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Henry Lamb Columns in 1995

Contents Sustainability: No! ......................................................................................................................3 Sustainability: why? ....................................................................................................................5 Sustainability: what is it? ............................................................................................................7 Sustainability: Politically correct - personally disastrous .............................................................9 The Battle For Property Rights .................................................................................................. 11 When Does a "Takings" Occur? ................................................................................................ 13 Property Rights Abuse .............................................................................................................. 15 Whoever Controls the Land Controls the Wealth ....................................................................... 17 The Green Party Platform .......................................................................................................... 19 The Green Party Platform: Economic Structures Under Siege ................................................... 21 The Green Party Platform: Technology Under Siege ................................................................. 23 The Green Party Platform: Ideology Under Siege ...................................................................... 25 The Global Environmental Agenda ........................................................................................... 27 The Global Environmental Agenda: How Can It Happen? ......................................................... 29 The Global Environmental Agenda: A Closer Look ................................................................. 31 The Global Environmental Agenda: A Better Way ................................................................... 33 Off the deep end: "Free the Planet" ........................................................................................... 35 Off the deep end: Islands of human habitat ................................................................................ 37 Off the deep end: Communal property ....................................................................................... 39 Off the deep end: Governance ................................................................................................... 41 Cosmolatry: the worship of gaia at the Temple of Understanding .............................................. 43 Cosmolatry: the New Age ......................................................................................................... 45 Cosmolatry at the United Nations .............................................................................................. 47 Cosmolatry: the worship of Gaia ............................................................................................... 49 Omnipotent Institutionus ........................................................................................................... 51 Omnipotent Institutionus: the source ......................................................................................... 53 Authority Ultimous at work ....................................................................................................... 55 The Global Battlefield ............................................................................................................... 57 Wetland Reform ........................................................................................................................ 59 Endangered Species Reform ...................................................................................................... 61

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Citizen Suit Reform .................................................................................................................. 63 Property Rights Reform............................................................................................................. 65 Sustainable Development: Beware! ........................................................................................... 67 Sustainable Development: The First Principle ........................................................................... 69 Sustainable Development: What It Will Cost............................................................................. 71 Sustainable Development: What It Should Be .......................................................................... 73 Reorganizing society ................................................................................................................. 75 Education under the gaia principle ............................................................................................ 77 Total Reorganization ................................................................................................................. 79 Governing reorganized societies ................................................................................................ 81 International Intrigue ................................................................................................................. 83 International Intrigue: the instigators ......................................................................................... 85 International Intrigue: public/private partnerships...................................................................... 87 International Intrigue: the machinery ......................................................................................... 89 Land: private property or a public trust ...................................................................................... 91 Land: the Sierra Club's view ...................................................................................................... 93 Land: the Sierra Club's vision .................................................................................................... 95 Land: the foundation of freedom ............................................................................................... 97

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Col 112 - January, 1995

Sustainability: No! By Henry Lamb Sustainability - as implied in the Convention on Biological Diversity, defined in the Global Biodiversity Assessment, and practiced in third-word protected areas by indigenous (primitive) "traditional" communities - has no place in American life. On the other hand, prudent, responsible use of natural resources, by the resource owners, is the essence of American life. Those individuals who use their resources responsibly tend to succeed. Those who do not, tend to fail. Such is the effect of free market forces. America has more timber acres and fewer agricultural acres, per capita, than any "sustainable" community in the world. Only when resources are taken out of private ownership and held in common by "the public," are resources seriously abused and degraded. There is no better steward of natural resources than the private owner whose personal welfare is dependent upon prudent use of those resources. The value of private ownership is not a new discovery. In every nation where land and its resources are held by "the public," the environment is a disaster. The environment is best in nations that promote private ownership. The same principle applies to "public" housing, which in city after city is a shambles compared to privately owned homes. Private ownership is the foundation on which prosperity is built and it is also the most effective caretaker of the property that is owned - including natural resources. Those who sell sustainability contend that natural resources should not be privately owned. Land is considered to be species habitat and whatever lives on the land is biodiversity which must be used sustainably lest global warming descend in torrents of fire and brimstone. The November 8th Republican earthquake resulted in an immediate response by Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs). Dozens of organizations, journalists, educators, and activists met in Blue Mountain, New York, to develop a coalition strategy to stop what they call the "anti-democratic right." Some of the characteristics of the group they wish to stop, as they define them, are those that support: "a rapacious form of unregulated free market capitalism," and oppose: "government regulations concerning health, safety, and the environment." A treatise issued by the group says they embrace all people who oppose groups that fight for property rights, States rights, wise use of resources, sovereignty, and county government autonomy. Another coalition of GAGs, called the Western Ancient Forest Campaign, warns that the Republican Congress will impose such horrors as: "risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis, and unfunded mandate legislation." They also warn that: "Takings amendments are another threat which will pay property owners not to pollute, or not to destroy habitat value and ecosystem functions.

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Habitat value and ecosystem functions are obviously more important than the needs or wishes of the person who owns the habitat and ecosystem - to the Western Ancient Forest Campaign. To them, habitat value is more important than the Constitution which requires government to pay for private property taken for public benefit. Those who cling to the Constitution and promote free market capitalism, and work to reverse the proliferation of government regulations, and outlaw unfunded mandates, and require cost-benefit studies, and meaningful risk analysis - have long been labeled as "anti-environment" by the GAGs. The new label, "anti-democratic" is evidence of deepening desperation at the realization that America is resisting the rush toward omnipotent government control. America has had about enough government intervention. America wants to get on with the business of earning a living. America is tired of hearing government say "no, you can't." America certainly does not want to hear all the "no, you can'ts" associated with sustainability. America went to the polls on November 8th and said, loud and clear, "NO," to the omnipotent government agenda. If necessary, in two years America can ask "which part of NO did you not understand?"

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Col 113 - January, 1995

Sustainability: why? By Henry Lamb Sustainable use, sustainable development - sustainability - is the new organizing principle around which government agencies, educational institutions, and world governments are restructuring. Why? Lester Brown, head of the Worldwatch Institute says: "Massive food shortages will develop over the next 40 years as a population explosion outstrips world food supply." These words, written in August, 1994, sound much the same as the words written by Paul Ehrlich in 1968: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Noel Brown, a Regional Director of the United Nations, told the "Voices of the Earth" Conference in Boulder, Colorado last July: "The global environmental crisis is, indeed, dire. The crisis is the result of human-created problems ranging from deforestation, rising ocean levels and ozone depletion to wars, rapidly-increasing population and poverty [which] have been documented in a doomsday report issued by the United Nations." Because the world is going to hell in a hand basket, according to the UN doomsayers, we must reorganize the entire world around the principle of sustainability. Whoa. Wait one minute. What environmental crisis are they talking about? The environment is getting better, not worse. Surplus food storage is a much greater problem than food shortages, except where local dictators steal it. Paul Ehrlich's predictions of starving millions is, in retrospect, ridiculous exaggeration that never came to pass. The picture painted by the current doomsayers is equally ridiculous exaggeration that is at odds with observable fact. Those who can remember the belching smoke stacks and coal-fired train engines of the 1940s and 1950s know that the air is certainly cleaner now than it was then. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that total emissions into the air decreased by 33.8% between 1970 and 1990. Particulate matter released into the air decreased by 60.5% during the same period. Not a single river has caught fire since the Cuyahoga River in Ohio burned in 1969. The first National Water Quality Inventory was conducted in 1973. Dr. Myrick Freeman reported that 96% of the nation's waterways were fishable then. EPA reports reveal continuing improvement every year since. Water in America is safer and cleaner than in any other nation on earth. Contrary to the claims of population fear-mongers, population growth rates have declined globally since the 1960s, from 2% to 1.4%. Starvation is hardly the cause of declining population growth. Ronald Bailey, author of Eco-Scam, says that only a tenth as many people

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died of starvation between 1950 and 1975, as died during the last quarter of the 19th century, despite the fact that the world's population had nearly doubled. Incidentally, virtually all agriculture, resource use, and development in the 19th century, precisely fits the modern descriptions of sustainability. Deforestation is said to be a crisis that is causing the greatest species loss in 65 million years. The fact is, according to a 1993 report issued by the U.S. Forest Service, every year since 1952, forest growth has substantially exceeded harvest. Wooded acres have grown 20% in the last 20 years. The annual growth in wooded acres is three times greater than in 1920. In 1992, less than 1% of National forests were actually harvested. There are more trees in America today than there were 100 years ago. The oft-cited species loss used to justify sustainability and the need to protect biodiversity is based on computer model projections. Actual species known to have vanished in the last 100 years are rarely listed. It is a very short list (fewer than 100 according to many estimates) compared to the thousands of new species identified during the same period. No one knows how many species there are. No one knows how many species become extinct or how many new species emerge. Everyone knows, however, that the process has been going on since the beginning of time, and that no man-made law is going to stop the process. If the world were in such a "dire" environmental crisis, why is the population growing, albeit at a declining rate? Why has life expectancy continued to increase - from 70.8 to 75.4 years, between 1970 and 1990. Why do all the actual, scientific records say the environment is getting better, not worse? Because the environment is getting better, despite the doomsayer's claims to the contrary.

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Col 114 – January, 1995

Sustainability: what is it? By Henry Lamb "Sustainability" is an ambiguous term that can be used by those who wish to judge the activity or behavior of others: acceptable behavior is sustainable; unacceptable behavior is not sustainable. Section 10 of the Global Biodiversity Assessment says flatly that "current agriculture is not sustainable." Oh, really! American agriculture has not only sustained a population that has more than doubled this century, it has also provided food for much of the rest of the world. American agriculture is one of man's most successful achievements. American agriculture provides a greater quantity, and a broader variety of healthy, nutritious food, with less labor on fewer acres of land than ever before. Nevertheless, the National Wildlife Federation condemns agriculture as the most environmentally destructive industry, and the international environmental community has condemned "current" agriculture as unsustainable. Sustainability advocates contend that current practices cannot meet the growing demand for food. Such a claim ignores the obvious fact that current agriculture has more than met the world's growing demand for food, it has constantly decreased the price of food (in constant dollar terms). The only obstacle to America's continuing ability to meet the demand for food is government interference. Sustainability applies not only to agriculture, but to every facet of human life. Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the 1992 Earth Summit, says that air-conditioning, convenience foods, processed meats, suburban homes, and the American life style, are not sustainable. Vice President, Al Gore, says that the automobile is the greatest single threat to sustainability. If what America is now doing is not sustainable, what is? Legal documents, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, are careful to avoid defining what is sustainable. The specific definitions are left to the Conference of the Parties. There is plenty of evidence, however, which specifies sustainability. Sustainable agriculture uses no man-made fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, no hybrid seed stock or live stock, and only low-input technology is considered to be sustainable. Low-input technology means technology that requires no fossil fuel. In other words, it's a mule, horse, oxen, wife, or kids. The Global Biodiversity Assessment describes "traditional" agriculture as the sustainable ideal. "Traditional" is described as communities of indigenous (primitive) people who raise their own

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food without the influence of modern technology. "Traditional agriculture" sounds very much like American agriculture in the 19th century - described in 21st century eco-speak. Literally, the concept of sustainability means that natural resources may not be used at a faster rate than they can be renewed by nature. At first glance, it appears to be a prudent concept. The kicker is - renewed by nature. It takes nature millions of years to make a barrel of oil, a ton of coal, or a cubic foot of gas. In less than a century, we have used resources that took millions of years to produce. Fossil fuel energy cannot be used at a "sustainable" rate. Ironically, as long as free market forces prevail, we will never run out of oil, coal, or gas. During the Carter oil crisis in 1978, we were told that world oil reserves were 648 billion barrels which would last only 29.2 years. Today, after 16 years of rising consumption, known reserves stand at 991 billion barrels. Other possible reserves, such as the one under the Arctic Natural Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), have never been tested. Coal and gas reserves will last at least two centuries at current rates of consumption. But that's not the point. Some day, theoretically at least, fossil fuels will be depleted. Long before that happens, free market forces will force alternative energy sources into existence. Ethanol is an alternative fuel that is renewable. It is not yet economically feasible. As fossil fuel resources become scarce, the law of supply and demand will force prices up. Simultaneously, technology will drive down the cost of alternative energy sources, and consumers will switch to the energy source that is most cost-effective. Free market forces will - as they have for the last two-hundred years - take care of sustainability. Government intervention in free market forces is a far greater threat to sustainable use of resources than any free market use.

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Col 115 – January, 1995

Sustainability: Politically correct - personally disastrous By Henry Lamb To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations next year, the Global Vision Corporation is producing a series of 100 60-second television spots promoting "sustainability" as the only solution to global problems. The project is funded by UNICEF, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Television Trust for the Environment, Peace Child International, and the Center for our Common Future. The first ten spots will be broadcast by satellite to 500 million homes in 100 countries during the international Social Summit, in March, 1995. The series will preach doom-and-gloom propaganda, and promise salvation through one-world government. Maurice Strong, founder of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Secretary General of the 1992 Earth Summit, has now formed The Earth Council, an NGO (non-government organization). Costa Rica gave the new organization a home and $500,000 to get started. The purpose of The Earth Council is to monitor governments and multinational corporations for compliance with the biodiversity treaty and other "sustainable" activities. The Earth Council's membership is a who's-who of the world's "sustainable" elite, including Robert S. McNamara, former Secretary of State and former President of the World Bank. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is building coalitions among "environmental, consumer, and farming organizations that have united around sustainability," according to Sustainable Ag Week. The Iowa Legislature has created the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. (Aldo Leopold is the author of A Sand County Almanac which calls for a new land ethic that includes land, rocks, flora and fauna in the community of life). The new Minister of Agriculture in England, William Waldegrave, has announced plans to pay subsidies only to farmers who practice "sustainability." The international community of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) are conducting no less than 12 major conferences around the world during the month of November, leading to another major treaty on sustainability. The President has created a special Task Force on Sustainable Development that includes the heads of several major GAGs and cabinet level officials. Sustainability is politically correct, and the term is permeating our government, our educational institutions, and the media - even though its meaning and implications for American life, are seldom discussed. Maurice Strong has identified air- conditioning and single-family homes, among other values, as unsustainable. Current agriculture, automobiles, industrial technology in general, and energy and chemical production in particular, have all been identified as unsustainable by the Global Biodiversity Assessment and other international authorities. Few Americans can remember "the good old days" before air-conditioning, before automobiles, before plastic and the many other miracles of chemical production. Few can remember plowing behind a mule, hoeing endless rows of corn (most of which was for the mule), spirals of fly-paper hanging from the ceiling to trap disease-carrying insects, coal-oil lamps and kerosene cook

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stoves. Who wants to remember the outbreaks of polio and cholera that crippled entire communities? Why should we want to remember, or return to, the good-old days of sustainability? It is the expressed objective of the sustainability concept to reduce American consumption, affluence, and the capacity to produce wealth. The sustainability concept is built upon the assumption that American prosperity comes only at the expense of the rest of the world. "Equitable distribution of resource benefits" is the eco-speak language used to promote the Marxist policy of taking from the rich to give to the poor. Throughout the world, Americans are seen to be rich, obscenely rich. America's wealth has been the object of envy by those who tried to take it by force. The sustainability initiative also seeks to take America's wealth. Not by military force, yet. Take it they will, if they can, by instilling guilt and fear through politically correct propaganda. Individual Americans who have worked to achieve some measure of comfort and security are the target. It is they who will suffer the sting of sustainability.

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Col 117 – February, 1995

The Battle For Property Rights By Henry Lamb Property rights will define the 104th Congress. Property rights were never an issue in America until environmental laws and regulations intruded into rights that had been taken for granted for centuries. In less than 10 years, more than 500 grassroots organizations have sprung up across the country to defend private property rights. The fledgling movement was able to block nearly all of the legislation proposed by Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) in the 103rd Congress. Sixteen of the nation's largest, most powerful GAGs co-signed a letter sent to their combined membership which said that the property rights movement presented the most severe threat they had ever experienced. The GAGs are now waging a major propaganda war to diminish the effectiveness of the property rights movement. That war will underlie virtually every issue considered in the 104th Congress. As a young man in the 1950s, Miles Runk bought two lots on a Michigan Lake. He planned to sell one, someday, and use the money to build his retirement home. Every year, he paid his taxes, which increased steadily as houses began to appear. Two years before he planned to retire, his wife died of cancer. Miles had to sell his lots, the only undeveloped lots remaining on the lake, to pay his wife's hospital and funeral bills. Miles knew nothing of the wetlands laws which had evolved since 1972, until he discovered that neither he, nor anyone else, could ever build anything on his lots. He could not sell his property. He spent the last two years of his life trying to convince the government that his property had been taken from him by the wetland law. The property rights movement believes that if the government declares that Miles' wetland lots have to be preserved for the greater public good, then the Constitution requires the government to pay just compensation. The GAGs disagree. Sierra Club spokesperson, Joe Turner, in an extensive, five-part propaganda piece published on the Internet, sets forth the GAG arguments: "Takings bills would...force us to pay polluters not to pollute." A "takings" occurs when private property is rendered valueless by government action. Historically, the exercise of eminent domain has honored the principle of compensation for public use of private property. Environmental laws, however, rarely use private property for a tangible purpose such as a highway. The property is simply "preserved" for the benefit of the public. Had Miles' property been needed for a highway, the government procedure would have not only offered payment, it would have paid Miles' legal fees as well. In environmental regulatory takings, the responsibility for compensation is shifted to the property owner. The government will not pay unless forced to pay by a court. In a case very similar to Miles', David Lucas spent years, and more than $1 million to force the government to pay for two lots in South Carolina on

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which he was forbidden to build. The property rights movement says the government must bear the responsibility of paying for all property taken for public benefit, including wetlands and critical habitat. The Sierra Club says this position is "...a radical new interpretation of the Constitution." Turner says, "This assault is driven by a desire to boost private profits at the public's expense - not by a wish to defend property rights." Why should Miles Runk be deprived of his investment, and his profit, and pay taxes on the property from which, not he, but the public, benefits? If the public gets the benefit, why should the public not bear the expense?

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Col 118 – February, 1995

When Does a "Takings" Occur? By Henry Lamb Annie Laurie James' 900-acre farm provided a good living for her family for three generations. The Obion River borders the farm, and some of the best crops in the county were grown on her river-bottom ground - until wetlands became a prized "public" resource. Annie was forced to sign over to the government in a perpetual easement, 149 acres of her farm. No, she was not paid, and in fact, she must continue to pay taxes on the 149 acres. This "compromise" was reached to avoid prosecution by the government and a law suit by a Green Advocacy Group (GAG), for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act. Nearly 17% of Annie's farm was "taken" for public benefit. But, since she retained the use of 83% of her property, the law says she is not entitled to compensation. The law is not clear on exactly how much property, or value, must be taken before compensation is required. One of the property rights bills introduced in the last congress would trigger compensation at a 50% reduction in value. The Sierra Club, and other GAGs, bitterly oppose this idea, on the grounds that the heavy expense required would curtail environmental regulations. Government cannot afford to pay for property taken by regulation, therefore, the property would not be regulated. Many property rights advocates contend that any property taken by government should be compensated from the first dollar lost. Private property is not limited to wetlands and habitat for endangered species. If the government assumes the power to control privately-owned wetlands, which it has done, it can also control dry land, or farm land, or any other land it chooses. If the government can control privately-owned land, it can control any other privately-owned property it chooses, also. The law now allows the government to force a landowner to leave privately-owned property undisturbed, for the benefit of endangered species. Thousands of acres of privately-owned timber cannot be harvested, because of the spotted owl, or a woodpecker, or a bear. The same authority would allow the government, should it choose to do so, to declare spare bedrooms to be critical habitat for the homeless. If the government can force a landowner to provide habitat for owls, then the government can also force a homeowner to provide habitat for the homeless. Just compensation is the only effective restraint that prevents government from taking all private property. Rather than confront these difficult issues head-on, the GAGs have chosen to redirect the debate in an effort to distort the issues and discredit their opposition. The Sierra Club says that the property rights movement is "...a powerful coalition led and financed by huge corporate polluters." Their propaganda says, "Takings proponents are extremists who seek special privileges. They want to do whatever they please no matter how it affects their neighbors."

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Both assertions miss the truth by a country mile. The Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO) began raising the property rights issue in 1987. Since then, more than 500 grassroots organizations have formed and created a spontaneous movement that is empowered by voters, not dollars. Of all the grassroots organizations in the movement, perhaps one has an annual budget of a million dollars. A few have achieved a $100,000 budget. But the vast majority work with volunteers, and very little money. The Sierra Club, by comparison, and its legal defense fund, had an annual budget of $49 million in 1990 (last available reports). Much of their money comes from the government as payment to their attorneys for litigating law suits they initiate. The sixteen GAGs that sent a joint letter to their combined membership, urging them to oppose property rights legislation, have a combined annual budget approaching $500 million, contributed by large corporations and foundations. Sixteen GAGs, armed with $500 million per year, oppose property rights protection. Five hundred property rights organizations, with less than one-tenth the money, are promoting property rights protection.

