How about that Agenda 21?????

Agenda 21 is a hard issue to understand, even harder to explain to neighbors and friends.  It shows itself as an environment/land conservation approach and hides under the title of 'sustainability'.  But the outcomes, consequences, details are never revealed.

The 1980's Bruntland Commission, Agenda 21 developer, says its "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future", basically common sense and mom's apple pie simple such that any fool could accomplish it. And we are all in this together with Gia - Kumbaya!

So why not look at each of its principles from a critical standpoint considering are we better off, is the environment better off, who benefits, and how do we make it happen?

Mantra #1:  "Sustainable communities encourage people to work together."   One must admire those that take sustainability serious, get rivers, bays, waterfronts, roadways and other trashy areas cleaned up, recycle containers, manage the heat level in their homes, and ride bicycles as often as possible. 

On the other hand, if you are not one of those, you get dealt with!.  Their children are pummeled with political correctness of being environmentally proper citizens through guilt and indoctrination.  The absolute necessity of these next generations being prepared to work for their communities comes with a requirement to donation service hours to qualify for a diploma.  Proper environmental attitudes is equal in importance to learning.  And where best is that regimentation found today - in "Common Core" national standards.

Collaterally, adults are managed in an equally restrictive world.  Once upon a time, public meetings on policy or community was managed under 'Roberts Rules of Order" - all participants were offered an fair chance to express their position and a vote followed.  Now, under the California Brown Act, we have 'facilitators' managing meetings on policy or community whose function is to lead the gathering in the exact direction of the predetermined outcome.  The really 'superior' facilitator will not only lead, but will convince the participants that the outcome was what they had in mind when they started the activity.  And the phrase, 'worked together', becomes the mantra of any group of persons attacking a policy or community issue; dissent or difference of opinion is tolerated only until the statement "We agree to disagree" is articulated.

Mantra #2: "The goal is to create healthy communities".   The range of possibilities is endless and most lead to limiting individual freedom, choice or property.  On one hand, this might be the growing power of the 'food police' who mandate any number of things in the daily diet as unhealthy, e.g. New York's mayor who micromanaged salt and greater than 16 ounce sodas as unauthorized in his city, pizza sauce unhealthy, fries made in grease, or hamburgers connected to accusations of cruelty to animals.

In one sense, citizen's today are totally removed from their food source.  If it didn't come from Lucky's, SaveMart or Safeway, the human carnivore is unable to visualize slaughtering as the process by which they obtain beef, pork, chicken, turkey or fish.  Food system industrialization has been tremendously successful in providing huge food quantities with a minimal labor expenditure, often to consumers at lower prices. From 1950 to 2000, U.S. farm production has more than doubled, utilizing yet a fraction of previous human labor.   The gains are shared in the more than 50% U.S. corn crops, for example, are fed to cattle, hogs and poultry. The actual U.S. food supply calorie level has increased by 20% over the 1950 - 2000 period.   It is claimed U.S. agriculture has grown to become the “most efficient in the world" when viewed in dollar and cents costs of production terms.

The problem is when big business starts adding stuff to our food that isn’t food at all.  They have long ingredient lists that require an advanced degree in chemistry to comprehend. They scream convenience: i.e. it is chicken nuggets, boxed macaroni and cheese, hamburger helper, ravioli, frozen lasagna, corndog, cans of soda, and boxes of cereal, for example. 

Real food doesn’t have to take all day OR all night to prepare.  You can be a busy, working family and still eat real, wholesome food.   One easy way to limit the amount of processed foods you pick up are to avoid going down the aisles of the grocery store.  Nearly everything you need to make a balanced meal exists; the few things you should be picking up on the aisles should be short ingredient list foods or staples such as dried beans, pasta, canned tomatoes, nut butters, and canned tuna.   If you make  (bake) your own cookies, you’ll have them a lot less.  You want fries; cut the potatoes and fry them in coconut oil.   Many 'fast food or convenience foods” aren’t difficult to make and take no more time to prepare once the skills are developed.  It is still just as easy to learn about and experiment with processes such as fermentation, freezing, dehydrating, and canning to ensure quality foods. 

In another scenario, comprehensive plans exist to pack people, one family over another, in high-rise buildings or what is known as 'rack-n-stack' housing specifically along transit corridors (think One Bay Area-S.F. Bay Regionalization Plan). 

Historically, such housing forcing people into a containerized or 'rabbit warren' housing arrangement results in quality-of-life reduction, spread of disease, and creates an environment encouraging violence and crime.  The Russians used to call them gulags.  Upton Sinclair wrote about them in exposing unsanitary and unsafe conditions in the meat packing industry.

