January / February 1998
Table of Contents
Sustainable
Communities
Under construction
everywhere
Global Influences on American Farming
Social Democracy
Essay by Henry Lamb
About this edition...
No one paid much attention to the UN Commission on Global Governance Report, Our Global Neighborhood, issued in 1995. The Commission, however, has been busy implementing the various proposals it advanced. An update on their activity is on page 4.
The grandaddy of UN treaties is now in draft form: The Covenant on Environment and Development. This document, under development since 1989, will give the UN all the enforcement power it needs to make global governance a reality.
Sustainable communities are under construction across America. Page 10 begins a series of reports on the progress being made. "Local Agenda 21" has already been adopted by some municipalities in Santa Cruz County, California.
"Federal Land Use Control" (page 12) traces how private property rights in America have been eroded by a changing federal policy. This article is excerpted from ecologic Special Reort, "Federal Land Use Control through Federal Ecosystem Management."
Now that Kyoto is history, what can we expect? Here is a report on what has happened since Kyoto and what is in store for the future.
Page 19 contains a transcript of the presentation made by Henry Lamb to the American Farm Bureau Federation's Annual Convention.
Finally, the essay on page 23 discusses the benefits and dangers of social democracy, compared to the American form of self-governance. Agenda 21 will create a global system of social democracy with the United Nations at the helm.
Cover Photos
Front: What will be. Spring wildflowers growing in the
median on Interstate 81 in Virginia.
Back: What has been. Winter-laden trees behind the ECO
office in Hollow Rock, Tennessee.
Global Governance Update
The UN-funded Commission on Global Governance published its report, Our Global Neighborhood, in the Fall of 1995, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. Aside from the analysis published by ecologic in January, 1996, the report went virtually unnoticed by the U.S. media. Congressman George Miller (D-CA), in particular, and many other elected officials, ridicule those who express concern about the UN's apparent efforts to achieve global governance. All the while, proponents of global governance are busy promoting their objective and incrementally implementing programs and policies which are creating a defacto system of global governance.
The 28-member Commission on Global Governance was co-chaired by Ingvar Carlsson, Prime Minister of Sweden, and Shridath Ramphal, former President of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Maurice Strong, Secretary General of Earth Summit I, in Stockholm in 1972, and Earth Summit II, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, was also an important member of the Commission, responsible for much of the text in the Commission's 410-page report. Strong is now the Executive Coordinator of UN Reform at the United Nations. He is responsible for implementing the recommendations contained in the Commission's report. These three men are leading the campaign toward global governance.
Strong issued a 95-page plan last July which outlined the first steps he is taking to restructure the UN to fulfill its mission of global governance (see ecologic, July/August, 1997). Ramphal and Carlsson are on the global speaking circuit drumming up support for their goals.
At the 15th annual Clement Attlee Lecture in London, February 18th, Ramphal said "Our global neighborhood needs the UN as never before, but we need the UN not as it was before, serving the world of its first 50 years, but as it must be hereafter, serving the new world of its next fifty years." Ramphal was quite specific:
"Pax Americana is as unacceptable to most of the world, and perhaps to many Americans, as ever pax Britannica was to America. In the era of globalization, we must live by consensus or die. Only pax planeta will suffice. There are those who will say they are pressing for reform but really mean downsizing, miniaturizing, even emasculating the organization. Big nations with veto power must become enlightened and creative in bringing about real reform. The UN must become the overriding factor in foreign policy."
Ramphal concluded his remarks with these observations: "At the center of international affairs, there must be enshrined the ethic of internationalism, the core values of multilateralism, the habit of acting together. We must relegate to the worst time of this century the excesses of nationalism, of unilateral action, of the politics of power. The bedrock of every country's international relations must be the mission of using the United Nations system as the machinery for working and acting together."
Carlsson took his message to the European Forum, meeting in Berlin in November, 1997. He told the group that "today there are strong reasons to revise and reform the United Nations system." He said:
"First, the possible use of modern
military weapons -- particularly nuclear
and biological weapons -- would have
such devastating effects on the entire
globe, that it can't be said to be only a
national security matter. Secondly,
ecosystems are mindless of border
controls and visa requirements. The
depletion of the ozone layer, climate
changes and the greenhouse effect all
have consequences beyond internal
affairs. Thirdly, more and more goods
and services move across borders. A
touch on a keyboard at a powerful
money dealer's desk may hold individual
nations to ransom."
In a new book, The Future of European Social Democracy, edited by Heinz Fischer, Carlson calls for the creation of a UN Economic Security Council, a key recommendation advanced by the Commission on Global Governance in its 1995 report.
Another recommendation advanced in the Commission's report calls for the creation of a new International Criminal Court. The UN General Assembly will convene a conference in Italy in June to consider a draft document developed by the International Law Commission which would create such a court. The Commission on Global Governance says the new International Criminal Court should have its own panel of prosecutors who are free to investigate inside the borders of any sovereign nations without interference by national or local governments. A coalition of NGOs (non-government organizations) has been organized to promote support for an "effective and just institution," which will function from New York to "provide important information on this effort." Planning has been underway on this project since at least 1994. A Preparatory Committee met in February and will hold three two-week sessions leading up to the conference.
Women's NGOs are organizing to advance global governance. The Commission on Global Governance convened a two-day conference in London in November where more than 50 women's organizations assembled to hear Shridath Ramphal explain how women can help bring about the goals of global governance. Other speakers included Dr. Elizabeth Bowen, past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility; Victoria Brittain, Foreign News Editor of the British daily, The Guardian; Lynda Adamson of the Baha'i Community of the United Kingdom; and Dame Joscelyn Barrow, President of UNIFEM Association in Britain. The group formalized plans to create a global network of women's organizations to promote global governance.
Peter Sutherland, former head of the World
Trade Organization, and now chairman of
Goldman Sachs International and of British
Petroleum, and chairman of the Overseas
Development Council, called for a world
summit on global governance in a New York
Times article, February 8, 1998. His
suggestion echos a recommendation advanced
in the report of the Commission on Global Governance. One month earlier, October 22-24, in
San Jose, Costa Rica, a national conference on global governance was convened by Oscar Arias,
former President of Costa Rica and a member of the Commission on Global Governance. The
event was sponsored by the Foreign Ministry, the National Legislative Assembly, three
universities, and the United Nations Development Program, which is headed by Gustave Speth, a
former member of the Clinton/Gore transition team. The conference adopted a declaration
calling for a World Summit on Global Governance.
At the close of the 20th century, the world is witnessing the "wrenching transformation," as Al Gore described it in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, of a world consisting of sovereign nations, to a world where the UN assumes responsibility for the "security of people."
Speaking to the Conference on Sustainable Development in the 21st Century, in Reykjavik, Iceland on September 13, Shridath Ramphal said:
"The Commission has developed its proposals on global security to reflect the transition from a world of states to a world of people -- the transition from the conventional concern with the security of countries to the security of people worldwide."
He said that "linking all the main proposals of the Commission -- from reform of the UN Trusteeship Council to global trusteeship of the global commons -- was the unity of human needs and the concept of human -- people's -- security."
In Chicago last October, Ingvar Carlsson promoted another recommendation of the Commission on Global Governance -- a standing UN army. The idea was first advanced by Tryggve Lie, the UN's first Secretary-General. Much of the support for the UN originally came from the notion that world wars could be ended only by surrendering national military capability to an international military force that could enforce a pax planeta. The Kennedy Administration issued a policy document that set forth a disarmament plan to reduce America's military capability while strengthening the UN's capability. The UN's peacekeeping force of recent years is a continuation of that policy.
Speaking at Northwestern University, Carlsson said that "Talk of a UN Force tends to arouse fear of the UN becoming some kind of supranational body. Such concerns must give way to the very real advantages of the Security Council and the Secretary-General having at their disposal, for immediate deployment, well trained, motivated, and equipped peacekeepers." He pointed out that "at present it can take weeks, more often months, between the passage of a resolution in the Security Council and the arrival of the first elements of a peacekeeping force. Operationally and politically, that is unacceptable."
To finance global governance, as it is envisioned by the Commission, a new source of income will be necessary. The Commissions's report identified several possibilities, but focused primarily on what has become known as the "Tobin Tax." This scheme would extract a small percentage of all international currency transactions. A minimal .05% would produce a staggering $1.5 trillion dollars annually - more than 150 times the current UN budget.
Paul Martin, Canada's Finance Minister, favors such a tax, according to an article he wrote for the North-South Institute's Newsletter (Vol. 1, No. 1, 1997). He also presented the idea to a meeting of the G7 countries and said that Lloyd Bentsen, then U.S. Treasury Secretary, supported the idea. Gustave Speth, head of the United Nations Development Program, has been promoting the Tobin Tax since 1994. To implement such a tax, the UN must consolidate its control over the international financial machinery. The recommendation to create a new Economic Security Council would provide that control. In Maurice Strong's plan to reform the UN, he has announced the consolidation of all UN programs and organizations into five administrative departments. One of those new departments consolidates all of the financial organizations.
For seven days, the World Economic Forum
met in Davos, Switzerland. The theme was
"Priorities for the 21st Century -- Managing
Volatility." According to Joan Veon, an
independent journalist who attended the
event, and who also is a member of the
Advisory Council of Sovereignty
International, Inc., the conclusion reached by
the world's economic leaders
is that "the UN system has to be given
greater power in their ability to react to
international crises, not only on the
international level, but also at the national
level." In addition to strengthening the UN
oversight capabilities, "it was recommended over and over again that the banking rules for large
international banks now be applied to the banks located inside of a country. What this really
means," says Veon, "is that the final integration between the international infrastructure which
has been evolving since 1945 and now the local/national level of every country be combined into
one -- an empowerment of world government." (Joan Veon's most recent book, Prince Charles:
The sustainable Prince, is available by calling 301-774-7856).
Among those attending the Davos conference were: Newt Gingrich, Hilary Clinton, Donna Shalala, Governor Christine Todd Whitman, Senators John Kerry, Orin Hatch, Congressmen Howard Berman, and Jim Kolbe. Major corporations represented include: CocaCola, Sara Lee, DuPont, TRW, 3M, Arco, the Perot Group, Texaco, Philips Petroleum, Pepsi, Xerox, Proctor & Gamble, Kemper International, Ford Motor, Case Corporation, and Dow Chemical.
Few, if any, of the participants would recognize the event as another step toward global governance. More than 200 workshops and presentations expounded the benefits of greater control over the international money flow without discussing the negative consequences of global governance. Across America and around the world, conferences and campaigns are taking place on a daily basis, all designed to advance the ultimate objectives set forth in Our Global Neighborhood.