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Col 119 – February, 1995

Property Rights Abuse By Henry Lamb The Sierra Club, according to Joe Turner, says that property rights proponents are "extremists" who "...want to do whatever they please, no matter how it affects their neighbors." HOGWASH! Property rights proponents are, most often, property owners who are very sensitive to the impact of neighbors' activity on property value. Consequently, they are likely to be conscious of the impact their activity may have upon their neighbors. The privileges that accompany property rights stop at the point of infringement upon a neighbor's rights. That potential conflict is inherent in the concept of private ownership of property. The reality of that conflict is the reason for the judicial system. When the exercise of one person's rights infringes upon and damages another person, the law provides for recovery. Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) have introduced a radical new interpretation of property rights. They contend that "biodiversity" has inherent rights equal to humans. The Endangered Species Act, and Wetlands policy create a boundary around the alleged rights of biodiversity and, they contend that human activity which infringes upon these alleged rights should be prevented. Humans who intrude into a critical habitat, or a wetland, should be punished and required to restore biodiversity to its condition prior to human activity. GAGs contend that proposed property rights protection laws would "...force us to pay polluters not to pollute." Property owners should be able to do whatever they please with their property, so long as their activity does not damage others. If others are damaged, the law has always provided for recovery. The radical GAG interpretation means that should a landowner choose to harvest timber from his own property, that the government has designated a critical habitat, the landowner is a polluter. The landowner's expectation of compensation for not harvesting his timber, is twisted by the GAGs into extortion payments to the would-be polluter not to pollute. Such a radical interpretation of the simple concept of property ownership rights is a scandalous abuse of the property rights principle. Such distortions confuse rather than clarify the real debate between public and private resources. The GAGs have attempted to build a psychological temple around biodiversity, and elevate its importance above all other values. To them, property rights are but an obstacle to be removed in the construction process. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) further distorts the property rights issue with an outrageous interpretation of the Republicans' Contract With America. Erik Olsen, NRDC's Senior Attorney, says, "The private property it would protect belongs to polluters." He also objects to: allowing industry scientists to participate on review boards; allowing landowners to sue to recover damages; and to requiring the plaintiff to pay legal fees for the defendant when the plaintiff loses.

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The NRDC insists that its scientists sit on review boards, but would not allow the regulated industry to be represented. The NRDC is quick to file third-party law suits, and bill the government for legal fees, whether they win or lose, but would not allow landowners to sue. The NRDC does not want to be held financially accountable for the frivolous law suits it files for no purpose other than to clog the system and to delay progress. The NRDC is a $23 million per year GAG that orchestrated the Alar hoax that cost the apple industry hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the Sacramento Bee, they have also provided "questionable" data in a petition to list the gnatcatcher as an endangered species. The petition blocked development in 400,000 acres of Southern California until a judge unraveled the deceptions. The GAGs, which property owners have supported for years, are largely responsible for the erosion of property rights in America. Now, GAGs are leading the battle to defeat efforts to restore property rights.

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Col 120 – February, 1995

Whoever Controls the Land Controls the Wealth By Henry Lamb The land and the natural resources it contains are the source of wealth. The battle to control land use is not new. It is being waged, however, for a new purpose. The current battle for land use control by the government is orchestrated by Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), and is pursued in every state and in every nation. The new purpose is to protect biodiversity; the inevitable result is the control of all sources of wealth. The battle between private property rights and the environment is a relatively new phenomenon in America. It has been underway for most of the century, but has only recently been noticed in America. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was organized in 1961, with Prince Philip as its leader. It was an outgrowth of the British Flora and Fauna Society and was created to bring more money and visibility to their efforts to protect flora and fauna (i.e. the environment, and now biodiversity) throughout the British Empire. Their primary method of protection was the creation of parks and reserves, now referred to as "protected areas". Africa and India were prime targets. The WWF simply identified an area to be protected, and the British Crown declared it to be a protected area, and designated the WWF as the manager. Stories abound about local people being removed from the area, often by force, and denied any use of the area or its resources. The land, and its resources, were used by and for the benefit of the manager, and the government that controlled it. To create a broader global appeal, another organization was established in 1948, three years after the formation of the United Nations, called the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). A direct linkage of leadership is traceable from the Flora and Fauna Society to the WWF, and on to the IUCN. The IUCN today is unique in that it boasts 68 sovereign nations as members, along with 743 Government Agencies and Green Advocacy Groups. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. State Department, and the U. S. Agency for International Development are listed as contributors to the IUCN's $53 million 1993 budget. Jay Hair, President of the National Wildlife Federation, is also the current President of the IUCN. It was the IUCN that first proposed the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1981. The IUCN and the WWF developed most of the propaganda used by GAGs to promote biodiversity protection. It is the IUCN that provides the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other UN agencies, with policy direction. Through the IUCN's global network of GAGs, there are plenty of foot soldiers to lobby Congress, and state legislatures, file lawsuits, write press releases, and organize protest demonstrations for the media. It is the expressed objective of the IUCN, the WWF, UNEP, UNDP and their puppet GAGs to control the use of all resources, which requires control of the land and water which contain those resources. Land that is privately owned and privately controlled is an obstacle that must be

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overcome before their objective can be realized. In many countries, land use can simply be decreed by government. In America, the Constitution prevented government confiscation of private property for 200 years. Since the 1970s, though, government has followed the strategies of the IUCN, and expanded its control of the use of land through regulations. Land ownership is meaningless, if another person (or government agency) controls the use of it. The wealth, and potential wealth contained in the land belongs to the person (or government agency) that controls it; not to the person who holds the deed, and pays the taxes. Private property rights means the right to control the USE of land and the resources it contains. That concept exercised by Americans has produced wealth and prosperity never before imagined - as well as the world's healthiest environment. The concept of private property rights cannot coexist with the concept of global protection of biodiversity and the sustainable use of its components. The IUCN concept requires a government to regulate and enforce "protection" and to define "sustainable use". If the IUCN objective is realized, control will be in the hands of a UN agency, dominated by the IUCN. The inevitable consequence will be the loss of private property rights and the opportunity to convert resources to prosperity.

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Col 121 – March, 1995

The Green Party Platform By Henry Lamb At the core of all conflict between Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs)) and those who oppose their policy proposals, is a fundamental difference in values. That difference is stated quite succinctly by the Green Party: "We must change our viewpoint from a homocentric one to an ecocentric one, and at once." Deep ecology literature uses the terms "Anthropocentric" (i. e. human-centered) and "Biocentric" (i.e. nature-centered). What is meant by "change our viewpoint" is clarified by eight principles in the Green Party Platform:

1. The well being of life on earth has value that is independent of its usefulness to human kind. 2. The richness and diversity of life has value in and of itself. 3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. 4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease in human population. The flourishing of non-human populations requires such a decrease. 5. Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening. 6. Basic economic, technological, and ideological structures must be changed. 7. The ideological change is mainly appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. 8. Those who agree have an obligation to try to implement the necessary changes.

Who agrees? Vice President Al Gore agrees passionately, according to his book, Earth in The Balance. As a part of his reinvention of government, the Ecosystem Management Policy was devised, in which the EPA decided to put ecosystem protection on a priority level equal to the protection of human health, according to EPA documents. Interior Department documents instruct employees to consider humans as a "biological resource" in all ecosystem management activities. Ecosystem management is a fundamental concept of the "Wildlands Project", proposed by Earth First! founder, Dave Foreman. The project proposes that at least half of all land be restored to wilderness, and that half of the remaining half be buffer zones in which government-managed activity such as farming, mining, logging, and recreation could occur. Humans would occupy the remaining 25% in "islands of human habitat", surrounded by wilderness where non- human populations could flourish. The Convention on Biological Diversity, now being promoted by the administration and GAGs, requires the creation of "protected areas", and holds up the "Wildlands Project" as the ideal to be followed.

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John Davis, Editor of Wild Earth, which published the Wildlands Project, says, "People would not be required to relocate if they gave up motors, guns, and cows," which is what principle # 7 means in the Green Party Platform. It is also a realistic description of what is meant by the term sustainable development. Maurice Strong, founder of the United Nations Environment Programme, (the UN agency responsible for implementing the Convention on Biological diversity) has publicly denounced as NOT SUSTAINABLE such things as air conditioning, suburban housing, convenience foods and fossil fuels. The Green Party and other GAGs believe that improving the human standard of living diminishes the standard of living for non-human biodiversity. The processes that improve the standard of living for humans are the "economic, technological and ideological structures" that must be changed, according to principle # 6. The Green Party, now very active in California, Chicago, and other urban centers, and the major GAGs, such as the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, and others are waging an all-out assault on the structures they want changed.

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Col 122 – March, 1995

The Green Party Platform: Economic Structures Under Siege By Henry Lamb The foundation upon which the world's most prosperous economy has risen is private property. By contrast, state ownership of property (socialism) and state control of private property (fascism) are economic structures which have proven to be cataclysmic failures. The Green Party and major Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), however, ignore the failures of both socialism and fascism and continue to promote policies to change the American economic structure based on private property, to a structure based on state ownership and control. The Wilderness Act of 1964 preserved 9 million acres as wilderness. In 30 years, officially designated wilderness area has grown to more than 100 million acres. Official "protected areas" in North America represent 12.6% of the total land area, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The Global Biodiversity Assessment, required by the Convention on Biological Diversity, calls for the implementation of a plan that would preserve 50% of the land area, and control another 25%. Environmental policies, particularly those relating to endangered species and wetlands, have given government effective control over virtually all private property, and GAGs continue to lobby for more government control and more publicly-owned land. In their wisdom, Jefferson, Madison and their colleagues, erected a barricade between private property and government confiscation when they wrote the Fifth Amendment, which requires just compensation when government finds it necessary to "take" private property. GAGs have so skillfully written environmental laws and regulations that private property rights are completely ignored when environmental policy is enforced. Infringement of private property rights by the federal government provided powerful motivation to voters who so dramatically shook-up Washington in the last election. The Sierra Club in particular, and other GAGs are mobilizing their vast resources to bypass the new Congress and pressure the Gore-Clinton Administration to implement GAG policy proposals 'administratively,' by Executive Order. The economic structure is also besieged by a rapidly expanding stealth taxing policy. In 1960, 31.8% of the national income was consumed by taxes (federal, state, & local). This year, 44.2% of national income will be taken by government in direct taxes, according to Roger E. Meiners and Roger Miller of Clemson University. Since 1960, in addition to the 39% increase in direct taxation, federal mandates, mostly environmental regulations, take an additional 20% of the national income. Stunned by the election results, President Clinton rationalized that his economic successes had not yet reached the average voter. What he fails to see is the fact that low inflation rates are overwhelmed by expanding tax demands. One need not be a Wall Street analyst to recognize that a $10,000 salary in 1960, which provided the earner with $6,820.00 of spendable income, would have to swell to $19,000 in 1994 to produce the same amount of spendable income. With

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inflation factored in, even at a most conservative rate estimate of 3.3%, the $10,000 salary in 1960 would have to rise to $30,000 in 1994 - just to retain the same standard of living as in 1960. Inflation has been higher than 3.3%, and when coupled with expanding tax policies, the average voter is working harder, earning more, and ending up with less money than ever before. The average voter is not impressed with the Administration's statistics that say the economy is better. The tax policy has expanded largely due to unfunded Federal mandates. The feds pass the law, and require the state and local government to impose the tax. To the wage earner, a tax is a tax is a tax. The Environmental Conservation Organization joined a national effort to ban unfunded federal mandates. The new congress has agreed to bring the issue to a vote. Not surprisingly, GAGs support unfunded federal mandates. They are systematically urging their members to oppose both unfunded mandate legislation and private property protection legislation. These actions put the Green Party and highly respected GAGs squarely in the corner of government control and ownership of property - including 64.2% (or more) of private income. The intrinsic value of biodiversity, as alleged by the Green Party and the GAGs, is not sufficient justification to change our proven economic structure based on private property, to a structure based on government ownership and control, especially since history has already relegated such structures to the garbage heap of failure.

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Col 123 – March, 1995

The Green Party Platform: Technology Under Siege By Henry Lamb The Convention on Biological Diversity uses the term sustainable development. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Charter says its purpose is to assure resource use according to the principle of sustainable development. The Green Party Platform calls for a change in the structure of technology. These are simply politically correct euphemisms for the expressed objective of shutting down modern industrial technology. It is one thing to talk about returning America to a pre-Columbian condition, as do the proponents of the Wildlands Project. It is quite another thing to adopt public policy that will result in pre-Columbian lifestyles. Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) rarely promote the destruction of technology directly. Instead, they promote legislative or regulatory protection from some alleged disaster. The last thirty years is strewn with the wreckage of industrial technology, destroyed unnecessarily because the public and legislators were panicked into action by questionable and often outright deceptive claims of imminent disaster. DDT, asbestos, PCBs, Dioxin, CFCs, and Alar are but a few of the industrial technologies that litter recent history - unnecessarily. Most Americans still believe these to be dangerous substances, despite a preponderance of scientific evidence to the contrary. Sixty Minutes was quick to proclaim Alar to be a deadly chemical sprayed on apples, based on a flawed study produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). They have yet to report the findings of Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, who reported that for a human to consume the doses used in the NRDC study, a person would have to eat 28,000 pounds of apples per day, each day for 70 years. For several years, GAGs were content to target a single substance and wage a propaganda and political campaign until the substance was banned. Now they have become impatient, and are targeting entire industries. For several years, GAGs have claimed that dioxin is a deadly killer. It was the presence of dioxin that caused the evacuation of Love Canal and Times Beach, Missouri. Scientific fact, however, has not cooperated with GAG claims. No one has yet found a single cancer death attributable to dioxin. The government official who ordered the evacuation of Times Beach later told a St. Louis newspaper that the exercise had been unnecessary. Dr. Bruce Ames, a noted cancer researcher, says that a single beer produces a cancer risk 1,000 times greater than the risk from dioxin faced by the people in Times Beach. Nevertheless, GAGs have now focused on the chlorine industry. Greenpeace and the NRDC, strongly supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund, WWF), claim that chlorine results in increased dioxin levels accumulating in body fat which results in increased health risks. Dozens of scientific studies challenge the GAGs' conclusions. Peru listened to the GAGs' recommendations, and stopped using chlorine in public water supplies. A

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Cholera epidemic was the immediate result. A million cases, and nearly 10,000 deaths occurred before the epidemic was brought under control by reintroducing chlorine. Last year, Congressman Bill Richardson (D-NM) introduced two bills to ban the use of chlorine in America. Greenpeace and the NRDC, with extensive cooperation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are preparing another campaign to ban all uses of chlorine -including the disinfectant of public water supplies. The chlorine industry is under heavy siege. The energy production industry is an even bigger prize. The use of fossil fuel has been declared not sustainable by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). GAGs have already destroyed the nuclear power industry in America. Every single power generating permit application in recent memory has been challenged by GAGs and many have been withdrawn to avoid costly court battles. Every single attempt to find new oil and coal reserves has met the same fate. Many energy reserves have been declared to be "wilderness," or "protected areas," forever unavailable. Projected energy demand outstrips projected supply around the year 2000. If all environmental restrictions were lifted today, the industry could not build fast enough to keep pace with the need. To further burden the energy production industry, GAGs, supported by Al Gore and UNEP, have proposed consumption taxes on fossil fuel energy. The attack on energy is to protect the planet from alleged global warming, a popular, but scientifically unsound hypothesis based on computer models, which is not supported by actual scientific, historical records. When the Green Party says it is necessary to change the structure of technology, it means to destroy technology, to insure that humans do not have the capability of infringing on the rights of non-human populations.

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Col 124 – March, 1995

The Green Party Platform: Ideology Under Siege By Henry Lamb If there is an identifiable "American" ideology, it would include the idea of individual freedom, individual responsibility, freedom to choose religious precepts, the right to own property and use the resources it contains, the right to privacy, to speak freely, and the right to defend one's person, family, and property. These ideas are among the basic human rights agreed to and accepted by the individuals who carved America out of the wilderness. These ideas constitute the foundation of American ideology. The American ideology is a structure the Green Party says must be changed. The problem with American ideology is that it evolved around respect for and appreciation of the value of human life. The Green Party embraces an ideology which neither respects nor appreciates human life more than any other life form. In fact, the biocentric ideology holds that all life has equal intrinsic value. A human life has no more value than the life of a cockroach, or the life of a rattlesnake. It is this biocentric ideology that must replace the American ideology, according to the Green Party and the proponents of deep ecology. Ideology, like religion, is a matter of faith. It is a matter of what one chooses to believe. Baptists believe immersion is necessary for salvation. Methodists believe a few drops will do the job. Jews believe that neither is required, but all believe that the Kingdom of God - has already come, or is at hand, or will be experienced in the afterlife. Biocentrists believe that the Kingdom of God is in reality, the Kingdom of Nature. Christians believe salvation occurs when one accepts on faith the reality of God, and demonstrates belief through behavior consistent with moral principles prescribed by Christian doctrine. Biocentrists believe "awareness" occurs when one accepts the Kingdom of Nature, or gaia, as the source of life, and demonstrates that belief through behavior consistent with the moral principles prescribed by biocentric doctrine. People are converted to biocentrism in much the same way they are converted to any other religion. First, there is a declaration of a supreme authority. Then, identification of a specific course of required action. Next comes a promise of unparalleled reward for taking that action, and a threat of unimaginable horrors if that action is not taken. Biocentrists identify gaia as God. Their course of action is the green agenda, as summed up in the new term "sustainable development". A healthy, sustainable planet is the reward, and gloom, doom, death and destruction are certain if the world fails to convert. Biocentrists are not content to simply preach their gospel, and let people decide for themselves whether to believe or not. While they gladly accept all converts, they expect their congregation

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to help impose their belief system on everyone else by supporting legislative proposals to achieve their objectives. The proposal to convert half the continent to wilderness, the proposal to ban chlorine and proposals to eliminate the use of fossil fuels all seek to impose the biocentric ideology by law. As with most religions, guilt and fear are more powerful persuaders than are promises of rewards. The biocentric ideology is no exception. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), plays to the guilt emotion by using gut-wrenching photographs of tortured animals to shame people into submission. Greenpeace has paid hunters to torture baby seals and other animals while they film fund-raising footage. The Earth Island Institute ruined the American tuna fleet with manufactured footage of bloody dolphin deaths which they portrayed as "typical" tuna harvests. Fact, especially scientific fact, is not necessary to justify any religious claim. The Convention on Biological Diversity specifically says that the absence of scientific certainty shall not be a reason to postpone action. In any religion, a proposition becomes a religious truth when a person accepts it as such. Once accepted, a religious truth is rarely shaken by argument, evidence or fact. Once a person accepts the biocentric idea that a laboratory mouse has as much right to live as a human, then the same right has to be extended to wolves, grizzlies, cockroaches and rattlesnakes. Humans who dishonor the rights of non-humans are heathen to the biocentric faithful. Heathen are unenlightened, and must be forced to comply through force of law. The Green Party, fully supported by well-funded national and international GAGs, are working to impose their law in order to effect the changes in ideology called for in their platform.

