BY
JOAN M. VEON, CFP
While American's have been tending their gardens, caring for their families and enjoying the good life, unbeknownst to them, a small group of powerful globalists have been planning for their future and that of their children and their children's children. The foundational cornerstone of their new world is a concept called "sustainable development." While this phrase has no meaning to the average person, it has substantial meaning to those who elevate nature and "Mother Earth" over man.
Just as a prism displays different colors when you turn it, so too, does sustainable development. Its colors are philosophical, environmental, economic and social. In order to understand where this concept is going, we need to examine its origins. In the Habitat II Programme of Action, the word "sustainable" was paired with cities, human development, transportation, water, energy and even living, as in sustainable living. When the word sustainable is used with other words, it creates a whole new level of meaning. The writer feels that sustainable development could be considered a code word for "control" as everything that we do will be controlled according to our production and consumption patterns and whether or not we are good global citizens.
The origins of sustainable development
In follow-up to two previous studies on the future of the world after the year 2000-- one by former German Prime Minister Willie Brandt and the other by Scandinavian leader, Olfe Palme-- and United Nations General Assembly resolution, No. 38/161, the World Commission on Environment and Development was set up. The UN asked Mrs. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway, to chair the Commission in December, 1983. Their purpose would be to formulate a "global agenda for change" which would among other goals, (1) "propose long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond" and (2) "recommend ways in which concern for the environment may be translated into greater co-operation among developing countries..."
The Commission was comprised of 22 members in addition to Mrs. Brundtland. With the exception perhaps of William Ruckelschaus from the United States, the commissioners were from socialist (including social democrat), fascist or communist countries. Two of the more interesting members of the Commission are Maurice Strong who called for the first UN environmental conference in 1972, who served as Secretary-General of United Nations Environment Programme and who was the Secretary-General of the "Rio Earth Summit" in 1992 and Sir Shridath Ramphal who was co-Chairman of The Commission for Global Governance, the group which succeeded the World Commission. Their study, Our Global Neighborhood, appears to carry the globalist agenda to a final conclusion environmentally, legally, socially and economically.
Our Common Future is considered one of the main reference books of the UN environmental agenda as it contains the official UN definition of sustainable development which is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It goes on to define "needs" to mean the world's poor "to which overriding priority should be given and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs."
The reports of the Commission's three Advisory Panels were published under the titles Energy 2000, Industry 2000, and Food 2000 and are constantly referred to by the UN today.
Where does the concept of sustainable development come from? First, it is part of the Declaration of the UN Conference on the Human Environment, chaired in 1972 by Maurice Strong. In their Declaration, Principle 1 states, "Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations." Another principle states, "The natural resources of the earth, including the air, water, land, flora and fauna and especially representative samples of natural ecosystems, must be safeguarded for the benefit of present and future generations through careful planning or management, as appropriate."
Since this concept is not found in the US Constitution, the writer started to look socialism and communism and found it in the 1977 Constitution of the USSR, Chapter 2, Article 18:
In the interests of the present and future generations, the necessary steps are taken in the USSR to protect and make scientific, rational use of the land and its mineral and water resources, and the plant and animal kingdoms, to preserve the purity of air and water, ensure reproduction of natural wealth, and improve the human environment.
To understand how accepted sustainable development is on the global level, the Prince of Wales delivered a keynote address to the World Commission on Environment and Development on April 11, 1992 in which he said,
"There is little doubt that your commission's report, in 1987, was the single most important document of the decade on this subject, bringing the phrase 'sustainable development into all our vocabularies...Your commission also pointed out the importance of democracy and individual participation in achieving a more sustainable world....'the future of our planet is in the balance'...we should not, I believe, just be 'managing the Earth's resources more efficiently' (relying on a traditional utilitarian ethic), but seeking to live in balance with the rest of creation, even if we cannot discern any direct and immediate material benefit to ourselves...this of course, points to the need for a fundamental shift in attitudes.....a new triad should be recognized: environment plus development plus democracy...A first requirement will be a strong commitment by one and all to create a balance, within nations, between nations and between generations."
