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Henry Lamb Columns in 1997

Contents America at risk: individual freedom ............................................................................................3

America at risk: limited government............................................................................................5

America at risk: free markets .......................................................................................................7

America at risk: national sovereignty ..........................................................................................9

Facts about UN land designations.............................................................................................. 11

Building Consensus ................................................................................................................... 13

Sustainable Communities .......................................................................................................... 15

Global governance .................................................................................................................... 17

The Consensus Con ................................................................................................................... 19

What's wrong with consensus? .................................................................................................. 21

Protecting our freedom .............................................................................................................. 23

The UN: friend or foe? .............................................................................................................. 25

The UN: where does America fit? ............................................................................................. 27

The UN: crafting global governance .......................................................................................... 29

The UN: the way it ought to be.................................................................................................. 31

Global warming: is it real? ........................................................................................................ 33

Global warming: the cost .......................................................................................................... 35

Global warming: threshold to global governance ....................................................................... 37

Global warming in context ........................................................................................................ 39

UN Reform: strengthening global governance ........................................................................... 41

UN Reform: the Trusteeship Council ........................................................................................ 43

UN Reform: the democratic process .......................................................................................... 45

UN Reform: America's role ....................................................................................................... 47

President's Council on Sustainable Development ....................................................................... 49

PCSD: Social engineering ......................................................................................................... 51

PCSD: Transforming America .................................................................................................. 53

PCSD: Functionary for the UN .................................................................................................. 55

Climate experts unsure about global warming ........................................................................... 57

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Ted Turner's true colors............................................................................................................. 59

UN rule change could bind America .......................................................................................... 61

Losing liberty - fast! .................................................................................................................. 63

National sovereignty ................................................................................................................. 65

American democracy ................................................................................................................ 67

The high price of freedom ......................................................................................................... 69

Kyoto: the Protocol ................................................................................................................... 71

Kyoto: the process ..................................................................................................................... 73

Kyoto: the consequences ........................................................................................................... 75

Sustainable Communities .......................................................................................................... 77

Transforming a republic ............................................................................................................ 79

A Sustainable Community By Henry Lamb ............................................................................. 81

Sustainable Freedom ................................................................................................................. 83

New Treaty Looms.................................................................................................................... 85

The U.S. and the UN ................................................................................................................. 87

A Sustainable World ................................................................................................................. 89

A Sustainable Future ................................................................................................................. 91

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Col 209 – January, 1997

America at risk: individual freedom

By Henry Lamb

Once, human beings were free, absolutely and completely free. They were as free as any other animal on the planet. They were governed only by the law of survival of the fittest, and they were judged only by the impartial, unyielding, merciless judge called nature. The fittest survived, and in order to survive, the less fit submitted to the will of the fittest. The power of the fittest evolved into dynasties and kingdoms. The dominant power, whether called king, tyrant, dictator, governor, or government, controlled the land and its resources, and granted -- or denied -- the right of use to the less fit.

Such was the nature of things in Europe for centuries. The king owned all things and held all power, absolute power granted by God. The King granted the right of land use to favored lords, who in turn, granted the right of land use to workers whose efforts produced the wealth that sustained the lords and the king. The landless workers were provided a place to live and a portion of their produce as long as they retained the favor of the lord. The lord maintained his status as long as he retained the favor of the king. Lords retained the favor the king as long as the lord produced the wealth quota (taxes) the king required. Workers retained the favor of the lord as long as the worker produced the wealth demanded by the lord. Workers were free to come and go as long as their work quota was met and as long as the lord approved.

It took hundreds of years for enough people to challenge the king's authority to begin changing the way society was organized. A handful of malcontent misfits braved uncharted waters to escape the tyranny of overbearing lords and kings. They came to a new world -- America. They reorganized society without lords and kings. And to prevent a recurrence of the survival-of-the-fittest syndrome, they created a new government.

Individual freedom -- liberty-- was their highest value, second only to life itself. Liberty meant the possession of land. Without land, or property, there could be no liberty. To be free, a person must have the security of a place that is his own. He must have a place where he can control events, where he can decide who enters and who is excluded. He must have a place where he and his family are secure, safe from prying eyes and unwanted intrusion. He must have a place where he can produce his own wealth for himself and his family. These values are the foundation upon which these misfits constructed a new society, which, in only 200 years emerged as the most prosperous example of social organization the world has ever known.

A society which promotes individual freedom will prosper because people are free to use their imagination, their energy, and their resources to pursue the happiness promised by the principle of property ownership. People are also free to fail. And people do fail. Where people are free, there can be no equality because people are not equal. People will never be equal because the architect of the universe designed it that way. Efforts to enforce "equity" among people are nothing less than misguided efforts to redesign nature.

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In the last half of the 20th century, a rising tide of influence is seeking to redesign nature, and reorganize societies around the world. A growing number of people are promoting the idea that individual freedom is less valuable than equity among all the people. In fact, individual freedom is seen as the reason inequity exists. To achieve equity, there must be an authority somewhere that ultimately decides what is equitable. To achieve equity, those individuals who have more than others must be deprived of what they have, and those who have less than others must be given more. An authority somewhere must manage that distribution of wealth. Karl Marx is a familiar proponent of social equity: "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

Any and all systems based on social equity are doomed to failure. Despite repeated examples of failure throughout history, the dream of social and economic equity persists. The first casualty in any experiment to achieve social equity is individual freedom. To achieve equity, society must be managed. In a managed society, individuals cannot be allowed to do whatever they choose. The managing authority must allocate the labor of productive people in order to supply the needs of others.

As governments strive to achieve social and economic equity, management of society intensifies. Individual freedom is necessarily decreased as government power is inevitably increased. There can be no individual freedom -- liberty -- in a managed society. The two ideas are mutually exclusive. America is in the early stages of a wrenching transformation, as Al Gore described it, from societies built upon the principle of individual freedom, to societies managed by governments. The transformation is called "sustainability." Sustainable communities are now in vogue. Sustainable development is the current buzzword. Sustainable activities are those which are approved by government. Unsustainable activities are not approved and are increasingly subject to fines and/or jail.

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Col 210 – January, 1997

America at risk: limited government

By Henry Lamb

Those malcontent misfits who did such a magnificent job designing and constructing America did so in the belief that the government they built would be limited perpetually by the people governed. To ensure that the government would never escape the limits imposed by the people governed, they built in a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government, and provided that two of the three branches could be purged on a regular basis. For 200 years, the system worked very well. In recent years, the system has begun to bog down. Government has found creative ways to escape the limits imposed by the people governed.

Third-party lawsuits transformed the Clean Water Act, which protected the "navigable waters of the United States," into administrative authority to regulate virtually any land in the United States that may be moist within 18 inches of the surface for seven days during the growing season. Rule-making authority of executive agencies has expanded legislative intent well beyond recognition in the Endangered Species Act and many other environmental laws. But these creative ways to escape the limits of power imposed by the Constitution are now old hat. Citizens have accepted government's mission-creep, and now government is creeping again. A new technique is now in place: collaborative decision-making through public/private partnerships.

The designers of our government intended for public policy to be established by elected officials. If the citizens do not like the policies adopted by elected officials, the officials can be purged at the next election. The ballot box is the process by which the people governed limit their government. Therefore, policy decisions must be made only by elected officials who are directly accountable to the people governed.

The new process is designed expressly to bypass elected officials and thereby avoid accountability to the electorate. It is a process that substantially empowers government to manage society while denying society the opportunity to limit government's actions. It is an ingenious scheme; here's how it works.

Al Gore has a vision of how he believes society should be organized and how individuals should live. His vision is published in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance. Al Gore has directed that government will implement his vision in America. A central feature of his vision is the creation of "sustainable communities." The Department of Interior, or other government agencies, offers a grant to create a "community visioning council." An NGO (non-government organization) takes the grant and begins the visioning process. Frequently the NGO is created expressly for the purpose and consists of no more than two or three professionals who are well-versed in Al Gore's vision of the future.

Typically, the NGO will approach the heads of several local, state, and federal agencies with a proposal to create a community-wide visioning council of stakeholders to develop a community

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plan to improve the quality of life in the city, or most often, the multi-county region. To the bureaucrats, a few carefully selected business leaders, and a few elected officials will be added to representatives from a variety of NGOs. This then, becomes the "visioning council." These councils are called by different names in different communities but their function is the same.

The moderator calls a meeting and explains that the purpose of the council is to provide broad-based input from all the stakeholders in the area in the process of developing a long-range plan to improve the quality of life for everyone by making the community "sustainable." These meetings are rarely publicized in advance and the community learns about them only if the local press decides to write a news article. Often, these councils exist for many months before the general public is aware of them.

Early in the visioning process, it is decided that the group will be eligible for more grants, from both government and foundations, if the council incorporates as a non-for profit corporation. It is then chartered and becomes a legal entity. The next step, when the plan has sufficiently progressed, is to develop MOAs (Memorandum of Agreement) with local governments in the defined region. The rationale is that since the visioning plan crosses political jurisdictions, the visioning council will serve as a regional coordinator of local policies to ensure that local policy decisions are consistent with the overall plan being developed by the stakeholders in the region. These MOAs are written to give the visioning council all the authority they can wrest from the local officials. The federal government helps. Grants to the council, or the local governments may be withheld unless cooperation with the council is assured.

Once this plateau has been achieved, the council is in charge. For example, the council can include in its regional plan a requirement that all local governments adopt a model building and zoning code prescribed by the Department of Housing & Urban Development. The code can manage minute details of every building. Local governments that do not comply may lose federal matching funds, and the visioning council is on hand to monitor and report local compliance.

If the local citizens do not like the new building codes, who do they purge from office? If all the local elected officials were dumped, the new ones would be under the same constraints as the old ones. Local citizens, the people who are governed, are losing the ability to limit government action. NGOs, including visioning councils, are not accountable to the electorate. When NGOs work in collaboration with the federal government, they become private instruments of government working beyond the reach of the electorate. Moreover, they claim to be representing all the stakeholders and thereby claim that their action is the will of the people.

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Col 211(February, 1997)

America at risk: free markets

By Henry Lamb

Government is intensifying its efforts to manage society through the development of "sustainable communities," and by forcing corporations to become "responsible." Corporate responsibility is the euphemism for managing trade. For years, government has used tax incentives and disincentives to nudge industry into the directions desired by government. For years, business and industry has lived with governmental meddling. Corporate responsibility, however, is taking on the appearance of micro-management. Aside from a myriad of so-called safety regulations, and environmental regulations, government is now intruding into operational decisions. Government now requires that employers grant time-off for certain family-related activities. Government now wants to expand the time-off requirement to include community activities. Government sets the minimum pay, decides when the minimum should be increased, when overtime should be paid, what products may or may not be sold, and requires employers to invest heavily in record-keeping procedures to prove compliance with the government's regulations.

Despite horrific intrusions by the government, the American free-market system continues to dazzle the world. But the sparkle is fading, and America's economic powerhouse may well sputter and fizzle to a ghost of its former self. New regulations proposed by the International Standards Organization (ISO) would require manufacturers to be responsible for not only the safety and effectiveness of their products, but for the "sustainable" disposal of the products as well. A process called Life Cycle Analysis would require a manufacturer to demonstrate how a product would be produced and disposed of, in order to get government's permission to produce it. The process would have to be approved and the approval could require that only "sustainable" material be used, and that provisions be made before manufacture for its disposal. The paperwork, time and administrative investment, and additional cost of such a procedure will have a chilling effect on the entry of new products into the market place. The cost of necessary consumer goods will rise, and economic output will slow. The new regulations, known as ISO 14000, also carry a requirement for industries to be managed according to an approved environmental plan. Virtually every business now regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency would be affected by the new international standards.

There's more. Government is moving forward with a recommendation from the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) to implement a "Green Seal" program. That is a system of identifying products that have been manufactured by a process and with materials that the government has deemed "sustainable." A third-party NGO is to be selected and funded at tax-payer's expense, to identify those products that are to bear the green seal. Government agencies, including state and local governments, as well as private industries that operate on federal contracts, may be required to purchase only those products that bear the green seal. Those manufacturers who cannot, or choose not to submit to government's management of their business will be at a distinct disadvantage in the market place, despite any competitive advantage

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their product may have. A market so heavily managed by government cannot be called a free market.

There's still more. A bizarre idea advanced by radical environmental extremists is gaining support: a sunset law for all corporations. An organization funded by the Tides Foundation is proposing that all corporations should be chartered for a limited period of time with the possibility of additional periods of life providing that the corporation can demonstrate social responsibility as prescribed by government-mandated criteria. The criteria suggested would include such items as equity in hiring and compensation practices, reasonable profits, environmentally sustainable resource use and manufacturing practices, and representation on the board of directors by civil society.

Sadly, a growing number of Americans believe this intrusion by government into the market place is needed. A steady drumbeat of propaganda about corporate polluters, corporate greed, corporate indifference to workers' needs, has conditioned consumers to lose sight of the benefits that corporations have brought to American life. Corporations are castigated by government and by NGOs -- unless they become a poster child for the sustainability movement. Larger corporations are raising the flag of sustainability which is a white-flag of surrender to government management of the market. Some corporate officials sincerely believe that by climbing out of the polluted waters of the free market and into the pristine harbor of government management they will gain a market advantage while helping the environment.

Managed markets stagnate and die. They always have in the past and they always will in the future. Only a free market, governed by price, can produce a dynamic, self-adjusting economy which reflects both the capacity and the appetite of society. A free market made America strong; a managed market will make America a responsible member of an equitable global neighborhood.

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Col 212 (February, 1997)

America at risk: national sovereignty

By Henry Lamb

America is changing rapidly, from a society organized around the fundamental principles of individual freedom, private property, free markets, and limited government, to a society organized around the principle of unlimited government, free to mandate individual behavior, land use, and business procedures. The change is occurring, not because the people governed want it so, expressed through their choices at the ballot box, but because a determined minority have masterfully manipulated policy decisions at the international level which are being implemented at the national, state, and local levels. The rising tide of influence from the international community, enforced through international treaties, is eroding national sovereignty.

UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, told CBS news and the Washington Post, that the UN has no intention of "taking over" the United States, in an effort to quiet the growing resistance to UN influence. Annan is right. The UN has no intention of "taking over" the United States. There is no need to "take over" any country. The published strategy now being implemented is to convince every country to adopt principles of governance which originate within the UN system, which are implemented in many countries through UN agencies, and which are to be enforced through international agencies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). Most nations in the world, including America, are eagerly implementing the UN strategy .

The strategy is set forth in a variety of UN documents: Agenda 21, and the two treaties which flowed from the Rio Earth Summit II (climate change and biodiversity); Global Biodiversity Assessment, 1140 pages of explanation of a 16-page treaty on biodiversity; Our Global Neighborhood, the final report of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance; and dozens of "Plans of Action" adopted by the various UN Conferences and Commissions. The strategy is unmistakably clear, straightforward, and published in official documents available for all to read. The objectives are set forth, explained in verbose detail, along with estimated time-lines for implementation.

The plan is not to "take over" any nation, but to achieve "global governance" in all nations. There is no plan to have UN personnel administering government at any level in the United States. There is no plan to have UN troops enforce UN policy in America. There is no need for such a plan. It is far more effective to have Al Gore and Bruce Babbitt implement the Ecosystem Management Policy which is precisely the land-use policies required by the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity. It is far more effective to have Carol Browner expand the National Ambient Air Quality Standards to achieve the objectives of the UN's Convention on Climate Change. It is far more effective to have the Department of Housing and Urban Development implement the recommendations of Agenda 21 in a nation-wide program to develop the UN's concept of "Sustainable Communities."

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Proponents of the UN agenda are quick to denounce, ridicule, and discredit anyone who speaks ill of the UN, charging irrational fear of black helicopters and blue-helmeted forces sweeping from the forests to take over America. Such attacks, leveled by administration officials, Congressmen, and major environmental organizations, divert attention away from the real thief of national sovereignty. Of course, many people who realize that something is wrong in America, but have not yet come to fully comprehend the UN strategy, do, indeed, fear black-helicopters and blue-helmeted forces in America's future. Such threats may lie in the distant future. But the immediate threat is not military; it is the implementation of policies that erode the foundation principles on which America was built.