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Col 125 – April, 1995

The Global Environmental Agenda By Henry Lamb Until a few years ago, most Americans were proud to participate in the "environmental movement." Even when spotted owls were given nearly 6,000 acres each, and loggers were given the boot - most Americans assumed it was necessary. But when forest fires near Yellowstone ravaged an area the size of Denmark - because it was good for the environment - many people began to wonder. When homeowners in Southern California were forced to watch their homes burn to the ground because they were not allowed to plow a fire-break through a rat burrow - many people began to really wonder. When Ming-Lin's tractor was arrested, confiscated, and sued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because it accidentally ran over a rat - people began to wonder if the environmental movement was on the right track. What many Americans have suspected is now confirmed: the environmental movement was hijacked. The track has been switched and a new crew is in control. Originally, the movement was a network of small, local organizations working to clean up the neighborhood and promote laws to stop pollution. Today, the global environmental agenda is a multi-billion dollar business directed by a handful of international non-government organizations (NGOs), using the United Nations to transform the world. The hijacking occurred in the late 1970s and early '80s. Few Americans were even aware that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) proposed a treaty on Biodiversity in 1981. It took 13 years to get the treaty signed by 150 nations attending the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. But since 1992, the treaty has become international law and the entire global environmental agenda is about to be published. The Biodiversity treaty requires the development of a GBA - Global Biodiversity Assessment (Article 25). Immediately after the Earth Summit, before the treaty had been ratified by any nation, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the massive GBA with $2 million from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The document is scheduled to undergo peer-review in February, 1995 and be published in the summer. Four of the 12 sections of the GBA were "obtained" and unauthorized summaries were developed. Americans are in for a drastic shock. The GBA will become the official document from which the regulations for the Biodiversity treaty will be developed. Section 9 of the GBA says the root causes of the problem the treaty is designed to fix are: (1) Human social organization (2) Growth of human population and over-consumption of resources (3) World trade (4) Inadequate taxes on resource use (5) Unequal ownership, management, and flow of benefits

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To solve the environmental problems, these five root causes must be eliminated. To begin with, the document says biodiversity (bugs, trees, snakes, and lizards) must be given legal rights to "straighten out the principle that biodiversity is not available for uncontrolled human use." From there, the document discusses the need to restructure our system of land use to require any resource user to justify the need for the use, and to prove that the proposed use would not harm biodiversity. In other words, the GBA recommends land-use policies that would require a land owner to ask the government for permission to cut a tree dig a ditch, plant corn, or to use the land in any way at all that may alter biodiversity. The government, of course, could say no, or say yes, providing that the owner follows the government's management dictates. Agriculture must be totally transformed. The GBA says that agriculture must return to the days when no chemical fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, or hybrid seed were used. Fossil-fuel-driven tractors are taboo, and irrigation must be stopped. Over-consumption must be curtailed. Such things as air-conditioning, suburban homes, convenience foods and fossil-fuel motors are all examples of over-consumption. World trade introduces undeveloped nations to consumerism and addicts people to "unsustainable" lifestyles, so it too, must be transformed. Unequal ownership and benefits for biodiversity are to be adjusted through what is called "internalization" of costs, which means resource taxes to transfer wealth to developing countries. The global environmental agenda intends to transform the world into villages within "bioregions" in which people are dependent upon muscle power to produce their food using only the tools they can make without industrial technology. Bizarre? You bet! The entire agenda is described in vivid detail in the Global Biodiversity Assessment coming soon to a government official near you!

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Col 126 – April, 1995

The Global Environmental Agenda: How Can It Happen? By Henry Lamb The global environmental agenda is being implemented every day, and America is paying much of the bill. In 1993 alone, America contributed $646 million to 34 international organizations involved with some phase of the implementation process, according to the U.S. State Department. At least $1.2 million went to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the non-government organization that initiated the agenda. Another $22 million went to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which authorized the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) and will administer the Biodiversity Treaty. A whopping $123 million went to the UN Development Program (UNDP) that is developing, and will administer the Sustainable Development Treaty. American tax dollars are paying the very people who are hell-bent on reducing America's standard of living by shutting down the industries that produce consumer goods. To stop over-consumption in America and other developed countries, treaty proponents intend to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of fossil fuel energy and man-made chemicals, both essential ingredients in all manufacturing processes. The people American tax dollars pay promote government control of all land use, and intend to impose a land-use system that requires all resource use, even on private lands, to be permitted and regulated by government. How can it happen? The three primary institutions that initiated the global environmental agenda, and provide the on-going direction, are: (1) the IUCN, (2) the WWF (World Wide fund for Nature, formerly the World Wildlife Fund), and (3) WRI - World Resources Institute. These three non-government organizations (NGOs) provide the strategies that are carried out by thousands of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) around the world. In America, major groups such as the National Wildlife Federation (whose president, Jay Hair, is also president of the IUCN), the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Greenpeace, the Wilderness Society and others, collect contributions from unsuspecting citizens, then lobby Congress and state legislatures, produce propaganda for schools and the media and continually push the agenda that originates in the international community. The leaders of these GAGs take turns serving in highly influential government positions. Russell Train headed WWF-USA before he went to the Environmental Protection Agency, when he left, he tapped his GAG colleague, Bill Reilly, to take the EPA job, and Train returned to head a subsidiary GAG. Train also hand-picked Gustave Speth to head the WRI. Speth's chief policy analyst was Rafe Pomerance. After the Clinton/Gore election, Speth moved to head the UNDP, and his assistant, Rafe Pomerance, moved to the U.S. State Department in charge of international environmental issues. Little wonder that the U.S. gave the UNDP $123 million in 1993. Top level positions in the State Department, Office of Management and Budget, Department of

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Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, departments, and commissions are filled with people who came directly to their government jobs from a leadership position in a GAG. Jessica Tuchman Matthews moved from President of WRI to Deputy Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs. Thomas Lovejoy moved from the WWF to the Department of Interior. George Frampton moved from head of the Wilderness Society to head the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Brooks Yeager moved from lobbyist with the National Audubon Society to the Department of Interior. Bruce Babbitt moved from head of the League of Conservation Voters to Secretary of Interior. The people who dreamed up the global environmental agenda are now the government officials whose job is to implement the agenda. The IUCN is a unique organization. Its 806 members include 100 government agencies in 68 nations, 53 international NGOs, and 618 GAGs. Their $53 million budget includes not only the $1.2 million from the U.S. State Department, but contributions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as well. In the mid 1980s, the Tides Foundation funded the Institute for Global Communications (IGC) which set up a worldwide computer network among the GAGs. More than 17,000 activists in 94 countries are now hooked up the IGC network. Strangely, the IGC had an exclusive arrangement with the IUCN and UNEP to provide all the communications arising from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and continues to feed IUCN strategies to member GAGs. When the IUCN decides that wetlands need to be protected, it puts its strategy on the IGC network and all the GAGs go to work promoting Wetlands. All the GAG officials in government begin developing wetland policies, and regulations. Before average people are aware that wetlands are no longer swamps, there is a new law, and people are going to jail. The entire global environmental agenda is now on the wire, and GAG officials at every level of government are busy developing policies, regulations, and laws to implement it. Americans, beware!

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Col 127 – April, 1995

The Global Environmental Agenda: A Closer Look By Henry Lamb The Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) initiated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is a massive document consisting of 12 sections, written by scientists and environmental activists around the world. It sets forth a gloomy picture of the world and calls for a major reorganization of societies, governments, institutions, and lifestyles. America is held up to be the example of what is wrong and what must be changed. The prescribed changes would transform America, and Americans, into a plight most of the world is struggling to escape. The rationale has a lot of currency, is believable, and is winning converts by the millions, especially among children and young people whose experience and education do not yet provide adequate defense. According to the GBA, the world has far too many humans in it (5.6 billion) and the population is expected to double in the next 60 years. The food and shelter demands of all those people are ravaging natural resources (biodiversity). Moreover, the people who live in America and other developed countries, are using far more natural resources than they need, thereby increasing the strain on biodiversity. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and their think-tank associates, civilization will inevitably collapse as resources are depleted. If humans survive at all, they will regroup in small colonies and revert to cave man lifestyles - unless...! The purpose of the GBA is to provide an alternative. The global environmental agenda is offered as the only alternative that can prevent the world from undergoing a cataclysmic collapse of the human society. First, biodiversity must be elevated to a status of equal value with human life, in law and in moral and ethical conduct. Human society must be reorganized around the principle of protecting biodiversity. Biodiversity is to be established in law as "communal property." Use of communal property is to be controlled by government. Laws governing resource use are to be developed on the "precautionary principle" which means that a resource user must prove a need to use the resource and prove that the use will not hurt biodiversity. The highest human objective is to protect biodiversity. Individual aspirations are to be suppressed in favor of "fair and equitable" distribution of resource benefits among all members of the global community. The time frame projected to achieve this transformation ranges from 50 to 200 years. One of the authors of the GBA says, "our goal should be staying the course, not setting a speed record." The machinery to achieve this transformation has been designed and is presently under construction in the form of international treaties, national laws and regulations, and propaganda campaigns being waged by proponents of the global environmental agenda. In the short term, the government authority is expected to be the United Nations. Maurice Strong, founding Director of the UNEP and Secretary General of both Earth Summits in 1972, and 1992, is campaigning to give the UN more global authority over environmental issues. He told the Swedish Royal Academy that "The 50th anniversary of the UN next year (1995) provides a unique opportunity to restructure and revitalize the UN...to prepare for the vastly increased role it must have as the primary multi-lateral framework of a new world order."

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UN authority, however, appears to be a transitional device to ultimately place governing authority in the hands of "Bioregional Councils," designated by - not the UN, but by the IUCN and its associates. The agenda is already being implemented around the world. Implementation is at a variety of stages on different continents. In America, it is just beginning. In South America, India, Africa, and Australia, implementation is much further along. Protected areas have already been established in many South American countries. In Costa Rica, 42% of the total land area is in preserves. More than 30% of the land in Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador is in preserves. These land preserves have blocked every possible route for a proposed railroad linking California to Chile, as well as prospective sites for a new sea-level canal to supplement the Panama canal. These protected areas, or preserves, are being linked into "Bioregions" which are administered by contract with NGOs. The WWF actively administers protected areas in South America, Africa, and India. Subsidiary organizations are created to administer smaller protected areas. And the development of bioregions is underway in America under the guise of ecosystem management. Even before the treaty was presented in Rio in 1992, a new organization was founded in the northwest called the Greater Ecosystem Alliance (GEA). Funded through the members of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, the GEA set out to map and inventory the Columbia River Basin, a 75,000 square-mile area reaching from British Columbia to Nevada. It is no coincidence that the GBA lists the Columbia River Basin as a high-priority bioregion. The global environmental agenda is being implemented all around us.

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Col 128 – April, 1995

The Global Environmental Agenda: A Better Way By Henry Lamb The global environmental agenda assumes the world is going to hell-in-a-hand basket. It further assumes the only salvation is a spectacular transformation of society that results in central planning, central control, central enforcement and "equitable distribution of resource benefits" among all the members of the global community. Both assumptions are dead wrong. Even if resources were being depleted faster than they can be regenerated, an international command-central is the worst possible way to correct the problem. In the first instance, the environmental horror stories are grossly exaggerated, according to hundreds of world-renowned scientists who signed the Heidleburg Appeal, which asked the world's governments not to rush into policies the need for which are unsupported by scientific evidence. Secondly, the very idea that any number of scientists, activists, politicians and gurus can actually "manage" biodiversity and 5.6 billion people, is aspiration to arrogance beyond the bounds of belief. A better way to deal with the many real problems that do exist is to build on the experience acquired so far: hold to the principles that have proved successful; reject those which have failed. Replicate those processes that produce positive results; eliminate those that do not. Identify problems accurately - and honestly - and unleash human creativity, intellect, and determination. Then, get out of the way. Free people solve problems that prevent them from satisfying their natural instincts. Regulated, or managed people do not. History is unmistakably clear on that fundamental principle. History makes it equally clear that regulated, or managed people, inevitably become the victims of inept managers. Not only is society devastated under managed regimes, natural resources are devastated as well. The global environmental agenda promises to inflict the worst of both outcomes on the entire world. There is a better way. America invented a better way by accident. Looking for nothing more than personal freedom, and willing to face the threats of a hostile biodiversity, free humans set out to solve the problems that stood between them and the satisfaction of their natural instincts. Nobody was in the way. Government had not yet grown to sufficient size and power to control resource use, confiscate profits, or chill the desire to succeed. America should lead the world in finding solutions to the real problems that limit human happiness. People in Africa need economic freedom, not ecology reserves. People in India need

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prosperity, not population control. People around the world need to see the American example of free people solving problems and producing prosperity. Freedom should be our number one export. When America sits at the international negotiating table, personal freedom expressed through free markets should be the first criterion for participation. Proposed treaties and agreements that tend to advance personal freedoms and free markets should be supported; those that tend otherwise should not. The first test of any treaty, whether on climate change, biodiversity, sustainable development, world trade, or any other subject, is: does it encourage free people to find solutions, or does it require government to find and impose solutions. If it empowers free people, it should move forward; if it empowers government and restricts free people, it should not. The global environmental agenda is designed to entangle free people in a web of expanding government empowerment. It blames free people for exaggerated or imagined ills, labels prosperity as over-consumption, condemns success, takes profits from productive people to pacify the poor, and seeks to prevent the poor from ever learning how to exercise their freedom to satisfy their own natural instincts. The global environmental agenda has been developed, and is being imposed upon much of the world with little fanfare in America. The spotlight of public debate must be illuminated. Those who believe that human life is more than a "biological resource" have a responsibility to inform, inspire, and recruit others to rise yet again to meet a new challenge that threatens personal freedom. We, the little people who pay the taxes and elect the leaders, must become informed, inspired, and insist that free people remain free to help the rest of the world discover what we found by accident.

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Col 129 – May, 1995

Off the deep end: "Free the Planet" By Henry Lamb For several years now, there has been a growing suspicion that the leadership of the environmental movement may be moving toward extremism. That suspicion is now confirmed. In fact, "off the deep end" may be the understatement of the year. Drawn by such prestigious sponsors as Greenpeace, Ralph Nader's U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and others, 1800 students assembled in Philadelphia recently to attend the "Free the Planet" conference. Carl Pope, President of the Sierra Club, told the students that their struggle in the current political environment, is the "greatest challenge that any generation has ever faced." The "Free the Planet Campaign" (FTPC) will be launched officially April 22, as a part of the Earth Day celebration. A key element in the campaign will be to collect a million signatures on a petition to present to Newt Gingrich on July 10. The petition will demand "25 sensible" actions to protect the environment. The "sensible actions" include such steps as: banning chlorine, banning all logging in old-growth forests, banning off-shore drilling, banning nuclear power, requiring 45 mpg cars, reducing carbon dioxide emission by 20%, and blocking legislation to protect property rights. "Hog calls to Congress" are scheduled on the 22nd of each month. The students are encouraged to call their Congresscritter to denounce "polluter pork" and end their calls with a loud "sooooey." The FTPC calls for an "Environmental Bill of Rights" that says "Wildlife, forests, mountains, prairies, wetlands, rivers, lakes, historic sites, urban parks, open space, oceans and coastlines are all part of our national heritage," which must be preserved. The fact that private owners of such properties may have other plans makes those private owners "polluters" who should be penalized. An Eco-Summit is planned in Washington in early April to coincide with the Senate debate on three key elements of the Republican Contract with America: property rights protection (HR925), suspension of regulations (HR450), and risk analysis (HR1022). Greenpeace Executive Director, Barbara Dudley told the students they need to "go beyond legislation. We should be storming the castle right now!" The FTPC is planning massive boycotts of corporations which they claim are "greenwashing" America. DuPont, Exxon, Dow Chemical, Monsanto, and Texaco are specifically targeted, while corporations in general are under legislative attack. They intend to propose legislation that revokes corporate charters. Spearheaded by Peter Montague, Executive Director of the Environmental Research Foundation (funded by the Tides Foundation), the campaign seeks to exclude corporations from the protections of the Constitution, make corporate officers personally liable for environmental infractions, and limit the life of a corporation based on the corporation's

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environmental responsibility. The highlight of the Philadelphia conference was a street theater demonstration of students dressed up like corporate executives and politicians swapping fistfuls of money while other students held up a 5'by 8' "Declaration of Environmental Rights" on which was written:

•We have a right to a voice in the decisions that affect our future. •We have a right to take direct action when our voices are not heard. •We have the right to community and local control over the quality of our air, water, land and food. •We have the right to a biologically diverse world. •We have the right to a world where resources are fairly shared. •We have the right to an education that incorporates the principles of biological and social diversity. •We have the right to local, state, national and international laws that ensure environmental and social justice. •We have the right to break the law if the government conflicts with the principles of justice.

Environmental leaders who lead students into this kind of extreme thinking and action have indeed gone off the deep end. If the consequences were limited to a bunch of students dancing around the streets of Philadelphia, making fools of themselves no one would get particularly concerned. Students of every generation have performed similar rituals. It gets much more serious when the leadership of the same environmental groups are appointed to high government positions and charged with the responsibility of implementing their off-the-wall ideas as public policy.

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Col 130 – May, 1995

Off the deep end: Islands of human habitat By Henry Lamb Speaking of "off the deep end" ideas, imagine all the people in America herded into islands of human habitat scattered among vast reaches of wilderness connected by corridors of wilderness up to 300 miles wide. Here's how Science (the official journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) described the plan to establish "protected areas" in America: [It] "is nothing less than the transformation of America to an archipelago of human-inhabited islands surrounded by natural areas." The plan referred to here, first appeared in Dave Foreman's Confessions of an Eco-warrior, in which he described his dream of wilderness reaching from Mexico to New York, from Florida to the Columbia River in the great northwest. Foreman, of course, is the guy who founded the eco-terrorist group Earth First!, and who plea-bargained his way to a conviction for conspiracy to blow up power transmission lines. Foreman's dreams were given substance by Dr. Reed F. Noss, who, with a grant from the National Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy, developed what is called the "Wildlands Project." The plan is given greater substance by the Global Biodiversity Assessment which holds up the "Wildlands Project" as the ideal to be followed by the nations that ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity (Biodiversity Treaty). The treaty was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last year by a vote of 15-3, but was not ratified by the full Senate when information about the "Wildlands Project" was provided to key Senators. The treaty requires all nations to establish "protected areas" (article 8). "Protected areas" are not defined in the treaty, but the definition is quite explicit in the GBA, also required by the treaty (article 25). Not to be outdone by the Senate of the United States, the Department of Interior is implementing the plan without treaty ratification. Dr. Reed F. Noss, the guy who wrote the plan, is employed by the Department of Interior as one of three scientists who are writing the recommendations to be implemented as the result of the first year's operation of the National Biological Survey (now called the National Biological Service). Both Reed Noss, and Dave Foreman are members of the Advisory Board of the Greater Ecosystem Alliance (GEA) which has been working since 1992 in the Columbia River Basin conducting studies and surveys to create a 75,000 square-mile bioregion reaching from Canada to Nevada. Similar work is underway in the southwest, the northeast, in Appalachia, Florida, and the Great Plains. Under the guise of the National Biological Survey, and the Ecosystem Management policy, the "Wildlands Project" is being implemented in America. The "off-the-deep-end" idea of herding people into islands of human habitat is taking place every day. People who live in the Columbia River Basin are being forced out. A federal judge recently closed six national forests in the area in response to a law suit brought by Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs). Five hundred grazing permits, nearly 200 active mines, and all forestry

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operations must stop. The people whose livelihood depends upon cattle, mining, or logging must move out. Others, whose livelihood depends upon the payroll of the resource providers, must also move out. That, of course, is precisely the objective; move the people out so the land can be returned to wilderness. Reed Noss says: "the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans...." In his "Wildlands Project," he also says: "I would offer a more ambitious long-term goal...that at least 95% of a region be managed as wilderness. Nonetheless, half of a region in wilderness is a reasonable guess of what it will take...assuming that most of the other 50 percent is managed intelligently as buffer zones." It is not enough for these "off-the-deep-end" radicals to convert half the land area to wilderness; half of the remaining land area is to be used as "buffer zones" in which all resource use is subject to the approval of government. If this plan is realized, human populations would necessarily be squeezed into 25% of the land area that would truly be nothing more than islands of human habitat surrounded by wilderness.