Philosophical
While one side of the philosophical part of sustainable development is spiritual--the earth and its preservation over man, a direct perversion of Genesis One, the other side is a direct inversion of the principles found in the Constitution of the United States and represented by the U.S. flag. Any philosophy which has principles found in the Constitution of the USSR as its basis is against personal freedom as all freedoms are given by the state and therefore can be altered, changed, amended, and abolished at any time--for any reason versus unalienable rights which cannot change and cannot be taken away and which come from God not the state.
Environmentally
Since the Rio "Earth Summit" in June, 1992, there has been a concerted effort by the United Nations and environmental groups to change the face of America. The outcome of Rio was Agenda 21 which is an agreed "programme of cooperative international work for the sustained and responsible development of the planet for the 21st century." "Biodiversity" is a phrase coined to describe the variety of the genes, species and ecosystems found on our planet. Al Gore wrote in his book, Earth in the Balance, "We must make the rescue of the environment the central principle for civilization...use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action....to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nature our ecological system." Although the Biodiversity Treaty did not pass in the Senate, the President, by Executive Order, established the President's Council on Sustainable Development to effect the Programme, pacts and treaties agreed to at the Rio Earth Summit.
Today, many of these ideas are being implemented around the country by a number of U.S. Agencies and environmental non-governmental organizations. If you ask farmers and ranchers across America, they will tell you their farms and property are endangered by these ideas. Should the Environmental Protection Agency come around and determine that there is an endangered species on your property, your property could be condemned so as to protect this species and "save the ecosystem." This action cuts to the heart of personal property rights. If we have no personal property rights, then we have no freedom. The potential loss of future property rights is seen in the Wetlands Project which wants to ultimately force people to live in "human islands" surrounded by buffer zones while 50% of the surface of America is returned to natural wildlife.
Economically
Sustainable development is economic--who would have ever thought that there was a possibility that the air we breathe and the water we drink would be measured by a global body and that our use could then be measured according to how much we produce (or how we think), a Marxist/Leninist concept. Production and consumption are at the heart of sustainable development--if you don't produce, you don't consume. When we ask ourselves who cannot produce, the answer is babies and toddlers as well as the elderly. Do we wonder why there is an upward trend in abortion and euthanasia? A women who is not pregnant and who has a limited number of children can produce more for the state than the woman who has three children. In addition, welfare is not sustainable as those living off of it are not producing. Lastly, would it be inappropriate to mention the fact that there are many industries and individuals who will and have already benefited from sustainable development?
The concept of "earning your keep on Planet Earth" are best seen in the "family dependency ratio" which the writer came across in the Final Draft of the Fourth Women's Conference Platform of Action document. This phrase was used only once and was not defined. However, the writer concluded that because the UN wanted to put a value on the unremunerated work--which is the time a woman spends caring for dependents--young and older, working in the house, in the family business or volunteering in the community ( this also could be applied to men), as well as the fact that the UN asked the World Bank/IMF to come up with a way to measure unremunerated work, that the family dependency ratio was a way to determine the net productivity, or lack thereof, from a household. For example, in the future, the UN will be able to point any house in the world and say, "Four people live there, two work and two are dependent on those who work. After we subtract out what they consume from what they produce, they either are adding to the earth's resources or depleting them and are either good global citizens or bad global citizens."