More and more people are becoming aware of the growing influence of the UN. Since the November elections, there has been a marked increase in activities to implement in America the policies which originate within the UN system. Dozens, if not hundreds, of communities are discovering the existence of some form of "stakeholders council" conducting meetings to begin a "visioning process" to make their's a "sustainable community." Industry is facing new clean air standards so strict that even trees in the Smokey Mountains will be polluters in violation of the law. Farmers, ranchers, loggers, and miners are losing the right to use land, water, and natural resources, even when they are located on the property -- bought and paid for -- by private citizens. As these policies impact more and more people, they become concerned and involved.

As they get involved in local property rights organizations and begin to contact their elected officials, their influence begins to counter the influence of the UN. The introduction by Congressman Don Young (R-AK) of the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act , which simply requires Congressional approval before American land can be designated as a UN Biosphere Reserve or World Heritage Site, brought bitter disapproval from UN officials, Democratic Congressmen, the administration, and the promise of a veto from the President.

Opposition to the bill was directed not toward the issues of land control or national sovereignty, but to the irrational fears of people who dwell in the "twilight zone" of UN conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, awareness of , and resistance to the rising influence of the UN is growing in America. Kofi Annan's assurance that the UN has no desire to "take over" provides no assurance at all that the UN is not advancing its agenda relentlessly. The UN is advancing it agenda with the help of well-placed, powerful, government officials. If America is to retain its national sovereignty, Americans must limit the government's power give away sovereignty through voluntary implementation of the UN agenda.

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Col 213 (January, 1997)

Facts about UN land designations

By Henry Lamb

A lot of misinformation is flying about related to the UN designated Biosphere Reserves and World Heritage Sites. Kentucky and Tennessee residents were alarmed by recent radio reports that 500,000 people were going to be forced from their homes near the Land-between-the-Lakes Biosphere Reserve. That's misinformation. George Frampton, then-head of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, told a Congressional committee that "International agreements, such as the World Heritage Convention, have in no way been utilized to exclude Congress from land management decisions, nor do they have the ability to do so." That's misinformation. Then-Congressman Bill Richardson (now UN Ambassador designate) said on the floor of the House of Representatives "We very well might have blue-helmeted UN troops sweeping in in black helicopters, driving out our poor Smoky-the-Bear-hatted park ranger in a triumphant victory of the new world order of sinister forces." That's misinformation.

Here are the facts. There are 20 World Heritage Sites, so designated by UNESCO, in the United States. These sites are subject to the World Heritage Convention signed by the US on November 16, 1972. Ownership of these sites is not affected by the designation. Management of the sites, however, is governed by the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, published in 1994, by UNESCO. Paragraph 17 of the document requires that when necessary, "an adequate `buffer zone' around a property should be provided and should be afforded the necessary protection." Both Yellowstone National Park and the Everglades have been listed by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites in danger. Consequently, it is necessary, under the requirements of the treaty, to "protect" the sites - even beyond the boundaries of the site - by creating "buffer zones." The Greater Yellowstone Coalition has proposed an 18.3 million acre buffer zone around the 2.3 million acre park. Land use -- and private property rights -- must be restricted in the buffer zone as the direct result of the UN designation.

Biosphere Reserves are not covered by any treaty. It is a UNESCO program to which the U.S. government has subscribed voluntarily. Nevertheless, the nomination of an area to the Biosphere Reserve Program implies that management of the area will be consistent with the management policies set forth by UNESCO. The U.S. State Department's Man and the Biosphere Program has published its Strategic Plan for the U.S. Biosphere Reserve Program. The document says "The U.S. Strategic Plan was developed in response to UNESCO's call for country MAB Programs to develop and adopt Biosphere Reserve Action Plans (page 2)." It describes the relationship of U.S. MAB to UNESCO, and describes how each Biosphere Reserve is to consist of a "core" protected area; surrounded by a "buffer zone;" which is surrounded by a "zone of cooperation." These zones are to be open-ended and continually expanding, with land-use controls ever tightening toward the core area, in which no human activity is allowed.

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UNESCO has no power to enforce this management scheme. Participation is voluntary. To encourage maximum participation in the voluntary program, a host of regulatory schemes are employed, including wetlands policy, endangered species legislation, scenic rivers legislation, Heritage corridors, Transportation Viewshed, Open-space regulations, and other land-use control devices. The enforcement mechanism is a "stakeholders council." This is one or more NGO (non-governmental organizations) created for the purpose of "promoting" the Biosphere Reserve. Its function is to conduct "consensus-building" workshops and seminars (which are called capacity building opportunities) to "educate" the local community and to develop a vision of a "sustainable" resource use plan for the area.

Stakeholder councils typically are driven by professionals masquerading as a civic organization, funded by the likes of the Tides Foundation, the Rockefeller Fund, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the federal government. Through memoranda of agreement with local, state, and federal agencies, these councils accumulate inordinate power to recommend approval or disapproval of specific local projects, based upon the proposed activity's compatibility with the overall plan for the area. Biosphere Reserves always embrace multi-county, and frequently, multi-state areas. The stakeholder council provides a coordinating unit that crosses jurisdictional boundaries. Local governments are rarely willing to contest the recommendations of the council. The council's plan is said to represent the consensus of the stakeholders and has been developed with broad community support. More often than not, that's misinformation.

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Col 214(January, 1997)

Building Consensus

By Henry Lamb

The President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) says in its "We Believe Statement," "We need a new collaborative decision process that leads to better decisions; more rapid change; and more sensible use of human, natural, and financial resources in achieving our goals." The title of the PCSD report is: Sustainable America: A New Consensus. The "new collaborative decision process" used by the UN, by the PCSD, and increasingly around the country in local visioning councils and stakeholder councils is called "Consensus Building."

The process is described in a 54-page booklet, written and published by Richard H. Graff, which relies heavily upon a paper by Alan Kay and Hazel Henderson, entitled Introducing Competition to the Global Currency Markets, published in Futures, May, 1996. Graff's booklet is distributed widely among consensus builders as a tutorial for consensus building. Graff says: "It is revolutionary in that it abandons the traditional model of persuasion...while at the same time adroitly discouraging the usual stream of petty objections."

Consensus is not agreement. Graff's booklet makes it very clear that consensus building is a process that avoids and disposes of conflicting views and is, in fact, the achievement of a state where objection is quieted rather than where agreement is reached. He says:

"The idea of consensus is not new. Most people have a vague idea of what it is, but very few, when asked to define it, can give a precise meaning and clearly distinguish it from agreement. Let's begin with agreement. Normally when you want to persuade others of the validity of something, you attempt to convince them to agree with you. You present your case with as much supporting argument as you can muster, and when you are finished you ask (explicitly or implicitly) whether everyone agrees. Consensus, in contrast, does not involve convincing others to adopt your view, and it most certainly does not require anyone to change his or her mind."

Consensus is an extension of the "Negative Poll," it involves asking questions rather than making statements.

Consensus building always begins with a predetermined position which may or may not be made known to the group. The purpose of asking questions is to identify those who may wish to speak. The desired response is silence. Questions are framed to force individuals who might be opposed to identify themselves and give a reason for their opposition. According to Graff, "A well - crafted question provokes thought and elicits no response." Those who might disagree are confronted with the decision of whether they disagree strongly enough to speak up and defend their position, or whether or not they "can live with it."

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"Everyone also realizes that before answering they had better think about it a moment -- make sure they understand it -- so that if they do open their mouth something intelligent and pertinent will come out. There is silence. Everyone is thinking about the same question and no one disagrees. No one can speak without thinking, and the silence implies consensus."

Questions are constructed so that a response will force the person to disagree with something that is universally seen to be good, or to support something that is generally seen to be bad.

"This is the key feature of the negative poll: you don't ask if everyone agrees (which encourages everyone to start talking), you ask if there's anyone who does not agree (which encourages everyone to keep still). It's a poll for negativity. Thus we have the crucial distinction between agreement and consensus."

Here's an example of how the consensus building process works by asking well-constructed questions:

"When you ask a question such as, "Does anyone think we should not be concerned about the future well-being of our species?" Everyone who hears, understands and thinks about the question remains silent. You have an immediate implied consensus. The point is that no one disagrees that we should be concerned, no one speaks up, no one says we should not be concerned."

When a consensus is declared, as the result of a series of well-crafted questions, it is a strong claim that doesn't need proving. The burden of proof is shifted to opponents who must prove that a consensus does not exist.

Another strategy used by the consensus builders is the use of notable personalities to support a particular position. Graff teaches his students to not claim that any particular personality agrees with a position unless you are certain that your statement is true. On the other hand, however, he says: "you can quite properly name anybody you like as not disagreeing. No one can disagree without saying so explicitly, so you can name any well-known or highly respected person you like as not disagreeing, and no one can dispute you."

Consensus decisions are accountable to no one. Since no votes are taken, no individual is required to publicly state a position. Every participant in a consensus process can deny that they supported the consensus reached. Nevertheless, public policies across the country are being determined by consensus, more often than not, by "stakeholders" in meetings facilitated by trained professionals -- rather than by elected officials.

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Col 215 (February, 1997)

Sustainable Communities

By Henry Lamb

From one end of this country to the other, "visioning councils or "stakeholder" councils are conducting "consensus-building" workshops to promote the social changes mandated in Agenda 21, adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. These workshops are funded in large part by the federal government. The EPA announced the availability of "Challenge Grants" to local communities specifically to advance the purposes expressed in Agenda 21. The vision of the future presented in these workshops glamorizes open spaces, economic renewal, dynamic neighborhoods, and a wonderful life for all.

What the vision always fails to describe is the fundamental shift of governance from duly elected officials to an unseen, unaccountable, unelected, authority that flows from the international community. The very principle of self-governance is being replaced by an insidious "stateism" that claims to be democratic action by civil society.

America has prospered as no other nation in history, because the system of self-governance set forth in the U.S. Constitution fixes the authority for governance squarely upon officials elected by the people. If the people don't like the policies, they can un-elect the officials. The process is slow, inefficient, raucous, and never satisfies everyone. It is a process that forces ideas with merit to prove their worth. Debate polishes gems into jewels, and grinds fools’ gold into powder. The end result -- is what the people want.

The consensus process begins with what is best for the people -- as determined by someone somewhere who is never identified, nor is ever directly accountable. What is best for the people is determined by the "state." It is presented with the endorsement of the state, funded by the state, and enforced by the state, and ultimately, paid for by the people. Rarely, if ever, is the big picture of the future revealed. Only small segments are presented, such as a Heritage Area, a river protection scheme, a Biosphere Reserve, a bike trail, or some other politically correct vision of what the state thinks a community should be. The big picture, however, is finally available.

The faint-hearted will never see the big picture. It is buried in thousands of pages of UN documents such as the Global Biodiversity Assessment; Our Global Neighborhood, Our Common Future; Biodiversity Strategy; and official Plans of Actions adopted by dozens of UN Commissions and Conferences around the world.

These documents reveal a future society very similar to the society described by Al Gore in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance. The UN documents, though, are much more specific. The diligent student of the UN documents will see a world in which all people honor the earth as the giver of life and all species are respected as equally valuable with inherent rights equal to the rights claimed by humans. In the UN's future world, all people have a responsibility to protect

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the earth and the duty to comply with international law. All people should benefit equally from the earth's resources. In order to insure that no individual gets more than his share, there must be a system for distributing the earth's bounty. Land, and the resources it contains, must be controlled by the state.

Human resources cannot be wasted, therefore, they too, must be distributed by the state. People cannot be allowed to become doctors just because they want to. If there are too many doctors, in the opinion of the state, then mechanisms must be put into place that prevent individuals from becoming doctors. Schools must be manipulated to produce the kind of workers that the state decides are needed; people cannot be allowed to develop whatever skills they want.

Nor can people be allowed to live where they choose. Biodiversity must be protected, so individuals cannot build a home where it may have adverse impact on the environment. As much as half the land area, according to the published UN plan, would have no homes at all. Most of the rest of the land would be strictly managed for conservation objectives, by the state. People would then have to live in sustainable communities designed by the state. The communities would have strict borders to avoid urban sprawl, surrounded by "greenways." Transportation would be by foot, bike, electric vehicle, or by light-rail mass transit. Integrated neighborhoods would ensure social justice. People cannot be allowed to live where they choose because they choose to live in patterns that are not just. The rich tend to live with the rich, and the poor live wherever they can. That is neither equitable nor just, according to the UN. Automobiles that use fossil fuels will become history and transport between communities will be extremely difficult and very expensive. People will have little reason to wander far from their sustainable community in which the state has provided for their every need.

The future according to the UN will not be imposed by force; it is being adopted piece-meal by local communities that blindly accept the result of the visioning and stakeholder councils that are tirelessly at work in every community in the nation.

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Col 216 (February, 1997)

Global governance

By Henry Lamb

"Global governance is here, it is here to stay...and global governance is going to expand."

These are the words of James Gustave Speth, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), delivered to the World Conference on Rio + 5, in Rio de Janeiro on March 18. The Conference was convened by the Earth Council, an NGO created by Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of Earth Summit I and II, former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and now Senior advisor to the UN Secretary-General in charge of reforming the UN.

Who is James Gustave Speth? He began his environmental-activist career as a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is the organization that staged the bogus Alar apple scare, and is now working with the UNEP on a program to eliminate automobiles called the Green Auto Race. In 1982, Speth was chosen by Russell Train of the World Wildlife Fund-USA (WWF), to become the President of the newly created World Resources Institute (WRI). For eleven years, WRI worked closely with the WWF, UNEP, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to develop the strategy that underlies Agenda 21, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, Speth went to work for the Clinton-Gore Transition Team. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed Executive Director of UNDP, an agency that redistributes billions of dollars annually from developed nations to developing nations. His speech focused on the role of international development agencies in the new era of global governance. He told the conference that rich nations had "failed utterly" to supply the funds needed by the developing nations, despite the fact the U.S. pays nearly 30% of the total UN budget. He said that global governance is not global government; he said it was, instead, a system of controls. Some people may have difficulty sorting out a difference between the two.

Speth said the World Trade Organization (WTO) has powerful implications for global governance. The WTO is the first international institution that has the power to enforce international law. It has the power to impose trade sanctions, not only against a nation, but against industries within a nation. Perhaps more significantly, Speth told the conference that the Climate Change treaty would ultimately have even more powerful implications for global governance. He was not exaggerating.

The protocol to the Climate Change treaty now being negotiated will give an international body the authority to control the availability of fossil-fuel energy in America. Through taxation and other measures, an international body will determine how much fossil-fuel energy may be used in 34 developed nations. The rest of the world is not bound by the treaty. The Clinton

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Administration has already endorsed the protocol and has planned a year-long campaign to win public support for the measure that will have to be ratified by the Senate early in 1998. The protocol, should it be ratified, could be the clamp needed by the UN to bring the powerful United States to its knees.

Global governance, which Speth says is here, and here to stay, also envisions the removal of veto power from the UN Security Council's permanent members, and within 10 years, removal of permanent member status. Global governance requires global taxation. One published plan promoted by Speth's UNDP, is the Tobin Tax, a scheme to tax international currency transactions that would produce $1.5 trillion dollars a year, more than 150 times the UN's current annual budget. Global governance would require a UN standing army under the command of the Secretary-General, and eventually control of the manufacture, sale, and distribution of all munitions -- including hand guns. Global governance, as published in the report of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance, would assume "trusteeship" over the global commons, which is defined to be the "atmosphere, outer space, non-territorial seas, and the related environment and life support systems that support human life." That includes biodiversity -- all biodiversity -- privately owned biodiversity as well as state owned biodiversity. Global governance also requires a new International Criminal Court and legally binding verdicts from the Court of International Justice, supported by an independent panel of UN prosecutors who have the power to enter any sovereign nation to investigate and prosecute violations of international law.

Global governance cannot occur without the concurrence of the U.S. The Clinton Administration appears to be pushing for global governance by supporting the Climate Change Protocol, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Convention on the Law of the Seas, and an array of other international initiatives. There can be no doubt that Gus Speth, Clinton's former employee, is an ardent supporter of global governance. He is one of the governors. Perhaps Clinton sees a future position higher than the one he now holds.

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Col 217 (February, 1997)

The Consensus Con By Henry Lamb

The newest fad in political correctness is "consensus building" through "stakeholder" councils, in meetings that are conducted by trained "facilitators." The process is said to provide broad public input into policy decisions that result in "better" policy decisions. Consensus building is the process used by the United Nations. It is the process used by and recommended by the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD): "We need a new collaborative decision process that leads to better decisions; more rapid change; and more sensible use of human, natural, and financial resources in achieving our goals.