The idea of global governance is marching forward and it is gaining momentum. At the international level it marches forward with each new treaty and declaration. At the national level, the campaign is disguised by terms such as "sustainable development," "ecosystem management," "Heritage rivers," "smog-check II" and the like.
Global governance is not an event that will occur on a day certain at some point in the future. It
is a process that has been under way for several years, that has now gathered sufficient critical
mass to almost overwhelm those who resist. America is the only nation that can prevent global
governance -- as it did when the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the League of Nations. Whether or
not America still has the backbone to resist is an open question. The question will be answered,
one way or the other, before today's first-graders graduate. Will they be American citizens, or
citizens of our global neighborhood?
New Treaty In the Making
Covenant on Environment and Development
Few people in America have seen Agenda 21. Even fewer have read it. It is a 288-page document, consisting of 40 chapters replete with "recommendations" that affect virtually every aspect of human life. Taken together, the recommendations, when fully implemented, constitute what is called "sustainable development." Agenda 21 is the Action Plan adopted at UNCED -- the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development -- in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The United States was one of 179 nations that signed the document. It is a "soft-law document," meaning that it is not legally binding, and therefore, Congress has no reason to review or approve its content.
Nevertheless, the recommendations contained in Agenda 21 are being implemented through two separate, but coordinated, initiatives: the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). Implementation is occurring through the promulgation of rules by federal agencies, and through the development of plans for "sustainable communities" at the local level. Recommendations from Agenda 21 are being implemented without the benefit of public debate by elected officials. Though many communities do not recognize it as such, a well-coordinated national effort is underway to transform America to conform to the principles set forth in Agenda 21.
Although Agenda 21 is a soft-law document, it was, from the start, intended to be the precursor of an all-encompassing UN Treaty. The most recent iteration of that treaty has now been obtained and reviewed. It is called, in its present form, "Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development." It is organized into 11 parts, containing a total of 72 Articles. It will convert the "soft-law" recommendations of Agenda 21, into legally binding "hard" international law.
Before examining the document itself, it is helpful to realize that the procedure for making international law has evolved since 1948 and is now recognized by the international community as the norm. The introduction to the Draft Covenant says:
"The progression of legal principles from recommendatory `soft' to legally clear `hard' is well known in international law. For example, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a `soft law' instrument, was the precursor to the two 1966 UN Covenants on Human Rights."
Similarly, the Vienna Convention on Ozone Depleting Substances was adopted and ratified as a treaty which required only that nations "monitor" substances thought to be ozone-depleting. The Conference of the Parties, then adopted the Montreal Protocol which made the treaty legally binding. The same process is being used to convert the "voluntary" Framework Convention on Climate Change into a legally binding "hard law" document through the Kyoto Protocol. The Covenant on Environment and Development is following the same path.
The first call for an international treaty on environment and development came from the 1983 World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the "Brundtland Commission." Their final report, published in 1987, entitled Our Common Future, recommended that the United Nations prepare
"a new and legally-binding universal Convention [which] should consolidate existing and establish new legal principles, and set out the associated rights and responsibilities of States individually and collectively for securing environmental protection and sustainable development to the year 2000 and beyond."
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) assembled a working group under its Commission on Environmental Law (CEL), under the chairmanship of Dr. Wolfgang E. Burhenne, in November,1989. They produced a draft text containing 88 provisions. A second meeting of the IUCN group met in March 1991, under the chairmanship of Dr. Parvez Hassan. The Draft Covenant was translated into six official languages recognized by the UN and provided to PrepComm Working Group III, then preparing for UNCED in Rio. The evolving Covenant then became the basis for the development of Agenda 21.
From the start, Agenda 21 was intended to be a "soft law" document. Therefore, its ideas are presented in the form of recommendations with do discussion at all of compliance and enforcement. The Draft Covenant, however, does address those issues. A third meeting of the IUCN group was held shortly after UNCED to incorporate ideas presented in Rio into the Covenant. Two more meetings occurred, in April and September 1993. Both the Chairs of the IUCN's Ethics Commission and the IUCN's Species Survival Commission were invited to participate. The drafting committee met again in April, and September, 1994. While the IUCN is clearly the driving force behind the document, other organizations that participated in the development of the Covenant included the International Council of Environmental Law (ICEL); and the United Nations Environmental Programme's Environmental Law and Institutions Programme Activity Center (UNEP/ELIPAC).
The current Draft Covenant was completed March, 1995, in Bonn, Germany.
Like all recent UN Treaties, the language is somewhat vague and seeks to establish principles which may be interpreted in the future by the treaty's Conference of the Parties. Part I, Article 1 sets forth the Covenant's objective:
"The objective of this Covenant is to achieve environmental conservation and sustainable development by establishing integrated rights and obligations."
The casual reader might miss the import of this Article: "...by establishing integrated rights and obligations." This Article clearly illustrates the difference between the UN's concept of governance and America's concept of governance. America recognizes that humans have certain "inalienable" rights, among which is the right to create a government controlled by the people who are governed through representatives who are elected by the people who are governed. Inalienable rights are limited; obligations are accepted in America only with the consent of the people who are governed. The People who are governed retain the right to cast off any limitation on their rights or any obligation they may have previously accepted, simply by electing a new batch of representatives.
The Covenant, on the other hand, assumes that "rights" are granted by government, and that people to whom rights are granted "owe" certain obligations to government as may be prescribed by government. This concept of governance is the prevailing view held by most of the world. The American view is beyond the comprehension of most of the world's peoples. Even in nations that are described as "social democracies," it is assumed that government is the source of human rights. This is an exceedingly important principle of governance that America has failed to advance in the international community. In fact, the UN's concept of governance is eroding the traditional American view of governance every time America embraces a UN treaty. The President's Council on Sustainable Development, too, is operating on the UN principle, by-passing Congress and other elected officials, as it implements the recommendations of Agenda 21.
Part II of the Covenant includes Articles 2 through 10 which set forth the primary principles on which the Covenant is based. Most of the principles are at odds with traditional American values. For example, Article 2 declares that:
"Nature as a whole warrants respect; every form of life is unique and is to be safeguarded independent of its value to humanity."
This principle replaces the anthropocentric world view with a biocentric world view. Historically, Americans have believed that human life is the supreme value aside from the creator of all life; that human beings are at the top of the food chain. Americans have believed that human beings are creation's crowning jewel, that, ultimately, all species (natural resources) are available for human use. The biocentric world view holds that humans have no value greater than any other species and that all species -- including humans -- have equal rights. This biocentric view has been officially adopted by the U.S. Department of Interior, which, in its Ecosystem Management Policy, states that "in all ecosystem management activity, human beings shall be considered as a biological resource."
The "Precautionary Principle" is codified in Article 7. The same idea is expressed in Principle 15 of Agenda 21. It is the idea that policy action should not wait on scientific justification if "government" decides that a "threat" to the environment exists. Article 8 (Principle 3 in Agenda 21) declares that the "right" to development is accompanied by the "obligation" to meet environmental and "equity" needs -- as determined by non-elected government policy makers. Article 10 writes into international law "The elimination of unsustainable patterns of production and consumption..." again, as determined by non-elected government policy makers. Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of UNCED, and now, Executive Coordinator of UN Reform, declared in Rio that single family homes, air conditioning, and automobiles -- are not sustainable.
Part III sets forth the general obligations. Article 11 declares that "States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to utilize their resources...." This article clearly establishes the United Nations Charter and the "principles of international law" as superior to national sovereignty. Moreover, the Article also sets forth specific "obligations" which include the obligation to "protect and preserve the environment."
Article 12 describes the obligations of individuals: "All persons have a duty to protect and preserve the environment." Article 13 requires "Parties shall pursue sustainable development policies aimed at the eradication of poverty...[and] the conservation of biological diversity."
Part IV (Articles 16 through 22) says States "shall restrict human activities which modify, or are likely to modify..." stratospheric ozone, global climate, the soil, water, natural systems, biological diversity, and cultural and natural heritage. Part V, in three Articles, deals with measures to prevent environmental harm, pollution, waste generation, and the introduction of "alien" organisms.
Part VI deals with global issues. Article 27 focuses on "demographic" policies. Each state Party is required to "provide to their populations full information on the options concerning family planning." Article 28 requires "strategies to reduce or eliminate unsustainable patterns of consumption." Article 29 requires the eradication of poverty and "food security." Article 30 requires pricing of raw materials and commodities to "reflect the full direct and indirect social and environmental costs of their extraction, production, transport, marketing, and disposal."
Responsibility and Liability
The Covenant is quite comprehensive. It writes into "hard" international law virtually all of the recommendations of Agenda 21, and many new ideas. Part IX deals with "Responsibility and Liability." The following articles speak for themselves.
Article 47 - State Responsibility
"Each State Party is responsible under international law for the breach of its obligations under this Covenant or of other rules of international law concerning the environment."
Article 48 - State Liability
"Each State Party is liable for significant harm to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, as well as for injury to persons resulting therefrom, caused by acts or omissions of its organs or by activities under its jurisdiction or control."
Article 49 - Cessation, Restitution and Compensation
"Each State Party shall cease activities causing significant harm to the environment.... Where that is not possible, the State Party of the origin of the harm shall provide compensation or other remedy for the harm."
Article 50 - Consequences of Failure to Prevent Harm
"Each State Party may be held responsible for significant harm to the environment resulting from its failure to carry out the obligations of prevention contained in this Covenant, in respect to its activities or those of its nationals."
Article 52 - Civil Remedies
"Parties shall ensure the availability of effective civil remedies that provide for cessation of harmful activities as well as for compensation to victims of environmental harm irrespective of the nationality or the domicile of the victims."
Article 53 - Recourse under Domestic Law and Non-Discrimination
"Each State Party of origin shall ensure that any person in another State Party who is adversely affected by transboundary environmental harm has the right of access to administrative and judicial procedures equal to that afforded nationals or residents of the State Party of origin in cases of domestic environmental harm."
Article 54 - Sovereign Immunity
"Parties may not claim sovereign immunity in respect of proceedings instituted under this Covenant."
Article 55 - Beyond National Jurisdiction
"The provisions of Articles 47 to 54 may be invoked by any affected person for harm to the environment of areas beyond national jurisdiction."
Disputes arising from the Covenant are to be settled either by an arbitral tribunal, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice, and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. As has become the custom of UN Treaties, Article 69 provides that "No reservations may be made to this Covenant."
This is the UN Treaty that will move the world into the clutches of global governance. All the other "soft law" documents and specific purpose treaties are simply steps toward global governance. The Covenant on Environment and Development clearly identifies the destination to which all the other documents are leading. Our State Department is fully aware of this Covenant, and the other activities of the IUCN which has developed this Covenant. In fact, the U.S. State Department contributes more than $1 million per year to the IUCN, a non-governmental organization (NGO), that coordinates the activity of more than 550 other NGOs toward the development and implementation of global governance.
