biodiversity for centuries without overall detrimental effects.	Any type of land use except that which follows "natural patterns" is viewed as potentially detrimental to biodiversity and ecosystems. The Convention on Biological Diversity calls for government to withdraw large blocks of land into wilderness reserves, surrounded by buffer zones to protect the wilderness reserves. The UN funded Global Biodiversity Assessment calls for as much as 30 to 50% of the land area to be so protected. There is no ecological justification for this and requires huge areas be taken out of production for human use, further reducing the ability for those in poverty to ever improve themselves.
	Having a multitude of private property owners who have a range of different land use objects creates biodiversity - not perfectly, but usually adequately. Very few species have become extinct due to land use activities by people. The greater the wealth that is generated, the better the land will be managed and protected.	Land will be controlled through heavy regulation dictated by the state, supposedly to protect biodiversity and ecosystems. This will diminish creativity and productivity. Island Biogeography and conservation biology theories about population dynamics and species loss have not been proven on continents, eliminating the need for such precaution. Biological diversity will deteriorate in protected reserves as they gradually mature into monotypes.
Air & Water	There is little evidence of man-caused global warming. Most comes from land-based data contaminated by urban "heat island" effect and inaccurate climate models. More than 17,000 scientists in the U.S. say that there is insufficient evidence for man-caused warming to consider international policy. Conversely, increasing CO2 has been proven to have a "fertilizer effect" and could increase crop production by up to 50 percent, greatly benefitting food availability to developing nations at no cost to them. The wise course of action is to prove global warming before harming the economic base of the world.	The knee-jerk reaction by the international community to the possibility of man-caused global warming does not warrant international control efforts. Satellite temperature measurements show little to no warming. The so-called precautionary principle (better safe than sorry) is likely to backfire as the law of unintended consequences shows that stabilizing or reducing CO2 emissions will harm efforts to help the poor and will not permit huge increases in global food production that could solve the global food problem. Even if there is global warming, the Kyoto protocol does nothing to stop or reverse CO2 emissions, but instead is a global economic redistribution plan.
	Except in a few localized areas, water is available. Rather, it is a problem of water management -- and poverty. Both problems are best addressed with property rights for citizens, free enterprise, minimal bureaucratic red tape and the elimination of hostilities between peoples and nations.	The UN claims water is the number one problem in the 21st century and is developing a huge governmental program to "solve" this problem. Property rights and business activities will be heavily regulated, stifling the very capital and creativity that is needed to solve this problem. The huge bureaucratic solution to this perceived problem will only make the problem worse.
Toxic   Chem- icals	While hazardous chemicals should always be treated with respect and proper precautions, toxic chemicals do not always present a high risk-if handled appropriately. This is one of the least understood principles in modern society. The use of pesticides, if eliminated, would likely cause 26,000 additional cancer deaths in the U.S., while saving less than 20 lives. In lives saved, spending money on things like health care and residential, occupational or transportation safety is a tiny fraction of the cost of saving the same lives from environmental risks. It becomes a matter of how we spend limited resources.	Environmentalists and others have made a host of false chemical scare stories and demand that we must limit or eliminate all man-made chemical use. Agenda 21 and sustainable development would limit their use based on raw emotion, not good science. All things of nature are made of chemicals. There are far more natural pesticides in plants, than are used by farmers that are man-made. About the same percentage of these natural pesticides are carcinogenic as is found in man-made pesticides. By curtailing or banning their use, people have, and will continue to die - 2 million a year by malaria due to the elimination of one chemical -- DDT!
Summary	Property rights and free markets provide incentives to find a better way to meet challenges. Property rights also provide critical capital to get the poor out of poverty by giving them ownership and pride. Freedom 21 offers the best hope to meet the needs of people and the environment!	Command and control governance destroys initiative and pride of citizens and leads to corruption in government. Capital is provided by big multinational corporations who reap the profits, not the laborer. Agenda 21 cannot, and will not work. It is doomed to failure!