[EDITOR'S NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS FROM TDV MANAGING EDITOR, REDMOND WEISSENBERGER]
“…current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable. A shift is necessary which will require a vast strengthening of the multilateral system, including the United Nations…” -Maurice Strong, opening speech at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development
We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse. –Maurice Strong
Agenda 21 is the Communist Manifesto of the Environmental Movement. It is a renewed attack on the underpinnings of civilization, prosperity and the desire to destroy the standard of living achieved in the developed world and the forced permanent poverty of those in the developing world. This comes chiefly in the call for the abolition of what little remains of the institution of private property.
The first plank of the Communist Manifesto, written in 1844, calls for the Abolition of Private Property in Land.
- Abolition of property in land and application of all rents
Throughout the 20th century, when socialism was ascendant across the entire world, the abolition of private property and the socialization of the means of production in the hands of the state was key to the transformation of society into the murderous dystopias that made up the eastern bloc.
Revolutionary socialist movements have had a long history of association with the environmental movement. At their core they are both collectivist in nature. The “Socialist” views society as a whole, a unit, and seeks to impose a particular plan to organize society for the supposed benefit of the “Masses”. In this framework, the individual does not matter – individual human beings are replaceable cogs in the machine of the state. The goal of the Socialist elite controlling society was the creation of the “New Socialist Man”. What was the most important characteristic of this new man according to the Chinese Communists?
Absolute selflessness. The new man has no ambitions beyond that of serving the revolution. He seeks no personal fame or glory. He seeks neither comfort nor reward for himself or his family. He makes no personal plans that cannot be completely identified with the revolution. Furthermore, he is always ready to sacrifice his own interests for the good of the revolutionary cause, and he gladly sacrifices his life when necessary.
The Environmental movement has a particular collectivist manner of viewing the world, rooted in the concept of the “Ecosystem”. The term Ecosystem has its roots in the word Ecology. Coined by Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919), a German zoologist, he defined ecology as “the whole science of the relations of the organism to the environment.” Haeckel told us that individuals don’t actually exist. Human individuals do not possess an individual consciousness, he said, because humans are only a part of a greater whole.
The first marriage between political collectivism and environmental collectivism occurred in National Socialist Germany – the original Eco-Socialist State. The National Socialist government was deeply influenced by the environmentalists of the day. In fact many of their policies would be right at home in the UN. From James Delingpoles “Watermelons”:
They were the first nation to take the concept of “animal rights” seriously (in 1933 Goering – ah, the big cuddly softie – said that anyone found guilty of animal cruelty or experimentation would be sent to the concentration camps), the first to pass national environmental laws – the Reich Nature Protection Law of 1935, the first to champion organic food (an especial obsession of Heinrich Himmler), the first to promote vegetarianism (another of Hitler's fads), and, above all, the first to address with proper planning and mechanised efficiency the issue that tends to concern ecominded catastrophists more than any other: what to do about the world's population “problem.”
According to the National Socialists, the German Volk required Lebensraum, in order to create the perfect eco-friendly, sustainable world. They were simply far more open with their plans and direct in their methods. Their solution to the overpopulation of the earth was simple, exterminate the Untermenschen.
After the defeat of the National Socialists in Germany, some of their more distasteful practices such as their virulent racism and radical application of the pseudo-science of Eugenics fell out of favor. But the Eco-Socialist movement simply went underground and rebranded.
In 1954, Harrison Brown wrote a book that could be considered the blueprint for the global Eco-Socialist movement, The Challenge Of Man’s Future. In it he lays out the necessity of destroying national and by extension, individual sovereignty in order to “save the world”
“In the first place, it is amply clear that population stabilization and a world composed of completely independent sovereign states are incompatible….Given a world authority with jurisdiction over population problems, the task of assessing maximum permissible population levels on a regional basis need not be prohibitively difficult.” (P260)
Over the next 20 years the noted neo-malthusians, John P. Holdren (Clinton and Obama’s science advisor) and Paul Erhlich (author of the Population Bomb and co-author with John Holdren of Eco-Science) along with UN puppeteer Maurice Strong constantly made the case that the world was running out of resources and that the key to this problem was population control. Their work culminated in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the founding of the Club of Rome and the release of the book “The Limits to Growth” in 1972 and “Mankind at the Turning Point” in 1974. The key quote from “Turning Point” that betrays the attitude of Neo-Malthusians and Eco-Socialists towards humanity and material progress is this: “The Earth has a cancer and the cancer is man”.
Within “Turning Point” we see the call for what would eventually become Agenda 21
“Now is the time to draw up a master plan for organic sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all finite resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years from today it will probably be too late…”
The direction of the attack was made clear. In 1976 a precursor to Agenda 21, the Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements incorporated the 1st plank of the communist manifesto into the plan for future “Sustainability”
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; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interest of society as a whole.
The destruction of the private ownership of the land was declared to be a key aim to achieving the ends of the eco-socialist movement. Agenda 21 was the blueprint that Harrison Brown had called for in 1954. From Wikipedia:
Agenda 21 is an action plan of the United Nations (UN) related to sustainable development and was an outcome of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. It is a comprehensive blueprint of action to be taken globally, nationally, and locally by organizations of the UN, governments, and major groups in every area in which humans directly affect the environment.
The UN is attempting to implement Agenda 21 at every level of government in every country it can as quickly as it can. The method by which they seek to control yourself and your property is through a never ending web of regulations that criminalize and control your interaction with the world around you. Remember, according to the eco-socialists definition of the “ecosystem”, the environment is EVERYTHING on this planet, every microscopic organism and molecule of carbon dioxide all the way up to the Blue Whale, the largest animal to have ever existed.
Agenda 21 is implemented mainly through the interaction between unelected bureaucracies within the nation-states of the world. Directives are issued by the UN and are written up by the Local, State and Federal Bureaucrats and eventually passed by the legislatures. The creation of Ministries of the Environment at the mational level of various nation-states, beginning in the 1970s has been the main method of directing Agenda 21 across the world. Elected governments may only last four years, but bureaucracies last forever.
So far the implementation of Agenda 21 has been done mostly under the radar and without the consent of the governed. Termed as “sustainability initiatives” and similar friendly sounding names, it is only in the last few years that the impact has been truly felt, and the affected populations are beginning to awaken to the radical transformation that is taking place in the legal and regulatory structures of the states that they reside in.
In part two of this three part series, we will examine the impacts that are being felt around the world, as the one world government, hidden under a cloak of green begins to take shape.
Redmond Weissenberger is the Managing Editor of the Dollar Vigilante and TDV Golden Trader. He is also the Founder and director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada. www.mises.ca