It is not yet known when the UN intends to roll-out this Covenant for public consideration. The Millennium celebration planned for the year 2000, during which the first meeting of the new "Assembly of the People" will meet, could be the occasion. The Assembly of the People will consist of selected representatives from NGOs that are "accredited" by the United Nations. Global governance is not an event that will occur on a day certain in the future. It is a process that has been underway for several years and will become a fact before most Americans realize that it is a threat.
- ecologic staff
Sustainable Communities
Under construction everywhere
Sustainable Development is defined as meeting today's needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable Development is, in fact, the process by which societies are being reorganized around the central principle of protecting the environment -- as called for by Al Gore in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance. It is a process that originated in the international community and is now sweeping across America, encompassing small towns and large cities, without legislative authority or legal definition. Congress has never defined, debated nor approved a national policy of sustainable development. Nevertheless, the Executive Branch of the federal government is promoting and implementing the principles of sustainable development through each of its agencies.
In
almost
every
state
and in
most
communities,
activities are underway to impose the principles of sustainable development. In only a few
communities, are the citizens told that the ideas being advanced come directly from the United
Nations. Santa Cruz California openly admits that its vision for the community's future is "Local
Agenda 21," and the activity is openly sponsored by the United Nations Association. In Florida,
the Department of Community Affairs vehemently denies that its Sustainable Communities
Program has anything to do with the United Nations or the President's Council on Sustainable
Development. Nevertheless, many of the requirements for participation in the program mirror
the recommendations of Agenda 21 and the President's Council on Sustainable Development.
More often than not, the "visioning" process in local communities tries to avoid any connection to the UN or to Agenda 21 by adopting positive-sounding names such as "Environment 2000" as in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, the program is called "Economic Renewal." All sorts of names are used to camouflage the UN's influence on public policies that are being developed for every American city. Regardless of names used to describe the process, the end result looks very similar, whether in Santa Cruz, Birmingham, or St. Louis.
More often than not, the participants in the visioning process are unaware that they are being led through the "collaborative consensus process" to conclusions that were reached in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Professional facilitators are used to lead selected individuals through a process that is intended to validate the recommendations advanced in Agenda 21, while appearing to be the ideas and conclusions of the participants.
Both the process and the product are the invention of the United Nations. The process is called consensus building; the product is called a sustainable community. The purpose of the process is to avoid the possibility of rejection by elected officials; the purpose of the product is to create the legal mechanism for managing the lives and affairs of people. The consensus process in every community must have a starting point. While each community's program may evolve differently, each has common characteristics. An individual or an organization affiliated with one or more of the three major international NGOs will assume the responsibility of initiating the process. (The three major international NGOs are: the International Union for the Conservation of Nature [IUCN]; the World Wide Fund for Nature [WWF]; and the World Resources Institute [WRI]). The initiating organization will sponsor a meeting to which leaders of other NGOs, individual businessmen and other respected community leaders are invited. Frequently, state and federal agency officials are invited. Where there is an elected official with an acceptable environmental track record, he too, is invited. During the initial meetings of the group, care is taken to deliberately exclude individuals who are known to advocate Constitutional values such as private property rights.
The EPA and other federal agencies offer grants to organizations that undertake the visioning process. Frequently the ad-hoc group will organize itself as a not-for-profit organization in order to apply for federal and/or foundation grants. Once funded, the organization is institutionalized and the process of developing a long-range plan for the creation of a sustainable community is underway.
In Santa Cruz, the
process took five
years. The plan
says its purpose is
"to make long-term sustainability
the driving
criterion in every
area of human
activity and simultaneously alter these human activities for the better." The initiating
organizations were ACTION - Santa Cruz County, and the Santa Cruz Chapter of the United
Nations Association. Early on, the groups sponsored what they called SEED Summits. SEED
stands for Social, Environmental, and Economic Development. The underlying objective of all
sustainable development activity is the integration of economic, equity, and environmental
policies. This principle of sustainable development was adopted by the UN through the 1987
World Conference on Environment and Development report entitled Our Common Future. The
principle was translated into 288 pages of specific recommendations in Agenda 21, adopted by
the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro. Those
recommendations are now being translated into specific policy actions through groups such as
ACTION Santa Cruz in communities across America.
Whatever the program is called in any community in the country, the outcome will be the same. Recommendations will be developed which call for a reduction of fossil fuel energy use with specific recommendations to apply special taxes to fuels and to automobiles based on miles driven. Mass transit, bicycle and pedestrian paths are called for, while automobile travel is penalized. Education is to include "lifelong learning" opportunities and embrace principles of "sustainable" living. Land use is to be strictly governed to prevent "urban sprawl" and to provide for "ecosystem management" -- irrespective of the wishes of private property owners. It is nothing short of amazing that the various plans from the various communities all come out looking so much alike, and so much like the recommendations contained in Agenda 21.
One of the usual features of these sustainable communities plans is that they tend to be
"transboundary." That is, they tend to embrace more than one political jurisdiction, frequently
taking several counties into the plan area. The Charlotte, North Carolina plan, for example,
addresses a multi-county area that is described as "one region, one economy, one environmental
area, and one society." When such a plan is developed, the organization promoting the plan can
call on the local governments within the plan area to enter into a Memorandum of Agreement
that allows the organization to review any and all local proposals for coordination with the
overall plan. Too frequently, local city councils, or county commissions, are reluctant to adopt
programs or policy proposals that are not "approved" by the coordinating organization.
Federal programs such as the American Heritage Rivers Initiative, the Vice President's Watershed Initiative, the Department of Transportation's Scenic By-ways Program, and several others, are woven into the fabric of the sustainable community vision. Jacksonville Mayor, John Delaney is actively seeking recognition of the St. Johns River as an American Heritage River without realizing that such a designation would give the coordinating organization the authority to actually set land use and river use policy, thereby by-passing the elected officials who are elected expressly to make such policy decisions. He thinks that the American Heritage Rivers Initiative is nothing more than a "beauty contest" to recognize America's great rivers. Were he to read Agenda 21, and Sustainable America: A New Consensus, he might realize that the program is just another innocent-sounding effort to strip local elected officials of their governing power and transfer that power to non-elected bureaucrats and non-governmental organizations, operating at the behest of federal agencies that are operating at the behest of the United Nations.
Across the land, Agenda 21 is being implemented. Elected officials at every level are being co-opted by the sophistication of a well-devised international strategy that is being implemented locally. Absent from all these visions of the future are the fundamental values on which America was built: freedom for individuals to live where they choose, drive what they choose, and do what they choose. Present in all these visions of the future is the notion that Maurice Strong advanced during the Rio conference in 1992: "We cannot pursue our futures soley as isolated individuals or as isolated sovereign nations." Sustainable communities will ensure that individuals and nations pursue the future only along the paths deemed "sustainable" by those self-appointed bureaucrats who think they know what is best for the world.
-ecologic staff
FEDERAL LAND USE CONTROL
Private ownership of land
The hope of land ownership is the compelling force that brought people to America from the oppression of governments around the world. The right to own property is one of those "inalienable rights" described by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. The right to own land is a "natural right" demonstrated throughout nature. The term "own" land must be defined as the power to control the use of land. Throughout nature, every member of every species "owns" land. That is, every species in the universe controls the use of the space, and the resources contained therein, it requires to sustain its life. It controls that space until it is usurped by another. Such is the law of nature.
As early as 1651, Thomas Hobbes decried the plight of man living under the theory of natural law as "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." His solution: "The control of power must be lodged in a single person, and no individual can set their own private judgments of right and wrong in opposition to the sovereign's commands."1 The sovereign, according to Hobbes, with absolute authority and power, could delegate land and resource use for the benefit of all.
John Locke countered the Hobbesian thought in 1690 with the idea that unowned things (resources) are not owned in common under the authority of the sovereign, but that ownership of any unowned thing belongs to its first possessor.2 Locke says: "...every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his."3
Man has no less natural right to space, and the resources contained therein, than any other species. Man, however, created a mechanism to minimize the constant conflict among humans for the use of land. The mechanism that evolved is called government. With few exceptions in all of history, government became the usurper, and granted land use to favored citizens and denied land use to others, which Hobbes recognized and described in Leviathan. It was just such a system of government-granted favors and denials that motivated oppressed people to challenge the vast oceans and untamed wilderness of the new continent, in hopes of securing land under the Lockean concept of "ownership by first possession."
There can be no question that the founding fathers held private ownership of land to be a natural right co-equal to the right of free speech, and the right to worship freely. Nor can there be any question that the first purpose of the government created by the founding fathers was to protect those "inalienable rights," including the right of individuals to own, and control the use of, private property, whether acquired by "first possession" or by contract from first possessors.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 set the procedure for distributing lands acquired by the federal government to private ownership. A minimum price of $1 per acre was stipulated. By 1862, not enough land had been transferred to private ownership, so Congress implemented the Homestead Act, which gave 160 acres to anyone who would live on the land for five years. The Act also provided for the purchase of land for $1.25 per acre after a six month residency.
The Timber Culture Act of 1873 and the Desert Land Law of 1877, both provided for free transfer of government land to private ownership. For the first 150 years, the objective of American land policy clearly was to get government land into private ownership. Progressive forces, as early as 1871, urged Congress to set aside forest land for protection from "robber barons." Twenty years later, Congress obliged with the Forest Reserve Act of 1891. By 1908, Theodore Roosevelt, and his natural resources advisor, Gifford Pinchot, extended forest protection to more than 132,000,000 acres, 88% of today's reserves.4
The distribution of government land to private ownership ended with the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. The official policy of "public domain" lands was set in concrete in 1976 with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Throughout much of this century, and particularly since 1970, federal land policy has shifted a full 180 degrees. Originally, the policy was to promote private land ownership to the extent of giving land to individuals. Then the policy shifted to locking up the remaining federal lands for the "public domain." Then the policy shifted to acquiring more land to expand the "public domain." And now, the policy is rapidly shifting toward absolute government control of all lands, both public and private.
Driving Public Policy
American land policy has been driven by a parade of identifiable people who see free enterprise and private property rights as an obstacle to be overcome rather than as a value to be protected. The idea of "conservation" had emerged by 1900, when both political parties endorsed the concept. The concept, though, was not clearly defined. To John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, conservation meant preservation. To Gifford Pinchot, conservation meant federally regulated use of resources on public land. The battle between Muir's preservation ideas and Pinchot's federally regulated conservation ideas came to a head over the Hetch Hetchy Dam. Pinchot won in 1909, and the dam was built.
