Table of Contents

Preface

Over the past thirty years the need for protecting the environment has become a national and international priority. Few would challenge the need for protecting the environment so that future generations can enjoy productive and fulfilled lives. The question then becomes how best to achieve sustainability. During the 1970s the United States passed a number of laws such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and others to protect our environment. In 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created to oversee the promulgation and enforcement of these laws. In 1972, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) was created following the first "Earth Summit" in Stockholm, Sweden (also called the United Nations Conference on Human Environment).

The numerous environmental international treaties and laws that have been passed, along with the creation of the EPA have done much to improve the environment in America and the world. The question is whether these international treaties and laws represent the best approach to protect both the environment and people. Could the environment have been protected to the same level or better using a different approach other than that employed by the international community and the U.S. Congress in establishing these laws and the EPA to enforce them? The answer is undeniably, YES! The concept of Freedom 21 defines in general terms why it is necessary to use a different approach and how to accomplish it.

The reasons for this are very important. Most of the international environmental treaties that are already in effect, or are in the wings to be proposed, are based on the same command and control model of environmental law and enforcement that currently exists throughout the world, including the United States. In his 1997 Track II Reforming the United Nations document, Secretary General Kofi Annan recommended restructuring the UN Trusteeship Council into a supranational EPA "through which Member states [nations] exercise their collective trusteeship for the integrity of the global environment and common areas such as the oceans, atmosphere, and outer space."¹ If implemented, this could greatly impact the culture and civil liberties of all American citizens — indeed, the citizens of the whole world.

Sustainable development means different things to different people, but the most frequently quoted definition is from the 1987 report Our Common Future (also known as the Brundtland Report): "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It goes beyond just protecting the environment, but addresses restructuring the economic and social context of the entire world. It encompasses changing policy and practice at all levels, from the individual to the international corporation.² What does this mean to America? As Tom DeWeese, a respected private property rights activist, notes, "Imagine an America in which a single ruling principle is created to decide proper societal conduct for every citizen. That principle would be used to determine everything you eat, what you wear, the kind of home in which you live, the way you get to work, the way you dispose of waste, the number of children you may have, even your education and employment decisions. Imagine, too, that all of these decisions are called ‘voluntary’ while the federal government uses its full power to induce — coerce — what it deems ‘correct behavior.’"³

The specific goals for sustainable development were encompassed in Agenda 21, a forty-chapter plan by the United Nations designed to completely reorganize the planet’s economies and resources. It defines massive income redistribution to eliminate poverty, how our environment should be used and protected, and how each citizen should live in order to be "sustainable." Signed by President George Bush (Sr). at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, this noble sounding effort has at least one major flaw that will prevent it from success: It represents a totally controlled and planned society, ostensibly pushing decision making to the local level, but in fact limiting those choices to a few pre-approved options through what the United Nations calls "global governance." As such, it is diametrically opposed to the proven principles of the United States Constitution; and ultimately to freedom itself.