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Col 131 – May, 1993

Off the deep end: Communal property By Henry Lamb Another off-the-deep-end idea: natural resources, including land, air, and water, are all "communal property" which cannot be "owned" by anyone. The use of any natural resource should be approved by government only after the user proves that the use is necessary, and that the use would do no harm to biodiversity. This idea underlies much of the current environmental law and regulations that ignore the individual land owner's right to use private property. Vince Halter has an ankle-deep, eight-foot wide stream on his property. A gravel bed developed and split the stream into two channels. Willows quickly grew on the gravel bed, clogging the stream and causing it to erode his pasture and farm land. Having owned the land for a number of years, and having seen similar events in the past, he knew how to remedy the problem. He sent a dozer into the stream to remove the gravel bed. All hell broke loose. The Corps of Engineers announced that Vince had polluted the "waters of the United States." Vince's horrible sins were then announced to other government agencies and environmental groups which were invited to comment on what should be done about Vince. The recommendations are still coming in. Vince could be fined as much as $25,000 per day, jailed, and required to rebuild the gravel bed in the center of the stream. The stream on Vince's property is not his, it is "communal property." The fish in the stream are not Vince's; they are "communal property." Vince will discover that the land adjacent to the stream is not his either because the Corps of Engineers can delineate wetlands or flood plains or riparian zones wherever it wishes and claim jurisdiction over the property Vince has paid for and on which he continues to pay taxes. The off-the-deep-end idea of communal property is at work in America despite its failure in every other nation that has tried to embrace it. Vince's stream is one of ten thousand examples of the communal property concept at work. When such examples do make the news, the land owner is cast as the villain for polluting or for destroying critical habitat, or fouling a scenic "viewshed." What is at stake is far more important than any single example, or any collection of horror stories. What is at stake is the foundation of the American economic system. The ownership of private property, including the use and control of natural resources on that property, is the foundation of all wealth. Humans have the unique ability to transform natural resources into goods and services that extend life, and make living infinitely more enjoyable. The off-the-deep-end crowd contends that the use of natural resources is destroying the planet and therefore must be stopped, or at least dramatically reduced, by heavy-handed government restrictions. Humans, like virtually all other species, do what comes naturally. Use of natural resources comes as naturally to humans as it does to any other species. When a natural resource is

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depleted, humans, as do virtually all other species, find alternatives, or they perish. Such is the law of nature. Nature has the ability to change, to come up with alternatives, to replenish itself, to adjust to the demands of any of the species it has provided. The idea that nature (biodiversity) must be managed by a small group of government experts is the elevation of arrogance beyond stellar measurement. Nevertheless, the "communal property" idea requires that a small group of government experts decide whether or not a private citizen may use a natural resource. Despite the pronouncements of the off-the-deep-end extremists, the planet is not doomed. Cancer does not lurk behind every man-made chemical. Cars are not causing global warming. And free-enterprise capitalism is not an instrument of death and destruction; it is the salvation of mankind because it is the natural extension of the laws of nature. It is the mechanism humans have developed naturally to satisfy their natural instinct to survive. What is unnatural is the effort to block human development, to stop evolution, to preserve biodiversity at a stage which a small group of government experts think is appropriate. "Communal property" is a man-made idea that Karl Marx, among others, championed as the way to equalize the distribution of resource benefits to all the people. The inherent, fatal flaw in this idea is the fact that nature made individuals - man made communities. Communities that suppress the natural rights of the individual in favor of the man-made rights of the community have historically enjoyed the same success recently demonstrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The idea of "communal property" in America is off the deep end.

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Col 132 – May, 1995

Off the deep end: Governance By Henry Lamb How are islands of human habitat governed so that communal property (natural resources) are grudgingly used and assure that the benefits are equally distributed to all people on the planet? The answer is a concept called "bioregionalism." Bioregions are enormous tracts of land, such as the Columbia River Basin, which frequently include several governmental jurisdictions and are defined by biological characteristics rather than by political boundaries. The Columbia River Basin reaches from Canada to Nevada and includes portions of Washington and Oregon as well as portions of western Montana. The objective of bioregional governance is "local control" of resources. To most people, local control means city councils, county commissions, state governors and legislatures and other forms of locally elected governments. The off-the-deep-end extremists have a different idea: "local control" means a bioregional council consisting of "stakeholders" in the bioregion, administered by a designated NGO (non-government organization). Bioregional regional governance is defined in Section 10 of the Global Biodiversity Assessment. It says the biodiversity should be granted legal status and imbued with legal rights, and that NGOs should be the primary mechanism to educate the stakeholders and enforce biodiversity protocols through the use of law suits in behalf of biodiversity. Off the deep end? It's happening. It is happening is South America, Africa, Australia and other nations around the planet. It is underway in America. The Greater Ecosystem Alliance (GEA) is an NGO that has been working in the Columbia River Basin since 1992. They are defining the bioregion and developing the Columbia Covenants - recommendations for resource use, or non-use. They are in line to be designated as bioregion administrators, should the biodiversity treaty ever be ratified in America. NGOs developed the concept of bioregionalism, developed the biodiversity treaty, developed the Global Biodiversity Assessment, and have developed an incredible network of thousands of NGOs around the world. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is a major international NGO that has several affiliated NGOs actually administering bioregions in other nations. Thomas E. Lovejoy, formerly an official of U.S. WWF (now an official with the Department of Interior) designed what is popularly called the "debt for nature swap." NGOs bought the debt of developing countries for as little as fifteen cents on the dollar. Then gave the notes to affiliated NGOs in the developing country which surrendered the notes to the local government at face value, exchanged in the form of land and government bonds. The process virtually gave NGOs millions of acres of land for a fraction of the land's value. The local NGO administers the bioregion according to the dictates of the international NGO that made it all possible. There are thousands of NGOs operating in America. The Pew Charitable Trust, one of 168 foundations that participate in the Environmental Grantmakers Association, provides millions of dollars to the Tides Foundation, which in turn, funds small NGOs that fan out across the country

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agitating in local communities to generate support for the off-the-deep-end ideas generated by the international NGOs. Frequently, these small NGOs are nothing more than two or three well-trained people who are the staff of a not-for-profit corporation called "friends of the whatever." They are paid to review building permits, Section 404 wetland applications, and other activity which they can protest or stop with a law suit. The Tides Foundation also funded the Institute for Global Communications (IGC) which is a global computer network that links 17,000 such activists in 94 countries. The IGC has an exclusive arrangement with the International NGOs and with the United Nations to communicate the international agenda to the NGO network around the world. NGOs, under the leadership of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the WWF, and the World Resources Institute (WRI) are preaching the off-the-deep-end gospel like missionaries around the world. They are winning converts in America by branding private property owners as polluters, claiming that any chemical made by man is causing cancer, and by perpetuating the myth that the sky is falling through the hole in the ozone layer. A growing number of the endangered human species is discovering the off-the-deep-end agenda of the extremists, and demanding that government pay more attention to the needs of people and less attention to bugs and lizards. Nature can take care of itself.

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Col 133 – June, 1995

Cosmolatry: the worship of gaia at the Temple of Understanding By Henry Lamb Follow this closely: the Temple of Understanding (TOU) was founded in 1960 by Juliet Hollister. In 1982, the UN formed the Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (GCPPD). The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) created a special Trust Fund to "work with networks set up by the GCPPD. (The US contributes more than $100 million annually to the UNDP.) In 1988, the TOU co-founded the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival in Oxford, England. A TOU brochure says: "The Temple of Understanding is a Non-Government Organization (NGO) affiliated with the United Nations. We sponsor monthly roundtables at the UN Headquarters featuring outstanding religious leaders and scholars. The TOU is working on a conference to incorporate the role of spiritual values at the United Nations and as part of the emerging new world order." James Lovelock was a featured speaker at the Oxford conference. According to Shared Vision, the official publication of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival, "Lovelock's contribution is to suggest...that life on earth regulates its environment as if it were one huge organism. The name given to the organism - and the idea - is that of Gaia, the Greek earth goddess...She is of this Universe and, conceivably, a part of God. On Earth She is the source of life everlasting and is alive now; She gave birth to humankind and we are a part of her." Twelve board members of the Temple of Understanding also sit on the Global Forum Council. Lovelock warned that if we continue polluting, "the temperature and sea level will climb decade by decade, until the world will become torrid and all but unrecognizable." He said global warming is like the first signs of a fever, and that humans are not allowing Gaia to recuperate. "She may be unable to relax because we have been busy removing her skin and using it as farm land, especially the trees and the forests." He predicted: "The human and political consequences of the two geocidal acts, forest clearance and suffocation by greenhouse gasses, will be the news that usurps the political agenda" The Temple of Understanding is housed in The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, New York. Its publication, Cathedral, says that the Cathedral "finds itself in the forefront of sacred environmental work. Now the National Religious Partnership for the Environment has the reach to serve over 100 million interfaith congregants on a regular basis." The Temple is aligned and "in harmony" with both the Theosophical Society and the Lucis Trust (formerly Lucifer Publishing Company) to promote the "Convergence" and the "New Genesis" which is an effort to amalgamate all the worlds religious beliefs into one, New Age religion based on the principles of Gaia. William Bryant Logan, Writer in Residence at the Cathedral, describes a St. Francis Day worship service: "Many of us who regarded ourselves as `serious' looked forward with fear to a kind of epic petting zoo that would trivialize both St. Francis and the great Gothic space.... I saw

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children lying in the laps of large dogs and a boy bringing his stuffed animals to be blessed. I saw the not-yet-famous elephant and camel march up the aisle.... It is equally appropriate to pray for the Earth, to adopt a pet, to organize to fight incinerators, to plan education in sacred ecology, or to lie down and admire the grass." Al Gore delivered the sermon at this particular worship service, in which he "called on the congregants to recognize that `God is not separate from the Earth'." Amy Fox, an Associate at the Cathedral, writes: "the fundamental emphasis is on issues of environmental justice, including air pollution and global warming; water, food and agriculture; population and consumption; hunger, trade and industrial policy; community economic development; toxic pollution and hazardous waste; and corporate responsibility. Fox describes the work of the Cathedral as a "single mission with two doors: those who are passionate about the natural world come in one door; those who care first about the human family come in the other door. They can no longer separate one question from the other. Paul Mankiewicz, co-head of The Gaia Institute, says they "encourage people to recognize the interpenetration of human and natural communities by recognizing the individuality of each and every being. He says that St. Francis insists "that we meet this wolf, this bird, and the leper, each as an individual." American tax payers send $100 million a year to the UNDP, which funds a special Trust to pay outfits such as the Temple of Understanding to conduct workshops and international conferences to promote Gaiaism as the religion of enlightenment in the New World Order. The school prayer amendment seems minuscule by comparison.

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Col 134 – June, 1995

Cosmolatry: the New Age By Henry Lamb The Rev. Dr. Thomas Berry is on the Board of Directors of the Temple of Understanding at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The Florida Catholic (Feb. 14, 1992) says Berry is "...perhaps the leading figure in the movement to preserve the environment." The National Catholic Reporter says Berry's book, The Dream of the Earth, "is the most important book published in this country right now. Berry is the acknowledged leader of a massive shift in consciousness as Christians begin to see the Earth as the revelation of God." In Context, a New Age magazine, considers Berry to be "...a pivotal thinker in the emergence of a spirituality of the Earth." Berry is trained in theology, anthropology and cultural history and has authored several books and papers, was head of the History of Religion Program at Fordham University, President of the American Teilhard Association, and founded the Riverdale Center for Religious Research. He is widely viewed as the "Pope," and leading spokesman of the New Age religion cosmolatry -which is the celebration and worship of gaia. What is cosmolatry? According to Berry, to save the earth from human exploitation, what is needed is "...the change from an exploitative anthropocentrism to a participatory biocentrism. This change requires something beyond environmentalism."

"We need to go to the Earth as the source whence we came and ask for its guidance. The sacred character of the natural world as our primary revelation of the divine is our first need, our second need is to diminish our emphasis on redemption experience in favor of a greater emphasis on creation processes."

Creation magazine says Berry's book "speaks of the need to recapture the unassimilated elements of paganism that can help us experience the spirit that is forming the new era and hear the voices of the Earth that is calling us into the future." "Writing in The Florida Catholic, Sister Chrysta Lerhinan calls Berry a "prophet." She says, "Berry proclaims that life systems formed on earth over the past 65 million years have begun a descent into degradation and possible extinction because of a deep cultural pathology of human greed and addiction. He [Berry] charges that Christianity, far from redeeming the situation, is partly responsible for it. He dismisses all religions as insufficient to remedy the disastrous situation of planetary sickness and death, posing instead an `ecozoic' period in which mankind heals its relation to the earth." A Winter Solstice celebration honored a poem by Thomas Berry (which was actually written for a celebration at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine). A newsletter of the Institute for Pastoral Ministries at St. Thomas University in Miami, Florida (Fall, 1992) describes the celebration: "It

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began with making a circle and visualizing light flowing through those in the circle. The Hindu sacred mantra was chanted - Om...Om...Om.... The spirits were then invoked, plant or animal. An example given was an invocation to the `O wise King Snake.' The ceremony was to restore the sense of spiritual connection with the rhythm of the Earth - and praise and thank Her, the Great Mother of us all." To many Americans, these ideas and rituals are lunacy. They are, however, very real, very powerful among the politically correct, and are very rapidly permeating "modern" religion, academia, and the official United Nations organizational structure. A course description from the Jesuit Seattle University entitled "Shamans and Systems" quotes from Berry's book: "What is this shamanic dimension?" The course seeks to answer this question "Drawing on images and insights from science, from the mystical and esoteric traditions, from shamanism, and from the New Age Movement...we will seek to define the nature of an emerging global spirituality (Seattle Summer schedule 1991, p15). Similar courses are offered by many leading colleges and universities. The gospel of theologian, Passionate Priest, The Rev. Dr. Thomas Berry is the official gospel of the Temple of Understanding at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Cathedral Dean, and President of the Board of Directors, The Very Rev. James Parks Morton, is also Co-Chair of the Global Forum Council, on which also serve 11 other Directors of the Temple of Understanding. The Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival was organized by the Temple of Understanding and co-sponsored by the UN's Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development which receives funds from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to which America contributes more than $100 million each year.

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Col 135 – June, 1995

Cosmolatry at the United Nations By Henry Lamb Meet Maurice Strong, perhaps the most influential individual behind the global environmental agenda. He was the Secretary-general of the first "Earth Summit" in Stockholm in 1972. He founded the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1973 and served as its first Executive Director. He was Secretary-general of the second "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. His hand, voice, and influence have shaped global, national, and even local environmental policies that affect every American. In addition to his official UN duties, he has served as President of the World Federation of United Nations Organizations, Co-chair of the World Economic Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, Trustee of the Aspen Institute; Director of the World Future Society; Director of finance of the Lindesfarne Association, founding endorser of Planetary Citizen, and founder of the Business Council for Sustainable Development. When the Rio Summit adjourned in 1992, Strong founded the Earth Council in Costa Rica. Back up to the Lindesfarne Association for which Strong was the Director of Finance. Lindesfarne is headquartered in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, along with the Temple of Understanding. (See column 134.) Lindesfarne is the publisher of G-A-I-A, A way of Knowing - Political Implications of the New Biology. James Lovelock, originator of the gaia hypothesis, is also a member of Lindesfarne. Strong owns a ranch in Colorado called Baca Grande. Larry Abraham and Franklin Sanders, in their book, The Greening, describe the ranch as "an international community of spiritualists, complete with monasteries, devotees of the Vedic mother goddess, amulet-carrying native American Shamans, and Zen Buddhists." On this ranch, the Lindesfarne Association built a Babylonian Sun God Temple. Strong's global exploits are driven by his deep convictions based in cosmolatry. Strong granted an interview with David Wood, a writer for West magazine. Strong described a novel he wanted to write about the future. The story is set in the World Economic Forum (which Strong Co-chaired). More than a thousand CEOs and Heads of State meet each year to discuss and plan the world's economic activity. What if, Strong asks, this forum decides that the only way the planet can survive is for the developed countries to reduce their consumption significantly. Continuing with his plot description, Strong concludes that the developed countries would not voluntarily reduce consumption. His novel would feature a secret society, not terrorists, but world leaders of business and government, who position themselves strategically in financial institutions, communications centers, regulatory agencies, commodity markets, in the media - wherever necessary - and jam the gears until industrialized civilizations collapse. Strong's ideas for a novel, expressed casually to a reporter, are not necessarily an actual action

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plan. His official, published words, however, are another matter. He told the Earth Summit in Rio: "It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmental [sic] damaging consumption patterns." In his introduction to Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World's Economy and the Earth's Ecology, Strong wrote: "This interlocking...is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life. He told the Swedish Royal Academy: "The 50th anniversary of the UN (1995) provides a unique opportunity to restructure and revitalize the UN...to prepare for the vastly increased role it must have as the primary multi-lateral framework of the New World Order." Strong has demonstrated an uncanny ability to translate his ideas into official policy. His ideas are the product of his religious convictions. His religion is cosmolatry - the worship of gaia.

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Col 136 – June, 1995

Cosmolatry: the worship of Gaia By Henry Lamb According to the dictionary, cosmolatry is "worship of the universe." Father Matthew Fox, founder of the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality, and publisher of Creation magazine, further defines the term: "the world is being called to a new `post-denominational,' even a `post-Christian' belief system that sees the earth as a living being - mythologically, as Gaia, Mother Earth - with mankind as her consciousness. Such worship of the universe is properly called cosmolatry." Those who have experienced the so-called `enlightenment' of gaia believe all existing religions can and should be folded into cosmolatry. Temple of Understanding literature boasts among its "founding friends": Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, H.H. the XIVth Dalai Lama, Madalyn Garabaldi, Sir Zafrulla Khan, Fr. Thomas Merton, Jawaharial Nehru, Tenko Nishida, H.H. Pope John XXIII, H.H. Pope Paul VI, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishman, Eleanor Roosevelt, H.E. Ambassador Zenon Rossides, Anwar-el-Sadat, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, President S. Zalman Shazar, and Secretary-General U Thant. Add to this gaia-stew one Southern Baptist Vice President, Al Gore, who delivered a sermon at the Temple in which he proclaimed that "God is not separate from the Earth!" This stellar crowd of gaia worshipers have the full force of the United Nations to help proclaim their gospel. The Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival (Both Senator Dave Durenberger and Representative James H. Scheuer have served on the Global Forum Council), in cooperation with the Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development give credence, stature, and funding to the missionary effort to take cosmolatry to the four corners of the earth. The sanctification of biodiversity through cosmolatry is an ingenious strategic move because it removes the necessity of proving anything. The protection of biodiversity becomes the religious duty of the enlightened. Non-compliance with the religious dogma will result in a hell far worse than Dante's: e.g. global warming with melting ice caps and rising oceans; a holey ozone layer through which UV rays will kill frogs, blind people and cover their bodies with deadly skin cancer; starving multitudes trying to scratch out survival from deserts created by unrepentant, heathen loggers. And the strategy is working. Belief in gaia is a matter of faith, as is "belief" in any other religion. There is an old Christian hymn that says: "you ask me how I know He lives - He lives within my heart!" There is no arguing with that kind of belief. No proof is necessary; no disproof is possible. The enlightened of gaia says "you ask me how I know global warming is real - I know within my heart." No proof is necessary; no disproof is possible. It is a matter of faith. The gaia crowd has gone one step further. The preamble to the Convention on Biological

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Diversity specifically states that the absence of scientific certainty shall not be a reason to postpone action in the face of a threat to biodiversity. The so-called, or alleged "threat" can be known "in the heart" of the enlightened. Moreover, through its incredible web of bureaucracies and organizations, this principle - called the Precautionary Principle - is being instilled into policies of international and national governments. Obvious scientific fact, as in the case of the actual scientific record of global temperatures, is being ignored while policies are shaped in response to the "in the heart knowledge" of the enlightened. No example is more striking than the banning of CFCs in response to the alleged ozone hole enlightenment. More insidious is the massive educational campaign that is underway in America and around the world to teach people that it is morally wrong to cut a tree or kill a predator. Children are continuously bombarded in school and in the media with the message of enlightenment of cosmolatry. So pervasive is the structure of the gaia crowd that thousands of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), funded profusely by highly respected philanthropic foundations such as the Pew Charitable Trust, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and many others, churn out mountains of propaganda for distribution through the schools and the media. The missionary strategy of cosmolatry is more sophisticated than the Christian Crusades or the Moslem jihad. There is no frontal attack. There is no time line for global conversion. There is only persistence and the multi-media campaign to convince the unenlightened that regardless of their religion, they are becoming obsolete unless they accept the understanding that God is revealed in creation and that in creation, all living things are "beings" equal in the eyes of gaia - God revealed. While adults struggle with issues such as property rights, wetlands, endangered species, and budgets, children - through elementary and secondary schools, as well as colleges and universities - are being taught that property rights cannot include natural resources, wetlands and endangered species and trees are sacred, and that budgets fueled by capitalist economies are destroying the planet. The New Age of cosmolatry is upon us, and is the solid foundation upon which the New World Order is being constructed.