For the next fifty years, the federal government pursued a land policy of federally regulated use of resources on public lands. The Sierra Club led the growth of the preservation movement which became the modern environmental movement, dominated by three international NGOs (non-governmental organizations): the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN); the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF); and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
Robert Marshall, Aldo Leopold, and Benton Mackaye founded The Wilderness Society. Mackaye was a member of the Socialist Party that supported Eugene V. Debs. Marshall joined the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas which was more radical than the Debs group.5 In 1933, Robert Marshall published The People's Forests, which advocated the confiscation of privately owned forest land.
Another dam project in Echo Park in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah unified a growing number of preservation groups in the 1950s. The Wildlife Management Institute, the National Audubon Society, and the Izaak Walton League joined the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society to defeat the construction project. Howard Zahniser of the Wilderness Society was the primary lobbyist in Washington.
Howard Zahniser was also the driving force behind the Wilderness Act of 1964.6 The Act set aside nine million acres to be forever preserved as wilderness. Since then, more than 100 million acres have been added to the wilderness inventory. The preservationists gained more strength with the 1970 "Earth Day" organized by Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), who left the Senate to become an advisor to The Wilderness Society.
The preservation movement came together to produce a series of documents, funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which set forth the preservationists' agenda. The first, The Use of Land: A Citizen's Policy Guide to Urban Growth, published in 1972, was edited by William K. Reilly, who served as EPA Administrator under George Bush. The document begins with a quote from Aldo Leopold:
"It is time to change the view that land is little more than a commodity to be exploited and traded. We need a land ethic that regards land as a resource which, improperly used, can have the same ill effects as the pollution of air and water, and which therefore warrants similar protection."7
The second document, entitled The Unfinished Agenda, was published in 1977 to "enlist the collective expertise of sixty-three leading environmentalists...to identify and describe the most critical problems...."8 The final document in the series, Blueprint for the Environment, was 1500 pages containing 730 specific recommendations delivered to President-elect, George Bush on November 30, 1988. The document was prepared by: The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, Izaak Walton League, Friends of the Earth, Zero Population Growth, Environmental Defense Fund, and other NGOs, all affiliated with one or more of the three international NGOs.
The
1972
document
was
accompanied by a five-year effort in Congress to adopt the "Land Use Policy and Planning
Assistance Act." Led by Morris Udall, and supported by NGOs, the effort to achieve federal land
use control was defeated primarily through the efforts of David A. Witts, attorney for the Texas
and Southwest Cattle Raisers Association.9
The proponents of federal land use control didn't abandon their dream. They simply fell back to regroup and plan another strategy to achieve absolute control of private property in America.
Administrative expansion of the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973 have served as effective federal land use control devices. Both land use policies came about as the result of conforming American laws to meet the requirements of UN treaties. Ocie Mills, John Poszgai and Bill Ellen, all served prison sentences for minor infringements of wetland policy, to serve as examples to other land owners who dared to use their own property which the federal government declared to be "waters of the United States." Thousands of other land owners have been prevented from using their own land because a usurping government invoked the federal land use control device - wetlands.
The Endangered Species Act has had a similar chilling effect on the use of both federal and private lands. The spotted owl has never been in danger of extinction.10 Andy Stahl, of the Sierra Legal Defense Fund, told a conference at the University of Oregon, in 1988, that the spotted owl was just a "surrogate" to stop timber harvests until "Congress [has] a chance to provide specific statutory protection for those forests."11 The National Audubon Society, the Wilderness Society and other NGOs initiated litigation that has prevented any use of millions of acres of prime timberland.
Stephen McCabe, chairman of a California NGO, opposed the expansion of Quail Hollow quarry. To block the company's expansion, he has proposed that the Mount Hermon June beetle be listed as an endangered species. He readily admits: "My goal is to protect the habitat...The best route at present is to try to get individual species listed and by doing that get protection for the habitat."12
In Orange County California, the Natural Resources Defense Council used the Gnatcatcher to stop a highway project and other development on 400,000 acres until Judge Stanley Sporkin ruled that the Gnatcatcher had to be removed from the endangered species list because it was not endangered.13 Nevertheless, continued negotiations between environmental NGOs and local government resulted in a "Multiple Species Conservation Plan" that locks up 172,000 acres "of meaningful open space."14
The hind legs on Tipton Kangaroo rats are one one-hundredth of an inch longer than the hind legs of a Herman's Kangaroo rat. The Tipton is listed as "endangered;" the Hermon is not. Taung Ming-Lin had never heard of either when he bought a 720 acre farm near Bakersfield, California. Mary Mason knew both species well. When she saw a tractor discing land owned by Ming-Lin, but used by the Tipton rat, she brought down a covey of 20 state and federal regulators on the Ming-Lin farm, took the tractor and disc into custody, and threatened Ming-Lin with a $300,000 fine - whereupon he had a stroke.15
The federal government, driven by NGOs, has found inventive ways to control the use of private land and private property - jailing land owners and suing tractors. The Ecosystem Management Plan, adopted by federal government agencies, eliminates the need to identify wetland or endangered species as an excuse to control land use. It will empower NGO-spawned federal bureaucrats to control every square inch of land in America.
The objective
The ultimate objective of the NGOs is to implement the policies of the United Nations as published in the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global Biodiversity Assessment, Agenda 21, and other treaties and documents. The objective is so bizarre, so foreign to the ideas of Jefferson and Madison, the ideas on which America was founded, that free market property rights advocates have discounted their ideas as the lunatic fringe of the environmental movement.
The preservationist objective is only suggested by Aldo Leopold in his 1949 Sand County Almanac. He says: "We are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution." An awareness of which "changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it."16
Dave Foreman, father of the Wildlands Project, sheds more light on the ultimate objective of the preservationists:
"We should demand that roads be closed and clearcuts rehabilitated, that dams be torn down, that wolves, grizzlies, cougars, river otters, bison, elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, caribou and other extirpated species be reintroduced to their native habitats. We must envision and propose the restoration of biological wildernesses of several million acres in all of America's ecosystems, with corridors between them for the transmission of genetic variability. Wilderness is the arena for evolution, and there must be enough of it for natural forces to have free rein."17
He also says:
"...it boils down to the question of whether private property (and those dollars or jobs the property represents) or natural ecosystems are more valuable. Although most people in this country (myself included) respect the concept of private property, life - the biological diversity of this planet - is far more important."18
Foreman's dream of massive wilderness in America is not a private fantasy. Bill Devall says, in Deep Ecology, "The entire continent of Antarctica should be zoned as wilderness. In the United States, tens of millions of acres should be zoned wilderness with rigid restrictions on industrial developments."19
David Brower, former director of the Sierra Club and founder of Friends of the Earth, says: "Man needs an Earth International Park, to protect on this planet what he has not destroyed and what need not be destroyed. In this action, all nations could unite against the one real enemy - Rampant Technology."20
Philosopher, John Phillips says:
"The biosphere as a whole should be zoned, in order to protect it from the human impact. We must strictly confine the Urban-Industrial Zone, and the Production Zone (agriculture, grazing, fishing), enlarge the Compromise Zone, and drastically expand the Protection Zone, i.e. wilderness, wild rivers. Great expanses of seacoast and estuaries must be included in the Protection Zone, along with forests, prairies, and various habitat types. We must learn that the multiple-use Compromise Zone is no substitute, with its mining, lumbering, grazing, and recreation in the national forests, for the scientific, aesthetic, and genetic pool values of the Protection Zone. Such zoning, if carried out in time, may be the only way to limit the destructive impact of our technocratic industrial-agri-business complex on earth."21
Gary Snyder, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, says:
"If man is to remain on earth he must transform the five-millennia-long urbanizing civilization tradition into a new ecologically-sensitive harmony-oriented wild-minded scientific/spiritual culture...nothing short of total transformation will do much good."22
The wilderness objective is promoted throughout the literature of the environmental movement. Dave Foreman, one of the more articulate spokesmen for the movement, has substantially advanced his dream.
Until 1980, Foreman was a lobbyist for The Wilderness Society. Unhappy with the progress being made, he resigned and created Earth First! He published Ecodefense: a Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, and Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. His next venture was the creation of the Cenozoic Society, which publishes Wild Earth. In an 88-page special issue, entitled "The Wildlands Project", published with funds from the Hati Foundation for Deep Ecology, Foreman distributed 75,000 copies of his vision for land use in America. The mission of The Wildlands Project is:
"To stem the disappearance of wildlife and wilderness we must allow the recovery of whole ecosystems and landscapes in every region of North America. Allowing these systems to recover requires a long-term master plan. Our vision is simple: we live for the day when Grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to Grizzlies in Alaska; when Gray Wolf populations are continuous from New Mexico to Greenland; when vast unbroken forests and flowing plains again thrive and support pre-Columbian populations of plants and animals; when humans dwell with respect, harmony, and affection for the land; when we come to live no longer as strangers and aliens on this continent."23
The plan itself was devised by Reed F. Noss, who holds a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology from the University of Florida, who is a research scientist at the University of Idaho, a research associate at Stanford University, and is a member of the Board of Directors of The Wildlands Project. Noss says: "Most conservation biologists agree that compatible human uses of the landscape must be considered...However, the native ecosystem and the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans."24
The plan calls for a biological survey to identify and catalog plant and animal populations. It calls for the designation of "at least 50% of the land area" as "core reserves" surrounded by an "inner buffer zone" and surrounded again by an "outer buffer zone," almost exactly like that described by John Phillips above. The reserve areas are to be connected by corridors that could be several hundred miles wide. Noss says: "Eventually, a wilderness network would dominate a region and thus would itself constitute the matrix, with human habitations being the islands." He says that specific actions to be taken include: "...land and mineral rights acquisitions, Wilderness or other reserve designations on public lands, road closures, cancellation of grazing leases and timber sales, tree planting, dam removals, stream dechannelization, and other restoration projects. In many cases, private lands will need to be acquired and added to national forests and other public lands in order to serve as effective buffers."
Noss acknowledges that his work was prepared under contract with the National Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy.25
The Global Biodiversity Assessment, an 1140-page document published by Cambridge University Press for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), for those concerned with the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity, explicitly identifies the "Wildlands Project," as central to the preservation of biodiversity required by the Convention.26
John Davis, Editor
of Wild Earth, and
a Director of The
Wildlands Project,
says wilderness
advocates must
face squarely such
problems as
"private property,
local versus state or
federal control, and
appropriate human
roles in natural
areas." He says
people would not be required to relocate if they would "...refrain from any use of motors, guns, or
cows. The problem here is not so much people as it is their damnable technologies."