Most people would readily assume that a decision reached by consensus means that the people who made the decision were in agreement. Wrong! Consensus does not mean agreement; it means the absence of disagreement. The consensus process begins with a predetermined objective in mind, and consensus is reached when objections to that predetermined position have been quieted. The process is designed to give the appearance of broad participation in the process to reach a consensus on a position that was determined before the process began.

The process is most often advertised as "open to all" and everyone is free to speak. In reality, the participants are carefully selected and invited to participate on the basis of a known philosophical propensity, or for representation of a particular social group which can be said to "reflect" the views of the poor, or of an indigenous group, or of industry, or the like. Uninvited guests are rarely barred from the meetings, but they rarely know about the meetings until a report of the meeting is published in a local newspaper. Often, the media is not even invited until the process is well underway and the facilitator is confident enough of the outcome to begin developing public support.

Participants are invited to speak, but the process is designed to elicit silence. The facilitator is trained to ask for a negative response, or for disagreement with a statement with which most reasonable people would agree. For example, a facilitator might say: "Is there anyone who would disagree that we are dependent upon trees and other vegetation for the oxygen we breathe?" No reasonable person could disagree with such a statement. "Then is there anyone who would disagree that trees and other vegetation are extremely important to society as a whole?" Who could disagree with that? "Would you disagree that when vast acreages of trees are clearcut, we lose not only oxygen producing capacity, but wildlife habitat, and erosion protection as well?"

By framing questions in this fashion, an implied consensus is developed by the silence of the participants. Disagreement with a question so framed, automatically puts the respondent on the defensive and requires some form of justification for the disagreement. When there is disagreement, the facilitator is trained to marginalize the respondent even further by re-crafting the question is such a way as to make the respondent look silly. For example: "Are you telling this group that society has no right to be concerned about the oxygen producing capacity of the

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planet?" It only takes a few such exchanges to whip an audience into shape. A trained facilitator can move almost any audience to consensus on almost any issue, almost at will. Individuals who frequently disagree, or object, are quickly identified as trouble-makers, and are either ignored, or excluded from the process.

It is an ingenious process, developed by Socrates, and now widely used by government agencies and NGOs in community meetings designed to impose a previously determined position on an unsuspecting community that is led to believe they participated in creating a new "vision" of a new future that will benefit society. What actually happens in such processes is that an agenda developed by the United Nations is implemented at the local level while bypassing the elected officials who should be responsible and accountable for all public policy.

Interestingly, a county plan developed in Manistee County, Michigan, explicitly claims compliance with the UN's Agenda 21 Sustainable Community requirements. In Alachua County, Florida, the state official responsible for coordinating Florida's Sustainable Community Program claims no connection with the UN's Agenda 21. Nevertheless, both county plans are mirror-reflections of Agenda 21.

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Col 218 (February, 1997)

What's wrong with consensus? By Henry Lamb

The consensus process bypasses elected officials; removes accountability; imposes an agenda which originated elsewhere; and shifts governance from the people governed, to the enlightened elite.

The genius of our Constitutional Republic is the design that forces public policy up from the bottom -- from the people governed. Until now, our system has required that a public policy proposal be initiated into official consideration by an elected official. Every citizen has an equal right to propose anything that he wishes, but to be considered officially, an elected official must introduce the proposal to some governing body of elected officials. Every citizen has an equal right to become an elected official and to propose whatever he wishes.

Our system, until now, has required that every proposal introduced to an official body be scrutinized, debated, discussed, lobbied -- and refined in the process -- until eventually, a vote by the responsible, elected officials determine whether or not the proposal becomes public policy. Should the electors dislike the policy, they know which elected officials voted for the policy and they have direct recourse to correct the policy by replacing the officials who voted for it. Granted, the process is noisy, boisterous, slow, subject to political pressures, invites corruption, welcomes trade-offs and compromises, and frequently changes the original proposal dramatically. Whatever the eventual outcome of a policy proposal, the electors -- the people who empower government in the first place -- have direct recourse to change the policy if they wish. If a policy proposal fails to get a majority vote of the elected officials, it is dead -- until its proponents go through the process again.

Consensus, on the other hand, begins with a policy proposal developed elsewhere -- not from the passions of the people who are governed by it. The objectives of the policy proposals are always positive, and promise benefits to the people who are to be governed by it. Rarely, however, are the unintended consequences anticipated. The cost of the consensus process can easily outweigh any benefits that may be realized.

The individual freedom enjoyed by Americans is the envy of the world. Individuals who Column are free to risk their capital and their energy in a business enterprise is the impetus of the American economy which drives the world economy. Individual freedom is the power of social progress. Individual freedom is the power of the American system of governance. Individual freedom can exist only to the extent that individuals control and limit government. Control of government is accomplished only through the ballot box. When public policy decisions are made by non-elected bureaucrats -- behind the guise of "stakeholder" councils -- individuals lose control of their government.

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That is precisely what is wrong with the consensus process: non-elected bureaucrats assume the power of making public policy through a process that becomes legally binding upon the people who are governed -- and provide no recourse for remedy at the ballot box.

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Col 219 (March 1997)

Protecting our freedom

By Henry Lamb

The first step toward protecting our freedom from the unintended consequences of the consensus process -- is understanding the tactics and objectives of those who facilitate the process. The consensus process is now being used by the federal government and non-government organizations to involve "the public" in a wide range of public policy decisions. Visioning councils are springing up in communities across the country. The U.S. Forest Service is using the process to modify forest management plans. The Fish and Wildlife Service is using the process to develop ecosystem management plans. State and local governments are using the process to develop growth management plans and comprehensive county plans. The proponents of the process have done a magnificent job in promoting both the process and the agenda.

Those who are concerned about the unintended consequences -- as well as the objectives of the sustainable development agenda -- need to use the process rather than fight it. To remain outside the process and object to it invites ridicule and marginalization. It is a better strategy to get involved and take control.

The consensus process claims transparency -- that is, openness. Whenever a "stakeholder" council of any sort is organized in your community, get involved. Go to the meetings. Watch and listen. Discover who organized the meeting. Find out who pays the salary of the facilitator. Identify the steering committee or the board of directors. Know who the players are and learn all that can be learned about the objectives of the organizations represented by the key players.

"Stakeholder" meetings are never organized without some specific purpose in mind. As early as possible in the process, ask "Why has this meeting or process been organized?" Force the proponents to articulate a precise reason for starting the process. More often than not, the purpose for the process will be implied, or casually attributed to broad, sweeping generalizations such as "protecting the environment," or "creating a better future," or "economic renewal," or some other apple-pie-and-motherhood purpose.

Challenge the purpose. In Missouri, 93 percent of the land is privately owned. The State Department of Natural Resources announced that it was developing a Comprehensive Resource Management Plan and scheduled a series of "stakeholder" meetings around the state. One of the first questions asked by the land owners was: "If 93-percent of the land, and therefore, 93-percent of the resources, are privately owned, why does the state feel compelled to develop a plan to manage resources and land that is owned by others?" Another question raised was: "Who among the landowners felt that a need for a comprehensive plan was necessary or desirable?" The state agency was immediately put on the defensive. The issue was clearly defined: whose right and responsibility is it to manage the land and its resources, the individuals who own it, or the state?

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After meeting similar questions in community after community, the State Department of Natural Resources withdrew its Comprehensive Resource Management Plan. The people of Missouri have not won; they have only delayed the process. They have become aware, however, and the next attempt to use the consensus process to impose public policy decisions that diminish individual freedom will be met with a stronger and better organized resistance. Individual freedom is the reason resistance is possible -- it must be protected!

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Col 221 (March 1997)

The UN: friend or foe?

By Henry Lamb

Congressional opinion about the United Nations is sharply divided. A few Congressmen want to withdraw completely; a few want to empower the UN to become a world government. Most believe that the UN is a better alternative -- with all of its shortcomings -- than to have no international forum at all. Congressional opinion reflects public opinion; most Americans believe that the UN offers some hope of avoiding future wars and finding solutions to the world's problems. The bitter truth is that many Americans -- including Congressmen -- know very little about the UN and don't want to know more than they have to know.

The time has come when Americans must learn about the UN in order to either force a change in its direction, resist its quest for global dominance, or to dismantle the organization and start all over again.

The UN is widely perceived as the place where nations gather to debate their differences, the mechanism for delivering relief to starving refugees, and the peacekeepers of last resort. Beyond this perception, little is known about the United Nations' activities. These are the activities that claim the headlines and television reports. These are the activities that lead people to think that the UN is a positive force in the world -- despite the inefficiencies, waste, and incompetence. These activities, however costly, pose little danger; it is the plethora of other activities that never make the headlines or television reports that are a rising threat to America.

The United Nations system encompasses more than 130 different organizations, agencies, commissions, committees, and working groups. Each has its own budget and bureaucracy and each has its own agenda. Since the mid 1970s, with the creation of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the work of all these UN organizations has been coordinated through the DOEM (Designated Official on Environmental Matters). The DOEM is chaired by the Deputy Director of the UNEP, and its function is to coordinate the various agendas with the objectives of the UNEP.

UNEP is the UN agency responsible for Agenda 21, adopted by 179 nations in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This "soft-law" (non-binding) document sets forth 27 principles, and 300 pages of specific recommendations that should, according to the UN, be written into national laws and policies. From the recommendations of Agenda 21, two international treaties have already emerged and others are being developed. The Climate Change Treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate as a "voluntary" agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The UN bureaucracy is now converting the voluntary agreement into a legally binding agreement that will give a UN organization the authority to set emission limits for carbon dioxide -- the residue from fossil fuels. The Clinton Administration has already endorsed the new treaty. Should the U.S. Senate ratify the change to the treaty, The UN would have very real authority to determine how much fossil fuel energy is available in America.

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The Convention on Biological Diversity was presented to the 103rd Congress, but was not ratified. The Clinton Administration is implementing provisions of the treaty as if it had been ratified. Both the National Biological Survey (now renamed the National Biological Service), and the Ecosystem Management Policy are required by the treaty, and both policies are being implemented vigorously.

Congress has not yet confronted the real issues relating to the UN. Several bills are now circulating in Congress that could trigger debate. UN supporters, such as Representative Miller (D-CA), refuse to debate the real issues, opting instead to label any and all challenges to the UN as the rantings of the "black helicopter" crowd. Such tactics not only betray the trust of the American people, they only delay the inevitable confrontation. America is the most influential nation on earth; whether we lead the United Nations, and the world, or are led by the United Nations into a new form of global governance is the issue that must be confronted. The debate has begun.

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Col 222 (March 1997)

The UN: where does America fit?

By Henry Lamb

Because America pays more than twice as much as any other nation toward the activities of the United Nations (more than 25 percent of the total budget), America could, should, and usually does, force the United Nations to do its bidding in the world. Many of the nations of the world resent America's influence in the UN. Many Americans are embarrassed by it. Sometimes America's influence has been very visible, as in Desert Storm; at other times, America's influence has been invisible, as in the case of the Montreal Protocol which banned freon in America. America is the determining influence at the UN; nothing happens there which does not meet with the approval of the U.S. State Department.

Since America has the power of the purse, and the power to direct the UN agenda, why, then, is the UN moving very aggressively toward a socialist agenda? The answer may lie in the growing perception that America, itself, is moving toward a socialist agenda. Is America being influenced by the UN, or are the UN's socialistic policies being driven by the U.S. State Department?

The State Department, and the administration, vehemently deny socialist leanings, all the while proposing more, stricter government control over the affairs of private individuals. The term "socialistic" is not a politically correct term. Current language uses terms such as "public/private partnerships," and "collaborative decision making," and "sustainable development." These terms all describe activities in which the government assumes the power to determine the outcome of all discussions; citizen participation is invited to give the appearance of public input. These terms and concepts originate within the bowels of the UN.

America has a grave responsibility to the world. It was in America that civilization learned how to achieve maximum benefit from human endeavor. The lesson was learned by accident, but it was learned, nonetheless. The great societies of history flourished and faded. Some survived thousands of years. But none achieved the heights of social, technological, scientific, and economic progress made by America in just 200 years. Why?

In America, individuals were free. Really free. Free to try, to fail, to try again. People were free to be compassionate or to be killers. People were free to do whatever they wanted, or needed to do to survive, and to improve their plight. American freedom allowed individuals to pursue dreams and create what never before existed. Some people succeeded and grew incredibly rich. Other people suffered -- and died. It was a ruthless existence. America created a government that provided the people with the power to determine the extent government would be allowed to restrict the activities of the people governed. Until recent years, the people controlled their government pretty well. But no longer.

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Inequity is held up as justification for government intervention into almost every human activity, in America, and at the UN. It is seen as "unfair" that some people are rich while others are suffering abject poverty. Therefore, government must intervene to redistribute wealth so all will have an "equal opportunity." America was not created to ensure equality for its citizens; The Soviet Union, Cuba, and every other socialist nation was created for just that purpose.

America's responsibility to the world is not to give its wealth to other nations, but to give other nations an example of individual freedom, secured by private ownership of property, in which free markets excite creativity, protected by inviolate national sovereignty. Every American encounter with every United Nations organization should insist that these principles prevail. Government, whether at the UN, national, state, or local levels, should be nothing more than police protection from the lawless -- and a mechanism for delivering the services the people have determined that they want. Government, at any level, has no business manufacturing a social agenda that prescribes how individuals should live their lives. America, and the United Nations, are busy implementing a global agenda designed to dictate precisely how individuals should live, think, and behave.

While America is a part of the UN, it has an opportunity and a responsibility to provide leadership to help other nations discover the principles of self governance that made America the greatest nation on earth. Such leadership is America's most important function in the international community. It is the only place America should fit around the table of United Nations.

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Col 223 (April, 1997)

The UN: crafting global governance

By Henry Lamb

Walking through the woods, it is quite possible to see every tree, know every detail about each tree, and still have no idea how vast the forest may be. Walking through the United Nations system of organizations, agencies, commissions, committees, and working groups is much like walking through the woods. It is possible to become very familiar with each of the organizations and still have no idea that the cumulative effect of all the organizations is defacto global governance.

Until the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance published its final report, Our Global Neighborhood, UN watchers could only speculate about the ultimate objectives of the world-wide governmental organization. Those speculators have worn the mantle of "conspiracy theorists" for years. With the publication of the Commission's report, all speculation is now laid to rest: global governance by the year 2000 is the stated goal.

Shortly after his ascension to the UN throne, Secretary-General Kofi Anon assured Washington officials and media that the UN had neither the desire nor the ability to "take over" the United States. In March, however, Gustave Speth, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Program told an international conference in Rio de Janeiro that "global governance is a powerful and growing reality. It is here, and it is here to stay."

Global governance is not a "take over" of any government; it is instead, the voluntary acquiescence by every nation to the authority of the United Nations system. Global governance is being crafted, not as an event to look forward to, but as a series of events -- some that have already occurred -- which will incrementally shift power and control from sovereign nations to a variety of international agencies.

The Conference of the Parties to the Vienna Convention on Ozone Depleting Substances has the authority to limit production and use of certain chemicals it determines to be harmful. The Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species has the authority to limit trade in natural resources it determines to be a threat to biodiversity. The Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change will have the authority to determine how much fossil fuel energy can be used in America -- if the Senate ratifies the protocol currently under negotiation. The Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity has the authority to determine how land is used -- including privately owned land in America -- even though the treaty has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate. Through the implementation of ISO-9000 and ISO-14000, the International Standards Organization, a little known UN agency, has the authority to determine both manufacturing standards and environmental management standards used by American industry.

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Each tree in the United Nations forest produces its own poison. Those who walk in the dark woods of international intrigue, know full well the impact of the international agency that produces their particular poison. Few, however, see the big picture -- the forest of global governance. The incremental steps that have already been taken are a meager precursor of what is to come, according to the report of the Commission on Global Governance.

The Earth Charter, currently being circulated for ratification by member nations, sets the philosophical framework for protecting the planet -- by controlling the people who are said to be destroying it. The restructure of the UN Trusteeship Council to have "trusteeship" over the global commons -- outer space, the atmosphere, non-territorial seas, and the related environment that supports human life -- will give control of the planet to the UN. The World Trade Organization already has the authority to enforce the UN's mandates through trade sanctions that can be levied against individual industries within sovereign states.

The global agenda is to be financed through an array of global taxes, beginning with the existing power of the International Seabed Authority, and extending to the developing world central bank to impose taxes on foreign exchange. Resource use is to be curtailed by the imposition of taxes on fossil fuels, and other natural resources that the UN determines should not be used by humans.

