Sustainable Development Deception

In October, 1999, the Center for Strategic Governance and International Initiatives at the Florida Coastal School of Law will host the International Environmental Law and Sustainable Economic Development Symposium. Industry, government leaders, law students, lawyers from both the public and private sectors, and others involved or interested in international trade will be in attendance. Invited keynote speakers include Carol Browner, Director of the U.S. EPA, Klaus Topfer, U. N. Under-Secretary General and Executive Director, UNEP, and Bruce Babbitt, Secretary U.S. Department of Interior.

Sustainable development as envisioned by the United Nations. Activities that protect the earth receive first priority, while human needs like human rights, development, and economics receive least priority. Control is maintained by the UN through global governance.

This symposium represents yet another tool to further hone the international strategies to advance the promulgation of environmental law, initiate more intense environmental monitoring, and to facilitate the implementation of global sustainability.

The concept of sustainable development made its public debut in 1987 when the UN Commission on Environment and Development (CED) published its report, Our Common Future. The report defines Sustainable Development rather benignly as, "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Although sustainable development sounds like motherhood and apple pie, leaders at both the national and international levels are actually using it as a mechanism to reorganize societies around the central principle of protecting the environment. Presidential candidate Al Gore, in his book Earth in the Balance, affirms this same goal, "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization," even though he admits such an effort would cause "sacrifice, struggle, and a wrenching transformation of society" for America and the world.

Although protecting the environment is portrayed as the end goal, sustainable development is, in actuality, only the means to another end—the control of every citizen of the entire world. Such control is mandatory in an earth-based civilization where earth’s needs dominate human needs. Hence, the heart of sustainable development is state controlled private property rights.

State control of how the private citizen can use their land can be traced to the 1976 UN Conference on Human Settlements (HABITAT I). The Preamble to that policy states, "Land...cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable...."

"...frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place-air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable"

Sustainable development is almost always touted as a local idea, where control is relinquished to the local government. The opposite is the case, however. The very nature of sustainable development demands someone at the top decide what is and is not sustainable, and then control human activities—far from the communities which are employing it.

Sustainable development was introduced to the world during the 1992 Rio de Janeiro "Earth Summit." During the Summit, over 150 attending nations heard Secretary General Maurice Strong proclaim that, consumption of large amounts of meat and "frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable." This concept is embodied in Agenda 21, a 40-chapter manifesto replete with recommendations designed to transform the world into sustainable communities by dictating virtually every aspect of human activity.

To achieve sustainability, a community will limit family size and create compact residential and pedestrian-oriented development, with work-to-home proximity. Large scale reductions in energy and materials consumption, which will mandate a substantial reduction in the use of the automobile, is also required, as is a push for the "greening" of our educational system by incorporating environmentalism and the principles of sustainable development in every course of study.

President Clinton responded to Agenda 21’s call for "national councils on sustainable development" using "a new collaborative decision process" by issuing Executive Order #12852 on June 29, 1993, creating the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). Control of the environmentally dominated Council’s agenda was maintained by Cochair Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute (WRI). It was the WRI that wrote the UN Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA), a totally antihuman foundational document for writing the implementing language for the Convention on Biological Diversity, one of the executing treaties to provide Agenda 21 with the force of law.

The Council released its report, Sustainable America: A New Consensus for Prosperity, Opportunity and a Healthy Environment, in March of 1996. As with Agenda 21, the report’s 154 action items are centered on a controlled society and covers everything from wages to health care.

Key to the PCSD’s success is " a new collaborative decision process that leads to better decisions; more rapid change; and more sensible use of human, natural, and financial resources in achieving our goals." This collaborative decision making process is critical because it removes the power to make policy from elected officials who are accountable to the people they serve, to special interest "partners" who have no accountability. By doing so, sustainable development removes the last unyielding road block to our nation’s assimilation into the New World Order, the U.S. Constitution.

The process works through the Joint Center for Sustainable Communities, which acts as a liaison between federal and local communities. By the time the program reaches the local level all connections to the UN and Agenda 21 are normally eliminated.

Billed as an exciting cure-all to most urban-suburban problems, many communities throughout America are blindly falling for the siren song of sustainable development. By doing so, we face the loss of the independence we cherish and the freedom to live as we choose. Why? Because the American dream—liberty, privacy, safety, and the pursuit of happiness—is simply not sustainable.

Americans need to ensure that any plans for our nation’s future, sustainable or otherwise, protect the foundational principle upon which this country was founded: that government is empowered by the consent of the governed. Our Constitution guarantees individual freedom and private property rights for the sole purpose of protecting us from an all-powerful government.

In stark contrast, Agenda 21, and Sustainable America espouse the view that rights are granted by government, and that people to whom rights are granted, certain obligations are owed as may be prescribed by government.

The U.S. Constitution and sustainable development are diametrically opposed to each other. Apparently, these globalists believe the Constitution is not sustainable either. V ks