Mantra #3:  "Natural resources must be preserved".   We are being instilled with a 'fear' that our consumption will cause shortage of natural resources.  To reduce shortage, the plan is to install a forest of windmills or wind-farms as the natural method to avoid harm to earth's limited resources.  The failure of this method lies in its footprint:  (1) the wind machines will take more energy to produce than they will produce over their lifetime; (2) they still need an infrastructure to deliver the power; and (3) to install them in sufficient quantity to match one nuclear power plant would mandate thousands of acres of clear-cut land and cement for their erection.  Then there is the side effect - thousands of birds are slaughtered as the tendency is to erect them on the natural flyways.  Really - this is environmentally sound?

Couple to the wind-farm mentality, the concern that earth's resources need to be locked up; when do they become available for use in the future and who decides?   Science, in spite of the fear-based, dire predictions of resource gloom and doom, continues to identify additional resources in the face of dire predictions or shortage.  For example, it is recently discovered the U.S. has the largest gas and oil supply in the world, untapped as of yet.  Hydraulic fracturing stretches resources centuries into the future in spite of 'crank movies' based on non-science and provides scientists more than enough time to develop replacement energies and resource technologies.  The technique used today to 'destroy energy sources to push us into the future is functionally feudal', warped thinking at best.  What happened to the device advertised from Japan that can turn plastic bags back into the petroleum that made it?  Why was the GM electric car demolished when it functioned more than satisfactorily and was in use in by Silicon Valley engineers for multiple years?

Mantra #4:  "Jobs will be readily available, vis-a-vis, "build a ball field and they will come!"   What will magically jump up in the Sustainable World to create jobs that are not existing now?  Government cannot create jobs.  Free, driven, creative entrepreneurs create jobs to fill a need they recognize.  The 'aps' on today's smart phones came, not from the Government, but from the minds of entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley or the Massachuetts 'miracle mile, MIT, or other polytechnic-trained scientists.  The 'Sustainable' regulations developed by the EPA, HHS, or any other Government agency are functionally job killers - think mines, petroleum, farms, power plants that is currently being destroyed in multiple States in the U.S. today.

Mantra #5:  "Secure neighborhoods and transportation accessible living."   This is only accomplished through massive police control with surveillance cameras on every corner, freeway, bus stations, taxi stand,  and 'high crime area'.  NSA will be eavesdropping on all conversations while privacy and individual choice become extinct.  It is certain that there is no "Sustainable freedom" available in the above processes.  As to public transportation, you are expected to bicycle locally-travel long-distance by train.  Have you taken AMTRAK lately?  Trains don't arrive on time, delays and diversions to bus travel persist, and the facilities used are functionally 'cattle cars'.    Try to move across your town by bus - the transfers abound and the time to travel rises exponentially with distance.

Mantra #6:  "Sprawl will be contained through sustainable growth."   That evil sprawl which represents community grow areas people develop to escape megalopolis.  That sprawl, which permits home ownership, permits children to have a back yard in which to play rather than stickball on the street, a centralized park and recreation area with pools rather than opening fire hydrants to cool off the city kids when its hot in the city - yes Sprawl is evil.  One should ask where is the Sustainability Crowd acting to stop gang murder and rapes, drug cartels servicing the inner city high rises.  But wait!  Sustainability comes with all those Government Grants, the income stream for non-profits who live off the concept at property-owners, property-dreamers expense!

Mantra #7:  "Our citizens have an opportunity to advance their quality of life."   George Orwellian 'double speak'!  As Sustainable policies are being forced into communities, the United States economy is in shambles and not improving measurably.  The cost of food, healthcare, energy, rising taxes, transportation, housing - all are skyrocketing. 

How will the quality of life for individuals improve under a concept of  deliberate shortage, locked up resources, people stacked on people, none of the people-movers imagined by Disney or improvements depicted on Star Trek?  Trust us - we should!  NOT!   The primary driver of the concept:  "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need" - a slogan Karl Marx made popularized in 1875, operative when society has changed to Collectivism which the Sustainability God will lead us.  Remember, Collectivism is for the people, not the Collectivist, a new name for good old tyranny.  Look no further than Berchtesgaden - the people didn't reside there, merely funded it..

Agenda 21 remains a battle citizens must fight to retain the promise of the Constitution - life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness.  We all must fight against Agenda 21's tentacles of the Republic is to be restored.