Global governance is, indeed, a powerful and growing reality. Sadly, America is voluntarily acquiescing to the agreements and treaties that are, in fact, transferring authority from our sovereign nation to the United Nations system. Each new agreement and treaty is another tree in the forest, increasing the flow of poison that is choking the life out of America.

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Col 224 (April, 1997)

The UN: the way it ought to be

By Henry Lamb

The United Nations, as it was perceived by most Americans when it was created, was a good idea. It is certainly better for nations to meet in a neutral forum and discuss their differences than to meet on a battlefield. The United Nations should be the place where those discussions occur. The United Nations should also be the forum where nations can plan to take voluntary cooperative action to provide aid and assistance to nations in need. These two functions find much support from people around the world. The UN ought to be a facility through which the will of sovereign states can be exercised cooperatively.

The United Nations has become a different organism. It now exists, not to facilitate the will of its members, but to impose its own will upon its members. Peace and progress comes to nations as it come to individuals, through mutually beneficial agreements between and among the parties. Warring individuals may be kept apart by the force of law, but the absence of violence does not mean that peace has been achieved. Peace comes only when the warring parties decide voluntarily to end the violence. Peacekeeping activities of the UN have little hope of achieving peace, and, at best, may only delay the violence. Nations, like individuals, must make their own peace -- voluntarily.

Progress too, occurs when two or more individuals agree voluntarily to undertake an objective. Each of the parties to the agreement must believe that his participation will result in a benefit. Nations too, progress when mutually beneficial objectives are agreed to and undertaken. Only through voluntary action can real peace or progress be achieved. The United Nations ought to facilitate voluntary action by its member nations.

Instead, the United Nations bureaucracy has developed a massive global agenda which is thought to provide solutions to all the world's problems. Instead of letting individuals and nations find their own solutions through voluntary cooperation, the UN has prepared solutions and is coercing and bribing individuals and nations to conform. Instead of leading to peace and progress, the UN agenda is postponing progress and delaying violence.

Individual voluntary action is rarely orderly, never equal, and often fails to achieve the anticipated goals. But it is the only way to achieve real progress. Activities planned by governments, designed especially to achieve equality and justice, may be orderly, and appear to be equally dispensed, but repression, not progress, is the inevitable result. It is ironic that much of the UN's global agenda claims to seek restoration of biodiversity as it existed in the natural world before it was marred by human activity. In the natural world, rich with diverse species, there is no central planning agency. There is no United Nations of species that meet endlessly to decide how others should conduct their lives. There is, in fact, chaos and violence, competition and cooperation, out of which comes an orderly, natural, progress. Humans must interact with

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each other and with other species individually, on their own terms, in agreements voluntarily reached -- if real progress is to be realized. Nations too, must interact with each other on their own terms, in agreements voluntarily reached -- if real peace is to be realized.

The UN ought to be a place to facilitate peace and progress through the voluntary agreements of member nations; not a place where agendas are contrived and enforced upon member states.

Government, by definition, governs the activities of those governed. Perhaps the single most important discovery in the history of the world is the fact that people prosper most successfully when they, the people, decide and control the extent to which they are willing to be governed. On the other hand, when the government bureaucracy is empowered to decide and control the extent to which the people are governed, prosperity diminishes and oppression abounds.

The United Nations is collecting unto itself the power to decide and control the extent to which people around the world are governed. The people who are governed in most of the world have virtually no way to limit the power of the UN. Americans, however, do have the power to limit the UN. Americans provide the money needed by the UN. America is the only nation strong enough to limit the growing power of the UN. But instead of limiting the UN's power and transforming the institution into what it ought to be, America, through the officials appointed by the President, is actually encouraging and supporting the growth of UN power.

Many people believe that the UN is beyond reform, too far into its power-grab to ever be satisfied in a role as a mere facilitator. Immediate withdrawal from the UN by the United States would force the UN to rethink its mission and restructure its agenda. Perhaps it is time for Americans to exercise their control over their government and insist that the UN become what it ought to be.

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Col 225 (April, 1997)

Global warming: is it real?

By Henry Lamb

President Clinton told the UN General Assembly that we have to convince the American people and the Congress that global warming is real. One problem; it isn't. With increasing frequency, scientists are challenging the global warming hype that continues to drive the United Nations toward an international treaty protocol that will legally bind the U.S. and other developed countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The President said on June 26, that global warming "science is clear and compelling." It isn't. Dr. Benjamin Santer, convening author of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment Report, says "...few scientists would say that the attribution [of climate change to human beings] issue was a done deal." The President's remarks parroted comments that Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth made last year. Dr. Bert Bolin, Chairman of the IPCC, said "Tim Wirth may have said that, but I've talked with him and I know he really doesn't mean it."

Dr. Robert Stevenson, an oceanographer and former scientific liaison officer for the Office of Naval Research, reviewed 450 scientific studies conducted since 1991 by oceanographers and atmospheric physicists. In a presentation to the 15th Annual Meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, titled "The Non-Science of Global Warming," he threw buckets-full of cold water on the global warming scare.

According to Stevenson, there is no warming trend in the oceans, and has not been in the past 50 years. Periods of warming and cooling closely correlate to 11-year sunspots. He said there is no warming in the Arctic where the first "fingerprint" of global warming should occur. In the Antarctic, temperatures would have to climb 55 degrees to reach zero, and stay there for 1,000 years to melt the ice. The wild, preposterous claims that global warming will melt the ice caps and flood islands and coastal zones were also put to rest. Stevenson said that 97% of all water is already in the oceans. If all the Arctic ice pack were to melt, sea level would actually go down, much like a full glass of water with ice cubes protruding will not overflow when the ice melts because the frozen ice displaces the water. As the ice melts and turns to water, it occupies the same space previously occupied by the ice. Moreover, says Stevenson, the English Permanent Commission on Mean Sea Level in 1996 reported that sea level continues to rise as it has for the past 190 years at a rate of 1 mm per year, or 11 cm per century.

American Association for the Advancement of Science president, Jane Lubchenko, circulated a letter asking scientists to sign a "statement" supporting climate change claims. About 1 percent of those solicited signed the statement; 99 percent did not. By contrast, 80 of the world's leading climatologists, meeting in Leipzig, Germany, signed a declaration which said "Based on the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the so-called "scientific Consensus" that envisages climate catastrophes and advocates hasty actions."

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Why does the President want to convince the American people and the Congress that global warming is real, when much of the scientific community clearly believes it is not?

Why does the United Nations insist on developing international regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions only in developed nations, when many scientists believe that such emissions produced by humans have little to no impact on climate change. If greenhouse gas emissions by humans were known to affect climate, how could it help reduce the effect if only the 34 developed nations were restricted while 131 developing nations remain free to emit greenhouse gas with no restrictions?

Could there be a reason other than global warming for restricting the use of fossil fuels in America and other developed countries? You bet!

Most of the world is convinced that America is a gluttonous, over-consuming nation. A major objective of Agenda 21, the global environmental agenda adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, is reducing consumption in America and other developed nations. What better way to achieve that objective than to restrict the use of fossil fuel, the source of 85 percent of America's energy?

Not to be forgotten is the fact that developing countries face no such restrictions. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that industries facing energy restrictions and skyrocketing prices in America will simply move to unrestricted countries and continue operations. Mexico, Brazil, China, Korea, and Asia eagerly await the new international regulations that are scheduled for adoption in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997.

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Col 226 (April, 1997)

Global warming: the cost

By Henry Lamb

The Clinton Administration has been promising for nearly two years to produce an economic impact analysis of the proposed global warming protocol currently being negotiated by the United Nations. After missing three different release dates, the analysis was leaked to the press, and then released by the White House on July 11. No wonder the White House did not want the report released; it projects economic disaster.

The study, conducted by the Argonne National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy, as reported for the Bureau of National Affairs, says::

• "About 20 percent to 30 percent of the basic chemical industry would move to developing countries within 15 to 30 years.

• "All primary aluminum smelters in the United States would close by 2010.... • "Exports from U.S. steel producers might be cut about 30 percent with accompanying

loss of about 100,000 jobs. • "Domestic paper production would be displaced by imports. • "Output of U.S. petroleum refiners would drop 20 percent. • "Between 23 and 35 percent of the cement industry would shut down."

Carole Rylander, Texas Railroad Commissioner, cites studies by DRI/McGraw Hill and by Consad Research Corporation that set compliance costs at $350 billion annually in America and 700,000 jobs lost in the southwest. Her July 15 letter to Texas Governor Bush, urged him to "contact President Clinton and the EPA to ask that they reconsider their position."

The Clinton Administration is campaigning in support of the Kyoto protocol. In the face of increasingly compelling scientific evidence that neither global warming nor extreme weather events are caused by human use of fossil fuels, and in the face of well-documented studies of devastating economic impact upon America, the Clinton Administration is using tax dollars to send Tim Wirth, Undersecretary of State, and Vice President Al Gore around the country promoting the Kyoto protocol.

Interestingly, the Administration discounts its own Department of Energy economic impact analysis by saying the projections are based on computer models. Yet it accepts the result of computer models as "the best available science" when it comes to predicting global temperatures 100 years in the future.

The European Union, which also supports the Kyoto protocol, has already begun arbitrary taxation of petroleum products in anticipation of the protocol. Since 1991, fuel prices have risen by as much as 78 percent. Excise tax on automobiles will increase by an average of $230 in November.

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Throughout Europe, gasoline prices are between $4.50 and $5 per gallon. The Clinton Administration is following the European lead.

The recently proposed new air quality standards are designed to provide the Clinton Administration with the authority it needs to impose similar taxes on petroleum and the use of automobiles. By strengthening the standard for airborne particulates (from 10 microns in diameter to 2.5) to a size that makes flower pollen illegal, nearly two-thirds of the nation will fall into the "non-attainment" category. Non-attainment designation triggers the authority for the EPA to impose extraordinary regulatory restrictions on emissions. The EPA can do nothing about the natural particulates, such as those that make the Smoky Mountains smokey, but it can impose severe penalties upon automobile owners and industries that use fossil fuels.

Congressman John Boehner (R-OH) discovered an internal EPA memo which listed 39 specific measures that could be taken by the EPA to reduce the use of fossil fuel -- without Congressional involvement. Among those measures is a plan to impose a $0.50 per gallon tax on gasoline under an obscure Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Another proposed measure would increase Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards to 45.1 miles per gallon. The memo admits "This option would be very controversial and might result in the loss of authority to adjust the CAFE standards. On the other hand, moving forward with the first stages of this action would send a signal to the auto industry that the Administration is serious about global warming."

The Administration is serious about the Kyoto protocol, about imposing severe restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, and about expanding the power of the United Nations to exercise its authority over American sovereignty. Why?

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Col 227 (May, 1997)

Global warming: threshold to global governance

By Henry Lamb

When Gustave Speth, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Program, spoke to the delegates attending the Rio+5 Conference in Rio de Janeiro last March, he said:

"Perhaps the most far-reaching, powerful development in the area of global governance is the emergence of the World Trade Organization.... Over time, the global climate convention will actually become even more influential."

The Kyoto protocol, if ratified by the U.S. Senate, will effectively transfer to the UN, the authority to determine how much fossil-fuel energy may be used in America.

The Kyoto protocol might well be the watershed which, if not ratified by the Senate, blocks the emergence of global governance, or which, if ratified, ushers in a new era of global governance dominated by the United Nations.

Many people sincerely believe that national sovereignty is obsolete, that the time has come to embrace a global governance as described in the final report of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighborhood. Many of those people are officials in the Clinton/Gore Administration.

The number two man at the State Department, Strobe Talbott, wrote in Time magazine that he believed global governance would be a reality early in the next century. Gustave Speth, a member of the Clinton/Gore transition team before his appointment to the UN, told the Rio+5 Conference that global governance is a powerful and growing reality that is here, and here to stay. Vice President Al Gore said in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, that there should be a "globally coordinated" plan to eliminate the internal combustion engine within the next 25 years. The President himself, in response to a reporter's question during a March 7 White House press conference, refused to deny charges that he is giving away national sovereignty, and instead, he asked "...how can we be an independent sovereign nation leading the world in a world that is increasingly interdependent?"

The Kyoto protocol will give to the UN the power it needs to impose global governance.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) already has the power to impose trade sanctions against t he United States, and upon individual industries within the United States. The proposed merger between Boeing and McDonald Douglas, now must be approved, not only by the United States government, but also by the WTO. Manufacturers of the European Air Bus have threatened to block the merger by filing a complaint with the WTO. The WTO Charter (Article XVI) requires each member to "conform its laws, regulations, and administrative procedures," with its WTO obligations. It also provides for "effective cooperation" with other intergovernmental

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organizations (Article V). The Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Treaty is an intergovernmental organization.

Negotiators to the Kyoto protocol are actively discussing how the WTO can be used to enforce the reduction of fossil fuels required by the protocol.

Should the Kyoto protocol be ratified by the U.S. Senate, the proponents of global governance will have all the tools necessary to achieve a century-long effort to contain and control the American economy. Cost-effective energy is the fuel which feeds the American economy, providing jobs to millions of people who are free to purchase and consume an array of products that are the envy of the world. Control of the flow and price of energy will give the UN the power to control, and preside over the redistribution of American prosperity, which is the ultimate objective of the Kyoto protocol.

Mexico, China, Korea, and Brazil, are among the 131 nations that are not bound by the Kyoto protocol. Only America, and 33 other developed nations will fall under the control of the UN's energy police force. These nations eagerly await the UN clamp-down on energy use in developed nations so they can benefit from the industries that will flee from America, and other developed nations, to their shores.

The United Nations, and the Clinton/Gore Administration, promotes the idea that government-enforced social "equity" is essential to a healthy, happy society. It is the same idea (now described with different names and politically correct phrases) that fueled the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and ushered in three generations of Communist rule.

Should the UN gain the power to control energy use in America through the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, future generations of Americans will be subjected to the same oppressive, government-imposed policies that failed in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and every other society that has accepted management by government, rather than to fight for individual freedom.

The Kyoto protocol might be the last battleground.

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Col 228 (May, 1997)

Global warming in context

By Henry Lamb

Global warming may be one of the most blatant frauds ever perpetrated on the American people. It is, however, only one strand in a rope that has been carefully crafted into a noose around America's neck. The rope tightens with every World Conference, Commission, and meeting of the United Nations. Sadly, the Clinton/Gore Administration is helping to weave the rope, and pull it ever tighter -- strangling the life from the American ideals of individual freedom, private property rights, free markets, and national sovereignty.

Behind the banner of "sustainable development" -- meeting our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs -- the Clinton/Gore Administration is working feverishly to deny future generations the benefits of abundant, cost-efficient energy; the right to use private property; the prosperity of free markets; and the inalienable right to self governance.

Through the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), the Clinton/Gore Administration is actively implementing the provisions of Agenda 21, a massive document adopted by 178 nations in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The Conference was chaired by Maurice Strong, a socialist. His Vice Chair was Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Vice Chair of the World Socialist Party. It should come as no surprise that Agenda 21 is constructed upon the socialist philosophy that holds government to be the omnipotent authority empowered to manage the affairs of individual citizens. The surprise is that the American government endorsed the document, and is now working to implement it throughout the land.

The Kyoto protocol to the Climate Change Treaty, which was introduced to the world at UNCED, is the most powerful tool because it will give the UN authority to control the flow and the price of fossil fuel energy in America. The Convention on Biological Diversity, also introduced at UNCED, was not ratified by the Senate, but the Clinton/Gore Administration is implementing its provisions as if it had been ratified. Behind the politically correct title of "Ecosystem Management," agencies of the federal government are coordinating the most massive land grab in the history of America.

In addition to acquiring all the private property for which Congress will supply appropriations, the Clinton/Gore Administration is exercising its power to control the private property which it cannot purchase. Consistent with the UN's 1976 declaration that "public control of land use is indispensable," the federal government has used its rule-making powers, and appointments to federal courts, to redefine the land it may control. For example, "Waters of the United States," has been redefined administratively -- and upheld by the courts -- to include dry private property that is declared by the federal government to be a wetland.

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Privately owned forests may not be harvested if the federal government declares that a listed, or endangered species might wish to use the forest. Land owners adjacent to a designated Scenic Byway, may not erect a flag pole if a "stakeholder council" decides it will pollute the view. Private land owners are forbidden to pick up an arrow head in their own cornfield; archeological treasures belong to the "heritage of all mankind." Water, produced on private land from a well paid for by private owners, is now metered and controlled by the federal government. Private owners of businesses that use certain chemicals -- specified by a committee of the UN -- are subject to inspections and confiscations by a UN team, despite the Constitutional guarantee of freedom from search and seizure without a warrant.