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Col 137 – July 1995

Omnipotent Institutionus By Henry Lamb Janet Reno said that there should be no linkage between the Oklahoma City bombing and Waco because nothing could justify the horrible event in Oklahoma City. She is right; there is no justification for the Oklahoma City event. Nor is there any justification for the Waco event. Reno, of course, believes that Waco was justified. The perpetrators of the Oklahoma City event believe they were justified - therein lies the linkage. These two events, each justified in the mind of the perpetrators, are both horrible and neither is justified by any humane criteria of right and wrong or social justice. One event was perpetrated by individuals who are now pursued by the collective resources of the U.S. government. The other event was perpetrated by the U.S. government. The Oklahoma City perpetrators, if found, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as well they should be. The perpetrators of the Waco event, were found, and elevated in rank and pay. Why are the perpetrators of one hideous act rewarded, and the perpetrators of an equally hideous act considered to be the lowest form of criminal, worthy of the death penalty? The answer, of course, is that one perpetrator is the U.S. government; the other is a nobody. The U.S. government, particularly in recent years, has moved to a new plateau of maturity: omnipotent institutionus. In the historic cycle of governments, this stage of maturity inevitably precedes the final stage: institutionus overripus. Like the overripus stage in the relentless cycle of nature, governments too, can rot, decay, and become the fertilizer from which new beginnings sprout. The U.S. government, however, has a mutant gene: authority ultimous. This gene, like adrenalin in the human body, releases protectus libertus at the first signs of omnipotent institutionus. For more than 200 years, this mutant gene has thwarted every outbreak of omnipotent institutionus; it is likely to do so again. There is some cause, however, for cautious concern. This current outbreak suggests that the omnipotent institutionus bug has developed new, resistant strains, hell-bent on reaching the overripus stage. The bug has been striking in more subtle ways through a broader spectrum of targets. Ten years ago, the U.S. government decided to control private property because it contained water within 18 inches of the surface for seven days during the growing season. Omnipotent institutionus manifested itself in the federal "wetland" policy. Then the U.S. government decided to control the land which might be used by non-human species threatened by the human species. Omnipotent institutionus manifested itself again in the federal endangered species policy. In a first-time occurrence, omnipotent institutionus displayed its growing resistance. Officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) lashed out at the protectus libertus efforts of individuals who spoke against HUD's plans to control local neighborhoods. Similar displays of resistance are now appearing in the omnipotent institutionus' plans to access private

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electronic communications. Nowhere is the bug more visible than in the federal "seizure" policy. Private property can now be seized by the U.S. government on the suspicion that an offense may have occurred. Allowed by authority ultimous originally, to stem the flow of illegal drugs, the policy now reaches to computers owned by individuals who operate hobby bulletin boards, sports fishermen whose catch may not meet the size requirement, or to land owners whose property is coveted by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Guns, too, in the hands of authority ultimous, trigger a violent display of resistance by the omnipotent institutionus bug. Randy Weaver's shotgun barrel was suspected to be one-quarter inch shorter than the legal requirement (suspected because an agent of omnipotent institutionus provided the gun to Weaver). Weaver, exercising protectus libertus, was surrounded by the full force of the U.S. government, his wife and son shot dead, and he was hauled off to jail, later to be exonerated by a jury. Omnipotent institutionus, led by Larry Potts, was able to temporarily quash protectus libertus at the Weaver home. The same Larry Potts led the Waco brigade against protectus libertus. Potts now leads the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing, is applauded by Janet Reno, and elevated to the number two spot in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is reason for cautious concern about the resistance displayed by this current outbreak of omnipotent institutionus. Aside from the strength of the resistance the bug has displayed, its manifestations are disguised by insufficient and inaccurate information. The authority ultimous gene is getting confusing signals and is unsure whether to activate protectus libertus or defend the omniscience of the institution. Moreover, the institution is activating the old technique of "blaming the victim." Both the chief and vice-chief omnipotent, point to the victims with disdain and label manifestations of protectus libertus as "right-wing extremists" who condone the Oklahoma City event, all the while failing to recognize that the same rationale labels those who condone Waco as "left wing extremists." Neither event can be condoned in a human community. Both must be condemned. Neither individuals nor institutions can be allowed to take human life or property with impunity. Individuals are more difficult to persuade; governments, however, can be persuaded at the ballot box - if the authority ultimous gene is not destroyed.

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Col 138 – July, 1995

Omnipotent Institutionus: the source By Henry Lamb Omnipotent Institutionus (the federal government) is using the Oklahoma City tragedy to silence its critics and discredit its detractors. The "extreme right wing" is now responsible for all that's wrong in America. Immediately, President Clinton blamed talk radio for fomenting the attitude that formulated the bomb. The media took aim on militias and labeled militia members as kooks who condone violence. Green groups seized the opportunity to link "wise use" and property rights groups to militias and stretch the alleged connection all the way to Oklahoma City. Carol Browner, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), attacked the Republican Contract with America as an attack on the authority of the federal government. Omnipotent Institutionus would have Americans believe that anyone who disagrees with an action or position of the federal government is a dangerous member of the "extreme right wing." It is not talk radio, of course, nor is it militias, nor "wise use" nor property rights groups that have created the anti-federal government attitude that has emerged in recent years. It is the actions of the federal government. President Clinton is not to be blamed for those actions; they began long before he arrived in Washington. He must bear the responsibility, however, for allowing those actions to continue, and in fact, to intensify during his watch. Moreover, he, Vice President Gore and much of the administration appear to be carriers and propagators of the Omnipotent Institutionus disease which has infiltrated the federal government. The federal government, in its entirety, is not bad; it is good. It is the best government yet devised by man. It gets sick from time to time, as it is now, but it can be cured with a healthy dose of authority ultimous administered directly through the ballot box. A fairly strong dose was delivered last November. An even stronger dose, delivered in 1996, should work like castor oil and rid the system entirely of all signs of Omnipotent Institutionus. Strangely, the disease originates outside the federal government. In fact, those most severely afflicted with the disease, (Bruce Babbitt, Carol Browner, George Frampton, Rafe Pomerance, and many others) came to the federal government from organizations who actually want the federal government to be consumed by Omnipotent Institutionus. These organizations are convinced that they alone know how society should be organized, how other people should live, and what other people should and should not do. These organizations realize that the only way they can impose their vision of how everyone else should live is through an omnipotent federal government. These organizations are in a life or death struggle for survival. It took most of the century for them to gain access to the federal government and they are not going to give it up without a fight. And they are fighting. Those senior officials within the federal government are fighting with misinformation, disinformation, lies, character assassination, name-calling, intimidation, prosecution, confiscation, and anything else they can get away with. Those organizations outside the federal government are fighting with an even broader array of weapons, including, in some

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cases, violence. Earth First! openly advocates violence. The group known only as "FC" which claims responsibility for 16 bombings and three deaths told the New York Times they will continue their terrorism unless they get their way. The difference between these groups that openly advocate violence and the organizations from which our current administration emerged is simply a difference of tactics. Their philosophy and objectives are the same. Dave Foreman, who founded Earth First! was a lobbyist for the Wilderness Society. George Frampton was President of the Wilderness Society when he was appointed head of the Fish and Wildlife Service. The "FC" unabomber, who killed Gil Murray at the California Forestry Association, said in his letter that their objective was to "break down society into very small, completely autonomous units," and to bring about the "...destruction of the worldwide industrial system." Dave Foreman has written extensively about this same objective. His new organization, the Cenozoic Society, and its publication Wild Earth, created the Wildlands Project with extensive help from Dr. Reed F. Noss and funding from the National Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy. John Davis, editor of Wild Earth, says that his publication and the Wildlands Project "...advocate the end of industrial civilization." Dr. Reed F. Noss was hired by Bruce Babbitt to produce a special report for the Department of Interior to serve as the basis for implementing the Wildlands Project in America. The Sierra Club has embraced the concept and has identified 21 bioregions that cover the entire United States. The United Nations has adopted the concept in its Global Biodiversity Assessment and specified the Wildlands Project as the ideal to be followed by nations bound to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The way to stop this foolishness is for the people of America to deliver a heavy, undiluted dose of authority ultimous, administered directly through the ballot box, at every opportunity.

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Col 139 – July, 1995

Authority Ultimous at work By Henry Lamb Despite the howls of virtually every Green Advocacy Group (GAG) and the promise of a Presidential veto, the new House Republican majority moved matter-of-factly ahead with the exercise of authority ultimous when it voted 240 to 185 to enact the Clean Water Amendments of 1995 (HR961). While the Act addresses an array of clean water issues, it is Title VIII that has the GAGs in a dither: the Comprehensive Wetlands Conservation and Management Act of 1995. Omnipotent institutionus emerged in the mid 1980s when the Corps of Engineers (COE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began to prosecute people for modifying mudholes - on their own property. Ocie Mills went to jail for dumping 19 loads of building sand on a 65-foot building lot. John Poszgai went to jail for cleaning up an illegal dump. Miles Runk died during a two-year fight to get a fill permit so he could sell a lot to pay his wife's funeral expenses. Under the law passed by the House, none of these tragedies would have occurred. None would have been required to even ask the federal government for permission to use their own property - and the GAGs and other proponents of omnipotent institutionus are having a hissy. The new law takes substantial power away from the federal government and returns it to individuals where it belongs, while providing ample protection for the public interest in wetlands. Moreover, the new law honors the Constitution and the principle of private property rights by guaranteeing that land owners will be compensated when their property value is diminished by 20 percent or more to benefit the public. The GAGs call this law the "Polluters Bill of Rights." To generate opposition to this bill in the Senate, a coalition of GAGs has launched a reported $2 million advertising campaign to distort the facts, deceive the public, and disparage the individuals who champion authority ultimous. The new law recognizes that not all wetlands are created equal. Under the old law (current policy), a one-foot square mudhole is subject to the same protection as the Everglades. (Mike Strizki was actually fined $6,000 for allowing a telephone pole to be planted in what the government called a wetland). The new law creates three categories of wetlands based on their ecological value: type "A" wetlands are 10 or more contiguous acres that provide "critical" wetland functions. That means that they are wet. Type "B" wetlands are those that provide "significant" wildlife habitat. Both types require a federal permit before modification. Type "C" wetlands are those that provide neither significant wetland function nor wildlife habitat - a 65-foot building lot, for example. Type "C" wetlands may be modified without a permit from the government.

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The new law also exempts "normal" farming operations and maintenance of drainage systems from the permitting process. Bob Brace, a Pennsylvania farmer, has been fighting the wetland policy for nearly seven years because the federal government says that by cleaning his ditches he is polluting the "waters of the United States." The new law would give Bob's land back to him and allow him to continue his farming operations without intrusions from the omnipotent institutionus. President Clinton has vowed to veto the law if it reaches his desk because the compensation provision would, as the GAGs describe it, force taxpayers to pay polluters not to pollute. Several issues arise from such a deceptive characterization: is cleaning out a farm ditch, or dumping building sand on one's own property, or removing old tires and refrigerators from your own property actually polluting? Omnipotent institutionus says it is; authority ultimous says it is not. Should Dave Lucus be compensated when the government prevents him from building a home on his beachfront lot - because it is the last undeveloped lot on the beach? Omnipotent institutionus (and the GAGs) say no; authority ultimous (and the new House majority) say absolutely! The GAGs contend that compensating property owners when their value is diminished by regulatory land use restrictions will break the bank. They are correct; it is now breaking the bank of the individual land owners who are forced to pay the price for the public benefit. If regulatory land use restrictions are necessary to protect the public interest, then by all means, the public must pay the price. The fact is, that without accountability forced by free market pricing, federal and state agencies have no constraints. As long as someone else has to pay, government agencies have no reluctance to regulate. The new law forces government to pay for regulatory restrictions from their own budgets. What better way to induce responsibility into the regulatory process. Chances are very good that an agency will think long and hard about the real value of a wetland if the cost of protecting the wetland must come from their budget rather than from the pocket of the land owner. The new wetland law is not law yet. It must be approved by the Senate where it is sure to be sabotaged by the GAGs, and it must muster enough support to override a Presidential veto (or to Veto the President). This law is a classic battle between omnipotent institutionus and authority ultimous.

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Col 140 – July, 1995

The Global Battlefield Omnimpotent institutionus is a tonge-in-cheek term used to describe those people who sincerely believe that society prospers when controlled by an omnipotent government. Authority ultimous is used to describe those people who sincerely believe that society prospers when allowed to evolve naturally as the result of individuals seeking to satisfy their own self-interests. The conflict is as old as society. Historically, in most cultures, one group will prevail for a time only to be overthrown by the other group. The authority ultimous group created America and its views and values prevailed for nearly 200 years. Throughout the last half of the 20th century, the omnipotent institutionus view gained substantial strength, primarily through the modern environmental movement. Resistance to the growing strength began to emerge in the mid 1980s through community organizations now known as "wise use" or property rights groups. The Republican sweep last November represents the most serious threat to the omnipotent institionus view so far encountered. But the conflict was not resolved in November. The battle rages in Washington, in virtually every state and community, and throughout the world. The reason omnipotent institutionus was able to make such remarkable progress in such a short period of time is because the people who believe government control is best for society have organized, developed a long-range global strategy, and are working diligently to achieve their vision of the perfect society. The November election was but a single, and relatively minor, victory for authority ultimous on a global battlefield. The day after the election, omnipotent institutionus began damage control maneuvers and shifted into high gear with strategies to counter the opposition. While authority ultimous basks in its victory, new battles on far-flung battlefields are being prepared. The Clean Water Amendments, recently passed by the House, as well as the other provisions of the Contract with America, are mostly diversions from the other battlefields that are now, or will soon be under siege. The Endangered Species Act will soon be the focus in Washington as authority ultimous attempts to bring the same kind of common sense to regulatory control as it exercised in the Clean Water Amendments. Omnipotent institutionus will howl and scream and flush tons of hyperbolic propaganda through the media. All the while, nearly unnoticed, or deliberately ignored, the many faces of omnipotent institutionus will continue to exert its power and influence. In America, the Columbia River Basin is under siege. The area is designated as a high priority bioregion by the Wildlands Project and is being attacked by dozens of non-government organizations (NGOs) with law suits and a variety of regulatory control proposals. The Department of Interior has two studies underway in addition to a nation-wide analysis of what needs to be regulated conducted by none other than the man who wrote the Wildlands Project, Dr. Reed F. Noss. In New York, the state drew a line around six million acres and called it a park, never mind that half of the area is privately owned. The Adirondack Park Agency has the power to virtually control all land use within the area. This technique is being duplicated through Heritage Corridor programs. No state is free from coordinated projects aimed at getting

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land away from the control of individuals and under the control of omnipotent institutionus. It is not just land and natural resources that are subject to control by omnipotent institutionus. The Oklahoma City bombing is being used as an excuse to vastly expand the power of government to infringe upon the freedom of individuals. Telephone companies are already required to provide automatic access for wire-taps in new digital equipment as the result of a law passed last year. Now, anti-terrorism proposals would give the federal government even more power to snoop and make it illegal for individuals to send encrypted computer messages without first giving government access to the encryption key. Similar proposals provide expanded authority for the federal government to infiltrate organizations which might be "suspected" of anti-government activity. Under Clinton's proposals, the military could be used to perform police activities. These omnipotent institutionus ideas and proposals should conjure up images of the KGB is the former Soviet Union or the SS of Hitler's Germany. There should be no place in America for these measures. At the same time, proponents of omnipotent institutionus are working to exact new economic penalties upon authority ultimous. Under a Nobel Prize winning proposal offered by James Tobin, every international monetary transaction would be taxed to provide an estimated $1.5 trillion annually to the United Nations organizations. Such an infusion of money, a hundred and fifty times more than is now spent by the UN, would finance a standing global army, as has been proposed by the Commission on Global Governance. It would also free the UN organizations of any dependence upon, or accountability to its member nations. It would create the ultimate omnipotent institutionus which has clearly demonstrated its disdain for authority ultimous through the Conventions on Climate Change and Biological Diversity. The conflict between the two views of the perfect society is raging at a level never before experienced. The current battle is not being fought with nuclear threats, but with propaganda, fear, hyperbole, deception, regulation, treaties, and with any other device that serves to control individuals within a society. Authority ultimous cannot relax; the real battle lies ahead, both at home and on the global battlefields.

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Col 141 – August, 1995

Wetland Reform By Henry Lamb The House of Representatives has reformed the nation's wetland policy in the adoption of the Clean Water Amendments of 1995 (HR961). Green advocacy groups (GAGs) have gone ballistic and the President has vowed to veto the bill if it reaches his desk. Clearly, the nation's wetland policy must be reformed and the measures offered by the House are an excellent beginning. Under current rules, any land, regardless of size or location, can be designated "wetland" if moisture is found within 18 inches of the surface for seven days during the growing season. The land itself may be dry. The new policy would require that water be present at the surface for 21 consecutive days during the growing season for the majority of years that records have been kept. A wetland would also have to produce vegetation that grows only in wet conditions. Under current rules, a one-square foot area is subject to federal jurisdiction. And even inadvertent alteration could subject the land owner to fines. The current wetland policy provides an excuse for federal land use control; it has very little to do with protecting environmentally significant wetlands. The new policy establishes a classification system that recognizes the fact that not every mudhole is a valuable wetland. Under the new policy, Type A wetlands are those which are of critical significance to long-term conservation, which serve critical wetland functions, and consist of ten or more acres. These wetlands are still fully protected and require a permit before any alteration. Type B wetlands are those which provide habitat for a significant population of wetland dependent wildlife, or provide other significant wetlands functions. These too, are fully protected and require a permit before alteration. Type C wetlands are those which serve limited wetlands functions, or are prior converted cropland, or are within industrial, commercial or residential complexes or other intensely developed areas. Type C wetlands need no permit before alteration. This provision has the GAGs gagging. The Sierra Club sent out an alert through the Internet claiming that the House bill "would permit increased pollution and allow destruction of over half of the nation's remaining wetlands." The pollution standards in the new Act remain the same; Type C wetlands, as defined in the bill, are essentially mudholes on private property which the federal government had no business confiscating in the first place. The Sierra Club and a host of other GAGs have cranked up their lobbying campaigns and their media barrage of disinformation to try to persuade the Senate to gut the wetland reform passed by the House. The President's opposition stems from the compensation provisions of the new policy. The House bill provides compensation for land owners when the value of their property is diminished by as much as 20 percent as a result of a wetland determination. The new bill is quite specific.

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The burden of proof rests with the government and the responsibility for payment rests with the agency making the determination. The land owner is provided with several options. This provision complies with the Fifth Amendment guarantee that "...nor shall private property be taken without just compensation...." Yet, the President says we can't afford to pay, and the GAGs say the bill requires taxpayers to "pay polluters not to pollute." The bill represents a common-sense approach to protecting real wetlands while not interfering with private property rights and economic development. It cleared the House by a vote of 240 to 185, 50 votes less than the number required to override a Presidential veto. The Senate is just beginning to work on the controversial issue. Senator John Chafee (R-RI) chairs the Committee of jurisdiction and he, despite his Republican heritage, is prone to cower before the vocal, well-funded GAG lobby. The House bill, at least the wetlands portion, was authored by a Democrat, Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana. He has tried for four years to get his wetland reforms to the floor for a vote. Ironically, it took a Republican majority to adopt the reforms. The issue should not be partisan. The issue is clear: private property rights. When the government finds it necessary to restrict land use for the good of all the people, then all the people should pay the cost, not the individual land owner who happens to have the misfortune of owning the particular property the government wants.

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Col 142 – August, 1995

Endangered Species Reform By Henry Lamb As a tool to protect and recover endangered species, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is an abject failure; it is, however, an enormous success as a tool to impose federal land use control. In the 22 years of its existence, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent and not a single species has been legitimately delisted. The number of species listed has grown to more than 900 and there are more than 4,000 additional species nominated for listing. Almost every county in America is home to one or more endangered species. That means, simply, that the federal government has regulatory jurisdiction everywhere an endangered species roams, or might roam. The ESA is first and foremost, a land-use control Act; it must be reformed. Like the Clean Water Act, the ESA was scheduled for reauthorization four years ago. Green advocacy groups (GAGs) and the Democratic majority kept both bills off the table for fear that property owners might affect changes in the law. Under the Republican majority, the ESA is destined to be rewritten. Land owners and resource providers have been working for years to make Congress aware of the flaws in the existing law and the horrible impact of the law's enforcement upon certain individuals. Congress has turned a deaf ear, until now. In March, a group met in Washington to create the Grassroots ESA Coalition. More than 300 groups from all 50 states quickly joined in an effort to counter-balance the influence of the GAGs. The Coalition seeks to repeal the existing law and replace it with a law based on several principles that are totally unacceptable to the GAGs:

●Animals and plants should be responsibly conserved for the benefit and enjoyment of mankind; ●The primary responsibility for conservation of animals and plants shall be reserved to the states; ●Federal conservation efforts shall rely entirely on voluntary, incentive-based programs; ●Federal conservation efforts shall encourage conservation through commerce, including the private propagation of animals and plants; ●Specific safeguards shall ensure that this Act cannot be used to prevent the wise use of the vast federal estate; ●Federal conservation decisions shall incur the lowest cost possible to citizens and taxpayers; ●Federal conservation efforts shall be based on sound science (independently peer-reviewed).