To achieve this massive objective, Michael E. Soule, a member of The Wildlands Project Board, and a teacher in the Environmental Studies Department at the University of California, preaches a policy of patience. Rather than take a rancher's land, he suggests getting the rancher involved in a watershed council, or similar local group and "teach" him the tax benefits of donating his land to a conservancy after his death. He says: "...we must hurry to plan the system and the strategy. Some protective actions cannot wait. Some pieces and parts can wait as long as the plan is well conceived and is being implemented systematically. The goal should be staying the course, not setting a speed record."
The plan: Ecosystem Management
After the flop of the FLUP (Federal Land Use Planning) Act in the mid 1970s, NGOs realized that seduction might be more effective than rape. A new strategy was devised: go to the U.N. for help, and infiltrate the government. The Carter administration provided the opportunity for implementation of both initiatives. The President's Council on Environmental Quality sponsored a "Forum on Preservation of Farmland," which determined that:
"The greatest need is to create a federal policy. This can be done by various tax and regulatory schemes. Another way is for the community to become part-owner in the land. A third way, well tested in Europe, is for the community to intervene in the actual market of land buying and selling."27
Stanley D. Shift, head of the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Habitat Conference, participated in the Forum, and in the U.N. Habitat Conference. The Conference report begins:
"Private land ownership is a principal instrument of accumulating wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice. Public control of land is therefore indispensable."
The Conference recommended:
"Public ownership of land is justified in favor of the common good, rather than to protect the interests of the already privileged."28 (See ecologic, January/February, 1997 for a complete report of the UN Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver, BC, 1976.)
The Carter administration welcomed the environmental seducers into policy-making positions. In the Department of Interior, Under Secretary, Barbara Heller, and water specialist, Joe Browder came from Ralph Nader's Environmental Policy Center. Assistant Secretary, Cynthia Wilson came from the National Audubon Society. Assistant Secretary, Robert Herbat came from the Izaak Walton League. Attorney James Moorman came from the Sierra Club, Solicitor John Leshey, from the Natural Resources Defense Council.29
The Reagan administration cleaned house and replaced the Carter policy-makers with people such as James Watt from Mountain States Legal Foundation. The environmental community organized a national campaign against Watt, even before his confirmation, and eventually forced his resignation.
The ground lost by NGOs to the Reagan administration was recovered in part during the Bush years, most notably through the appointment of William Reilly as EPA administrator, who came directly from his position as head of the World Wildlife Fund. (The man he replaced, Russell Train, became Chairman of the World Wildlife Fund). The Clinton administration reopened the doors to NGOs, and in marched an army of enviromentalists. Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Department of Interior, formerly headed the League of Conservation Voters. Assistant Secretary, George Frampton, formerly presided over The Wilderness Society, the same Wilderness Society founded by avowed Socialists Robert Marshall and Benton MacKaye. Several others in the Clinton administration were recruited directly from NGOs.30
This formidable array of environmental buraucrats is commanded by Vice President, Al Gore, not President Clinton. Gore immediately named his former assistant, Carol Browner, to head the EPA, and another assistant, Katie McGinty, to head the White House Office on Environmental Policy. Gore initiated the National Performance Review (NPR) which was sold as the "reinvention of government." Gore, as Senator, apologized at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro for President Bush's failure to sign the Biodiversity Treaty, and then as Vice President, applauded Bill Clinton's signature binding America to a world wide environmental agenda under the control of the United Nations. Despite the U.S. Senate's refusal to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity, the administration's Ecosystem Management Policy is implementing the Convention's requirement to control of the use of all land, both public and private, to achieve the objectives of the United Nations.
ecologic staff
Endnotes
1. Richard A. Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p.2f.
2. Ibid, p.10. Epstein's discussion of emerging philosophies provides an excellent foundation for tracking the continuing conflict of philosophies which underlie land use policies.
3. Ibid, p.11.
4. Jo Kwong Echard, Protecting the Environment: Old Rhetoric, New Imperatives, Capitol Research Center, Washington, DC, p.7.
5. Ibid, p.13, 203.
6. Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, Harmony Books, New York, 1991, p. 179.
7. Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy, Free Enterprise Press, Bellevue, Washington, p.20.
8. Echard, Op Cit, p.20.
9. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Economic Growth and Stabilization of the Joint Economic Committee, Ninety-fifth Congress, June 7 and 13, 1977, p. 154ff.
10. Gregg Easterbrook, "The Spotted Owl Scam: Was industry destroyed for a bird in no danger?" The Sacramento Bee, April 24, 1994.
11. Andy Stahl, Sierra Legal Defense Fund, Transcript of speech presented to Western Public Interest Conference, University of Oregon School of Law, Eugene, Oregon, March 5, 1988.
12. John Bessa, "Expert bugged by proposed listing," Santa Cruz County Sentinel, June 27, 1994.
13. "Straining at a gnatcatcher," Sacramento Bee, May 20, 1994.
14. Dianne Jacob, Supervisor, San Diego County, "MSCP: Balancing Economic Growth & The Environment," September 1997.
15. United States of America v. One Ford Tractor, Model 8630 #A927242, One Towner Offset Disc, Model A248 #24C665, Eastern District, U.S. District Court, #CV-F-94-5315.
16. Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology, Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City, 1985, p. 85.
17. Dave Foreman, Op Cit, p.7.
18. Ibid, p.121.
19. Devall, Op Cit, p. 30.
20. David Brower, Introduction to "Galapagos: The Flow of Wilderness," 1968.
21. Devall, Op Cit, p. 124.
22. Ibid, p.171.
23. "The Wildlands Project," Wild Earth, Special Issue, 1992, p.3.
24. Ibid, p.13.
25. "The Wildlands Project," Op Cit, p.21.
26. Global Biodiversity Assessment, (Cambridge University Press, 1995,) p. 993.
27. David A. Witts, Theft, La Verne University Press, La Verne, California, 1982, p. 15.
28. Report of the UN Conference on Human Settlements, Agenda Item 10, "Preamble," Vancouver, BC, May 31-June 11, 1976.
29. Environmental organizations represented in the Carter administration also include: Sheldon Novick, publisher of Environment Magazine, David Hawkins, from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Gustave Speth from NRDC, Gerald Barney from Environmental Agenda, Marion Edey, from the League of Conservation Voters, Kathy Fletcher, from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Rupert Cutler, from The Wilderness Society, George Davis, from The Wilderness Society, Dennis Hayes, Earth Day organizer, and EPA Administrator, Doug Costle, from Connecticut's Environmental Protection Department, who said:
"The fervor of the sixties has evolved into the environmental institution of today. Environmentalists today carry calculators instead of pickets. The street leaders of Earth Day have become the institution leaders of today. In fact, many of them are now EPA administrators."
Source: David A. Witts, Theft.
30. Clinton administration policy-makers from environmental organizations include:
- Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Alice Rivlin served as Chair of the Wilderness Society.
- Scientific Advisor at the Department of Interior Thomas E. Lovejoy was an official at the World Wildlife Fund. (Lovejoy is the mastermind who created "debt-for-land" swap that let American environmental organizations buy foreign debt for as little as fifteen cents on the dollar, then give the purchased notes to a sister organization in the debtor country to be redeemed at face value, with interest, for the purpose of purchasing land and expanding the influence of the organization).
- Rafe Pomerance, Senior Associate for Policy Affairs at the World Resources Institute, has been appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources.
- Former World Resources Institute Vice President Jessica Tuchman Mathews has been appointed Deputy Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs.
- Former World Resources Institute President Gus Speth has been chosen by the White House to head the United Nations Development Programme.
- Former Sierra Club Legislative Director David Gardiner is the Assistant Administrator for Policy Planning and Evaluation at the Environmental Protection Agency.
- Brooks Yeager, Former National Audubon Society Vice President for Government Relations and Advisory Committee member for the MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider report, is Director for Policy Analysis at the Department of Interior.
- Former Natural Resources Defense Council official John Leshy is Solicitor of the Department of Interior.
Source: "Organization Trends," published by the Capital Research Center, September, 1993.
After Kyoto:
What now?
Kyoto has come and gone. What now? Stu Eisenstat, head of the U.S. Delegation to Kyoto, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the President would sign the Kyoto Protocol at the "diplomatically opportune" moment during the signing period from March 16, 1998 through March 15, 1999. The President's signature will not bind the United States to the Protocol's requirements. It will, however, commit the President to try to gain Senate ratification, and perhaps more important, commit the Executive Branch to comply with the Protocol's objectives.
The Executive Branch has been committed to the objectives of the Protocol since the Treaty was first presented in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Protocol would never have materialized had it not been for the influence of Timothy Wirth at the First Conference of the Parties meeting in Berlin in 1995 where the "Berlin Mandate" directed the delegates to convert the original "voluntary" treaty into legally-binding international law. Wirth, then Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, acted on the instruction on Vice President Al Gore when he agreed to the Berlin Mandate.
When Congress failed to ratify the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, another product of the 1992 Rio Conference, and especially when the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, it became apparent to the administration that a legally-binding Protocol to the Climate Change Convention would be difficult to get through the U.S. Senate. Not surprisingly, the administration adopted another strategy: new ambient air quality standards.
The Clean Air Act authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement regulatory measures when local air quality falls below the national standards. Existing standards had brought all but about 70 of the nation's 3000 counties into compliance. In a carefully orchestrated public relations campaign, using science that is at best, highly controversial, the EPA launched a program to raise the standard for clean air by a factor of four. Under the old standard, 10 microns was the standard for particulate matter; the new standard set the limit at 2.5 microns. Despite substantial opposition and protest during the comment period, the President signed the new standard into law last year, giving the EPA authority to impose more severe regulatory measures in more than 700 counties which were previously in compliance with the old standards.
Moreover, even before the new standards were announced, the EPA was developing a set of 39
new regulatory programs to force compliance with the new standards. Congressman John
Boehner (R-OH) discovered an EPA internal memo that described the 39 measures -- none of
which required Congressional approval -- one of which called for a 50-cent per gallon tax on
gasoline. Even the most casual administration observer can see that the President and Vice
President fully intend to force a reduction of fossil fuel energy in America. That should come as
no surprise. The Vice President announced in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, that there
should be a globally coordinated program to completely eliminate the internal combustion engine
by 2017. The Kyoto Protocol is that globally coordinated program.
Aside from the steps already taken by the administration to implement measures to achieve the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol -- with or without Senate ratification -- the administration is launching an all-out campaign to convince the nation that the Protocol must be ratified. The White House has scheduled a series of conferences around the country to "educate" the nation on the need for the Protocol. The administration has determined that the "science is settled" on global warming, and, in fact, has instructed the President's Council on Sustainable Development to find ways to counter global warming "without debating the science." The UN, too, refused to discuss the science at the Kyoto conference.