The PCSD's Americanized version of Agenda 21, Sustainable America: A New Consensus, sets forth 154 specific recommendations to tighten even further the noose around American freedom. The recommendations describe where and how Americans should live -- even to the extent of specifying the type of plants that may be used for landscaping private property. Recommendations to control educational curricula to ensure appropriate understanding of the socialist principal of "equity." Recommendations to control transportation and force people out of petroleum-burning automobiles onto bicycles and "pedestrian paths." Industry is to be controlled by requiring what is called "life-cycle" responsibility, i.e. the manufacturer of a product will be held responsible for the product's ultimate "sustainable" disposal. Only products that achieve an official "green seal" will be allowed in the "free" marketplace.

The stage is set, and, indeed, the play is underway. The Kyoto protocol, publicly justified on the grounds of preventing global warming, will give the UN -- and the Clinton/Gore Administration -- the power to remove the foundation of American freedom, and leave its citizens gasping, twisting, hopelessly in the noose of global governance.

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Col 229 (May, 1997)

UN Reform: strengthening global governance

By Henry Lamb

Precious little has appeared in the mainstream media about the UN Reform package released recently by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General. What has appeared has focused on Annan's promise to eliminate 1000 positions and to reduce overhead costs from 38 to 25 percent. Nothing has been said about Annan's plan to use the savings to supplement development budgets, rather than to return the savings to donor nations. Moreover, nothing has been said about the real purpose of the reform: "...to strengthen an indispensable institution...to ensure the Organization's relevance in a changing world...."

The person chosen to strengthen global governance for the United Nations is Maurice Strong, Executive Coordinator for Reform. Strong was the Secretary-General of the First Earth Summit in 1972; the first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program; Secretary-General of Earth Summit II, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992; and a member of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance. Strong's views are well known. On sustainable development, he says:

"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."

On national sovereignty, he says:

"National sovereignty...is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives...it is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful."

Maurice Strong is the person who has designed, and is now implementing the first phase of UN reform, which, he says, "is not an event, but a process. And the process will not end with the current report."

The current report, entitled Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform, issued July 14, 1997, announces the implementation of many of the recommendations first published in the 1995 Report of the Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighborhood. Among the first-phase reforms are: creation of a new International Criminal Court; creation of a new "Assembly of the People; and restructuring of the UN Trusteeship Council to assume "Trusteeship" over the global commons, which is defined to include "the atmosphere, outer space, the oceans beyond national jurisdiction, and the related environment and life support systems that contribute to the support of human life."

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More than 130 UN agencies, commissions, committees, and funds, are being consolidated into five "Departments" which will be coordinated by a new Deputy Secretary-General. All UN activities within a nation will be administered through a single "headquarters" facility that will be known as "UN House." No longer will there be UNICEF programs and UNESCO programs; all UN services will be delivered under a single flag -- the UN flag. South Africa has been chosen to receive the first UN House, with six other nations already identified to receive a new UN House facility.

The year 2000 has been designated for a special "Millennium" celebration surrounding the UN General Assembly session, which is to be preceded by the first meeting of the new "Assembly of the People." The Assembly of the People is to consist of 300 to 600 selected representatives from NGOs (non-governmental organizations) accredited by the UN. The function of the Assembly is to provide direct input from "civil society" to the UN General Assembly. In order to gain accreditation from the UN, an NGO must declare "support" for the aims of the UN, and provide documentation of two years of activity which demonstrates support. NGOs that are not accredited by the UN are considered to be "populist activist" organizations that can "...in a moment, destroy a decade of deliberation."

The reformation of the United Nations, headed by Maurice Strong, is the final phase of converting the United Nations from a deliberative forum, where sovereign nations meet to discuss, debate, and resolve their differences, into a world government where unelected bureaucrats design, implement and enforce policies which they believe will make the world better.

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Col 230 (May, 1997)

UN Reform: the Trusteeship Council

By Henry Lamb

The UN Trusteeship Council has been designated to assume "Trusteeship" over the global commons, which includes by definition: "the atmosphere, outer space, the oceans beyond national jurisdiction, and the related environment and life-support systems that contribute to the support of human life." Never happen? It is happening.

The Vienna Convention on Ozone Depleting Substances and the Montreal Protocol, combined with the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the upcoming Kyoto Protocol, already give the UN "Trusteeship" over the atmosphere. The Convention on the Law of the Sea, with its onerous "International Seabed Authority" already gives the UN "Trusteeship" over non-territorial oceans. There are plans to charge rental fees for geostationary satellites, and the Conventions on Biological Diversity and Desertification -- both of which are already in force -- give the UN "Trusteeship" over the rest of the global commons. Neither the Convention on Biological Diversity or Desertification has been ratified by the U.S. Senate. The Clinton/Gore Administration, however, is implementing policies to achieve the objectives of those Conventions even though they have not been ratified.

The legal framework has already been developed to give the UN authority over the global commons. The reform -- read: restructuring -- process now underway, will give the UN the administrative capability to impose and enforce its policies more directly. One of the five new Departments of the UN is the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements are being combined into a single agency, under which all environmental treaties -- more than 300 -- will be administered. This new Department will also house the United Nations University; the Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention; the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and several specialized Commissions.

The restructured United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is to become a global EPA -- Environmental Protection Agency -- which will establish and enforce environmental policy worldwide. Accredited NGOs are being used as an "early warning system." Through another new creation of Maurice Strong, a "Petitions Council," consisting of five to seven selected representatives of "civil society," accredited NGOs in the field are asked to file petitions which explain how UN rules and international law are being violated. The function of the Petitions Council is to direct the petition to the appropriate agency of the UN for remedy.

The role of "civil society" -- accredited NGOs -- is being significantly strengthened through Maurice Strong's restructuring process. Through the Assembly of the People, NGOs will have direct input into the development of UN policies. Through the Petitions Council, NGOs will direct the enforcement activity. Through an incredible worldwide network on the ground, NGOs

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will serve as an "early warning system." And with UN funds, NGOs will be chosen to administer UN programs in communities around the world.

The United States is a major target for this new process of policy development, implementation, and enforcement. The process is designed to by-pass elected officials. The federal government is funding NGOs to promote "visioning" and "stakeholder" councils in communities throughout America. These NGO-led councils develop policies consistent with UN policy, particularly those policies set forth in Agenda 21. Those same NGOs frequently receive federal grants to administer the programs they devise. And when obstacles arise, those same NGOs petition the UN to intervene -- as was done in the Yellowstone Park listing as a World Heritage Site "in danger."

The restructured UN Trusteeship Council's authority over the global commons is gaining strength through the UN reforms being implemented by Maurice Strong. The Clinton/Gore Administration is dedicated to assisting the drive toward global governance. The Administration was shocked when the Convention on Biological Diversity was blocked in the Senate. But it did not stop, or even slow the efforts to implement the requirements of the Convention administratively, specifically, through the implementation of the Ecosystem Management Policy. By-passing elected officials at -- every level -- is a strategy of the UN's global governance campaign. Elected officials should know that their function has been deemed irrelevant.

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Col 231 (June, 1997)

UN Reform: the democratic process

By Henry Lamb

Throughout the literature of the United Nations, lip-service is paid to the objective of "transparent democratic processes." Americans read or hear those words and assume that the United Nations is a democratic institution, promoting democratic ideals, and democratic processes. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To begin with, the term "democratic process" has a completely different meaning at the United Nations from the meaning usually associated with the term in the United States. In America, the term means: anyone may introduce a policy idea; anyone may speak for or against the idea; any one may lobby elected officials to adopt the idea; and ultimately, the idea will be decided by a public vote of the appropriate elected officials. At the UN, it is a different story.

At the UN, there is only one elected official, the Secretary-General, and he is effectively elected by five appointed individuals who represent the permanent members of the Security Council.

Everyone else within the UN system is appointed by the Secretary-General, or by the governments that are members of the United Nations. Policies are developed by UN staff -- at the urging of accredited NGOs. Appointed delegates to the various UN bodies and organizations are then permitted to speak to the policy proposals -- under very controlled circumstances. The policy is adopted when "consensus" is reached. There are no votes. Consensus is reached whenever the presiding officer says consensus has been reached.

The current negotiations of the Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change offers an excellent example of the absence of the democratic process as it is known in America. The delegates who attend the negotiating sessions are all appointed by their respective governments. Those NGOs who are allowed to send "observers" are carefully screened. Neither the press nor NGO observers are allowed to enter the negotiating meetings. At plenary sessions, the presiding officer announces what has been decided. There are no contemporaneous minutes kept of the negotiating meetings; the report of the meetings is prepared by staff. There is no way of knowing who supported or opposed any particular position. There is no accountability.

At a recent negotiating session in Geneva, Switzerland, a delegate from Venezuela delivered an impassioned speech urging the presiding officer to instruct the various subsidiary bodies to maintain minutes of the closed meetings and provide written reports of the proceedings for the official records. The presiding officer consulted with the Executive Secretary for a few moments, then announced that the subsidiary bodies would continue to deliver oral reports at the plenary session which would then be summarized by the staff for inclusion in the official record.

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To the UN, the democratic process has been achieved when selected individuals are allowed to observe, or to speak at a meeting. To observe or to speak at a UN meeting is a privilege granted by the UN, not an inalienable right of the governed. Herein lies the fundamental difference between democracy as defined by the UN and democracy as defined by the U.S. Constitution. In America, all power is vested in the individual, who grants limited power to the government. The UN philosophy sees all power vested in the government, which may grant or deny limited power to individuals as it sees fit.

All UN policies and procedures arise from this fundamental philosophy. That is why the UN sees nothing wrong with limiting access to negotiating sessions, or in denying observer status to organizations that express dissenting views. At the UN, the function of the presiding officer is to decide when consensus has been reached. Votes create conflict and division; consensus controls conflict and avoids division. A vote of a policy proposal risks rejection; at the UN no policy proposal ever emerges that is not consistent with the wishes of the leadership. The consensus process never risks defeat; the presiding officer only allows selected individuals to speak, and when a sufficient number have spoken to claim that the democratic process has been satisfied, a consensus can be declared. There is no provision for reconsideration, nor any provision for measuring the strength of the so-called consensus.

Just because the term "democratic process" fills the literature and the speeches of UN proponents, Americans should not believe for a moment that the UN respects the democratic process -- as it is understood in America. Nor should they be misled into thinking that the consensus process has anything at all to do with the democratic process. Consensus and UN procedures are synonymous. Both derive from the philosophy of omnipotent government -- the antithesis of the democratic process in America.

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Col 232 (June, 1997)

UN Reform: America's role

By Henry Lamb

The rise of Christianity, the reformation, the industrial revolution -- were all major turning points in the history of the world. Another event of similar historic significance lies just ahead: the transition to global governance. The UN reform plan recently developed by Maurice Strong and announced by Kofi Annan, the two top UN officials, sets the world on a direct course toward global governance -- to be achieved by the year 2000. Global governance is not an event; it is not an idea to be debated and acted upon by Congress; it is not an invasion; it is a process begun long ago, now reaching the final stages of implementation.

What is America's response to the UN reform? Praise. The reform package promises a reduction of 1000 staff people. As a reward, the United States is expected to pay $100 million to the UN toward what the UN describes as unpaid dues. Actually, the UN still owes the U.S. nearly $2 billion for peacekeeping costs that have never been reimbursed. But the UN's debt to the U.S. is ignored by Congress and the media, while the U.S. debt to the UN is called "shameful."

Neither Congress nor the media has examined the implications of the UN reform -- read: restructuring -- process that is currently underway. Consequently, the American government is supporting the measures that are moving the world ever closer to global governance. In fact, the Clinton/Gore Administration, with strong support from several Congressmen, is actually promoting the efforts to instill global governance, while attempting to discredit all critics of the UN. The UN cannot achieve its goals of global governance without support from the American Government.

Many people, including the current administration, apparently believe the time has come to submit to global governance. Many people sincerely believe that the only way to prevent ecological disaster, provide social equity, and achieve economic parity, is to empower the United Nations to "manage" the affairs of global society. Since the adoption of Agenda 21 in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro, the world has been moving toward a managed global society under the authority of the UN.

The fallacy of the global governance philosophy is that it ignores the lessons learned by America. America has achieved in two centuries what no other nation has ever been able to achieve. America's successes have occurred because its society was not managed by government.

America was constructed on the fundamental belief that all power of governance rests with the individual; government exists only by virtue of individuals voluntarily relinquishing some of their inalienable power, through elected representatives, to government. In America, government power is supposed to be limited by the governed. Individuals are supposed to be free to do whatever they want to do, except for those things they have voluntarily agreed to forego through

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the laws their elected representatives have enacted. History demonstrates a direct correlation between the exercise of individual freedom and America's greatness. As individual freedoms diminish, so does American greatness.

America's role as a member of the United Nations should be to cling firmly to the fundamental principles of self governance as they are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The greatest gift America can offer to the rest of the world is the principle of self governance as demonstrated by the United States during its first two hundred years. America's delegates to every UN agency, Commission, and Assembly should advance the principles of individual freedom, government limited by the governed, private property ownership, free markets, and national sovereignty.

Instead, America's delegates apologize for America's wealth and prosperity; acquiesce to international controls, embrace policies that ignore private property rights, and cede national sovereignty through international agreements and treaties.

Only Congress can stop the rush to global governance. Only Congress, with the power to control the purse strings, can stop the Clinton/Gore Administration from paving the road to global governance. And there is precious little evidence that Congress is inclined to do so. Therefore, it is up to the America people to exercise their control over their government -- while there is still the opportunity. There is no conspiracy; there are no black helicopters. There is a published plan available for all to see. The plan is being implemented daily. Congress must become informed, infuriated, and inspired to instruct the Clinton/Gore Administration to see that American values are instilled in the United Nations -- or get out of the organization altogether.

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Col 233 (June, 1997)

President's Council on Sustainable Development

By Henry Lamb

What makes America the envy of the world is the freedom of its citizens to do whatever they wish -- restrained only by laws that they, themselves, make through representatives they elect for that purpose. What a concept! It made America the greatest, most prosperous nation on earth. People from every other nation risk limb and life to get to America -- in hopes of doing whatever they wish -- to realize their dreams of personal security. The U.S. Constitution created a government to protect Americans from any threat that might infringe their freedom -- beyond the laws that they, themselves, enacted through their elected representatives.

A parade of would-be usurpers have been vanquished by a determined American citizenry in nearly every decade of our young history. But in the last decade of the 20th century, it is American freedom that is being vanquished, not by foreign usurpers, but by the very government created to defend that freedom.

The only protection citizens have from their government is to ensure that public policy - restraints on individual freedom - are enacted by officials elected by the citizens. Citizens can un-elect their officials and thereby change the laws. If public policy is imposed by people who are non-elected, citizens have no recourse. This decade is witnessing a transition from the system of public policy development that made America great to a new "collaborative" public policy decision process imposed by non-elected officials -- from which citizens have no recourse.

Of all the ideologies that have threatened American freedom, none is as ingeniously insidious as the concept of "sustainable development." Built upon the fabricated fear that the sky is falling, Chicken Little is appealing for volunteers to help hold the world together for future generations. Convinced that human population is growing out of control, that human activity is toasting the earth, and that human consumption is defoliating the planet -- people by the kazillions are rushing to embrace sustainable communities, sustainable development, sustainable lifestyles, and a sustainable America.

Sustainable development = managed people. Managed people are not free to do whatever they wish -- restrained only by laws they themselves enact through their elected representatives.

Managed people are free to do only those things that the managers determine are sustainable. The managers of sustainable development are not elected by the citizens of America. Once citizens are bound by sustainable policies, there is no one to un-elect.

Sustainable development is the reason put forth to justify government-enforced policies to prevent individual citizens from having the car of their choice, or to live in the home of their choice, or to have the food of their choice, or from having very many choices at all. The

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experience of free choice is changing from the ability to choose to do whatever one may wish, to the ability to choose from among government-approved alternatives.

Sustainable development does not allow an individual to choose from among all the automobiles a free market can make available. Instead, one may choose an over-priced, under-powered battery car, a bicycle -- or public transportation. Sustainable development does not allow an individual to build his dream house in the suburbs. Instead, one may choose from apartment communities that are managed to ensure socio-economic and ethnic integration -- all within sustainable communities that feature planned and managed business diversity within walking distance from home.

