by Tom DeWeese, American Policy Center, ©2024
(Jun. 2, 2024) — Solar and wind farms to eliminate gas and oil; 15 Minute Cities; eliminating single-family homes; eliminating gas-powered cars; stop eating beef; no more warm water showers; ban ice cubes and electric stoves; Sustainable! How did these radical ideas become official policies in our once great American cities, now on the verge of collapse? Here’s the story.
San Francisco is the birthplace of the United Nations. On June 5th, 2005, it was also the location for a major effort by the UN to circumvent national and state governments in order to reorganize human society. Coincidentally, the date was also World Environment Day. This time the UN was targeting mayors from all over the world to enlist them to be soldiers in the Sustainable war.
Like a scene from Michael Crichton’s landmark novel State of Fear, all the usual suspects, our self-appointed saviors, were there. There were UN bureaucrats seeking to increase their power and influence, NGOs with their private agendas, Hollywood celebrities acting like authorities on how Americans should rightly live, leaders of corporations seeking to help devise global regulations to kill their competition, and representatives from national and local news outlets that long ago had lost any pretense of delivering unbiased news.
They were all there. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, along with the host committee, including San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Senator Dianne Feinstein. Helping to host were the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Jonathan Lash of the World Resources Institute. Walking among the crowd were actors Robert Redford and Martin Sheen. As everyone fawned over them, singer Judy Collins could be heard inspiring the gathering with her emotional lyrics. Of course, to be expected were representatives from ICLEI. They had recently teamed with Robert Redford and the Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah to form an environmental congress called the Sundance Summit. Also in attendance were the leaders of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the legal arm of the radical Green movement that worked diligently to frighten Americans about everything in our society — from the food we eat, to the chemicals we use and the water we drink. Corporate sponsors included Federal Express, Toyota Prius, and Mitsubishi International Corporation Foundation, all dedicated to capitalizing on Sustainable Development practices. All of these forces were ready to do their dance and perform their magic tricks to influence your mayor to join their game.
As the cheerleading and drum circles faded, the gathering got down to the serious business. As part of their participation in the conference, the mayors were pressed to commit their communities to specific legislative and policy goals by signing a slate of United Nations accords. Two documents were presented for the mayors’ signatures.
The first document was called the “Green Cities Declaration,” a statement of principles which set the agenda for the mayors’ assigned tasks. It said, in part, “Believing as Mayors of cities around the globe, we have a unique opportunity to provide leadership to develop truly sustainable urban centers based on culturally and economically appropriate local actions.” The Declaration was amazingly bold in that it detailed exactly how the UN intended to implement a very specific agenda in every town and city in the nation. The document included lots of rhetoric about the need to curtail greenhouse gasses and preserve resources. But the final line of the Green Cities Declaration was the point of the whole affair: “Signatory cities shall work to implement the following Urban Environment Accords. Each year cities shall pick three actions to adopt as policies or laws.”
The raw meat of the agenda was outlined in detail in the second document, called the “Urban Environment Accords.” The Accords included exactly 21 specific actions (as in Agenda 21) for the mayors to take, controlled by a timetable for implementation.
Here’s a quick look at a few of the 21 agenda actions called for. Under the topic of energy, action item number one called for mayors to implement a policy to increase the use of “renewable” energy by 10% within seven years. Renewable energy includes solar and wind power.
Not stated in the UN documents is the fact that in order to meet the goal, a community would have to reserve thousands of acres of land to set up expensive solar panels and even more land for wind turbines. Consider that it takes a current 50 megawatt gas-fired generating plant about two to five acres of land to produce its power, yet to create that same amount of power through the use of solar panels would require at least 1,000 acres. Using windmills to generate 50 megawatts would require over 4,000 acres of land, while creating a deafening roar and chopping up birds. The cost of such “alternative” energy to the community would be vastly prohibitive, yet such unworkable ideas became the environmentally-correct order of the day that the mayors were being urged to follow.
Perhaps the most egregious action offered in the Urban Environmental Accords dealt with the topic of water. Action item number twenty called for adoption and implementation of a policy to reduce individual water consumption by 10% by 2020. Interestingly, the document begins by stating: “Cities with potable water consumption greater than 100 liters per capita per day will adopt and implement policies to reduce consumption by 10 percent by 2015.”
There is no basis for the 100 liter figure other than employing a very clever use of numbers to lower the bar and control the debate. One must be aware that 100 liters equals about 26 gallons per person, per day. According to the UN, each person should only have 10% less than 26 gallons each day to drink, bathe, flush toilets, wash clothes, water lawns, wash dishes, cook, and more.
Read the rest here.