These principles shift the whole strategy of species conservation from "command-and-control" by the federal government, to ideas and initiatives of the private sector and local government. The conservation failures have come under the ESA; the success stories come from the initiative

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of the private sector. Wild turkeys were all but extinct less than fifty years ago. Without an ESA, the Wild Turkey Association undertook a conservation program which placed turkeys on private lands. Wild turkeys have recovered and now provide an annual harvest of 550,000 birds which produce nearly $600 million in economic activity. Turkeys could be placed on private property without the land owner having to relinquish control of his property to the federal government. Imagine the land owner's response to a request to release a pair of spotted owls on his property; automatically, the federal government would take effective control of the land and the owner would be allowed to pay taxes - and little else. The eastern blue bird was in danger of extinction because another bird raided the nest. Innovative bird lovers designed a nesting box with a hole big enough for the blue bird, but too small for the predator. By widely distributing the bird house, the blue bird made a startling recovery. Compare that success to the way the federal government approached conservation of the red harvest woodpecker. Millions of acres were declared "critical habitat," land owners were not allowed to harvest timber crops or to use their land for other purposes. Again and again, the current command-and-control philosophy of more and more regulations results in hardship for people and failure for the critters. The ESA must be reformed. Several bills are now pending in both the House and the Senate. Whatever eventually comes out under the name Endangered Species Act, should remove the command-and-control authority from the federal government, make federal policy advisory and voluntary, and leave conservation of species up to the people who have a direct stake in the outcome, and who are directly accountable to the voters.

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Col 143 – August, 1995

Citizen Suit Reform By Henry Lamb A study of only four of the nation's Green advocacy groups (GAGs) revealed that between 1985 and 1994, 103 different law suits were filed, under ten different statutes, which forced eight federal agencies to pay more than $4 million to the GAGs for attorney fees and expenses. This money is not damage awards it is simply attorney fees and expenses incurred by the GAGs that filed the law suits. The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund was the big winner. The Sierra Club was second, followed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Citizen suits have become the weapon of choice for GAGs. There are now 132 different statutes under which "citizens" may sue the government or private industry or individuals for non-compliance. These suits are often frivolous, always create havoc, and are frequently extremely costly. The audacity of the GAGs is exemplified in a suit filed by the Defenders of Wildlife in which the GAG alleged that two of its members had traveled to Egypt and Sri Lanka and had visited ecologically sensitive areas which had subsequently become the sites of large-scale development projects. Since the projects had been funded in part by the federal government through USAID, the members had been deprived of the opportunity to observe ecologically sensitive wildlife at the site on future visits, and therefore, were entitled to recover damages. Chester McConnell, representative of the Wildlife Management Institute sued Annie Laurie James because she cleaned out a drainage ditch on her property which, McConnell alleged, deprived him of the opportunity to watch birds that no longer frequented the James' ditch. James ultimately settled the suit by placing 189 acres of her property in a perpetual easement, forever untouchable, but forever taxable. The attorney fees taxpayers are forced to pay for these obnoxious law suits are the least, though irritating, of the negative consequences. Frequently, the suits are intended to do nothing more than to stop a construction project or a timber sale. Delay and legal fees have prompted many a project sponsor to abandon the project. That, of course, is the objective of these suits. Often, out of court settlements result in giant pay-offs for the plaintiff. Large corporations would much prefer to pay GAGs blackmail than to experience the bad press and delays that litigation often brings. Finally, law suits result in complete shut-down of economic activity as in the case of the spotted owl. Initially, the spotted owl was not listed as endangered. It was the result of GAG sponsored lawsuits by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and others that shut down the northwest threw thousands of people out of jobs, and gave each pair of owls several thousand acres of prime timber. The fact that the gaggle of GAGs that filed the suits turned around and charged the taxpayers more than $2 million for attorney fees is just more salt in the wound.

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Citizen suit provisions of environmental, and other legislation, must be reformed. Citizens should have access through the courts to redress industry or government when a legitimate cause of action can be demonstrated. Citizens have that access in common law. The citizen suit provision could be stricken from all statutes and citizens that experience "injury in fact" can still sue either the government or industry. GAGs interpret the citizen suit provisions to mean that they can sue in behalf of bugs and lizards, trees and rocks, or future generations for the alleged loss of possible benefits such as visiting an ecologically sensitive site, or watching birds. No one in the federal government is monitoring these citizen suits. No one knows the magnitude of the adverse impact they are having on property rights or on the economy. The General Accounting Office should begin an investigation immediately to survey the damage, and then Congress should begin to tighten the standing provisions of all legislation to require that "injury in fact" has occurred before any citizen, or any GAG, can clutter the courts, rob the taxpayer, and derail development.

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Col 144 – August, 1995

Property Rights Reform By Henry Lamb Twelve states have enacted some form of private property rights protection legislation. Similar legislation has been introduced in 33 other states. Both the House and the Senate are grappling with the property rights issue. What is the problem? Why, after 200 years of an unchallenged policy of private property rights, is there a need to redefine just what those rights are? Despite the enormous progress that has been made by Americans, living under the principle of private property rights, many people believe that individual rights to private property are less important than the "public" rights to private property. Green advocacy groups (GAGs) line up behind the notion that air, water, wildlife, trees, and rocks, cannot be "owned" by an individual; they are "public" resources that should be communally owned and managed by a central government. It is this fundamental difference in the way property is seen that creates the conflict in environmental policy. America has proven the validity of Arthur Young's 1787 observation: "Give a man the secure possession of bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years lease of a garden, and he will convert it to a desert...." Americans took secure possession of a bleak, hostile continent and made it the garden spot of the world. Eastern Europe, on the other hand, gave its people a lease on a cultivated garden which quickly devolved into an environmental desert. The difference is the ownership of private property. Early efforts to protect the environment did not envision the wholesale confiscation of private property rights that dominates current environmental protection policy. The original Clean Water Act was aimed at "navigable waters of the United States." Through citizen suits and bureaucratic expansion of legislative intent, the law now extends to any mudhole, anywhere in the country. The Endangered Species Act further extends federal jurisdiction to virtually any land which an endangered or threatened species may wish to occupy. Ecosystem management policies now being implemented by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency consider humans to be a biological resource, and the property they own to be first and foremost habitat to be restored, rehabilitated, and managed for the benefit of biodiversity - not necessarily for the benefit of the land owner. The principle of private property rights is being ignored by the agencies of government because those agencies are now dominated by individuals who formerly ran the GAGs which filed the lawsuits and lobbied the government to adopt the "public" resource philosophy instead of the private property rights philosophy. Without the secure possession of private property, all other rights, liberties, and freedoms become hollow, empty vessels. It is the right to possess, use, manipulate, and profit from private property that empowers the individual to speak freely, to build houses of worship, to choose Democrat or Republican - to live free! Without economic independence, the individual becomes a vassal, hardly more than a slave, to the government that regulates and controls individual

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choices and eventually all individual activity. History has clearly demonstrated that such systems are doomed to failure. They are fatally flawed and must inevitably result in collapse. Such systems of central planning and central control are the opposite of natural law. Individuals of every species "own" the space they possess and use it freely at the expense of other species - until the space is occupied by another. It is this process, often chaotic, often violent, that advances the species. Individual humans have found ways to mitigate the chaos and violence, but retain the benefits of the process. The result has been an unparalleled advancement of the species. The domination by the "public resource" philosophy in recent years has slowed human advancement and threatens the same kind of stagnation that ultimately destroyed the former Soviet Union. Individual property owners recognize this threat and are rising to remove it. That's why more than 130 separate bills have been introduced into state legislatures to protect private property rights. That's why dozens of bills have been introduced in Congress, all of which are designed to enforce the Constitutional guarantee that in America, the right to own and use private property shall not be abridged by the government.

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Col 145 – September, 1995

Sustainable Development: Beware! By Henry Lamb Sustainable Development means: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Who could argue with such a noble objective? This definition was developed by the original Brundtland Commission, and formally adopted by the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD, which was created by Executive Order 12852 on June 29, 1993. For two years, now, the Council has been moving steadily forward with policy recommendations that will eventually find their way into administrative rules, legislation, and virtually every citizen's life. The idea of Sustainable Development, as defined above sounds much more noble than it appears in practice. In the first instance, the very term - Sustainable Development - implies that current development is not sustainable. No one seems to have challenged that assumption. The PCSD is moving forward as if it were a proven fact that current development is not sustainable. The work of the PCSD rests upon the assumption that current development activities will inevitably result in catastrophic collapse of not only America, but of the entire planet. Where is the evidence that supports such an assumption? Somehow, Vice President Al Gore has managed to sidestep the evidence issue and move forward on the assumption. The result is a high-powered Presidential Commission that is having profound influence on how individual citizens live their lives. The Council consists of 25 members and three ex-officio members. The Co-Chairs are: Jonathan Lash, President of World Resources Institute (WRI), and David T. Buzelli, Vice President of Dow Chemical Company. It should be noted that the World Resources Institute was created in 1982 by Russell E. Train, (then head of the World Wildlife Fund - USA) with substantial grants from the Rockerfeller Brothers Fund and the MacArthur Foundation. Gustave Speth was appointed President and served until his appointment to the Clinton/Gore transition team, from which he moved directly to head the United Nations Development Program. Speth's assistant, Rafe Pomerance, moved directly to the U.S. State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment, Health and Natural Resources. It is little wonder that Clinton (Gore) turned again to the WRI for leadership of the PCSD. Since its inception, WRI has been one of three non-government organizations (NGOs) that have been primarily responsible for the development and implementation of the Global Environmental Agenda. That fact largely accounts for the similarity between the PCSD documents and the bizarre ideas that permeate the environmental agenda of international organizations. Dow Chemical was named to give the impression that the Council is balanced between environmentalists and industry. Ha! The Council is unbalanced. A full third of the members are head honchos of major green advocacy groups (GAGs) including Jay Hair, National Wildlife Federation; John Sawhill, Nature Conservancy; Michele Perrault, Sierra Club; John Adams, Natural Resources Defense Council; and Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund. Another third consists of government officials with such notable objectivity as Carol Browner; EPA,

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Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Department of Interior; Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture; and Hazel O'Leary, Secretary of Energy. Free enterprise, property rights, and the little guy are represented on the Council by such industry giants as Dow Chemical, and Browning Ferris Industries' William D. Ruckelshaus, the former EPA Administrator who banned DDT despite the scientific recommendations to the contrary, and then admitted it was a "political" decision. Even if the industry representatives wanted to represent the little guy, their vote would be overwhelmed by the two-thirds that are died-in-the-wool green. Industry reps were chosen carefully, however. The industries represented on the Council are among the largest contributors to green organizations. At least two are participants in the Environmental Grantmakers Association. The Council was constructed to give the impression of balance, but with a certainty of outcome. The recommendations that will come from this group were written long before the group was convened. And they were written by the international environmental community. This high-octane Presidential Council is writing rules that will impact every single citizen. The ideas advanced so far are directly out of the Global Environmental Agenda. Most of the ideas are designed to control individuals, restrict property rights, convert private resources to "communal" wealth, and call it all - Sustainable Development.

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Col 146 – September, 1995

Sustainable Development: The First Principle By Henry Lamb The President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) has developed 16 principles that they have determined are necessary to adopt in order to achieve "sustainability." The first principle is:

"We must preserve and, where possible, restore the health and regenerative capacity of natural systems, including soils, water, air, and living organisms, that are essential to both economic prosperity and human life itself."

Wow! Note the use of the word "preserve" not "conserve." Note the use of the word "restore." These words have special meaning in the context of sustainable development. "Preserve" means to lock up as much as 50% of the nation's land area in wilderness, with another 25% "managed" under the control of government. "Restore" means to return degraded ecosystems to their "natural" condition before the impact of human activity. Does that sound bizarre or what? The PSCD documents speak only of the wonderful benefits that are to be derived from sustainable development; they do not speak of the costs. The idea of sustainable development, however, did not arise in a vacuum. It is a part of an overall strategy which originated in the international environmental community, was woven through the fabric of international organizations, and is now being fitted for the uniforms of Americans, distributed by the President's Council on Sustainable Development. On June 14, 1992, World leaders, including President George Bush, adopted the UNCED Declaration at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. That document is the foundation of many of the policies that are now becoming law in America. Principle 7 says: States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystems. To implement this principle, UNCED leaders unveiled the Convention on Biological Diversity (Biodiversity Treaty) which has now been ratified by 106 of 169 Signatory nations. Principle 17 calls for an "Environmental impact assessment." The Biodiversity Treaty requires a Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA), which is scheduled for release in July, 1995, and Bruce Babbitt has created a National Biological Survey (now renamed National Biological Service NBS), which, in fact, complies with the requirements of the Global Environmental Agenda. It is the GBA which gives meaning to the words "preserve" and "restore" in the President's Council documents. The UNCED Declaration of 1992 gave authority to the idea of Sustainable Development and the Biodiversity Treaty. The Biodiversity Treaty gave authority to the GBA and the NBS. It is the GBA that specifically states that preserving and restoring natural systems should follow the form established by the Wildlands Project, authored by Dr. Reed F. Noss. And it is no accident that the same Dr. Reed F. Noss works for Bruce Babbitt and has prepared the first report on ecosystems that should be preserved and restored. The first principle of the President's Council on Sustainable Development is to implement the requirements of the Biodiversity Treaty - even

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though the Senate refused to ratify the treaty in 1994. The PCSD is only one of several different initiatives at work, all of which are designed to implement the objectives of the Biodiversity Treaty, with or without Senate ratification or Congressional approval. The Biosphere Reserve Program, Heritage Corridors, Wilderness designation, Parks expansion, Scenic River designation, and a host of localized lock-it-up initiatives all work toward the eventual transfer of private property and resources to government control. The PCSD task force on natural resources lists as its first objective: "Create a network of conservation areas for each bio-region in the country based on public/private partnerships...." The mission of the United States Biosphere Reserve Program: "...is to establish and support a U.S. network of designated biosphere reserves...," of which there are already 47 in the United States. The GBA says that bioregions should be patterned after the Wildlands Project, and the Wildlands Project says that "At least half of the land area of the 48 coterminous states should be encompassed in core reserves and inner corridor zones." There is no question that domestic environmental policy has been overwhelmed by the Global Environmental Agenda. The international objectives are being implemented in America under the guise of apple pie and motherhood by the use of terms such as sustainable development, and under the auspices of thinly veiled, GAG controlled policy makers such as the President's Council on Sustainable Development.

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Col 147 – September, 1995

Sustainable Development: What It Will Cost By Henry Lamb To achieve sustainable development, the President's Council recommends an "...effort to advance the use of building codes in securing environmental benefits. These would involve sources and choices of materials, siting, design, construction process, and landscaping." Building codes generally are used to insure safe construction; the President's Council wants to extend government authority all the way to design, siting, and landscaping decisions. That sounds pretty ominous to people who believe government is already too intrusive, but the truth is, this recommendation is only a suggestion of what is really meant, and what is really intended by the designers of the sustainable development concept. Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, told the gathering in Rio that "...frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable." If the authority to regulate building codes is given to green building police, air-conditioning and single-family homes could be outlawed. There is no question that both are seen to be unsustainable by those who dreamed up the idea of sustainability. The President's Council also recommends "...shifting the tax burden...toward consumption...to promote a more progressive system of taxation...." With the authority to tax natural resources, the government could control the entire marketplace. To stop logging, simply increase the tax on wood and paper products. To remove cattle from public lands, or to reduce the intake of red meat, impose a tax on beef. To control the flow of consumer products, and thereby reduce consumption - tax fossil fuels. The real goal of sustainable development is the reduction of consumption in developed countries. Andy Kerr, head of the Oregon Natural Resources Council (which is affiliated with the Wildlands Project) advocates a forced reduction of consumption by as much as 75 percent. Proposals advanced at the recent Climate Change Conference in Berlin to reduce carbon dioxide emission to 1990 levels is nothing more than an effort to reduce fossil fuel energy consumption by 60 to 80 percent. Such a reduction in energy use would automatically result in staggering price increases which would cause a corresponding reduction in consumption. These are some of the costs of sustainable development. But there is more. The President's Council recommends the creation of a program to label and certify sustainable products. "An appropriate third-party, non-governmental entity will be supported with federal funds to certify...environmental[ly] superior products." An NGO will be selected to pass judgment on which products are sustainable. What happened to the idea of free markets? What happened to competition? When did the government get into the business of telling private citizens what kind of house to build, where to build it, what kind of flowers to plant, which products to buy, - and, by taxing resources, what price they will pay? This is part of the cost of sustainable development.

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But there is still more. The President's Council recommends the development of "...a reasonable stewardship ethic." The recommendation proposes to transform the Department of Education, to utilize the Departments of Labor and Commerce, the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment of the Humanities in programs of blatant social engineering designed to "...contribute to individuals having time for community and family and reducing their consumption." In keeping with the Global Environmental Agenda, the President's Council recommends: "Establish a bold new performance-based environmental management system immediately to transform the...environmental regulatory system that is currently in place. The new system will continuously improve the nation's environmental quality, enhance economic competitiveness, and produce greater social equity...." There is nothing in the recommendation that distinguishes management of private lands from public lands. There is nothing to suggest that property rights are to be observed, let alone protected. There is, however, a recommendation to expand the authority of NGOs (non-government organizations) in the oversight and monitoring of management activity. The Global Biodiversity Assessment contains a similar recommendation under the guise of public/private partnerships. Sustainable development is the buzz word of the 21st century. In the 70s, "environmental protection" was used to cover a multitude of intrusions into private property rights. In the 80s, "biodiversity" was born and was used to further erode individual liberty. Now, "sustainable development" encompasses both and, like pac-man, is gobbling up what remains of free enterprise and individual rights in America.

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Col 148 – September 1995

Sustainable Development: What It Should Be By Henry Lamb Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs - is a noble idea. In some form, every parent has fostered that idea. Every parent strives to pass on to future generations a better opportunity for the child to not only meet his own needs, but to prosper and enjoy the experience of life. Nature built that instinct into the human species. Government need not declare it. Government need not pursue it. Government should not attempt to enforce it. In so doing, government can only obscure the individual's hope of providing for his own posterity. Sustainable development has always occurred, and will continue to occur - if people are allowed to function naturally - without excessive manipulation by artificial and arbitrary governmental authority. Herein lies the great conflict: those who govern, or would govern, cannot believe that people can or will govern themselves. It is beyond the collective comprehension of bureaucrats to accept the idea that people seeking their own self interest can result in anything other than chaos. The truth is that people seeking their own self interest is the only way development can occur in an orderly fashion. Only when government is granted or assumes the authority to manage people does development stagnate, and people are pushed into poverty. Of course there are inequities and abuses when people pursue their own self interest; there are inequities and abuses among every species as each member pursues its own self interest. Nature designed it that way and it will not change simply because the President's Council on Sustainable Development recommends a change. The only thing that will change is the individual's ability to pursue his own self interest. There are also inevitable inequities and abuses when government imposes its management regime. The difference is that individual abuses tend to be self-correcting; government abuses tend to become institutionalized. For example, when an individual uses his territory (land) in a way that damages his neighbor, the neighbor has immediate recourse: negotiation, a club, shotgun, or court of law - depending on the stage of civilization that may exist. On the other hand, when the government declares dry and dusty land to be a wetland, the individual has no recourse - his ability to pursue is own self interest is thwarted. His ability to meet his own needs and provide for the needs of future generations is reduced and government is free to move on to the next individual with its heavy hand of institutional abuse. Government regulator types argue that the massive number of people now on the planet make it impossible to allow individuals to pursue their own self interest. The claim is that people are devouring "biodiversity" and soon there will be nothing left to feed people or critters. There is nothing new about that claim. It first appeared in the 1600s. It is repeated every decade or so. The claim was wrong in the 1600s, in the 1800s and in the 1900s. The claim that the earth cannot support the life it spawns is perhaps the most arrogant assertion of pseudo knowledge that can be expressed by a human.