Sustainable development does not allow individuals to learn whatever they wish or to excel in the career of their choice. Sustainable development requires an education that instills appreciation for sustainable development, reverence for the earth, a realization that the good of the community is more important than the desires of the individual, and job skills that match the requirements of the community in which one is fortunate enough to live.

Sustainable development will not occur on a day certain by Presidential decree. It will occur by Presidential decree -- over a decade or two -- as the policies of the President's Council on Sustainable Development are embraced in communities across the nation. Countless communities are currently by-passing their elected officials in a visioning process engineered by the federal government and NGOs (non-governmental organizations), developing localized policies to transform American cities and towns into "sustainable communities." Most of the citizens have no idea that the transformation is underway. Should they hear a neighbor talk about the consequences of sustainable development, it is quickly dismissed as too bizarre to be credible. Relentlessly, those who would manage society, move ever closer to their goal.

Freedom in America -- that has survived every threat -- is now slipping away into a sustainable, managed, tomorrow.

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Col 234 (July, 1997)

PCSD: Social engineering

By Henry Lamb

The President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) has recommended shifting the federal tax burden from income -- to consumption, "particularly consumption of natural resources." Such a policy would give the federal government the ability to determine the ultimate price of virtually every product on the market. By controlling the price of consumer goods, the government could control the behavior of its citizens. To protect the forests, the price of wood products would be taxed sufficiently to raise the end price of a conventional home well beyond the price of an environmentally efficient home made of government-specified recycled and other eco-friendly products.

The PCSD sees nothing at all wrong with this method of social engineering. It is the easiest and fastest way to protect the environment, reduce consumption, and generate money to eradicate poverty, complying with their mandate to integrate "sustainable" economic activity with environmental protection and social justice.

By taxing fossil fuels, the price of gasoline and electricity can be increased beyond the price of battery driven automobiles, and solar powered homes. The extra money generated can be used to eradicate poverty and to finance research in alternative energy technology. What could possibly be wrong with such a noble-sounding scheme?

It will destroy America. A consumption tax is a death sentence for free markets. Free markets supply the energy that drives America. Price is the voltage regulator that determines how much energy is available to the economy. As price increases, the energy flow is reduced. Conversely, as competition and productivity decrease prices, the energy flow is increased. Economic activity is optimized when competition in the market place produces sufficient alternative choices that price is determined solely by the amount a buyer is willing to pay and a seller is willing to accept. Extraneous factors such as excise, and value-added taxes, apply the brakes to economic activity -- in direct correlation to the tax-pressure applied. A consumption tax targeted on natural resources is not simply more braking pressure applied to economic activity; a targeted consumption tax will destroy the concept of free choice in a free market. Given the power to control price, government will have the power to control choice -- and manage the market.

The purpose of a consumption tax is not to generate revenue, its is to control the behavior of consumers -- social engineering -- and eliminate alternative choices to force a reduction in the consumption of natural resources. The PCSD says that social engineering is necessary to save the planet from the evils of human activity. Grossly exaggerated claims of global warming and biological degradation are presented as the reason government-controlled social engineering is necessary. And the American people are buying into the idea.

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The attack on tobacco is a prime example of what to expect across the market place. Tobacco has been demonized as the grossly exaggerated "killer" of 400,000 people per year, which actually means that of all the people who die in a year, 400,000 have smoked tobacco at some time in their lives. To be sure, tobacco use may well be a contributing factor in all manner of sickness and death. But is that sufficient reason to give government the authority to apply a consumption tax on tobacco expressly for the purpose of changing the behavior of its citizens?

If America is willing to accept the arguments put forward to justify a consumption tax on tobacco, then the era of free markets in America is over. It is only a matter of time before the social engineers will accelerate their attack on automobiles. Aside from the thousands of people who are killed directly by automobiles each year, the costs in health care, injuries, and property damage will be combined with the "environmental" costs of air pollution and global warming and the automobile will join tobacco in the growing graveyard of the free markets.

French-fried potatoes -- and the other convenience foods Americans cherish -- can be said to "kill" however many Americans that die each year who may have eaten at McDonalds. How many of the Americans that die each year drink alcohol? Why should there not be $1.50 per can tax on beer? There is likely to be such a tax on beer, on virgin paper products, on metal, on plastic products -- on any and everything that the social engineers decide that you should not use.

The consumption tax proposed by the PCSD, and currently being used to force Americans to stop smoking, amounts to the deliberate execution of the free market system in America. Many non-smokers who welcome the abolition of tobacco -- by whatever means -- must recognize that the principle of free markets is far more important to America than whether or not some of its citizens choose to smoke cigarettes.

Once the free market system has been replaced by government-controlled pricing, and government-controlled "eco-labeling," it cannot rise again until the inevitable collapse of the managed market. In Soviet Russia, it took 70 years. In Cuba, it has taken 45 years -- and counting. Who knows how long it will take in America? What is known, is that managed markets produce diminishing freedoms and must eventually collapse. Only free markets have the capacity to adapt to the demands of a dynamic society. Free markets expand freedoms -- the freedom to choose from among competing alternatives -- including the freedom to choose gas-guzzling automobiles, greasy french-fries -- or cigarettes.

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Col 235 (July, 1997)

PCSD: Transforming America

By Henry Lamb

The President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) seeks to transform America into what it believes is a "sustainable" America. To become sustainable, we must stabilize population growth, reduce consumption of natural resources, restore half the land to wilderness, eliminate the use of fossil fuels, live in sustainable communities, practice sustainable agriculture, teach our children the value of sustainable development, and accept the responsibility of leading the rest of the world to do the same. The decision to transform America has already been made. Neither Congress nor the American people were given the opportunity to vote on the matter. The Clinton-Gore Administration -- by Presidential Proclamation -- has made the decision to transform American and has empowered the PCSD to chart the course.

All the resources of the federal government are now committed to transforming America into the vision of sustainability crafted by the PCSD. Existing laws are being used where possible, and new regulations are being promulgated when necessary to bring the full weight and resources of the federal government into every community to impose the PCSD's vision of sustainability.

The American Heritage Rivers Initiative, created by Presidential Proclamation, is one of many measures being invoked to transform America. Central to the initiative is the "stakeholder's council" that prepares the nomination. A stakeholder's council is a group of self-appointed individuals who assume they know better than anyone else how a river corridor should be managed. The designation of a river corridor conveys extraordinary powers to the stakeholder's council. A Stakeholder's council, through the designated "River Navigator," can summon federal dollars to the river corridor, or invoke a coordinated regulatory enforcement campaign to transform the river corridor into its vision of sustainability. Elected officials are effectively by-passed; individual citizens -- even those who own the land adjacent to the designated rivers -- are ignored.

The Scenic Byways Program of the Department of Transportation might well be named the "American Heritage Highway Initiative." The program does for highways precisely the same thing that the rivers initiative does for rivers. It creates a stakeholder's council to manage the activities within "viewshed" of the designated highway. Individual citizens who own property within the viewshed of the designated highway discover that the stakeholder's council suddenly has the power to decide such things as the color a building may be painted or whether or not a birdhouse is appropriate for the viewshed.

A growing maze of "National Heritage Areas" is being created to transform America by placing governance of human activity in the hands of still more stakeholder's councils. Watersheds and Ecosystems are now subjects of stakeholder council concern and control. The PCSD has recently created the first Bioregional Council to coordinate the activities of all the various stakeholder

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councils in the Pacific Northwest. Other Bioregional Councils will soon be designated, all coordinated by the PCSD. The process is transforming America by removing the authority to make public policy from elected officials and placing that authority into the hands of non-elected, self-appointed stakeholder councils that are responsive to a coordinated campaign to transform American into a Sustainable America as defined and directed by the PCSD.

Stakeholder councils are promoted as the "new collaborative decision process" which is said to involve local citizens who are affected by the policies. In reality, the process excludes local citizens from the process -- except for those local citizens who are known to support the objectives and methods of the stakeholder council instigators.

The transformation of America is well underway -- and accelerating. Only recently have land owner groups and private citizens become aware of the consequences of the pie-in-the-sky movement toward sustainability. Protests by citizens groups in Florida caused the withdrawal of the nomination of St. Johns River for American Heritage designation. Public support is mounting in Indiana to stop the designation of the Wabash River. Missouri Citizens for Private Property Rights is mounting a campaign to stop the recently announced Scenic Byways Program. All across the country, individual citizens are making a difference by getting informed, getting angry, getting involved and getting satisfaction from their elected officials -- most of whom have not yet realized that their power is being compromised.

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Col 236 (July, 1997)

PCSD: Functionary for the UN

By Henry Lamb

It's almost funny to listen to federal officials explain how their activities have nothing to do with the United Nations. Congressman Joe Skeen (R-NM) asked the EPA how the Border XXI Program ties into the UN and the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). EPA's response said "There are no found links to the UN or PCSD." The Border XXI Framework Document says the program is "to promote sustainable development in the border region in accordance with the concepts of Agenda 21" The Border XXI Program was designed by, and is implemented by the EPA, whose Administrator, Carol Browner, is one of five directors of the Border XXI Program and also a member of the PCSD. The program is implemented through nine workgroups, each of which is co-chaired by an employee of the EPA. Is the EPA official lying? Is he unaware of the direct linkage that really exists? No, he is practicing the art of "doublespeak."

The Border XXI Program was created by Presidential Proclamation (Executive Order) which avoided the need for Congressional approval. The purpose of the program is to bring "sustainable development" to the border region -- an area 125 miles wide which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. The purpose of the PCSD (also created by Presidential Proclamation) is to bring sustainable development to America. The purpose of Agenda 21(created by the United Nations) is to bring sustainable development to the world. Agenda 21 calls for the creation of national and regional capacities to achieve global sustainable development. The PCSD represents the national capacity and Border XXI represents a regional capacity.

The PCSD's report, Sustainable America: A New Consensus, is nothing more than the Americanized version of Agenda 21. Agenda 21 is a massive document adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It contains a laundry-list of policy recommendations to transform global societies into its vision of sustainability. The recommendations are non-binding. The policy-recommendations of the PCSD are non-binding. The Border XXI 1996 Implementation Plans list precisely the same "recommendations" as are contained in the PCSD report and in Agenda 21. (For a detailed analysis, see ecologic, September/October, 1997). The policy recommendations are not presented to governmental bodies for approval. The recommendations are, instead, implemented directly through stakeholder councils, which through the collaborative process reach a consensus, that everyone should be governed by the policies recommended. Once adopted by the stakeholder councils, the policies are enforced by federal agencies using laws and regulations that were enacted for other purposes.

The United Nations is the source of sustainable development policies. Those policies were developed, to a very large extent, by the same NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that drive the local, regional, Bioregional, and national stakeholders councils. The PCSD is the

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national stakeholders' council. It is now creating Bioregional Councils to coordinate the work of all the other stakeholder councils. This organizational structure is no accident. It was conceived by NGOs. It is being implemented through the United Nations for the expressed purpose of using NGOs as an "early warning system" to inform the UN of violations of international law. The non-binding recommendations of Agenda 21 become international through international treaties such as the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change -- and more than 300 other environmental treaties. The UN has announced -- as a part of its so-called reform -- the creation of an International Criminal Court, and an "Assembly of the People," for accredited NGOs only, and a UN Trusteeship Council that is to have "trusteeship" over the global commons which includes all biodiversity -- "...the life support systems that support human life."

The PCSD and all of the Bioregional, regional, and local stakeholder councils that do its bidding, are, in fact, functionaries of the United Nations. Many of the people who participate in local councils are completely unaware of the UN's influence. At the top, the leaders are aware. And when an official of the EPA tells a Congressman that no link could be found with the UN or the PCSD for a program that exists expressly for the purpose of advancing the policies of the UN and the PCSD -- there has to be a reason. Whatever the reason, the reply is devoid of truth.

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Col 237 (July, 1997)

Climate experts unsure about global warming

By Henry Lamb

If the climate science is, indeed, "settled," it would seem that climate scientists would be among those who agree. In America, they don't. President Bill Clinton says "The overwhelming balance of evidence and scientific opinion is that it is no longer a theory but now a fact, that global warming is for real. There is ample evidence that human activities are already disrupting the global climate...." Fifty-eight percent of the official state climatologists in America disagree!

This latest in a series of surveys of climatologists was completed October 3, 1997, conducted by American Viewpoint of Alexandria, Virginia, and Commissioned by Citizens for a Sound Economy. The survey included 75 percent of the official climatologists employed by the individual states in America. Sixty-one percent of the participants hold a Ph.D., and 67 percent have been a climatologist for more than 15 years. The science appears to be settled only among the politicians and policy makers.

What do the climate scientist really think? Here is a sample:

• Current science is unable to isolate and measure variations in global temperatures caused ONLY by man-made factors.

89% agree 8% disagree

• Scientific evidence indicates variations in global temperatures are likely to be naturally occurring and cyclical over very long periods of time.

92% agree 3% disagree

• If no change were to occur in the amount of Greenhouse Gas emissions caused by humans, do you think over the next five hundred years the global temperature will be warmer or cooler than it is today or about the same?

17% warmer

8% cooler

22% the same

50% don't know

• Reducing man-made carbon dioxide emissions among developed nations to 1990 levels will prevent global temperatures from rising.

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11% agree 86% disagree

• Have weather events in the past 25 years been more severe or frequent than other periods in your state's history?

19% yes 72% no

• If yes, do you attribute the frequency and severity of these weather events to global warming?

29% yes 71% no

• Current computer modeling technology is significantly sophisticated to make conclusive, accurate predictions about future global temperatures.

14% agree 86% disagree

• Even if there were no human beings, the Earth's climate would constantly be changing.

100% agree 0% disagree

Similar results were produced in surveys conducted by Greenpeace International, the Gallup Organization, and by the Science and Environmental Policy Project (Wall Street Journal, July 28, 1997). Why, then, are the President and Vice President of the United States pushing so hard to convince the American people that "there is ample evidence that human activities are already disrupting the global climate?"

The Clinton-Gore Administration has announced support for a legally-binding international agreement to limit the use of fossil fuel in America to prevent the global warming that climatologists say is not occurring. The international agreement will be presented to the world in Kyoto, Japan in December. Only then will we learn how severely Americans must reduce their use of gasoline and electricity. Only then will we learn how much of America's wealth will be redistributed to the developing nations -- which, incidentally, are not restricted by the international agreement. Even then, however, we are not likely to learn why the President and Vice President are promoting this foolish, fatally-flawed international policy.

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Col 238 (August, 1997)

Ted Turner's true colors

By Henry Lamb

More than 20 national organizations, representing labor, industry, agriculture, and consumer groups, pooled their money to produce television ads in opposition to the proposed global warming agreement scheduled for adoption in Kyoto, Japan in December. Both the ads and the documentation for their claims were submitted in advance to CNN's Standards and Practices Department, and on September 10, the ads first appeared on CNN.

Unconfirmable, but reasonably reliable sources report that Al Gore had a "conniption-fit," and called Ted Turner and requested that the ads be canceled. No one is willing to go on-record to define precisely what a "conniption-fit" might be, but Washington is a-buzz about the process.

The ads were canceled on October 2nd. The excuse offered to the advertisers was that the ads were canceled due to the "intensified news coverage by CNN" on the global warming issue. The advertisers pointed out that this position is "inconsistent with the network's actions in prior controversial public policy debates, including national health care, tort reform, and NAFTA -- to name a few." To further blacken the Turner pot, CNN continued to run ads supporting the global warming agreement. And there are rumors around Washington that Turner provided $3 million to environmental groups to produce the ads.

During the short time the ads appeared on CNN, more than 100,000 people called the 1-888-54FACTS number, or logged on to the website (www.climatefacts.org) to get more information about the proposed Kyoto agreement.

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Chairman of the Senate Observer Group on UN Climate Change Negotiations, immediately sent a letter to David Kohler, Senior Vice President of CNN, to "express my strong objection" to CNN's decision to cancel the ads opposing the global warming agreement. "This decision gives the strong appearance that advertising has been prohibited...on the basis of CNN's disagreement with the content of this speech," Hagel said.

Hagel also sent a letter to Senator, McCain, Chair of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Senator Burns, Chair of the Subcommittee on Communications, and Senator Hollings, Ranking member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. He asked the various Senate committee chairmen to "look into this action to determine the extent to which CNN acted in compliance with the law and with its public information obligations." CNN's refusal to run advertising because Al Gore and Ted Turner disagree with its content is not simply the height of arrogance -- it is an example of the arrogance of power that would stifle all dissent, and produce propaganda to support policies the power-mongers intend to impose upon the people.

