For those of you who haven’t heard about Agenda 21, you are not alone. It certainly isn’t something we hear much about in the mainstream news. And to make it more complex and confusing there are many branches, organizations, and arms of Agenda 21.
In 1992, the UN-sponsored Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), or Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, began negotiations of international agreements based on the theory of human-made climate change. Scientific experts warned of the coming catastrophes caused by global warming, a direct result of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The UNCED agenda was met by 35,000 government officials, diplomats, non-government organization (NGO) activists, and journalists from 178 countries. The stance of the conference was to reduce and/or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to save the planet.
Earth Summit chairman Maurice Strong stated in the conference report: “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class…involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, ownership of motor vehicles, golf courses, small electric appliances, home and workplace air-conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable…A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns…We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrialized civilization to collapse.”
The UNCED opened the doors for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), determining that “human activities have been substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses; that these increases enhance the natural greenhouse effect; and that this will result in the additional warming of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, and may adversely affect natural ecosystems and mankind.”
The FCCC sets no limits on greenhouse gas emissions, instead providing protocols that would set mandatory limits on emissions, such as the Kyoto Protocol. The UNCED opened doors to establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It also produced the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Statement of Forest Principles, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and Sustainable Development Agenda 21.
Simply put, Agenda 21 is an action plan of the United Nations associated with sustainable development. This blueprint of action influences every aspect of human activity that in some way affects the environment. Let’s face it: everyone wants to save the planet which makes Agenda 21 sound like a really great idea, yet controversy over the Agenda has been brewing for some time.
Saving the planet is considered a trait of any good citizen and, like all good citizens, we support the idea of a pollution-free world regardless of whether CO2 is disrupting the climate.
However, we need to start paying attention to the details.
Agenda 21 consists of eight program areas for action that include agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystem management, education, energy and housing, population, public health, resources and recycling, transportation, and sustainable economic development. As you can see, it will affect every aspect of modern life. The controversy lies in the fact that the initiative of environmental protection is being used to control the world’s resources and people, based on the global warming theory, and not everyone agrees that global warming is, in fact, more than a theory.
In 2006, Al Gore propagated the idea of global warming with the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. As part of a campaign to educate citizens about global warming, the documentary has been credited with elevating awareness on an international scale and for re-energizing the environmental movement. This movement also suggests that the documentary be embraced by science curricula in schools around the world.
“Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tailspin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics, and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced – a catastrophe of our own making.” – Al Gore
If you read the headlines around the world, you will soon recognize that we are in that epic epoch of extreme weather. Perhaps Al Gore was right?
However…
In 1968, a global think tank called The Club of Rome was founded at the David Rockefeller estate in Bellagio, Italy, to deal with a variety of international political issues. The Club of Rome states that its mission is “to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public.”
In 1993, they published a book called The First Global Revolution which states that divided nations require a common enemy to unite them—“either a real one or else one invented for the purpose… In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill… All of these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
Unfortunately, The First Global Revolution did not receive as much media attention as An Inconvenient Truth.
Former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev said it best: “The threat of environmental crisis will be the international disaster key to unlock the New World Order.”
Which brings us back to Agenda 21.
The UNCED organizers realized that it would have difficulty enacting massive regulatory control over energy production and consumption. Sustainable development, defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” and Agenda 21 are intended to change that. Since Agenda 21 is not a treaty, it requires no congressional authorization. Since NGOs and unelected officials can participate actively in creating policy right alongside government representatives, private organizations have the ability to enforce their personal agendas on governments.
How bad can that be since we are only dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, right? Agenda 21 does not only deal with the carbon footprint of humans. Let us take into consideration the eight program areas of action listed above that include a global system for healthcare, education, nutrition, agriculture, labor, production, family planning, human settlements, and the wildlands project.
For example, this may mean that Agenda 21 will be able to tell you how many children you can have, what you can eat, where you can live, what vaccines you need to take, etc… This may seem a little farfetched, but new legislation is already being implemented around the world that in deed deals with these scenarios.
Every region in North America is being guided by federal agencies and NGOs to implement these sustainable development directives.
A poll conducted by Sustainable Prosperity and the Public Policy Forum in February shows that 80 per cent of Canadians consider climate change to be an important issue. Canadians look to the federal government to play a leadership role in setting policies in this area. The strongest steps have already taken place in British Columbia, Quebec, and Alberta, through realization of the carbon tax.
British Columbia’s Ministry of Finance concludes: “Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. From devastating storms and warmer winters to longer summer droughts and forest fires, the impacts are being felt right here in British Columbia. The consequences of climate change, such as the mountain pine beetle epidemic, are changing our environment, our economy, and our communities.”
Ultimately, money would be needed to save us from our own demise, and so the BC Government introduced the carbon tax. The provincial government estimated that BC’s carbon tax would save up to three million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually – all part of BC’s Climate Action Plan, supported by the IPCC, brought to you by the UNCED, and influenced by Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development.
Considering that global warming itself is debatable and that it has even been called a hoax – which is not to aver that our climate is not changing but to assert that it is possible that the earth’s climate is changing based on a natural cycle of climate change and not because of greenhouse gases – should we in fact be paying carbon tax?
The global warming hoax is not a new idea. It concludes that the theory behind global warming is incorrect, and that anthropogenic global warming has been invented and perpetuated for financial or ideological reasons.
A July, 2011 article in Forbes magazine titled “New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmist,” author James Taylor explains that “the study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.”
This proclamation of global warming being inconsistent with UN findings is just one of many that have surfaced over the years.
In 2003, Senator James Inhofe gave a speech to the US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works entitled The Science of Climate Change, in which he posed the question: “With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?” He also claimed: “Some parts of the IPCC process resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are predetermined and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor.” Inhofe also suggested that supporters of the Kyoto Protocol were aiming at global governance.
In 2007, a minority report of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works citing support of approximately 700 dissenting scientists challenged the human-made global warming claims made by the IPCC and by former vice-president Al Gore.
In 2009, former newspaper editor and politician Lord Monckton claimed that the science behind the IPCC deliberately omitted criticizing peer reviews, and that the United Nations Climate Change Conference appeared to be leaning towards establishing world government.
When we dig a little deeper into the language of Agenda 21, we discover that some of those who are executing the agenda believe that humanity itself is a plague upon the earth. We have been described as consumers whose carbon footprint must be eradicated to save us from planetary doom. That being said, history has shown us that the planet, being approximately 4.5 billion years old, is not going anywhere. Civilizations and cultures have come and gone, which proves the only thing we are capable of destroying is ourselves.
Personally I do believe we need to be responsible to this earth and we also need to keep it green, however, if you ask me, it’s time to dig deeper into Agenda 21 to make sure our human rights are not being diminished in the name of pseudoscience.
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Teena Clipston - Teena Clipston is publisher and editor-in-chief of TheGreenGazette. www.thegreengazette.ca
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