The science is not settled. Regardless of the administration's or the UN's unwillingness to discuss the science, the science is not settled. Scientific fact is scientific fact. And the fact is that science cannot yet determine what is normal variability in global climate. Science cannot yet determine whether or not human activity makes any difference at all. The strongest statement produced by the UN says simply that "...balance of evidence suggests a human influence on global climate." That statement is offered by policy makers, not the scientists. And is was offered only after more than 15 pages of comments by skeptical scientists had been removed by the policy makers from the final report of the scientists. Science cannot yet determine at what levels of concentration in the atmosphere carbon dioxide becomes dangerous. The original treaty required action to prevent "dangerous" concentrations and no scientist can say with certainty what that level is. On the other hand, scientists can say with certainty that elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide results in increased growth in vegetation. Dr. Sherman Idso, and many other scientists have conducted controlled studies that demonstrate elevated carbon dioxide levels can produce an increase of 30 to 40 percent in crop yields. Those studies are conveniently ignored by both the administration and by the UN.
The willingness of the administration and the UN to quash scientific debate on this issue raises suspicion about the presence of a broader agenda. That suspicion is heightened by the fact that the Kyoto Protocol expressly exempts 137 nations from any requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among those exempted nations is China, whose emissions are expected to surpass America's around 2015. Common sense forces the question: "How can the Kyoto Protocol claim to be concerned about preventing global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in only 34 nations while allowing 137 nations to continue to emit with no restrictions or limitations?" Especially when the unrestricted nations include Asia, India, Mexico, Korea, and the fastest growing emitters in the world.
One of the U.S. Senators who attended the Kyoto conference said "this is not an environmental conference; it is an economic conference." The Kyoto Protocol will definitely have a far greater economic impact than any environmental impact. It will have a dramatic negative economic impact on the 34 nations that are forced to reduce energy use while having profound positive economic impact upon those nations that face no restrictions. American industry will be forced to move off shore. Jobs formerly held by Americans will be performed by others, in other nations, which have lower environmental standards and lower wage scales. Those small businesses that cannot move off shore will have to compete unfairly with imports produced by American technology on foreign soil where energy is cheap, labor is cheaper, and few, if any, restrictions on the use of natural resources.
There are even greater problems with the Kyoto Protocol. It is beyond comprehension that any administration -- Democrat or Republican -- would allow a group of non-elected officials from 171 nations, operating under the authority of the United Nations, to mandate America's energy policy. The Kyoto Protocol mandates that America reduce its emission to a level seven percent below 1990 levels during the period 2008 - 2012. To comply with that mandate, America will have to reduce its use of fossil fuels by more than 40 percent, according to the most conservative estimates.
The Protocol, which the President has said he would sign, says simply that the mandate is "legally binding." Precisely how compliance with the mandate is to be monitored and enforced is not specified in the Protocol. It is up to the Conference of the Parties to work out compliance and enforcement regimes in future meetings.
The Kyoto Protocol represents massive erosion of national sovereignty and a giant step toward global governance. Gustave Speth, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Program, and a former member of the Clinton/Gore transition team, has said that the Climate Change Treaty will become more influential than the World Trade Organization in achieving global governance. The two UN organizations together will control both energy use and trade in the developed nations of the world. Along with the continually expanding military capacity of so-called "peace-keeping" operations, the UN is, indeed, gaining the power to govern the world. And the world envisioned by the UN cannot tolerate the values Americans hold dear: individual freedom; private property rights; free markets; and national sovereignty.
Now what? America is the last defense against global governance. The 137 nations not bound by the Kyoto Protocol eagerly await the redistribution of wealth and technology that the UN has promised. Most of the 33 other developed nations support the Kyoto Protocol because they, for the most part, have little or no understanding of the Constitutional values Americans cherish. Most of the European nations are governed by some form of "social democracy," which is a far cry from the freedom Americans take for granted. Maurice Strong, who chaired the 1992 Rio Conference, is a socialist. Gro Harlem Brundtland, who chaired the 1987 UN Conference on Environment and Development, was the Vice President of the World Socialist Party. Most of the people who developed and are now implementing the global agenda come from a socialist culture. The global agenda -- Agenda 21 -- is a socialist agenda. The Kyoto Protocol is only one part of that agenda.
Americans cannot rely on their elected officials to do the right thing. Most of our elected officials know very little about the UN agenda. In Congress, perhaps as few as five percent are knowledgeable about the scope of UN ambitions, and they are severely ridiculed by the administration and by other members of Congress. As many as 25 percent are actively promoting the UN agenda, some with knowledge and forethought, some through blind loyalty to the party line. The remaining majority have very little knowledge and even less desire to learn about the global agenda. It is up to informed citizens to educate the unaware majority in Congress, in state legislatures, and in local elected offices. It is an up-hill battle. Citizens will meet ridicule and discouragement, but citizens cannot become discouraged. Meeting in private homes, in churches, in community centers, and wherever people can meet, private citizens are educating their neighbors and elected officials. Grassroots organizations across the country are mobilizing to inform their state legislators and Congressmen. The number of Congressmen who are willing to examine the issue is growing because of the pressure from local grassroots initiatives. Not a single person in America will escape the impact of the Kyoto Protocol; every person in America should join hands to reject it.
-ecologic staff
Global influences on American farming
Comments of
Henry Lamb
to the
American Farm Bureau Federation Annual Convention
Charlotte, North Carolina
January 13, 1998
The only work that I know that's harder than loading hay by hand in August, is shoveling the bottom of a ditch to set grade for drainage tile under a corn field. If you haven't done both, you're not ready for your Ph.D. in farming. I used to do both regularly. One of those activities is still legal; the other isn't. You can still load hay by hand if you want to, but you'd better not get caught putting drain tile under your corn field.
There's probably not a person in this room who has not run headlong into America's wetland policy. And I'd be surprised to learn that there's more than a handful of people here who know that America's wetland policy is the result of a UN treaty signed in Ramsar, Iran, twenty-five years ago. There's probably people in this room who do not know that America's Endangered Species Act is the direct result of another UN treaty, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. There's probably a few people here who haven't yet realized that the reason you have to pay $300, instead of $30, to recharge your air-conditioner, is still another UN treaty, the Vienna Convention on Ozone Depleting Substances. UN treaties and UN policy documents are changing, not only the face of farming in America, but the very fabric of American life.
The impact of the three treaties I've mentioned has only begun to be felt. It will get worse. But these three treaties are simply an introduction to global governance -- Global Governance 101, if you will -- the advanced courses have already been prepared and they are not electives. They are required of every American.
You have heard how the voluntary Framework Convention on Climate Change is being transformed into a legally binding treaty that will affect every American. You may have heard about the Convention on Biological Diversity. You probably have heard very little about the Convention on Desertification; Agenda 21; the Earth Charter; or the Covenant on Environment and Development. These are only a few of the advanced courses that have been arranged by the international community to transform America from the "land of the free and the home of the brave," to an obedient member of "Our Global Neighborhood."
At the outset, I need to tell you that our organization -- the Environmental Conservation Organization -- is an environmental organization. We believe that human beings are the tenders of God's garden, and as such, have an inescapable responsibility to be efficient and productive stewards of the resources we have been given. We believe that responsible stewardship begins with the private ownership of land and the resources it contains. We believe that those who own the resources are infinitely better caretakers than any agency in Washington or an organization in Switzerland. We believe that the power of free markets is a far more efficient regulator than the federal government operating at the behest of an international treaty. We believe that human beings have the inalienable right to govern themselves through a government they create and empower through the officials they elect. We believe that these principles will not only protect the environment, but will also promote prosperity for all people everywhere.
But these are the very principles that collide head-on with the principles of global governance that underlie all UN treaties and policy documents. During the last two years, I have attended six UN meetings where the principles of global governance have been incorporated into the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. I have talked to many of the delegates from around the world, and to many UN officials. I have read literally thousands of pages of UN documents. There is no longer any doubt, any question, or any conspiracy. The plan to implement global governance is published in Our Global Neighborhood, The Report of the Commission on Global Governance, funded primarily by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and is available to all through Oxford University Press. Global governance is being achieved through the implementation of UN treaties, particularly through environmental treaties.
Today, I want to focus briefly on two of the treaties I mentioned earlier and show you precisely how they are being used to achieve global governance. Of the 171 nations that constitute the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Climate Change Convention, 136 are "developing" nations that are not affected by the Kyoto Protocol. This international body of unelected bureaucrats actually set the emission limits for America at 7% below 1990 levels. This same Conference of the Parties can change that target to any limit it wishes by a three-fourths vote. In other words, 127 nations can vote to impose any target they wish on America. Ironically, more than 120 of these nations are paid by the UN to attend these meetings with money that comes primarily from American taxpayers.
When an agency of the United Nations has the power to dictate how much carbon dioxide we can emit through our smokestacks and tail-pipes, they automatically have the power to control how much fossil fuel we can put into our industries and our automobiles. When an agency of the United Nations has the power to control our energy use, they have the power to control our economy. Neither the President, nor the Congress, has the Constitutional authority to give the United Nations the power to dictate our energy policy or regulate our economic activity. But the power to control our economy is an essential element of global governance -- one of many elements now being imposed on America.
Article 2 of the Kyoto Protocol contains a requirement to "protect and enhance carbon sinks." This requirement was included primarily because the United States has not yet ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity requires that each nation create "a system of protected areas." Since the U.S. has not ratified that Convention, the UN has no direct recourse to the control of land use in America. Article 2 of the Climate Change Treaty gives the UN that power.
Carbon sinks are nothing more than vast areas
of land, forested, or heavily vegetated land
that absorbs carbon dioxide. The Biodiversity
Treaty calls those vast areas of land
"bioregions." UNESCO calls them
"Biosphere Reserves," of which there are
already 47 designated in the United States.
The land-use restrictions envisioned by the United Nations for these carbon sinks, or bioregions,
or biosphere reserves -- are not limited to public land. Private property ownership is no excuse
for failing to control the use of land, according to the UN. Land, and the natural resources it
contains, are considered to be "public goods" by the UN, and therefore must be protected to
insure that all people "share equitably" in the benefits. This policy was adopted officially by the
UN in 1976 at Habitat I, the first UN Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver, British
Columbia. The Preamble to the Conference Document says this:
"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...."
Yes, the United States signed on to that policy. Our delegates included one Bill Reilly, who became EPA Administrator, and Carla Hill, who became our Chief Trade Negotiator responsible for GATT and the World Trade Organization, and who now sits on the Board of Directors of Time-Warner.