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Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic, widespread deceptive indoctrination of people to advance an idea or an agenda. Propaganda flourishes where information is controlled -- as in Hitler's Germany, the former Soviet Union, and Castro's Cuba. Propaganda falters in the face of free and open dissent.

The President invited 200 individuals to a special White House Conference on Global Warming on October 6. Only three of the invited participants could be described as possible dissenters. More than 100 known dissenters requested an invitation to participate; their requests were ignored. A week earlier, the President invited the nation's television weathermen to the White House for a propaganda session, and allowed them to use the White House Lawn as a backdrop for local weathercasts. Many weather men participated; some did not. The weather man at KMOX in St. Louis refused to be used by the administration to advance the global warming propaganda. An Orlando network affiliate dutifully stood on the White House lawn and told his central-Florida audience that "we are now sure that the planet will warm between 3 degrees and 10 degrees during the next century." Even the UN now says that computer models predict only about a one-degree increase over the next century.

On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Senator Hagel called these White House gatherings a "public relations show." He pointed to a New York Times article (September 23rd) in which scientists attributed up to 94 percent of the changes in the earth's temperature to variations in solar activity. He said of the White House Conference: "It will be a propaganda tool to spread the truth according to the White House, irrespective of differing views." He said "We need to take global climate issues seriously. But this is not a debate, nor has it ever been. When we take actions that will reduce economic opportunities, we must ensure that the benefits would be real, and that they would justify the very real economic hardship that we would be passing on to future generations."

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Col 239 (August, 1997)

UN rule change could bind America

By Henry Lamb

The European Union (EU) has proposed a change in the rules of procedures of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which could result in legally binding limits on carbon dioxide emissions in America -- imposed by the UN -- without ratification by the U.S. Senate.

This proposal emerged after the U.S. Senate adopted -- by a vote of 95 to 0 -- a resolution directing the Administration not to enter into any global warming agreement that failed to equally bind all nations, or that would have adverse economic impact on America. The global warming agreement now being negotiated for presentation in Kyoto, Japan in December, would be legally binding only on 34 developed nations; 134 developing nation -- including Mexico, China, Brazil, Korea, and India -- would not be affected. Economic analyses of the current proposals predict adverse economic impacts over 70% of the American economy and the loss of as many as 1.5 million jobs.

The EU proposal is an effort to avoid an inevitable collision between the will of the U.S. Senate and the will of the international policy makers.

The Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It was quickly ratified by the U.S. Senate because the treaty required only voluntary efforts to reduce greenhouse emission to 1990 levels by the year 2000. The agreement now being negotiated would be legally binding and could force an emissions reduction of as much as 20 percent below 1990 levels -- requiring a reduction of fossil fuel use of approximately 65 percent over the next decade.

The rule change proposed by the EU would allow the Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change to amend the original treaty by a three-fourths vote of the delegates. In other words, 127 of the 168 member-nations of the Conference of the Parties could impose legally binding restrictions on the 34 developed nations targeted by the agreement. The UN pays the delegates from at least 121 nations to attend these negotiating sessions. Only 14 nations are vigorously opposing this global warming agreement -- and the United States is not one of them.

In an October 1 letter to Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, signed by Senator Jesse Helms, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Rod Grams, Chair of the Subcommittee on International Operations, and Senator Chuck Hagel, Chair of the Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, the Senators said that the EU proposal "would cause an even more dramatic shift in these critical negotiations away from the interests of the United States."

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The letter also cited Executive Report 102-55, which accompanied the original resolution of ratification of the treaty which said that should the "executive branch reinterpret the Convention to apply legally binding targets and timetables," the entire treaty must be resubmitted to the Senate for ratification.

The State Department and the Administration have been put on notice by the U.S. Senate. Still, the Administration marches forward, looking for ways to give the UN the power to dictate domestic energy policy in the United States.

Another rule change has been proposed by the Convention Secretariat. One month after Sovereignty International, a new international NGO (non-governmental organization) created by the organization that produces this column, produced its first newsletter for the delegates to the negotiations, the Secretariat proposed that all NGOs must sign a "declaration of allegiance to the aims of the Convention" before being permitted to observe the proceedings of the negotiators.

The rule change is clearly designed to deny Sovereignty International permission to attend the sessions. It is another blatant attempt to eliminate dissent and control the flow of information about the process and about the agreement being negotiated.

Current rules assure that Sovereignty International will be allowed to participate in the final negotiating session in late October, and the December meeting in Kyoto where the final agreement will be presented to the world. Sovereignty International will attend both meetings and not only continue to publish its newsletter for the delegates, but will also broadcast radio programs to as many as 1200 local radio stations in the United States and via short wave, to more than 80 nations around the world.

In Kyoto, however, the door is likely to be slammed shut, and Sovereignty International may be banned from further participation in UN meetings. The UN is the world's chief purveyor of propaganda and they will not long tolerate free speech -- if that speech is in disagreement with their agenda.

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Col 240 (August, 1997)

Losing liberty - fast!

By Henry Lamb

Article 14 of the UN's Covenant on Human Rights says "The right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may, therefore, be subject to certain penalties, liabilities, and restrictions, but these shall be only such as are provided by law." Whose law?

In 1980, an International Commission for the Study of Communications Problems was convened, headed by Sean MacBride. The Commission's report, Many Voices, One World: Towards a new more just and more efficient world information and communication order, set forth the UN's view about how the flow of information should be controlled. The commission recommended a transnational political communication superstructure within the framework of UNESCO. The report said "media should contribute to promoting the just cause of peoples struggling for freedom and independence and their right to live in peace and equality without foreign interference." And they proposed that UNESCO should have the authority to regulate the flow of information to promote its agenda and "minimize public awareness of conflicting ideas."

What a contrast with the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...."

But the First Amendment is being circumvented, not by Congress, but by the President of the United States and by powerful members of the media such as Ted Turner. When the President deliberately disallows dissenting voices from the White House Conference on Global Warming, and when Ted Turner arbitrarily refuses to allow dissenting paid advertising on his network, they are circumventing the First Amendment and marching to the totalitarian drum-beat of the United Nations philosophy.

We are losing our liberty -- fast!

The new "collaborative" decision making process, recommended by the UN and practiced by the President's Council on Sustainable Development, is permeating the Executive Branch of our federal government. Nearly everywhere, policy decisions are reached by consensus of carefully selected appointed individuals -- rather than by the vote of elected officials.

Private property, that was once controlled by the owner, is increasingly controlled by the federal government through regulations that restrict land use. The UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) declared in 1976 that "Public control of land use is indispensable."

Free markets, too are coming under tighter control by both federal and global governance. The International Standards Organization (ISO), through its 9000 and 14000 series of rules, is forcing industry to manage itself according to the UN's environmental standards. The President's Council

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on Sustainable Development is promoting "green" procurement, which means that only those products manufactured in compliance with ISO 14000, or that bear the seal of an approved environmental organization, can be purchased with tax dollars. By controlling the procurement of the federal, state, and local governments, and the nation's school systems, the green stamp of approval will be essential for any product to survive. Of course, those products that are deemed to be "unsustainable," can be denied the green stamp of approval, forcing societies to conform to the green agenda. Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the 1992 Earth Summit, has declared such products as -- convenience foods, small appliances, single family homes, and air-conditioning -- to be unsustainable. The "green" stamp of approval and the ISO rules are transforming America's free markets into managed markets -- with management increasingly concentrated in the international community.

Even the idea of national sovereignty is sliding into oblivion. What does Maurice Strong think of national sovereignty? He says: "...it is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security." Maurice Strong is now the Executive Coordinator of UN Reform, the number-two man at the United Nations. He is busily restructuring the United Nations to assure "global environmental security." An important step toward oblivion for national sovereignty is the global warming agreement now being negotiated for presentation in Kyoto, Japan in December. When the United Nations gains the power to control energy use in America, national sovereignty is subordinated to the will of the United Nations. If the United Nations can determine America's energy use -- it can control virtually any other policy in America. The Clinton-Gore Administration is supporting the United Nations' effort to limit energy use in America.

While Americans are busy watching ball games, earning a living, and trying to avoid politics, powerful political forces in the White House and in the UN Houses around the world, are implementing policies, plans, and procedures that are accelerating our loss of liberty. The global warming agreement may well be the historic watershed; if it is adopted, liberty may well be lost. If it is rejected, liberty will not have been preserved its loss will have simply been delayed while the foes of freedom regroup to mount a new attack.

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Col 242 (August, 1997)

National sovereignty

By Henry Lamb

Jingoism is a word often used in UN negotiations to describe those nations which oppose the prescribed agenda. It is a pejorative term meaning chauvinistic nationalism. With increasing frequency, the term "nationalism" or "nationalist" is used with a negative connotation to describe opposition to an international or "global" objective. Throughout UN literature, the terms "narrow," or "petty" national interests are presented as obstacles to be overcome in the pursuit of a global agenda. The concept of a world of nation states is deliberately being replaced by the concept of a global village.

The paradigm shift is occurring despite the protests of the John Birch Society and other conservative organizations that oppose the UN. Globalists simply ignore their opponents, or publicly ridicule them as elements of the "radical right wing." Their strategy is working. Those who fear the rush toward a global village have focused on opposing global governance, rather than upon advancing the values related to national sovereignty. In the end, the better idea will prevail. But the end is not in sight and generations may suffer the oppression of excessive global government before the better idea can once again emerge through a courageous society that is willing to shoulder the responsibilities inherent in national freedom.

People who were born in America take for granted the freedom provided by the government created by our forefathers. That individual freedom is possible only because the founders insisted upon national sovereignty. Homage should never be paid to any king, to any other nation -- or to any collection of nations. And sovereignty within the borders of the United States should be exercised by a delicately balanced triumvirate of power. The source of that power is the people who elect the officials who exercise national sovereignty. The product of our forefathers was an experiment in self governance. The experiment was successful to a degree never before experienced in the history of the world. It could not have worked without insistence by our forefathers on the concept of national sovereignty. Had America remained inside the grasp of the growing British Empire, history would have unfolded differently. America demonstrated that nations should be free to govern themselves.

Other nations insist upon national sovereignty and have not prospered as has America. Prosperity and social progress, then, depend upon more than national sovereignty. National prosperity and social progress begin with national sovereignty. National sovereignty only provides the opportunity for a nation to succeed; it certainly does not guarantee success. America did not succeed without first overcoming failures, enduring severe hardships, and rebuffing repeated threats to its national existence. Other nations, too, are entitled to experiment with self governance. They too, will experience failures and hardships until they discover the right balance of power between the people who are governed and the administrators of governance.

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Few nations have yet discovered that right balance. The right balance can never be achieved until the people discover that it is they who possess the power, and limit the authority of their government as best suits their own needs and desires. Most of the people of the world, and the governments that rule them, reject the notion of government authority limited by the people who are governed. Consequently, control of government power is a far more appealing prize than service to the people. In many nations, governments change more often than the seasons. The change is not to better serve the people, but to control the power of government. In too many nations, the power of government is pursued with bullets instead of ballots. The United Nations intends to end the violent pursuit of governmental power through global governance. Ultimately, the United Nations intends to gather under its control all war-making capability of all nations, not to impose its will upon nations, but to prevent one nation from imposing its will upon another -- from exercising national sovereignty.

Global governance is portrayed as a benevolent system of social equity. It is envisioned to be a global village in which all people share equitably the earth's abundant resources, free from threats of warring invaders, from hunger, from disease, from homelessness, and from poverty. It is a utopian picture that appeals to most of the world. Even in America, many people long to be free from the burdens of freedom and welcome the idea of governance that will guarantee their basic needs. Because America is still a sovereign nation, it can choose to accept, or reject the utopian promises offered by the idea of global governance. The surrender of national sovereignty is the price of acceptance. Once surrendered, the national sovereignty which allowed America to achieve its prosperity will vanish -- as will its prosperity.

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Col 243 (August, 1997)

American democracy By Henry Lamb

American democracy rests upon a unique idea: sovereignty -- the power to govern -- is conveyed to individuals by creation; the institutions of government are empowered by the consent of the people who are governed.

In most of the other nations in the world, including Europe, governance rests upon a completely different belief system: sovereignty is the domain of the institutions of government, which has the power to grant, or to deny, individual freedoms -- including the right to participate in government.

In America, the individual's power to govern is expressed through elected officials. Every American is free to offer himself as a candidate to represent his constituency. Every American is free to present any idea for public policy, either through his own candidacy, or by persuading others who have been elected. Every American is free to speak out in favor or against any public policy proposal. Every American is free to criticize existing policy, and those who are responsible for its implementation. Every American is free to try to influence governance in any way that he can -- without fear of official sanctions. The result is chaos.

American democracy has evolved into two categories of political thought, currently described as "liberal" and "conservative." Although these terms have been used historically to describe different ideologies, in today's market place, "liberals" tend to be those who promote greater government authority to impose social welfare programs, while the "conservatives" are seen as those who promote less government authority. The continuous collision of these two broadly different ideas of governance often results in gridlock and assures legislative progress at a pace somewhat slower than a snail's. Other nations ridicule our system while envying the prosperity our system has produced. America's success as a nation, and the prosperity that it has produced, cannot be separated from the political system upon which America is founded.

As chaotic, disorderly, slow, and inefficient as American democracy may appear to be, it is -- by far -- the most representative, fair, stable, and productive system of self governance yet devised. With regard to self governance, the American system is the crowning jewel of human achievement. It can never be tarnished by external forces if, and only if, it is continuously polished by internal participation.

What makes American democracy work is the participation of the people who empower -- and limit -- the institutions of government. Government, like a team of heady horses, will run its own course unless held in rein by a strong master. In America, the people are the masters who direct and guide their government. If the people grow weary, apathetic, or indifferent, the government will run amuck and go where it chooses. The people must ever hold a tight rein.

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Control of the direction of American government begins, not in Washington, but in the neighborhood. Individuals who combine their individual power through like-mined community groups influence local elections and local policies. State officials are elected by local voters -- as are Congressmen, Senators and Presidents. Individuals who speak up at community meetings, at City Council and County Commission meetings, and individuals who vote, are polishing America's crowning jewel of human achievement -- American democracy. Those who think that they cannot make a difference and refuse to get involved are inviting looters to pummel America's jewel.

Every American has the right and the responsibility to participate in American democracy. Not everyone can make a career out of politics -- fortunately. But everyone can do something to promote his idea of what government should be. Letters to the editor and to elected officials do make a difference. Participation in local organizations does make a difference. Some of America's most effective elected officials are people who once thought that their opinion didn't matter. Every single American can do something to advance his ideas of self governance. The very least a person might do is to write a check in support of organizations that promote one's own ideas of governance. As long as individual people hold the reins of government, America will prosper. Should individual Americans grow tired of the struggle, and decide to let others run the show -- others will run the show.

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Col 244 (September, 1997)

The high price of freedom

By Henry Lamb

Freedom is not cheap. Freedom is not fair. Freedom is, however, the only route to lasting peace and prosperity. Peace does not exist until individuals voluntarily agree to end violent conflict. Peace among nations does not exist until nations voluntarily agree to end violent conflict. Ancient Rome imposed peace among warring tribes -- for a time. The Soviet Union imposed peace among warring nations in Eastern Europe -- for a time. Peace imposed is war postponed. Real peace, whether among individuals or among nations, must be achieved by voluntary agreement.

Prosperity is not achieved by governmental compassion. Programs designed to take wealth from those who have it in order to redistribute it to those who do not is the cruelest form of enslavement. Such programs enslave both the producers and the recipients. Prosperity is not the product of slavery. Prosperity is the product of freedom.

Prosperity is not simply the accumulation of money. Prosperity is achieved when an individual is free to do whatever he wishes. Prosperity begins with individual freedom, but individual freedom certainly does not guarantee prosperity. People, like every other species, are guaranteed by their creator, nothing more than the opportunity to survive. The level of prosperity a person may achieve is directly dependent upon the actions of the individual.

There is nothing fair about an owl pouncing upon a rabbit. There is nothing fair about a young buck deer driving off an older buck. There is nothing fair about a cow bird depositing her eggs in the nest of another species. There is nothing fair about one person becoming fabulously wealthy while another person struggles to find food and housing. It is, however, the system of survival into which all species are given life. Though we may have difficulty understanding it, there must be a good reason for that system of survival. Because we have difficulty understanding it, we continually strive to change it. All too frequently, our efforts exacerbate the suffering and postpone the achievement of prosperity.