While this sounds pretty Orwellian, the writer was able to ask Maurice Strong at the Gorbachev State of the World Forum if her assumption using the above illustration was correct. He replied that it was and went on to give the following short description of sustainable development:
I will not attempt a definitional discussion on sustainable development. We want to put it in business terms. We have Earth, Inc. with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts so that you are not living off of capital. If we continue to equate wealth creation with the liquidation of our natural capital, we will be headed for bankruptcy and that is the direction we are going now. We need all the elements you mentioned and more to bring the ecological systems and behavior towards them in line with our economic and social aspirations. Those things have to be brought into a new balance if we are going to enjoy a sustainable way of life on our planet. (emphasis added)
This brings us to Habitat II, the last mega-conference to be held by the UN in this century. The writer interviewed Ismail Serageldin, Vice President, Environmental Sustainable Development at the World Bank and asked him to explain further Mr. Strong's picture of Earth Inc. He said that the concept of the Earth as a corporation is a "back of the envelope" attempt of setting a value to all of the resources of the earth by categorizing them. They are: manufactured capital which is buildings, roads, machinery, etc., natural capital which is the minerals, water, forests and air, human capital which is you and I--our age, experience, education and health and social capital which he defined as the "way a person or society thinks." (note: political correctness.)
At the Group of Seven meeting in Lyon, France, the writer asked Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali and World Bank President James A. Wolfensohn to further elaborate on the above concept. While the Secretary-General did not, Mr. Wolfensohn called it a "first attempt at an international accounting." Most interestingly, Prince Charles in 1992 said, "Economists have started (at long last) to grapple with the concepts of sustainability, to question the way in which our national accounts are assessed, in order to value our natural resources...and to contemplate new market instruments to encourage changes in human behavior..." (emphasis added)
Social
Lastly, if sustainable development were not already odious, the writer, at the request of a colleague and friend, Dr. Judith Reisman who wrote Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, was asked to show the tie-in between Alfred Kinsey and the United Nations. At the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the UN propagated the sustainable development concept that the world was overpopulated which is the reason why the third world countries are poor. It was stressed by ALL of the speakers-- from world leaders to Lewis Preston, now deceased President of the World Bank, Jane Fonda and others-- that the population of the world has to be reduced so that according to the concepts found in Our Common Future, "production can be maximized at all times... [so] that it "does not endanger the environment...and the natural systems that support life on Earth...." because "[H]igh rates of population growth that can eat into surpluses available for economic and social development..."
The writer realized that sustainable development, as seen in all of the UN Programmes, appears to be the result of a marriage between the philosophies of Thomas Malthus and Alfred Kinsey. It is Thomas Mathuses "there are too many people on planet Earth who will outstrip the sources" and Alfred Kinsey's concept that "all people are sexual from birth and therefore should be allowed
to have non-productive sexual gratification at any age" which are enshrined in the philosophy of the (most favored UN) non-governmental organizations implementing sustainable development such as Planned Parenthood Federation of America, SEICUS, Population Action International and Zero Population Growth, to name a few. These NGO's are prominent in America as many of their concepts are taught in US schools through sex education programs. Their answer is to give every young person in the world a condom and teach them other types of non-creational sexual gratification techniques to keep youth happy and productive. When you look at their philosophy and the tenants of Alfred Kinsey, they appear to match all too closely. When you see this philosophy enshrouded in UN programs, it just makes one think.
Conclusion
If good men and women do nothing, sustainable development will replace not only the Golden Rule but every concept and way of life, not only in the United States but throughout the world. There will be no freedom of any type and we will become a slave to the global environmental lords who have decreed and engineered this "New World Order." Most evident is the fact that all of the world's leaders who have given speeches in Cairo, Copenhagen, the UN50 in New York, Beijing and Istanbul agree and appear to be following and implementing this global philosophy.
What we have been describing is spiritual warfare at its finest-- the god of this world against the God who created the universe. While all of the above is very evil, it presents an opportunity for those who love God to respond, how pure the church is will determine if we are able to hold this wicked agenda back. Either we repent of our personal hidden sins, our complacency and our selfish ways so as to allow God to war in the heavenlies or we go into judgement for our lack of repentance. God's sustainable plan for the universe is found in His Word--read it, live it and live.
"For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The Lord, The God of hosts, is his name." Amos 4:13.