The Kyoto Protocol has modified the Climate Change Treaty to give the UN a grip on our energy use, and on our land use. The Convention on Biological Diversity, and UNESCO's Biosphere Reserve Program gives the UN a firmer grip on land use. And we have not even looked at the Convention on Desertification, Agenda 21, the Earth Charter, or the Covenant on Environment and Development. All these treaties and policy declarations are advancing steadily to replace our principles of self governance and national sovereignty with the principles of global governance in a global neighborhood.
Many people believe that America should relinquish a measure of national sovereignty in order to protect the environment. Others simply refuse to believe that our sovereignty is threatened. "That can't happen in America," they say, "Congress would never let it happen." Friends, you're wrong. It is happening. And Congress is unwilling, or unable to stop it.
- Congress did not stop a wetland policy that evolved for more than 20 years through the administrative bureaucracy and the courts, on the authority of a law that did not contain the word "wetland."
- Congress did not stop the courts from redefining "endangered species" to include a five-mile radius around a bird nest.
- Congress did not stop the creation of the National Biological Survey -- a requirement of the Convention on Biological Diversity -- even though the treaty was not ratified.
- Congress did not stop the implementation of the "Ecosystem Management Policy" -- another requirement of the Convention on Biological Diversity -- even though the policy explicitly says that "human beings are to be considered a biological resource."
- Congress did not stop the designation of 47 UN Biosphere Reserves in America, nor can it stop future designations. Even though the House passed the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act, which would require Congressional approval of such designations, the President has vowed to veto the bill if it reaches his desk. Sadly, there are not enough votes to over-ride his veto.
- Congress did not stop, nor can it stop, the implementation of the new National Ambient Air Quality Standards which provides the legal authority to impose the measures necessary to meet the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol -- whether it is ratified or not. These new standards are so ridiculously severe that they criminalize the trees that emit the particulates that make the Smoky Mountains smokey. The new standards have less to do with improving air quality than with providing the legal authority to impose new anti-driving and anti-industry regulations that do not have to be approved by Congress.
Congressman John Boehner of Ohio discovered an internal memo at the EPA which describes 39 different measures that can be imposed by the EPA -- without Congressional involvement -- in counties that are in "non-attainment" with the new standards. Before the new standards took effect, there were about 70 counties in "non-attainment." With the stroke of the President's pen, the new standards placed nearly 700 counties in "non-attainment."
Friends, it's happening. Global governance is being imposed -- not by black helicopters or blue-helmeted troops -- but by radical environmentalists who have taken over the institutions of governance. And with the patience of Job and the tenacity of Noah, they are weaving a shroud for the burial of individual freedom, property rights, free markets, and America's national sovereignty.
According to the schedule set forth by the UN's Commission on Global Governance, the funeral for America's freedoms is just beyond the horizon. We have to realize that global governance is not an event that will occur in the future; it is a process that has been underway for several years. The year 2000 is seen as the watershed year, the point in time where enough of the elements of global governance are in place that there can be no turning back. The Climate Change Treaty, with the Kyoto Protocol, is a crucial element in reaching the point of no return. But as I said earlier, all this is just the beginning. Let me give you a glimpse of what is in store for the future, according to the UN's Commission on Global Governance.
The UN wants an "Assembly of the People."
This is a new UN institution that will consist
of 300 to 600 "selected representatives of
civil society," that will meet annually
immediately before the UN General
Assembly to provide direct input to the
delegates. This recommendation appeared in
the Commission's 1995 report Our Global
Neighborhood. Maurice Strong was a
member of that Commission; he is now the number two man at the United Nations, Executive
Coordinator of UN Reform. In July of 1997, he announced that the first meeting of the UN's
Assembly of the People would be held in conjunction with the Millennium Celebration of the
UN General Assembly in the year 2000.
Our Global Neighborhood also recommended the creation of a new International Criminal Court that would have its own panel of prosecutors who would be free to investigate inside the borders of any sovereign nation without interference from any national, state, or local government. In July, Maurice Strong announced that in June of 1998, an international conference of diplomats would adopt a treaty to create an International Criminal Court. The current administration has already announced that it supports such a court.
Also in your future is a new Economic Security Council with no permanent members and no nation with veto power. The Commission on Global Governance also recommends eliminating the veto power and permanent member status in the UN Security Council. The Economic Security Council would control the IMF, the World Bank, which would become a World Central Bank much like the Federal Reserve, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations Development Program.
You're going to love the newly restructured UN Trusteeship Council. This 23-member body is to be selected from representatives from "civil society," -- that is, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) accredited by the UN -- that will have "trusteeship" over the global commons. The UN defines the global commons to be: "outer space, the atmosphere, non-territorial seas, and the related environment that supports human life."
Unthinkable? Never happen? Laughable? Don't be so sure. In Maurice Strong's July announcement of UN reform plans, he revealed that the UN was reorganizing its 130 organizations into five administrative departments with straight-line authority directly from the UN Secretary General. One of those departments is the consolidation of all economic agencies and programs, a precursor to the new Economic Security Council. Another of those new departments is consolidating all environmental agencies and programs, a precursor to the new Trusteeship Council. The restructuring is underway even as we speak.
I don't have time to tell you everything that is being planned for you, but I must tell you about the new plans to relieve the United States of the burden of having to finance as much as one-third of the United Nations budget. You'll be delighted to hear about global taxation. There are at least 20 different taxation schemes presently being promoted through a variety of UN treaties and documents. The most promising global tax for the UN is called the "Tobin tax," named for James Tobin, the Nobel Prize Winner who devised it. It is a tax that can be taken from you without your knowledge or approval. It would produce in excess of $1.5 trillion per year, an increase of 150 times over the current UN budget. The tax proposed is only .05% of all international currency exchange. The only requirement for its imposition is the consolidation of the world's financial mechanisms under the central control of a UN agency -- say, a new Economic Security Council.
The principle of global taxation is already established by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. That treaty created the International Seabed Authority which has the power to require an application fee of any nation or company that wishes to explore the seabed. The application fee is $250,000 (negotiated down from $500,000 by the Clinton Administration), and the plan of operation must include a negotiated "royalty" from the applicant.
The Kyoto Protocol, which the administration has officially agreed to, says simply that compliance mechanisms will be developed next year -- after the November elections. One of the proposals that is on the table calls for a $50 per ton/ per year fine on nations that exceed their UN-imposed limitations. The money is to be redistributed to developing nations. Another proposal is to leave enforcement up to the World Trade Organization that already has the power to impose sanctions on nations and on individual industries within nations. There is a laundry-list of other taxing schemes, many aimed directly at energy use, that are designed to take money from those who have earned it, and redistribute it to those who have not -- with the United Nations becoming the vehicle through which the money flows.
I wish I had a more optimistic message for you about the global influence on American Farming. I wish I could talk to you about global opportunities, instead of global governance. I wish the UN were, in fact, simply a forum for nations to meet to discuss their differences -- as, for so many years, I thought it was. I didn't want to learn what I have learned about the United Nations. Fifteen years ago I didn't know, and I didn't care what the United Nations did. Fifteen years ago, all I wanted to do was to install some drain tile under a corn field so the low spots wouldn't die out. I couldn't understand how or why the federal government could prevent me from digging a ditch on my own land. I set out to learn why, and I did. My search took me to Washington, to Geneva, to Bonn, and to Kyoto and through more UN and federal documents than I care to recall. Unfortunately, while I see the rise of global governance as a horrible future for America and the world, others see it as the salvation of the world.
In closing I want to share with you the words of James Gustave Speth, a Viet Nam protester who became and environmental activist in the 1970s. Speth co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose manipulation of the media nearly destroyed the apple industry a few years ago with the Alar scare. Speth was chosen to become the first President of the World Resources Institute in 1982. He joined the Clinton/Gore transition team. Then Speth was appointed Executive Director of the United Nations Development Program. Last March, at the Rio+5 Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Speth had this to say about global governance:
"Global governance is here, here to stay..., and will inevitably expand. Perhaps the most far-reaching, powerful development in the area of global governance is the emergence of the World Trade Organization.... Over time, the global climate convention will actually become even more influential."
In his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, Al Gore said:
"It ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program...of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five year period." (Pages 325-326)
Last month, I watched Al Gore instruct the American delegation to accept the Kyoto Protocol,
which, for all practical purposes, is a coordinated global program that will completely eliminate
the internal combustion engine. With the Kyoto Protocol attached, the Climate Change Treaty
will become more influential than the World Trade Organization as a primary instrument of
enforcing global governance. As Gustave Speth says, global governance is real, it's here, and is
here to stay -- unless ordinary Americans realize what is happening, and stop it. America is the
only nation on earth that can stop and reverse the global march to global governance. I hope your
presence here today will encourage you to join the growing number of Americans who are
helping to build a roadblock. Thank you.
Essay:
Social Democracy
By Henry Lamb
Every generation is a linchpin that connects what has been with what will be. Without even realizing it, each generation determines which values from the past will influence what will be in the future. Not all past values survive, nor should they. Slavery, segregation, shoot-outs at the O.K. corral -- all can, and should be left in the history books. On the other hand, those values which have made life better should flow through each generation to guide and influence what will be in the future.
Americans have a unique opportunity -- and a profound responsibility -- to preserve for future generations those values which have allowed America to prosper beyond the wildest dreams of any previous generation in any nation. All those values flow from a simple principle, discovered almost by accident, by people who were determined to make life better than it had been. That principle is quite simple: government derives its power from the consent of the governed. As simple as that discovery may sound, it is a profound principle. It recognizes that people are sovereign and government is merely a servant of the people.
Few nations in the history of the world have ever come close to discovering the power of this principle. Throughout history, and throughout most of the world today, people live in societies where the government is sovereign and may grant or deny freedoms to individual people as it may suit the sovereign. The distinction between the two concepts of government is easy to see when comparing America with a monarchy or dictatorship. The distinction is less clear when the American concept is compared to what is called social democracies where elections are held on a regular basis. Social democracies, such as Germany, and most of the Scandinavian states, are a sophisticated version of Communism in which the people are allowed to play a greater role in the development of public policy, but where government is still sovereign.
Social democracies retain the idea that the government is responsible for the welfare of its citizens. In a government that derives its power from the consent of the governed, the people are responsible for their own welfare. Herein lies the dilemma facing the current generation in America: shall we pass to future generations the value of self governance derived from the principle that government derives its power from the consent of the governed; or shall we accept the principle that government is responsible for the welfare of its citizens and deny future generations the freedoms that allowed America to prosper?