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No one knows the capacity, the capability, the resilience, or the resolve of nature. We know that nature is self-regulating. When nature is abused by man, termites, or volcanos, it recovers. When a pasture is overgrazed and no longer provides grass enough to feed cows, the cow owner moves his cows - and the pasture recovers. Man has learned to temper the grazing to provide an optimum balance between his pasture's capability and his cow's requirement. That balance is honed most precisely by the person who owns the resource - not by a government bureaucrat or an idealistic do-gooder in a distant city. It is hard to believe, but nonetheless true, that sustainable development will occur in direct correlation with the absence of government regulation: the less regulation imposed upon people, the greater the sustainability of resources and development; when more regulation is imposed upon people, sustainability, prosperity, and individual liberty suffer. The President's Council on Sustainable Development obviously disagrees with this observation despite 80 centuries of evidence. Because the idea is sanctioned by the international community, shrouded in a cloak of Presidential respectability, articulated by a Council of day-glo big wigs, sustainable development has become little more than camouflage to conceal the outright theft of the individual's ability to meet his own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

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Col 149 – October, 1995

Reorganizing society By Henry Lamb Hiroshima awakened the world to a new era of warfare. Sputnik awakened the world to a new era of space exploration. Such awakenings are rare in history; change most often occurs in relative silence and is recognized only after the fact. The change now underway, occurring in relative silence, is far more significant than either Hiroshima or Sputnik; it is the planned, deliberate reorganization of global sociteies. Al Gore's passionate plea for society to reorganize itself around the principle of rescuing the environment was praised by the greens and laughed at by others. Most of the world's people, however, know nothing of the changes that are well underway, nor of the impetus and fuel that propel the changes that are taking place daily. The changes are manifested in a myriad of small, seemingly unrelated policy decisions. Over the last twetny years, nearly every domestic policy decision has been influenced by or determined by the initiative to reorganize societies around the world. At the heart of the initiative is a new understanding of man's role in the cosmos. The idea that man was created by and in the image of God is now seen to be an inadequate view of reality. The idea that man is nature's crowning jewel is now seen to be completely wrong and arrogantly self-serving. The new paradigm sweeping the world in silence is based on the gaia hypothesis: the idea that "...we are part and parcel of a living planetary organism." Some of the most powerful people on earth are advancing this new enlightenment. Dr. Robert Muller, former assistant to three UN Secretarys General, describes humans as "...cosmic and earth cells" of the living planetary organism. "The whole human species has become the brain, the heart, the soul...of the Earth." Humans are thought to be individual cells among all other life forms, all of which constitute the living organism that is the planet earth. It is this living organism, the earth, that evolved the human species. Muller says "This planet has not been created for humans, but that humans have been created for the planet." He means it quite literally when he says: "we are living Earth.... This is our newly discovered meaning. We now have a world brain which determines what can be dangerous or mortal to the planet." Muller celebrates the role the United Nations has played in advancing this new discovery of the meaning of human life. He says: "The world is changing very fundamentally in terms of consciousness, behavior and action. We are in the process of becoming a global civilization. There is more to come." He has called for 18 new initiatives beginning with a new world cosmology which would "explain what the cosmos is expecting from us in our next phase of evolution." He wants a new world spirituality in "which we will see the integration of humanity with nature...." He has

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called for "proper planetary management; new world education; new world science [that] must assume a cosmic responsibility; new world economy;" and in short, a new world organization. Muller and his colleagues are not only in positions of power to influence such changes, they are actually initiating these changes around the world, including changes in American domestic policy. Changes have been most visible in environmental policies where a host of policies have been designed by "the brain" of the earth which has determined that certain actions are "dangerous or mortal to the planet." Policies related to education, population growth, taxation, world trade, and even local governance, have all been influenced by the newly discovered role man is to play in the new organization of society. The new paradigm has in fact, permeated virtually every aspect of American life. It has grown in relative silence and for most Americans it will not even be discovered until it has become an accomplished fact.

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Col 150 – October, 1995

Education under the gaia principle By Henry Lamb Robert Muller is not a household name - but it should be. For forty years, he served as an assistant to three UN Secretaries General. He now serves as Chancellor of the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica. More importantly, he developed what is known as the "World Core Curriculum" for global education. Muller is not your basic "reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic" educator. He is a devout proponent and effective advocate of the gaia hypothesis. He believes that the earth is a living organism and that each living creature is a single cell in the organism. Moreover, he believes that humans represent the heart, soul, and brain of the organism. He believes that this enlightenment is the result of the evolutionary process in which the earth created humans for the purpose of protecting the organism. To normal people, these ideas may sound as if they came from another planet; to world leaders, these ideas are gospel. The United Nations Education, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO) certified the Robert Muller school in Arlington, Texas in 1985. The purpose of the school was to develop the World Core Curriculum. The school's first goal is to "assist the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of the greater whole. In other words, promote growth of the group idea...[and] replace all limited, self-centered objectives." Other goals include making the child a "planetary citizen" that can balance "spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and academic development." Education, according to the Muller school, is "the training, intelligently given, which will enable the youth of the world to contact their environment with intelligence and sanity and adapt themselves to the existing conditions." In short, Muller's World Core Curriculum is designed to teach children his gaia hypothesis, that they are nothing more than one cell in the living organism of earth, and that they must behave for the benefit of all other cells, human or not. Were these ideas confined to a small school in Texas, it wouldn't matter. They are not. These same ideas emerged in the recent "Education 2000" project. They are being taught as gospel in UN sponsored Universities around the world, and in the bastions of higher learning throughout America. Through the Temple of Understanding at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York (which also houses the Gaia Institute), the UN convened a Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival. The Advisory Board for this UN Forum almost exactly duplicates the Board of Advisors of the Temple of Understanding. Robert Muller, of course, is one of the major advisors. So thorough has the influence of gaia been on world leaders that Vice President Al Gore

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delivered a sermon at the Temple of Understanding in which he declared that "God is not separate from the Earth." Muller's World Core Curriculum is reaching the children of the world in UN sponsored projects and through projects funded by Congress and a variety of foundations. The Pew Charitable Trust has guaranteed funding of up to $50 million per year to launch a children's program called Earth Force. The National Wildlife Federation churns out Muller-type propaganda by the car load which is welcomed by most public schools. The main-stream media, especially the Ted Turner-Jane Fonda networks, pump hours and hours of television programming to children which is based on the gaia hypothesis. Education of the world's youth has been underway for nearly a generation. New values are replacing the old values on which America was built. Rugged individualism, free markets, personal responsibility, are now outdated ideas, according to the Muller-gaia way of thinking. Equity, compassion, and reverence of the entire global family (including bugs and lizards) are now the values of the enlightened.

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Col 151 – October, 1995

Total Reorganization By Henry Lamb The idea of reorganizing global societies is nearly beyond comprehension. Nevertheless, it is an idea in full bloom and societies around the world are in various stages of reorganization. America is considered to be the pivotal nation; if America succumbs, the rest of the world is a push-over. The reason total reorganization is necessary is to defeat a common enemy which threatens to destroy all life on the planet. The enemy, according to the reorganizers, is man's affluent life style. Man's quest for wealth is destroying biodiversity and causing the planet to warm so rapidly that all life is threatened. That is the party line. The consequences of allowing society to continue developing as it has are catastrophic. Therefore, as Al Gore put it in his book Earth in the Balance, society must be reorganized - whatever the cost. Of course, to the reorganizers, it doesn't matter that their contentions are not true. What matters, according to Paul Watson, founder of Greenpeace, is "...what people believe is true." And people believe that the planet is warming because of man's use of fossil fuel, and that biodiversity (endangered species) are vanishing at a rate greater than at any time in 65 million years. Because people believe these doomsday stories despite the availability of solid scientific evidence to the contrary, the reorganizers are rapidly advancing their reorganization plan. Global reorganization is based on several discernable principles. First is the gaia hypothesis which seeks to reorganize all religions of the world into one philosophical notion that the earth is a living organism which is both responsible for the creation of life and for providing sustanence for life. Consistent with the gaia hypothesis is the idea that all resources (biodiversity) are of equal value and should be used only as required to sustain life. Since humans have developed the capacity to use far more resources than is required to sustain life, a system must be designed to govern the quantity of resources that humans may use. Such a system is being designed. The philosophical underpinning for the system is the idea that resources are "communal property" and therefore, use of communal property by any individual should require a permit from some authority chosen to govern the use of resources. That abstract idea takes on new meaning in the face of the Endangered Species Act. Trees, which have historically been the property of the land owner, are now habitat for wildlife which is communal property. Land owners may not use their private property unless a permit is granted by the federal government. Wetlands may not be used without a permit from the federal government. Resources along a designated "scenic river" may not be used without a government permit. And on and on and on.

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These regulatory restrictions are but meager first steps toward total reorganization. Ultimately, the global reorganizers expect to have at least half of the land area in the United States designated as core wilderness areas forever off limits to human populations. An additional 25 percent is to be buffer zones in which humans must secure a permit to conduct any activity. Humans are expected to live in the remaining 25 percent in what Science magazine calls "islands of human habitat" surrounded by wilderness. By outlawing the use of fossil fuel, energy required to manufacture consumer products will be so scarce that prices will deny most humans the use of goods now taken for granted. By outlawing chemicals such as chlorine, manufacturing processes are expected to grind to a halt, forcing humans to live a proper life style. Robert Muller, a champion reorganizer, says: "Simple frugal lives of five billion people are the most monumental contribution to the environment of this planet." It is clearly the plan of the reorganizers to force humans to live as peasants in small societies that worship gaia, under the central authority of the world's elite.

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Col 152 – October, 1995

Governing reorganized societies By Henry Lamb For more than a half-century, the President of the United States has been the most powerful individual on the planet. In the reorganized society of the next century, the President will be irrelevant, as will the Congress, state and local governments. Governance will occur through bioregional councils. Such councils are being constructed today throughout America with little or no recognition of the ultimate consequences. In 47 Biosphere Reserves in America, and in nearly 300 more around the world, reorganizers are busy building "partnerships" for the future. These "partnerships" are presented as voluntary participation agreements which seek solutions to transboundary environmental problems. Pollution, they say, doesn't stop at the county line and therefore a new mechanism must be created that reaches across county, state, and even national boundaries. That new mechanism is called the bioregional council and its work is described in great detail in the Global Biodiversity Assessment and other documents prepared by various United Nations organizations. Bioregional councils are not instruments of any government. Yet they may be created by any government. In every instance, they are dominated by non-government organizations (NGOs). NGOs are qualified by the United Nations. Qualified NGOs are affiliated with one or more of the three international NGOs that developed the reorganization plan. NGOs are expected to provide the local education, and enforcement to control all activities within the bioregion. The primary enforcement tool is expected to be law suits, filed under the authority of international treaties where available or federal law when possible. Further enforcement mechanisms have been built into the World Trade Organization and new punitive tax measures are now proposed to provide even more enforcement tools. These bioregional councils are being sold to the public as a way to secure cooperation from all the stakeholders. They are being sold as non-binding agreements on local governments and private property owners. Don't you believe it. The Adirondack Park Commission was created by state law in New York. Its members were appointed. The state designated three million acres of private property around the existing park as a state park. The commission has the legal power to control all activity on private property within the buffer zone. It is one of many techniques being used to create bioregional councils that are beyond the reach of the electorate and that will ultimately govern the people within the bioregion. The National Heritage Act of 1995, now pending in Congress, provides for the creation of bioregional councils under the guise of "stakeholder partnerships." The language of this particular proposal precludes local government from vetoing actions by the council which may affect local government. NGOs dominate these councils by design. Literally thousands of NGOs are at work in virtually every community implementing the reorganization plan. These NGOs are not to be confused with real grassroots organizations that

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spring up in neighborhoods to fight some local issue. These NGOs are professionals. Here's the way it works. The Pew Charitable Trust, for example, gives the Tides Foundation a grant. The Tides Foundation then funds an office in a particular community with three or four professionals under the name of some appropriate sounding non-profit organization. The Greater Ecosystem Alliance is such an NGO, created for the purpose of pushing the Columbia River Basin Bioregion. These NGOs get their money and their marching orders from the institutions that are hell-bent to reorganize societies around the world. The Sierra Club, one of the largest and wealthiest NGOs, has announced that it has divided America into 21 bioregions and is now in the process of redrawing maps and promoting the development of bioregional governance throughout. America is seeing just the beginning of the reorganization process. Although it has been underway for many years, the evidence is just beginning to appear in the daily lives of average citizens. America is being reorganized to fit the mold of the gaia-worshiping global reorganizers.

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Col 153 – November, 1995

International Intrigue By Henry Lamb It is not the black helicopters nor the white, U.N. emblazoned tanks that Americans should fear. What should be feared is the eagerness of certain U.S. Government officials to facilitate the implementation of the Global Environmental Agenda, often without public or Congressional awareness. The September summit at Yellowstone provides a classic example of how the Global Environmental Agenda is being imposed in America. A little background: in 1991, an assembly of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) called the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee, created a "vision" document which, among other things, recommended a buffer zone of nearly 18 million acres to surround the 2.3 million acre Yellowstone National Park. Ranchers, loggers, miners, and landowners in the 18 million acre area renounced the plan, which was not adopted. One of the landowners in the area was Crown Butte Mines, Inc. which owned Henderson Mountain in the New World Mining District. For more than a hundred years, prospectors have dug gold from Henderson Mountain and the New World Mining District. Fisher Creek, which winds up in Yellowstone, contains 250,000 tons of acidic rock from past mining activity. Even though prospectors dug for a hundred years, they never found the mother lode; Crown Butte Mines did. Gold ore worth an estimated $600 million lies buried in Henderson Mountain. Crown Butte Mines wants to get it. They applied for a mining permit nearly three years ago, shortly after the "vision" document died. Crown Butte has spent, so far, $35 million attempting to comply with the permitting process required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and a host of other federal and state laws and regulations which involve 20 government agencies. The process is nearly complete. The final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is scheduled for release late this year. The EIS reveals that Crown Butte would clean up the 250,000 tons of acidic rock left by previous miners. It would build an earthquake-proof containment facility for new mine tailings. It would divert stream flows away from Yellowstone to insure that the Park would not be affected by the mine, even in the event of an unexpected catastrophe. The EIS was beginning to show how the mine would be a real environmental asset to the Park and an economic boom to the communities in the area. But some people don't want any mining near Yellowstone. Fearful that the Crown Butte mining plan may meet the permitting requirements of 20 government agencies and actually be approved, the same GAGs involved in the 1991 "vision" document sent a letter to Dr. Bernd von Droste in Paris, France. Why, you may ask, would the GAGs turn to Paris, France for help, rather than to Congress?

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In the 1970s, the United States joined 147 other nations in the World Heritage Treaty. The purpose of the treaty was to designate sites, such as Yellowstone, "of international significance." The treaty requires member states to "protect" such areas. The World Heritage Committee was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to monitor World Heritage Sites. Dr. Bernd von Droste is Chairman of the World Heritage Committee (WHC). The GAGs want the WHC to list Yellowstone as "in danger" which would bring global pressure to bear on the United States to "protect" the park. Upon receipt of the letter, von Droste wrote to Assistant Secretary of Interior, George Frampton, and asked for a comprehensive report on Yellowstone. Rather than tell von Droste that a three-year, 20-agency, $35 million review would be complete in a few months, which would be readily available to the WHC, Frampton said he didn't have time to write a report and urged von Droste to bring a team to make his own evaluation, and specifically requested that a representative from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) tag along. Frampton even agreed to pay the team's expenses. Frampton also told von Droste that his boss, Bruce Babbitt, had already told the U.S. News & World Report, that "placing a mine just across the boundary from Yellowstone is a bad idea, pure and simple." Bruce Babbitt (formerly head of the League of Conservation Voters) and George Frampton (formerly head of the Wilderness Society) joined their GAG colleagues in a deliberate effort to subvert the legal permitting process, ignore the scientific conclusions developed by the Environmental Impact Statement process, sidestep any Congressional involvement, and use international media pressure to impose their vision of Yellowstone on America. Bernd von Droste brought his team to Yellowstone for four days in September. Surprise, surprise; von Droste said that the American EIS process was "fragmented" and failed to take a "holistic" approach to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The team discussed the need to create a buffer zone around the park, say, about 18 million acres. The full World Heritage Committee will meet in December to hear the team's report. Then a decision will be reached as to whether Yellowstone should be placed on the "in danger" list. Of the 400 designated World Heritage sites, 18 are in the United States; the Everglades is already on the "in danger" list. Yellowstone is in danger, but not from Crown Butte Mines.

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International Intrigue: the instigators By Henry Lamb Tim Cassidy says we're "calling on international observers to judge the threat the [New World] mine would pose as just one of many strategies to stop the mine." Tim Cassidy represents American Rivers, one of several Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) which constitute the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC). Their goal is to encircle Yellowstone National Park with a so-called "buffer zone" eight times bigger than the park itself, thereby creating a 20-million acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which will eventually be under the control of international authorities. Never mind that the 18-million acre buffer zone includes private property, local and county governments, numerous ranchers, loggers, miners and communities that depend on the economic output of the region. American Rivers is funded in part, by the U.S. Government (five grants from the Department of Interior between 1993 and 1995 and additional grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation which is funded by Congress), as are many of the coalition GAGs. In addition to direct grants from the federal government, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition also collects attorney fees and legal expenses from the American taxpayer. On June 23, 1994, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition was awarded $32,750 in civil action (#93-0303-E-HLR) by the U.S. District Court. Interestingly, the attorney for GYC is listed as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. Between 1992 and 1995, the Sierra Clubs and their Legal Defense Fund, collected $2,299,218.13 from the American taxpayer in 34 similar cases, according to the General Accounting Office (GAO). Unwitting contributors to the Sierra Club and other GAGs, and the unknowing American taxpayers are actually providing the funding for the implementation of the Global Environmental Agenda which seeks to control the world's natural resources - including land. Tim Cassidy is absolutely right when he says they intend to stop mining in the Yellowstone ecosystem. His organization, and the other organizations in the Greater Yellowstone Coalition have already demonstrated their willingness to circumvent the law to achieve their objectives. Paul Pritchard, president of the National Parks and Conservation Association, said: "We hope Crown Butte realizes that this action is not part of a battle over their rights under and (sic) antiquated federal mining law, but of a fight to preserve the most revered national park in the world." About 90 percent of the mining site is privately owned, according to Crown Butte officials. The GYC wants to stop all activity on both private and public property in the area. Yellowstone, however, is but a small skirmish enroute to the achievement of a much broader objective. The Sierra Club announced their "Ecoregion" program in March of 1994. This program coincides with the "Bioregions" described in the "Wildlands Project" developed by Dave Foreman (of Earth First! fame) and Dr. Reed F. Noss. The program redraws the map of North America into 21 "Ecoregions," or "Bioregions," one of which includes Yellowstone: the Rocky Mountain Bioregion. Next door is the Pacific Coast Bioregion. Here, it is the Greater

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Ecosystem Alliance that is filing lawsuits and agitating to stop development and remove people enroute to the eventual wilding of an area that stretches "from Baja to British Columbia." In each of the 21 Bioregions, GAGs (funded by federal grants, proceeds from lawsuits, prestigious foundations, large corporations, and individual contributors who think they are protecting the environment) are busy advancing the Global Environmental Agenda. The anchor in each of the Bioregions are the World Heritage sites, Biosphere Reserves, National and State parks. These are areas already protected by state, federal, or international law. Yellowstone, for example, is a National Park which is also a World Heritage Site, and also designated as a Biosphere Reserve. Both the World Heritage designation and the Biosphere Reserve designation give the United Nations direct influence in how the area is to be managed. The official Operational Guidelines of the U.N. World Heritage Convention (Section 44(b)(vi)) requires the establishment of buffer zones around the heritage site. The official Strategic Plan for the U.S. Biosphere Reserve Program (operated under the auspices of UNESCO) calls for the creation of "a network of designated Biosphere Reserves" which includes fully protected "wilderness" areas, surrounded by "Managed Use Areas" (buffer zones), surrounded by "Zones of Cooperation." The Convention on Biological Diversity (Article 8) requires the creation of "Protected Areas." The Global Biodiversity Assessment, developed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), defines those protected areas to be essentially what Dr. Reed F. Noss described in the Wildlands Project (Section 10.4). Dr. Noss is on the Board of Directors of the Wildlands Project; Dave Foreman is Chairman of the Board. Both Foreman and Noss are on the Advisory Board of the Greater Ecosystem Alliance. Foreman is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club. And Reed Noss recently completed a special report for Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of Interior, which identifies just which ecosystems should be protected. The Wildlands Project describes the underlying doctrine of resource management which is the heart of the Global Environmental Agenda. The mine near Yellowstone does not fit the agenda. Cassidy speaks with some confidence and more candor when he says the World Heritage Committee is only one of many strategies being advanced to stop the mine. The agenda, however, is not simply to stop the mine, but rather to lock-up 50 percent of America in wilderness, control another 25 percent in managed buffer zones, and squeeze the people into the remaining 25 percent into "islands of human habitat surrounded by wilderness."

