Theorists argue that Agenda 21, a year-old non-binding UN resolution that suggests ways for governments and NGOs to promote sustainable development, is the linchpin in a plot to subjugate humanity under an eco-totalitarian regime.
APC is on the political fringes, but anti-Agenda 21 sentiment is moving into the political mainstream. Legislators in several states have even created anti-Agenda 21 bills, many of which could pose serious threats to companies pursuing sustainability in those states.
If it had passed, it could also have cost the state millions of dollars in lost revenue, as well as thousands of jobs. While the NRA is hardly a hotbed of sustainable activism, it supports several programs that dovetail with Agenda Last year, for example, the group gave money to 4-H, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Texas Wildlife Association, all of which promote conservation and sponsor outdoor education - activities that could easily be linked to the sweeping priorities of Agenda The Texas bill could also have barred nonprofits that work with the UN from receiving any state or municipal funding.
Yet Alabama has passed a law meant to outlaw any effects of the plan. The legislatures of Kansas, New Hampshire and Tennessee all passed state resolutions condemning it. Similar needless laws have been approved by one chamber of the legislatures in Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma.
And political fights over it have broken out in at least half a dozen other states and countless local communities. The fears generated in such places are ridiculous to the point of utter absurdity, but they have had an important real-world impact. In communities like Carroll County, Md. In Baldwin County, Ala. The politicians who spread falsehoods about Agenda 21 and its effects need to be shamed by other politicians, by editorial boards and other commentators, and by the citizenry at large.
The business community and organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, which know better, should speak out publicly about the real purposes and usefulness of planning and sustainability. The media needs to stop reporting on Agenda 21 as if it were a bona fide controversy and plainly state the facts about the plan. And communities around the country, some of which have abandoned work on sustainability plans because of the heat, need to be encouraged to return to or start to develop such plans in tandem with responsible groups like the American Planning Association.
It was edited by Potok. Russell Estes and Sunny Paulk designed the report. In Carroll County, Md. In Missoula, Mont. And in Albemarle County, Va. From one end of the country to the other, a year-old, entirely voluntary United Nations planning document known as Agenda 21 has increasingly come under bitter attack from a wide array of far-right fearmongers.
Led by nearly a dozen extremist groups and their propagandists, the plan — a document meant to help local communities deal with overpopulation, pollution, poverty and resource depletion — is being pilloried as a secret conspiracy to impose global governance. The end point, these ideologues insist, is the destruction of freedom and the onset of tyranny. At least three states — Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma— have considered laws, each of which passed one chamber of their legislatures, to halt the purportedly noxious effects of Agenda 21; Alabama went all the way, passing a law that was signed by Gov.
Robert Bentley. It is not a legally binding document. Even its recommendations do not come from the top down, but are meant to encourage local communities to come up with their own solutions. It does not have the slightest power to force anyone, American or otherwise, to do anything at all. And it was signed, in , by President George H. But the fears Agenda 21 has provoked plug directly into more than a century of far-right worries about any international body imposing any kind of control on the United States.
Bacon, a newsletter publisher and conservative activist who focuses on land use issues there. Back to the Beginning To be sure, when Agenda 21 was adopted at the so-called Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in , it was heralded as a key agreement, the first global effort to take on what was increasingly seen as a looming environmental crisis.
As its sweeping programs are implemented world-wide, it will eventually impact on every human activity on our planet. Deep and dramatic changes in human society are proposed by this monumental historic agreement. Perhaps because the document was, in fact, so sweeping — even though it contained no requirements, enforcement mechanisms or even significant funding — it quickly came under attack from conservatives in the United States.
Many of those opponents saw Agenda 21 as inimical to business and industry — it did, after all, focus on carbon emissions and related issues — and also believed that it represented an attack on property rights because it proposed to not allow owners completely unfettered use of their lands and businesses. After all, the far right had been sounding the alarm about all international agreements and controls going back to the League of Nations in the early 20th century and even before.
Indeed, one Patriot website, Sovereignty. The Activists Tom DeWeese, who heads an organization called the American Policy Center, was probably the first to focus on Agenda 21, launching attacks on it almost before the ink on the document was dry.
He believes that Agenda 21 is ultimately responsible for what he sees as destructive forces in American society, including multiculturalism, same-sex marriage and other cultural changes. For many years, DeWeese soldiered on almost alone, but as time passed he began to gain adherents, or at least his ideas did. Eisenhower of being a communist agent and claiming that fluoridation of water was a nefarious attempt to poison Americans — also got into the act early, sending a correspondent to cover the original Earth Summit in In those sessions, many of which involve local and regional politicians, the JBS has shrilly warned about the perils of environmentalism.
DeWeese and others are part of a network of radicals peddling essentially similar ideas about Agenda 21 see profiles, p. Michael Coffman, for example, is the executive director of Environmental Perspectives Inc. Michael Chapman of Ed Watch, a group against public education, sounded similar at the conference. To Chapman, the plan is to restrict economic development, not so as to protect the environment but just to give more power to the government.
Only their fetish has priority. A one-world order. Remarkably, there is also some opposition to Agenda 21 from the left, notably in the form of Democrats Against UN Agenda The group, which hosted a major conference on the plan in , is led by self-described lesbian feminist Rosa Koire, who came to the issue through battles over zoning in Santa Rosa, Calif.
Koire, who wrote the popular book Behind the Green Mask: U. Agenda 21, claims the plan will ultimately bring on the economic collapse of the U. Perhaps the most effective purveyor of the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory has been Glenn Beck, especially before he left Fox News in mid In , Beck went further, publishing a dystopic novel with co-author Harriet Parke called Agenda It purports to tell a post-Agenda 21 tale of America, a place where the beleaguered heroine is confined to a depressing apartment in a planned community, spending her days treading on a special pad to produce energy.
In this world, children are taken from parents and raised in group homes, mating partners are assigned, and people recite pledges in honor of squirrels. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty. On the Ground In this era of extreme political polarization, politicians with relatively large followings have jumped on the Agenda 21 bandwagon, simultaneously demonizing environmentalism, the United Nations and any kind of global planning.
Introducing anti-Agenda 21 legislation that ultimately failed, Oklahoma state Sen. Sally Kern R , already infamous for her wild-eyed anti-gay commentaries, said that the plan would destroy American property rights and result in a ban on cars powered by fossil fuel. Arizona state Sen. Around the same time, after a debate about raising sales taxes to pay for transportation improvements, state Sen.
In Missouri, legislators cut funding for the Department of Motor Vehicles after it came to light that it had turned over a list of , residents with conceal-carry permits to federal investigators. The move followed testimony to lawmakers from Melissa Wilson, wife of state Rep. With Agenda 21, I will be someone who will be put on a watch list. In Albemarle County, Va. And in Naperville, Ill. The latter is subject to each country's commitment. Similarly, Beirich described Agenda 21 as a "perfectly sensible planning paper, a nonbinding statement of intent aimed at dealing with sustainability on an increasingly crowded planet," in her conspiracy theory report for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
A claim suggesting the UN's Agenda 21 and the Agenda for Sustainable Development will establish "one world government" has been debunked by experts. A representative from the UN said that the agenda is not a genuine agency document. Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. Facebook Twitter Email. Fact check: U. Show Caption. Hide Caption.
0コメント