It is a legitimate debate. Throughout most of the 20th century, America has been moving ever closer to the concept of social democracy, and away from the founding principle of government power limited by the consent of the people. The two concepts of self governance are mutually exclusive. Every step toward social democracy is an erosion of individual freedom that is maximized by limited government.
Many Americans want a social democracy. It is certainly easier to let the government be responsible for health care than to be personally responsible for paying doctor bills. It is easier to let government be responsible for providing security for old age than to be personally responsible. It is easier to let government be responsible for the homeless, for those who cannot produce an adequate income, for educating our children, for guaranteeing a minimum wage -- than to be personally responsible. Most of the world lives under some form of social democracy. Increasingly, so does America.
Every time personal responsibility is transferred to the government, a measure of individual freedom is sacrificed. When government provides health care, it is the government, not the patient, who chooses the quality of the care and the provider. Where the individual is responsible, the patient, not the government, chooses both. Many people gladly relinquish their freedom to choose in exchange for not having to pay the cost. Many people gladly relinquish their freedom to choose where to live in exchange for the government providing any place to live. Many people gladly relinquish their freedom to choose what their children will learn in school in exchange for the government providing an education to their children.
All of the steps America has taken toward social democracy -- and away from limited government -- have come as the result of choices made through elected officials. Many, perhaps now a majority of Americans hail those choices as "progressive," and call for more government-provided security for individuals. But each step toward social democracy that we, as a nation, take erodes that founding principle of government power limited by the consent of the people. The benefits of socialization are often immediate and relatively short-term; the costs, however, are obscured and have profound implications for future generations.
Each step toward social democracy authorizes the government to manage a larger sphere of individual activity. Under a dictatorship, people's activities are managed completely. Under Communism, people's activities are managed completely. Under social democracies, people's activities are managed to the extent that government is responsible for their social welfare. In Canada and England, government management of people is less than in Sweden and Denmark, where government management of people is less than in China or Cuba. When America was founded, government management of people was nearly non-existent; today in America, government manages nearly every aspect of people's activity.
The short-term costs are obscured, but real; the long-term costs are inevitable, and disastrous. When people are sovereign and government is subservient, people are free. They are free to succeed or fail; to be kind or obnoxious; to be productive or lazy; to be selfish or compassionate; to take or to give; to love or to hate. Because people are individuals, they make different choices. Some people are successful while others fail; some are kind while others are obnoxious; some are productive while others are lazy. In the end, each person suffers or benefits as the result of the choices he or she makes. Social progress is the result of learning from wrong choices. When a person suffers the pain of a wrong choice, that choice is avoided in future decisions. The net result of both the right and wrong choices an individual makes, defines that individual at any moment in time.
When people are free, they have the responsibility to provide for themselves. Nature endowed each person with hunger, not simply as the mechanism to supply fuel to the body, but also as a stimulus for the brain. To satisfy our hunger, we must utilize our brain and activate our body. Out of our desire to satisfy our hunger, free markets were created. Free markets are the result of brainpower applied to an unmet need. Free people, searching for ways to satisfy their natural hunger, first identify an unmet need, then create a product or service to meet that need. The price one person is willing to pay to satisfy a need includes the profit the producer requires to satisfy his own need. It is a process that stimulates creativity. It is the process that built America.
In less than 200 years, America achieved a
level of prosperity not even dreamed of in
nations that have existed for centuries. Why?
Because free people accepted their individual
responsibility to meet their own needs and the
by-product of their brainpower created goods
and services beyond the comprehension of
people whose lives were managed by
governments responsible for their security.
Markets, like individuals, must be free to succeed or fail. Managed markets, like managed
people, atrophy and lose the power to create appropriate responses to unmet needs.
These are but a suggestion of the short-term costs that are so hard to see behind the gloss of immediate benefits offered by government programs that offer universal health care, minimum wages, paid maternity leave, free education, safe food, environmentally correct products -- the list is endless. The long-term cost is worse.
Government has no money that is not produced by individual people. For government to provide the personal security promised by social democracies, communist regimes, or by dictators, government must first take what individuals produce in order to provide security to others. In the Scandinavian countries, as much as 70% of the production of individuals is taken by government in order to meet the security requirements of the nation. Few Scandinavians object because they have never known any other way to live. In the former Soviet Union, in China, and in Cuba, virtually all of the individuals' produce goes to the government in order to provide security for the nation. The more an individual is required to give to the government, the fewer freedoms the individual enjoys. In the communist nations, individuals have no inherent freedom. Individuals may do, read, see, or say, only that which is allowed by government. In social democracies, individual freedom is reduced in direct correlation to the degree of security that is supplied by the government. In America, our freedoms, too, have been diminished in direct correlation to the security we have asked our government to provide.
The inescapable fact is this: we cannot be free without accepting the personal responsibility that empowers freedom.
During the last quarter-century, American have relinquished an unprecedented degree of individual freedom in exchange for security of one sort or another promised by government. Much of the pressure to move toward social democracy has come, not from the demands or the consent of the governed, but from the influence of the international community consisting of nations that are social democracies, communist regimes, monarchies, or dictatorships. Few nations, if any, in the international community, have any grasp of the individual freedom guaranteed (not granted) by the U.S. Constitution.
The incremental erosion of individual freedom is the short-term cost of the transition to social democracy. The long-term cost is a double disaster. As government provides an increasing portion of people's needs, the individual's need and incentive to produce is reduced. In such systems, individual productivity inevitably declines. Since the government will take 70% or more from each individual, there is little reason for the individual to do any more than is required. Personal productivity suffers while the demand upon the government to provide even more social welfare increases to meet the requirement of an expanding population and of replacing worn and obsolete goods and infrastructure. Inevitably, government must take a higher percentage of each worker's produce to meet the expanding demand. Eventually, all of the worker's produce goes to the government. As government's inability to provide for the social welfare expands, suffering, pain, and oppression among the people mounts. As surely as night follows day, such governments are destined to collapse. The former Soviet Union is a classic example of the evolution to oblivion that is the fate of all collectivist societies regardless of the name used to describe them.
China, the largest communist nation in the world, learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union. There, the government is experimenting with free markets. In a very limited way, the government is allowing some individuals to raise their own food and sell their excess in open markets. It is a practice that would never have been allowed prior to the fall of the Berlin wall. It is a meager step, and the people are still under strict government control, but it illustrates China's awareness that free markets have something to offer. China has been under communist rule for 50 years. It took 70 years for the Soviet Union to collapse. China may be able to extend the life of its communist control by tinkering around the edges with individual freedom. But unless it discovers the power of the principle of self governance, that is governance by the consent of the governed, then China too, will fall.
The great tragedy is that after two or three generations of social welfare, the people lose the skill, the knowledge, the know-how to be personally responsible. The entire society must start from scratch to rebuild an entire economic infrastructure. Again, take Russia as an example. There is no system for private property. There is no awareness of capital formation. People will have to suffer through another generation of misery while learning how to care for themselves -- assuming they can remain free enough to become personally responsible.
Social democracy in America is an insidious disease destined to destroy the values that have made America the envy of the world. There is no greater threat to America.
How, then, do we as a nation provide for those who cannot provide for themselves while we protect society from unscrupulous individuals and corporations? The answer is simple: rely on the U.S. Constitution. The consent of the people governed is exercised through the officials they elect. Should those officials enact public policy that is offensive to the people, those officials may be quickly un-elected. When public policy is implemented by non-elected officials, the people who are governed have no recourse or remedy. Non-elected officials are not directly accountable to the people who are governed.
Public policy should emerge from the people who are governed. Our Constitutional system guarantees every citizen the right to present ideas to his or her elected official. The elected official has the right and responsibility to propose his constituent's idea as public policy to the other elected officials who constitute the governing body. Our Constitutional system guarantees free and open debate among the officials, with input from any citizen who chooses to offer it. And at the end of the day, the public policy is decided by a public, recorded vote for which the citizens can hold their representatives responsible. Our Constitution requires that public policy be made just this way.
For the last 25 years, public policy has been made differently. America's wetland policy, for example, was fashioned from the 1972 Clean Water Act which does not contain the word "wetland," through lawsuits filed by the National Wildlife Federation, and others, which redefined words in the law to conform the policy to meet the objectives of the UN RAMSAR Treaty. At the direction of the Administration, the Department of Interior has created the Ecosystem Management Policy that is being implemented by Secretarial and Executive Orders expressly to avoid possible rejection by elected officials. The President's Council on Sustainable Development, has called for, and is implementing "a new decision-making process," a collaborative, consensus process designed to by-pass elected officials at every level.
Public policy in America is moving toward a social democracy because public policy is being made by non-elected, often self-appointed, individuals through a process that skillfully by-passes elected representatives. America has 47 UN Biosphere Reserves on its soil, but until Representative Don Young introduced the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act, very few Congressmen had ever heard of Biosphere Reserves. State agencies blindly go about implementing federal programs -- that most often come with a carrot or a stick -- without any awareness that the program originates at the UN.
In Missouri, the Department of Natural Resources worked a year developing what it called its Coordinated Resource Management Plan. The agency director vowed that it had nothing to do with Agenda 21 or the Convention on Biological Diversity, which, he admittedly, had never read. Nevertheless, the plan's objectives were, in many instances, taken verbatim from Agenda 21, and from the Global Biodiversity Assessment. Public pressure from informed citizens forced withdrawal of the plan. It is no accident that the Missouri plan paralleled the UN plan. The federal government agencies are filled with individuals who are actively promoting a social democracy agenda. And the UN's global agenda is an agenda for a global social democracy.
The UN utilizes the consensus decision-making process exclusively. Moreover, it strictly controls the participants who are granted the privilege of shaping the consensus. Consequently, the policy decisions that come out of the consensus process are decided before the process begins. Those policy decisions are then written into international law and sold to unsuspecting nations like America as necessary to stop global warming, or to reverse biological impoverishment, or to create sustainable communities. The people who are governed by these policy decisions rarely even know that the decisions have been made. The people who are governed, and too often, the officials they elect, have no idea how they became bound by such policies. The people who are governed have no where to turn when they are oppressed by such policies. When public policy is made by non-elected officials, there is no accountability.
Individual Americans -- the people who are governed -- can prevent the transition to a social democracy only by insisting that public policy decisions be returned to the exclusive domain of elected officials and then electing and supporting officials who have the backbone to resist the pressure of UN-sponsored, global social democratization.
Individual Americans who are alive today may be the last generation that remembers the values
that made America great. We may be the linchpin through which America's greatness can pass
to another generation. If we celebrate America's achievements, we can demonstrate to the world
an alternative to social democracy that will inspire and invigorate all people everywhere.