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May I ask you how much you know about ICLEI and the huge success it has had all over the country? I know that they have had huge successes in establishing much of the things you mentioned. If ICLEI exists in your local government then they have been involved in all those "things". One of their favorite terms happens to be sustainability in all its forms.
Maybe you need to look at the video I posted in the OP to find out what ICLEI has accomplished in so many places. The woman knows what she is talking about and the US has more local governments in ICLEI than most of the rest of the whole world. Listen to her talk, just for some knowledge.
But, so I'm not accused of trying to deflect, I'd like to say that I'm a property owner in two different neighborhoods in my city. I regularly attend the neighborhood organization meetings for both. We regularly deal with zoning issues in our neighborhoods. I also work in an architect's office, so I regularly deal with building codes and building officials. (building officials secondhand, usually) I've also attended many meetings discussing Youngstown's land-use plan: Youngstown 2010 and a few meetings discussing the modernization of our zoning ordinances. I've even used "the little clicker." (Turning Technologies, the company that developed TurningPoint, the PowerPoint plugin that allows those "little clickers" to work, is headquartered in Youngstown) All of which is to say I also know what I'm talking about.
Much of what she said, in the portion of the video that I listened to, has at least one of two problems for me. It either simply isn't true in my experience, or it's too specific to their location and lacks context by which to judge.
Take it for whats its worth, a small bit of education on Agenda 21/sustainability communities and wilderness areas
• The Vision Half the land area of the entire country will be designated "wilderness areas," where only wildlife managers
and researchers will be allowed. These areas will be interconnected by "corridors of wilderness" to allow migration of
wildlife, without interference by human activity. Wolves will be as plentiful in Virginia and Pennsylvania as they are
now in Idaho and Montana. Panthers and alligators will roam freely from the Everglades to the Okefenokee and beyond.
Surrounding these wilderness areas and corridors, designated "buffer zones"
• Sierra Club's proposal to reorganize North America into 21 Ecoregions. The Sierra Club, one of hundreds of
non-government organizations actively working to bring about this transformation, has suggested that North America
be divided into 21 ecoregions, that ignore existing national, state, and county boundaries.
• Consider "this basic design" as described in the Wildlands Project:
• "...that at least half of the land area of the 48 conterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones (essentially extensions of core reserves) within the next few decades.... Nonetheless, half of a region in wilderness is a reasonable guess of what it will take to restore viable populations of large carnivores and natural disturbance regimes, assuming that most of the other 50 percent is managed intelligently as buffer zones. Eventually, a wilderness network would dominate a region...with human habitations being the islands. The native ecosystem and the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans." (8)
• In the last days of the Clinton Administration, the Forest Service adopted the "Roadless Area Conservation Rule," which identified 58.5 million acres from which access and logging roads were to be removed. In the West, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are driving ranchers off the land by reducing grazing allotments to numbers that make profitable operations impossible.
• Inholders,
people who have recreational cabins on federal land, are discovering that their permits are not being renewed. The Fish and Wildlife Service is forcing people off their land through designations of "wetlands," and "critical habitat" which render the land unusable for profit-making activities.
• Sustainable Communities
Agencies of government are working with equal diligence, to create the "islands of human habitation," otherwise called sustainable communities
"...Community Sustainability Infrastructures [designed for] efficiency and livability that encourages: in-fill over sprawl: compactness, higher density low-rise residential: transit-oriented (TODs) and pedestrian-oriented development (PODs): bicycle circulation networks; work-to-home proximity; mixed-use-development: co-housing, housing over shops, downtown residential; inter-modal transportation malls and facilities ...where trolleys, rapid transit, trains and biking, walking and hiking are encouraged by infrastructures."
• Notice on the attached map the cities of Avon Park, Sebring, and Lake placid no longer exist, this is the 2060 plan of sustainable communities.
• We will be growing foods, dietary supplements and herbs that make over our unsustainable reliance upon foods and medicines that have adverse soil, environmental, or health side-effects. Less and less land will go for animal husbandry, and more for grains, tubers and legumes."
• Sustainable communities cannot emerge as the natural outgrowth of free people making individual choices in a free market economy. Nor can they be mandated in the United States, as they might be in nations that live under dictatorial rule. Therefore, the PCSD developed a strategy to entice or coerce local communities to begin the transition to sustainability.
•
"Amortization of Non-Conforming Uses." This means that a city or county may designate a period of time in which existing structures must be brought into conformity with the new regulations. "But for homeowners who live in a community that adopts the Guidebook's vision, the APA amortization proposal means the extinguishing, over time, of their right to occupy their houses, and without just compensation for loss of that property. How long they have before they must forfeit their homes would be completely up to the local government."
• Consequences of Sustainable Development What is perhaps the most serious consequence of sustainable development is the least visible: the transformation of the policy-making process. The idea that government is empowered by the consent of the governed is the idea that set the United States apart from all previous forms of government. It is the principle that unleashed individual creativity and free markets, which launched the spectacular rise of the world's most successful nation
• Proponents of sustainable development are forced to argue that the greater good for the community is more important than negative impacts on any individual. There is no equal justice, when government arbitrarily takes value from one person and assigns it to another. Nowhere is this injustice more visible than when eminent domain is used to implement sustainable development plans.
• Conclusion: Even in the early days of this century-long transition to sustainability, there is growing evidence that the fundamental flaws in the concept will likely produce the opposite of the desired goals. Forests that have been taken out of productive use in order to conform to the vision of sustainable development have been burned to cinders, annihilating wildlife, including species deemed to be "endangered," resulting in the opposite of "environmental protection." Government- imposed restrictions on resource use in land that is now designated "wilderness," or "buffer zones" have resulted in shortages, accompanied by rapid price increases that result in the opposite of "economic prosperity."
• Private property rights and individual freedom are diminished or extinguished. Sustainable development is a concept constructed on the principle that government has the right and the responsibility to regulate the affairs of people to achieve government's vision of the greatest good for all. The United States is founded on the principle that government has no rights or responsibility not specifically granted to it by the people who are governed. These two concepts cannot long coexist. One principle, or the other, will eventually dominate.
• The question that remains unanswered is: will Americans accept this new sustainable future that has been planned for them and imposed upon them?. Or, as Americans have done in the past, will they rise up in defense of their freedom, and demand that their elected officials force the bureaucrats and professionals to return to the role of serving the people who pay their salaries, by administering policies enacted only by elected officials, rather than conspiring to set the policies by which all the people must live.
Yes, I offered to allow people to learn about Agenda 21 from a Democrat who is an avowed lesbian. I don't think very many took the offer so I will try again. I know she spends a long time talking about Agenda 21 and what it is but so many know exactly nothing about what she talks about. Here is another opportunity to learn something about the scariest thing going on in the US these days.
Democrats and lesbians are not immune from mental illness
I've had it with Agenda 21 bashing. Far past time for the government to round up everyone in a subdivision and make them live in an environmentally responsible neighborhood. Frankly suburbanites are lucky we haven't done it yet and need to stop forcing our hand.
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