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International Intrigue: public/private partnerships By Henry Lamb In November, a conference will be held in Knoxville, Tennessee with the theme: "Assessing the Appalachian Landscape: Getting to Action through Partnerships." The mission statement of the U.S. Biosphere Reserve Program says: "The program promotes a sustainable balance...through public and private partnerships...." The President's Council on Sustainable Development says: "Create a network of conservation areas for each bioregion in the country based on public/private partnerships...." What, exactly, are "public/private" partnerships? In public documents, the term remains undefined by design leaving the listener to infer whatever may be convenient at the moment. The term, however, is given explicit definition throughout the Global Biodiversity Assessment. In short, public/private partnerships are the transitional phase toward the creation of Bioregional Councils. Bioregional Councils are the entities which are envisioned as the mechanism of governance for bioregions now being developed. The people who attend the conference in Knoxville will hear presentation after presentation about how government and the private sector must work together voluntarily to protect the biodiversity of the region. The presentations will be made, primarily, by representatives from Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), and officials from the Southern Appalachian Biosphere Reserve, which is, in fact, the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and now includes buffer zones and zones of cooperation that stretch from near Huntsville, Alabama to near Richmond, Virginia. The conferees will hear about specific agreements that are being developed, in which GAGs (also called NGOs for non-government organizations) will monitor resource use and regulatory compliance. Some agreements will typically call for administration by GAGs. They will hear that the U.N. University of Peace has already proposed to build a "Zero Emissions Institute" in Chattanooga. In general, the conferees will hear about the wonderful world we can build if we all work together in voluntary, but binding, agreements. The Yellowstone Vision Document process was very similar to what is happening in Appalachia. Similar conferences are being conducted in the Columbia River Basin, in the Adirondacks, in Southern California, around the Great Lakes, in Florida, in Texas, and in virtually every part of the country. What, exactly, is wrong with voluntary agreements? These agreements, these "public/private" partnerships, are each minuscule steps toward the eventual reorganization of American society. Each step is so small, and presented as a vitally necessary step to "protect" the panther in Florida, or the owl in Washington, or the warbler in Texas, or the integrity of Yellowstone, that neither the direction nor the ultimate destination is clearly visible to the participants. Until recently, serious students could only guess at the

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direction and speculate about the destination. Now, both the direction and the ultimate destination are a matter of public record. Both are published and are being actively promoted. Both are described is a series of documents published jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF, formerly World Wildlife Fund), and the World Resources Institute (WRI). These documents comprise tens of thousands of pages which most Americans will never read. But they reveal with frightening clarity the ultimate destination toward which each public/private partnership is inexorably leading. GAGs, or NGOs if you prefer, are identified in these documents as the primary instrument of implementation. They are expected to dominate the discussion in conferences such as the one scheduled for Knoxville in November. They are expected to be granted legal standing to sue in behalf of biodiversity. In America, GAGs have legal standing under all environmental laws since the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. Legal standing for biodiversity has been proposed in America, and is proposed in international law, but so far, America has limited standing only to endangered species and wetlands. NGOs gain their status through designation by a United Nations Organization. Only GAGs with a proven track record of agreement with the UN organization are granted what is called "consultative" status with the UN. Only approved GAGs may participate in the pre-conference forums and negotiating committee sessions. It is through this incredibly broad system of GAGs that the UN organizations can ultimately control the destiny of the rapidly developing bioregions in America. As the public/private partnership phase nears completion in a given bioregion, it will be necessary to create a mechanism to govern across city, county, state, and even national borders. That mechanism is expected to be the creation, by voluntary agreement, of a Bioregional Council, on which local governments and private interests will be represented, but which will be dominated by GAGs. The function of the GAGs in Bioregional Councils is expressly seen to be to educate the people in biodiversity protection and to enforce the principles and requirements as set forth in international law.

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International Intrigue: the machinery By Henry Lamb It's not on anyone's bestseller list. There are no reviews in Time. The Reader's Digest has not chosen to condense it. Most Americans will never hear about the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA), but their lives are already being affected by it. The GBA is a massive document produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the international machinery that is rapidly reorganizing the societies of the world. UNEP is simply the facilitator. It was created in 1973 to be a "catalyst" to implement the ideas and programs of others. It has been enormously effective in its short life, and its influence is gaining momentum. There are good reasons for its success. Twenty-five years before there was a UNEP, there was an IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The IUCN is not an official government agency; it is a non-profit organization centered in Gland, Switzerland. The IUCN was the brainchild of the same Sir Julian Huxley who founded the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It was created to provide the lobbying support needed to move proposals through the UN. The IUCN boasts that its membership, as of May 1994, included 53 international NGOs, 550 national NGOs, 100 government agencies, and 68 sovereign states representing a total of 126 nations. Its current president is Jay D. Hair, formerly CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, America's largest Green Advocacy Group (GAG). The IUCN has "consultative" status with at least six different U.N. Organizations, including UNEP. Their operating budget in 1993 was $54 million which included substantial contributions from the U.S. State Department ($1,214,873) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) was created in 1961 by Sir Julian Huxley and Max Nicholson, for the purpose of developing programs which would attract public contributions to help fund the IUCN. Nicholson's 1970 book, The Environmental Revolution: A Guide for the New Masters of the World, foreshadows much of the international intrigue that is being played out in America today. The WWF headquarters shares a building with the IUCN in Gland, Switzerland. Russell E. Train, head of the WWF in America, created the World Resources Institute (WRI) in 1982. Gustave (Gus) Speth was named President. The Institute was launched with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Andrew K. Mellon Foundation to the tune of $25 million. The Institute functions to provide the expert, so-called "scientific" support for the proposals developed by the IUCN. The WRI Board includes Martin Holdgate, who served as IUCN's Director General from 1988 to 1993, and Thomas E. Lovejoy, the WWF official who originated the "debt-for-nature" program. Speth brought heavy credentials to the job. A graduate of Yale and Oxford, a professor of law at Georgetown University, and co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Speth served WRI until the Clinton election.

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He then served on Clinton's transition team for which he was rewarded with an appointment as head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Speth's chief policy analyst, Rafe Pomerance, was moved to the U.S. State Department as Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources. These three inbred NGOs are the wellspring from which flows the ideas that are being translated by the UNEP, UNDP, and dozens of other United Nations Organizations, into international treaties and agreements as well as national laws and regulations. They have produced, not only the ideas, but have been the school from which dozens of national and international officials have graduated. Perhaps even more important, they are the command post for thousands of subsidiary NGOs around the world. The WWF has offices in most nations around the world. In South and Central America, WWF affiliates actually administer existing Bioregions. The National Wildlife Federation has chapters in virtually every state. They exist to implement in the field the policies that are formulated in Gland, Switzerland. The 600 NGO members of the IUCN work together in coalitions such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Greater Ecosystem Alliance, and dozens of others, to multiply their political effectiveness. Through extensive cross-connections with Foundations, these organizations strongly influence which NGOs get funding. More than $500 million annually is spent advancing the agenda developed by these three NGOs. The Global Biodiversity Assessment will carry the official seal of UNEP. It was paid for by the United Nations Global Environment Facility (GEF). But it was developed by these three NGOs and their activist colleagues around the world. When people gather at a local courthouse to consider some new environmental protection measure sponsored by a "local Citizens for..." group, chances are quite good that the spokesperson's salary is paid by an organization with direct links to these three NGOs. When an injunction is filed in Arizona to stop logging in 11 national forests by the Greater Gila Biodiversity Project, or by the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, rest assured that their salaries are paid by organizations with direct links to these three NGOs. When the Sierra Club, the Environmental Working Group and the Natural Resources Defense Council issue simultaneous press releases three days before a Congressional vote on the Clean Water Act, be confident that their actions are orchestrated and funded through direct linkages with these three NGOs. Here is the engine that drives the Global Environmental Agenda.

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Land: private property or a public trust By Henry Lamb At the crux of the debate lies a fundamental difference of opinion eloquently expressed by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes said, in 1651, that "The control of power must be lodged in a single person, and no individual can set their own private judgments of right and wrong in opposition to the sovereign's commands." That sovereign, according to Hobbes, with absolute authority and power, could delegate land and resource use for the benefit of all. John Locke disagreed. He said, in 1690, unowned things (resources) are not owned in common under the authority of the sovereign, but that ownership of any unowned thing belongs to its first possessor, as observed in practice throughout all of nature. Since the Hobbes-Locke debates of the 17th century, societies have experimented with governments based on both philosophies. The Hobbes theory was put to the test, most notably, in 1917 when absolute sovereignty was vested in the communist party in Russia. The sovereign delegated land use for the benefit of all. In less than 75 years, Hobbes' theory proved to be a catastrophe. The theory failed, not only in Russia, but in Cuba, and in virtually every other society that has adopted it. Eager to escape the Hobbesian theory administered by the King of England, a small group of rabble-rousing rebels possessed the unowned lands of America. When the King tried to enforce his claim of sovereignty over the newly possessed lands, the rabble-rousers revolted and terminated the King's claim. In 200 years, without the benefit of a sovereign delegating benefits, the rabble-rousers advanced civilization to unimagined heights of health and prosperity. They did it by possessing and utilizing unowned things (resources) as dictated, not by the sovereign, but by their own self-interest. It would appear that the lessons of history should be clear. It would seem that all societies everywhere would want to emulate the American experience. Many do. But still, there are those who believe that Hobbes was right, despite the repeated failures of every society that has been built on his principles. The current property rights debate in America is a renewal and continuation of the Hobbes-Locke debate of the 17th century. There was very little debate during the first 200 years in America. First possessors possessed, utilized, and flourished. The nation flourished. The Hobbesians never went away, they were just ignored. Throughout the first hundred years of America, government acquired land expressly for the purpose of getting land into private hands. Under the Northwest Ordinance of 1785, the government sold land for $1 per acre. Under the Homestead Act, land was given away in 160 acre tracts to anyone who would live on it for five years. In the 1930s, avowed socialists, Robert Marshall, Aldo Leopold, and Benton Mackaye founded The Wilderness Society. (The same organization whose former President, George Frampton,

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now heads the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). In a publication entitled The People's Forests, The Wilderness Society advocated the confiscation of privately owned forests. Throughout the 1960s, the Wildlife Management Institute, the National Audubon Society, the Izaak Walton League, and the Sierra Club joined the Wilderness Society to promote the Wilderness Act of 1964 which established the notion that some land should be protected from any human activity. The act set aside nine million acres as wilderness. Since then, more than 90 million acres has been added to the wilderness inventory and new proposals are offered each year. The official policy of "Public Domain" lands was set in concrete in 1976 with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Those who believe in the Hobbesian theory of control by the sovereign have gained much ground. The Endangered Species Act of 1973, coupled with the regulatory expansion of the Clean Water Act, serve to extend Federal (sovereign) jurisdiction over virtually all land in the United States. Land owners have again begun to revolt. A massive "Property Rights Movement" has emerged in recent years protesting the government's intrusion into private property rights. The same organizations that promoted the Hobbesian theories in the 1930s are at the forefront of legislative efforts to expand the sovereign's power and castigate the property rights movement as enemies of democracy. The Sierra Club has emerged as a major spokesman for hundreds of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), all of which are pushing to expand the sovereign's power to control land, and render obsolete the principle of private ownership which made America the envy of the world.

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Land: the Sierra Club's view By Henry Lamb Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, stood before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last June, and delivered a scathing attack on the idea of private property rights and those who are trying to protect them. He told the group:

"Land is real estate. Real, in this case, does not mean solid. It means royal; land came from the king. In England, kings gave out lands to their feudal retainers.... In the 13 colonies, land was held by virtue of royal charters. When the kings, or the federal government, conveyed land to settlers, they also conveyed restrictions."

This view ignores the John Locke philosophy of ownership by first possession. It also ignores the fact that America rejected the king's ownership of American soil. It also ignores the fact that the creators of American government most feared creating a monster that would, like the king, claim ownership of the land. When the people of America adopted the U.S. Constitution, the principle of private ownership of land was established firmly in the law of the land. The 5th Amendment allows the federal government to "take" private property, providing that due process of law and just compensation is provided to the land owner. If land belonged to the government, or to the sovereign, to convey "with restriction," why does the Constitution specifically require the government to pay the owner? For the government to "take" the land, it must belong to someone else. The creators of America clearly intended for the land to belong to private individuals. The entire history of the government, prior to the mid 20th century, illustrates a wide understanding that the land should be privately owned. Government worked hard to get newly acquired territories into private hands. Not until the reemergence of the socialist theories in the mid 1930s, did the Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) such as the Sierra Club begin to overwhelm the concept of private property rights in America. Pope, and his GAG cohorts use a variety of skillful distortions to convince Americans that private property rights is a bad idea. In his speech to the Commonwealth Club, he used the example of two property owners whose land was divided by a stream that flooded each year. When the flood came, both landowners were equally flooded. Under the private property doctrine, either land owner has the right to build a levee to protect his property, which would force the other property owner to suffer all the flooding while the one was protected. Pope says that the government has the right, and should restrict both property owners and make them both suffer equally. Pope's argument assumes that the government's solution is the best solution. That is the fundamental flaw in the Hobbesian-socialist-communist notion of absolute sovereignty of government under which the doctrine of Public Trust must operate. American history has proved beyond any shadow of doubt that when left to their own resources, Americans can solve whatever problems arise. In Pope's example of the two land owners, he fails to consider that the

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two individuals might get together and work out a mutually agreeable solution. He fails to recognize that common law provides adequate remedy for the damaged land owner in the event he is damaged. There is simply no benefit to be obtained by either party when the government steps in to take control. Pope chooses not to argue the merits of his sovereign government theory. Instead, he lambastes those who believe that the John Locke-private property principle best serves society. He dubbed the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act as the "Polluters Bill of Rights" because it requires government to pay just compensation when private property is taken for public use. He charged that Newt Gingrich's "regulatory reform" is a "euphemism which elevates polluter profits above public health." He claims that the property rights movement in America is inspired and funded by greedy industry, which "overlaps so heavily with the members of the militia...." Pope and his cohorts want to cast proponents of property rights in the most negative light possible. They must discredit their opposition because they cannot defeat the idea of property rights on the merits. The concept of private property rights, so well understood by the framers of our Constitution, is the foundation upon which America is built. That concept is under severe attack by Pope's Sierra Club, a host of GAGs, as well as by the international environmental community. If the concept of private property rights can be destroyed in America, and absolute sovereignty, rather than enumerated powers, be handed to the federal government -- America will quickly crumble as surely as did the Berlin wall.

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Land: the Sierra Club's vision By Henry Lamb In a special, expanded edition of their magazine, the Sierra Club introduced "...a fresh way of looking at the world. We here describe 21 ecoregions that, while embracing all 50 U.S. states and 12 Canadian provinces and territories, are not defined by them. The Sierra Club has wholeheartedly embraced ecoregionalism as a context for our work during the coming decades, and has devoted significant energy to recasting the maps of the United States and Canada." There is no place for private property in the Sierra Club's vision of how the world ought to be. Sierra's vision is a literal interpretation of the Wildlands Project, written by Reed F. Noss, funded by The Nature Conservancy and the National Audubon Society, and published by Dave Foreman's (Earth First! founder) Wild Earth. The Wildlands Project is named as the ideal to be followed in the Global Biodiversity Assessment (Section 10.4), a document coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and funded by the U.N. Global Environment Facility. This is the plan required by Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a treaty signed by President Clinton which narrowly escaped ratification in 1994. Had the treaty been ratified, or if it is ratified in the future, the U.S. would be bound to implement the plan. This same plan is at the heart of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program and the World Heritage Program, which already have 65 sites designated in the United States. President Clinton, in response to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has created the President's Council on Sustainable Development which is recommending to Congress that the plan be implemented. The Sierra Club is moving forward with its program to implement the plan with or without the treaty. It has already designated 21 ecoregions and has invested considerable energy and resources into their "environmental agenda" which will result in the plan's implementation. Sierra's vision is becoming crystal clear and private property is seen as nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome. The Sierra publication says: "...we are designing protection for the public and private lands that are the core habitat for native species." Reed Noss says, in his Wildlands Project, that:

"the native ecosystem and the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans." John Davis, editor of Wild Earth. says "Human residents need not be asked to relocate, but all people should be required to respect the wildlife...by refraining from any use of motors, guns, or cows. The problem here is not so much people as it is their damnable technologies."

Sierra's vision is to eventually designate at least 50 percent of the land in North America as wilderness, off limits to human beings. Another 25 percent is to be designated "buffer zones" or "zones of cooperation," in which all resource use must be strictly regulated by the government authority. People are to be relocated into what Science magazine describes as islands of human

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habitat surrounded by wilderness. The Global Biodiversity Assessment says (Section 10.5) "There may be a transition phase while local inhabitants are provided with options for relocation outside the area." And the President's Council on Sustainable Development is recommending the creation of a "national commission to develop a national strategy to address changes in national population distribution that have negative impacts on sustainable development." Private property cannot be tolerated in Sierra's vision of the land. But it is not simply Sierra's vision. Nor is it simply Dave Foreman's, nor Reed Noss' vision. It is the vision on an incredibly complex, extremely powerful conglomeration of international and national organizations that have been working for decades to gain control of the land and its resources. Similar efforts in the past have ended in war. In this century, such wars were ended by Americans fighting to protect their land and their right to own and use it. Strangely, it is American officials in the Executive branch, and many in Congress who are actually promoting policies that advance Sierra's vision. Through grants and legal fees paid to Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), it is the American taxpayer who is funding the implementation of Sierra's vision. It is the American taxpayers, through their 100 billion dollars contributed to the United Nations over the years, that have financed the development of the organizations which now seek to destroy America's wealth that comes from the private ownership of property. Americans must decide whether they want to own the land and use it as they see fit, or if they prefer to turn over that right to a government authority that will decide for them where they should live and what they may be permitted to do on the land. If the Sierra Club and their cohorts have their way, land owners will not.

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Col 160 – December, 1995

Land: the foundation of freedom By Henry Lamb Without land, and the right to be secure in the ownership of land, no other freedom matters. The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that the private ownership of land was the foundation of America. Private ownership of land is the principle which distinguishes America from other forms of government. It is the principle that allowed individuals to unleash creativity and ingenuity that resulted in advancing human civilization to achievements previously unimagined. It is the defining principle which gives hope that future generations too, will be able to solve their problems and continue to advance civilization to even higher plateaus. Land, and the resources it contains, is the source of all wealth. Whoever controls the land, and its resources, controls the wealth. Urbanites, whose income is derived from insurance sales, clerking, lawyering, accounting, and other non-commodity activities, frequently fail to recognize the connection between the land and wealth. People who have grown up in major urban centers have little connection with the land. It matters little to them whether the government or individuals own the land. They don't. Often, they would rather have the government own 40 percent or more of the land. Under government ownership, non-land owners can feel that somehow the vast stretches of the west, or Alaska, actually belong to them. If government owns the land, no one can be secure where ever they live. The owner always has the final say in who may access his land. If the government owns the land, you may speak as freely as you wish - until you annoy the owner. You then could be expelled to speak your piece to the Siberian snowman. Such was the case in the Soviet Union where the government owned the land. You may worship freely, as long as your worship fits the mold of the owner of the church. You may work at the job of your choosing, so long as the owner of the land on which your job is performed wants the job performed. No other freedom can exist if the individual is not secure in his land and the resources it contains. It is strangely ironic that this discussion is even taking place in America where the principle of private property rights was enshrined in the greatest document ever written about self-governance. But there are those who believe the principle of private property rights is obsolete. They believe that private property rights are the cause of the loss of biodiversity, the reason for inequitable distribution of wealth, and the foundation of all the world's major problems. Those people believe that the only solution is government control of private property, and thereby control of the people. Those people have developed a long-range strategy, using various governmental institutions, to ultimately gain control of all land and all resources - the source of all wealth. That strategy is advancing steadily around the world, and particularly in America, behind a billowing smoke screen of sustainable development, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Those who promote the principle of government control of land and resources have built a frightening scenario of what will happen if the government does not take control of private

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property - impoverishment of the biosphere. They have devised a complex scheme to wrest control from private land owners through a maze of treaties, laws, and regulations which, little by little, transfer private property rights to government authority. In the last 20 years, Americans have already lost rights to land use which have been taken for granted for 200 years. Through the Convention on Biodiversity, the Climate Change Treaty, and the President's Council on Sustainable Development, plans are now on the table which would bring the federal government to the local building and zoning department where a prospective home builder would be required to use only certified materials, build only on an acceptable site, using a government approved design, and landscape according to the government's design. To pursue life, liberty, and happiness - people must be free. Freedom begins with the right to own, and use, private property. Common law provides for individuals who are damaged by another's use of private property to recover those damages. There is no need for the government to take control. There are no benefits that accrue to the individual when the government does take control. There is only inevitable calamity. People must be free to exercise their ingenuity, using their own land and resources, to pursue their own brand of happiness without being managed by a government or a king. Every war we have ever fought was fought to preserve this fundamental principle. Americans must recognize that the new weapons of war are not bombs and soldiers, but armies of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), swarming the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and county court houses, fighting with propaganda and misinformation. The weapons of war may have changed, but the ultimate objective has not. Private property rights are the immediate target, but the ultimate control of people is the true objective.