Compassion is the voluntary surrender of wealth for the benefit of others. Compassion is a quality -- not limited to the human species -- but often abused by the human species. Because compassion is an admirable quality, by most human standards of values, governments have attempted to institutionalize compassion. When the surrender of wealth by one for the benefit of another ceases to be voluntary, the act ceases to be compassion and the enforcer of the act might arguably be called a thief.

Recipients of enforced redistribution of wealth may be spared, for a time, the suffering that the redistributed wealth relieves. But the act prevents or delays the discovery of individual efforts that may relieve the need permanently. People are not different from other animals with respect to using the line of least resistance. Where there is a backyard bird feeder, birds flock to the easy

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feed. Where there is a government handout, people flock to the government trough. If the birds become dependent upon the backyard feeder, they die when it is not refilled. If people become dependant upon government handouts, they too die when government can no longer fill the trough.

The cost of freedom is very high. Freedom requires the individual to accept responsibility for himself, and those for whom he chooses to provide. Prosperity is achieved only when an individual is able to meet his basic needs by his own actions. Freedom from want that is dependent upon the whims or ability of government -- is not prosperity. It is, in fact, a formula for failure.

Governments that ignore the fundamental laws of nature and continue to expand institutionalized compassion -- the forced redistribution of wealth -- may be well-intentioned, but in the end, they are simply postponing and intensifying the suffering that will befall the people who are crushed by the inevitable collapse of a flawed system. How many times does the Berlin Wall have to fall?

Individual freedom requires constant effort. Constant effort is only partially successful. Far more effort results in failure than in success. It is through failure, however, that success is eventually achieved. Those who are denied the opportunity to fail are also deprived of the opportunity to succeed. Peace exists only where there is voluntary agreement; prosperity exists only where there is individual achievement.

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Col 245 (September, 1997)

Kyoto: the Protocol

By Henry Lamb

There went America's prestige and leadership in the arena of international negotiations. Bill Clinton confidently announced a "bold" program to return America's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2008 - 2012. He said reduction targets beyond his goal (which would require a 34% reduction from current emission levels) were "unrealistic." He said he would accept no treaty that did not require "meaningful participation" from developing countries. He sent Al Gore to Kyoto to demonstrate U.S. leadership, and to "walk away" from a bad deal. Gore announced to the delegates that he had instructed the U.S. negotiators to show increased "flexibility" in their position. In the end, Gore left, the U.S. negotiators crumbled, caved in, sold out, and accepted an incredibly horrible deal.

The U.S. agreed to reduce emissions by 7% below 1990 levels, which is a reduction of more than 40% below current levels -- well beyond what Bill Clinton called "unrealistic" two weeks earlier. The only mention of developing countries is a reiteration that no "new commitments" shall be required of them. Where is the "meaningful participation?" Nevertheless, in an effort to spin cow manure into rose petals, the White House is claiming victory in Kyoto.

The U.S. Senate adopted a resolution immediately before the final round of negotiations held in Bonn, Germany in October, which instructed the president to accept no treaty that would seriously impact the American economy, nor which excluded developing nations. During the Bonn negotiations, it was reported that private "consultations" between the UN Secretariat, China, and the United States produced an agreement that the U.S. would sign whatever document was produced in Kyoto, but that the White House would not advance the document to the Senate for ratification until after the elections of 1996, and if necessary, until after the 1998 elections. In the meantime, the administration would begin to implement measures administratively to achieve the objectives of the Protocol.

Apparently, those reports were true. The day after the Kyoto deal was concluded, Energy Secretary Pena was on CNN's Crossfire announcing that the Kyoto Protocol was a just a "first step" and that the President "would not bother" the Senate with it until after COP IV to be held in Argentina in November, 1998 -- after the mid-term elections. Pena's Department of Energy produced studies that predicted major adverse impact across 70% of the economy, affecting 1.7 million jobs -- when the President's target was only to reach 1990 emission levels by 2008. The new targets agreed to by the White House will stab deep into the very heart of the American economy. Gasoline prices will now climb by as much as $1 per gallon and household electric bills can be expected to increase by as much as 75 to 80 percent during the work-up to the first budget period. The only truthful statement to come out of the White House regarding the Kyoto Protocol is that this agreement is simply the first step. Each subsequent five-year budget period is designed to reduce emissions even further with new targets. In the future, the targets may be set

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by the Conference of the Parties -- with no requirement for Senate ratification. The ultimate objective is to phase out altogether the use of fossil fuels as an energy source

The phase-out has begun in developed nations. During the phase-out period, China, Mexico, Brazil, Korea, and the rest of the developing world are free to use low-cost fossil fuel to build their economies, while the developed world is being required to develop alternative technology which is to be transferred to the developing world. The UN scheme is to eventually reach a point when all the world has equal prosperity (or equal poverty), dependent upon energy sources under its control.

That the White House would agree to such an outrageous document is beyond comprehension

for those who value national sovereignty. America is subjected to a gross disadvantage with the rapidly growing "tiger" economies of Asia and the agricultural competitors to the South. Under the Protocol, energy use in America is subject to the whims of the Conference of the Parties to a UN Treaty. Moreover, even as the American economy is strangled by artificial and unnecessary taxes, Americans are expected to pay the "full cost" of implementation for the developing world and provide a "clean development fund" to help developing nations achieve "sustainable development."

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Col 246 (September, 1997)

Kyoto: the process

By Henry Lamb

As outrageous as the Kyoto Protocol is, the process by which it was developed is even worse. At the United Nations, decisions are reached through the "consensus" process. Consensus is not unanimity, as has been repeatedly declared by Michael Zammit Cutajar, Executive Secretary to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Nor is consensus the absence of expressed objection, as demonstrated by Raul Estrada, Chairman of the Ad Hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate, when he ruled that a consensus had been reached despite the expressed objection of the United States, Canada, and Russia. Estrada further announced that a two-thirds majority would be required to over- turn his ruling. What then is consensus? The sad truth is, as Michael Cutajar told a reporter in Geneva, Switzerland, "consensus is very much up to the presiding officer."

Consensus is said to be a "democratic" process through which all interested parties present their views on an issue and eventually persuade each other to accept a common position. Nothing could be further from the truth. The consensus process must have a starting point, a proposed position which participants are expected to embrace. Negotiations toward a climate change treaty started in 1990 with the proposition that global warming was occurring, that it was bad, and that it was caused by human use of fossil fuels. That presupposition was clearly in place by the conveners of the first working groups charged with developing the treaty text. It is the same presupposition that caused the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be created. The adoption of the treaty in 1992, and now the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, affirms both the presupposition, and the consensus process which resulted in ultimate adoption. In the climate change negotiations, the presupposition is based on belief and hope, rather than upon scientific evidence. The UN working group that prepared the treaty was well underway before the IPCC reached its first conclusions, which were also reached by consensus.

The consensus process does not allow all interested parties to present their views; only selected individuals are allowed to participate. And then, only selected participants are allowed to speak. A good facilitator -- the presiding officer -- will allow balanced "interventions" (speeches) from a representative number of participants and then declare that a consensus has been reached which very much resembles the presupposition raised at the starting point. In so doing, the process gives the appearance of democracy in action and implies a unanimous consent of the participants. Not so! To reach the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties was divided into several subsidiary bodies, working groups, non-groups, and contact groups -- all appointed by the presiding officer. Each had a special task to deal with various elements of the Protocol. The meetings were almost exclusively closed to observers and to the press. No written minutes were taken. Oral reports were given to the Conference of the Parties meeting in plenary sessions which were then condensed into written reports by the staff of the UN. A constant complaint by the delegates throughout the two-year negotiating session is that the written reports that show up in the official record do not resemble the events that occurred in the private meetings.

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The President of the Conference of the Parties is "elected" each year, along with seven Vice Presidents and a Rapporteur, which constitutes the UNFCCC "Bureau." The current President, Mr. Hiroshi Ohki (Japan) was "recommended" by the outgoing President, Chen Chimutengwende, from Zimbabwe. The President is "elected" by acclamation, with no other names submitted by anyone. The President then identifies his list of Vice Presidents who are also "elected" by acclamation. There is no such thing as campaigning for office; the officers are predetermined by a rotating scheme to assure geographical balance and the appearance of a democratic process.

The scam election process puts in place official delegates to serve as the "Bureau," which is roughly the same as an executive committee. Officers serve only one-year terms. The result is that the UN staff is greatly empowered. The staff is there year after year; the officers come and go. Moreover, if the elected officers ever want to be appointed to any future choice positions, they had better not cross the UN staff. It is the staff that recommends who goes where and which delegates get the plum assignments. The Executive Secretary, the CEO, if you will, of the entire Climate Change Convention, got his start in the UN working in Maurice Strong's office in 1970-1971 during the preparations for the first Earth Summit in Stockholm, which Strong chaired. Strong also headed the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio at which the Climate Change Treaty was adopted.

The consensus process ensures only that the outcome of a particular event will be what the conveners want. In no way does it reflect a democratic process or even agreement among the participants. The consensus process is the "new decision process" heralded by the President's Council on Sustainable Development (Belief Statement number 8) and it is now being used as a matter of course by all federal agencies as the mechanism to advance the administration's agenda of social engineering. The chief purpose of using the consensus process is to bypass duly elected representatives of the people where an open debate and public vote can stop a bad policy cold.

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Col 247 (September, 1997)

Kyoto: the consequences

By Henry Lamb

If the cost of the Kyoto Protocol were nothing more than an increase of $1 per gallon at the gas pumps, and an increase of 75 to 80 percent in household electric bills, America could adjust and eventually assimilate the financial impact. But as the President and environmental gurus like to say, this is simply the first step. Of course, they say it is a first step to solving the global warming problem. It is not. The Protocol does not limit emissions in the developing countries. China will rapidly surpass America's emissions early in the next century. Greenhouse gas emissions will not be slowed by the Protocol; they will simply be shifted from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere.

So will America's jobs, industry, and wealth. This first-step Protocol is designed to start a series of five-year "budget periods" for which the Conference of the Parties is empowered to adjust the emission limits on developed countries. By limiting America's emissions, the UN effectively limits our energy use. By embracing this Protocol, America is willingly giving up its authority to set its own energy policy. The Gore/Clinton Administration has embraced the Protocol and has the audacity to claim that it is not a surrender of national sovereignty.

Everyone else recognizes the surrender of national sovereignty. Tony Juniper, a spokesman for Greenpeace International was asked specifically how Americans would react to the surrender of national sovereignty required by the Kyoto Protocol. He said most Americans want a strong Protocol and are not concerned about national sovereignty. He noted that we had willingly surrendered national sovereignty by ratifying the World Trade Organization, the CITES Convention (endangered species), and dozens of other treaties.

The Right Honorable John Gummer, a member of the British Parliament, former Minister of the Environment in Britain's conservative government, and now a delegate to the Conference of the Parties representing the European Union, was asked what was his take on the sovereignty issue.

He said: "I've got no take; it's just rubbish. Don't talk to me about America's sovereignty. Your pollution is infringing my sovereignty. This is not America's world. It's our world. America's sovereignty is of no account!"

Jessica Mathews, a close Gore advisor, also recognizes that the Kyoto Protocol will cost another "little chunk" of national sovereignty, but, she says, it is necessary. Michael Jefferson, Secretary of the World Energy Council, says national sovereignty is not as important as international cooperation to solve the world's problems. Moreover, he said that those who are trying to expose the science on this issue are contributing to the downfall of America because technology will bypass America, making U.S. business obsolete.

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This is the prevailing attitude throughout Europe, Asia and Japan, and the rest of the world. It is obviously the attitude of the Gore/Clinton Administration as well.

Another consequence of the Kyoto Protocol that is nearly as bad as the surrender of national sovereignty is the deliberate corruption of the scientific process. Science, more than any other institution, should be dedicated to finding the truth. The environmental movement has spawned a new branch of "advocacy science," not dedicated to the truth, but dedicated to producing scientific- sounding scenarios to justify behavior modification schemes advanced by the enlightened elite. Nowhere is advocacy science more rampant than in global warming circles.

In a widely quoted Discover magazine article, Stephen Schneider, who just 20 years ago was a prophet of global cooling, now a global warming zealot, tells his colleagues that we must offer up scary scenarios, keep quiet about any doubts that we may have, and each scientist must decide between the truth and effectiveness. The Union of "Confused" Scientists, and the Society of Conservation Biologists are at the forefront of advocacy science, not searching for scientific truth, but attempting to provide the appearance of scientific justification for a social modification agenda.

The consequences of the Kyoto Protocol include another giant step toward global governance. The international bureaucracy being constructed by the UN is reaching its tentacles into every facet of American life -- hiding behind the scary scenario of planetary impoverishment. Society is being transformed incrementally to conform to the vision of Al Gore's 1992 declaration that societies must be restructured around the central organizing principle of protecting the environment. His book, Earth in the Balance, also called for a globally coordinated plan to completely eliminate the internal combustion engine in 20 to 25 years. The Kyoto Protocol -- with its plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels -- is, in fact, a globally coordinated plan to eliminate internal combustion engines. It doesn't matter that there is no technology available to replace them. The radical-deep-ecologists believe that they can have government mandate technological change that is "sustainable," by their definition, and if not, people ought to be walking more and riding bicycles anyway.

The consequences of the Kyoto Protocol is a first step for America, not toward the solution of a global warming problem -- which does not exist -- but a major first step toward a new kind of world. In Gore's new world, bugs and biodiversity are far more important than people; and global governance is far more important than national sovereignty.

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Col 249 (October, 1997)

Sustainable Communities

By Henry Lamb

Across America, communities are being transformed into "Sustainable Communities." No, there is not a new federal law, nor are there even state laws, which define and prescribe the transition from locally governed communities into sustainable communities. Why, then, is it happening? How is it being imposed? What is the driving force? What are the consequences?

Sustainable communities are becoming a reality because a small group of international environmentalists think the way Americans live is obscene. Three international environmental organizations, in particular, are responsible for advancing their ideas about how Americans should live, into international treaties that affect all Americans and, in fact, all humans everywhere. The World Conservation Union (also known as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature ) which uses the acronym IUCN; the World Wide Fund for Nature, formerly the World Wildlife Fund (WWF); and the World Resources Institute have emerged as the driving force behind the global environmental agenda called Agenda 21.

Agenda 21 is a 300-page document adopted in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 which sets forth specific recommendations to transform the world into sustainable communities surrounded by biosphere reserves. These recommendations have been "Americanized" by the President's Council on Sustainable Development, created in 1993 by Executive Order, neatly side-stepping any Congressional debate, oversight, or approval. The agenda is being implemented through a great variety of environmental organizations, coordinated by the three primary international organizations, with the primary impetus coming at the local level from the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI).

So what's wrong with making communities more sustainable? Nothing. The programs outlined in Agenda 21, and by the President's Council on Sustainable Development, and by ICLEI, however, are not sustainable. In fact, those programs have produced the worst environmental conditions in the world and they will inevitably destroy America's will and ability to sustain our economic prosperity.

Sustainable development is defined to be meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Every American should have learned that our ability to meet our own needs is the result of our freedom to engage in whatever lawful activity we choose, in order to earn a living. When looking to the future, the first value that must be sustained is individual freedom. The second value that must be sustained is the right to own and use private property. Then we must sustain our free market economy, and certainly, our national sovereignty. These are the values that have made possible the incredible growth and development in America. These are the values that underlie American prosperity.

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These are the values that must be at the top of the list of objectives to protect and preserve for future generations.

They are not. They are ignored, or referred to as negative inhibitors of sustainable development as it is envisioned by the international leadership. Sustainable development is further defined to be the integration of economic, social, and environmental objectives into all public policy. It is the goal, then, of the sustainable communities initiative, to ensure that government, through its public policies, regulates economic, social, and environmental activity. Moreover, the regulation of human life cannot be the result of policies proposed and adopted by officials who are elected by the people who are governed. Those policies must be consistent with the recommendations of Agenda 21, proposed and imposed by the international community, implemented by non-elected, self-appointed surrogates of the international community.

ICLEI, the primary promoter of local Agenda 21 initiatives, was created and funded by the United Nations, and now claims to represent "Local Government Authorities," at meetings of the United Nations. The IUCN was created by Julius Huxley, the same man who founded UNESCO. It was the IUCN that created the World Wildlife Fund, headquartered in the same building with the IUCN in Gland, Switzerland. And it was the World Wildlife Fund that created the World Resources Institute. This incestuous group of international environmentalists has been extremely successful in translating their view of how Americans ought to live, into international treaties and policies that are transforming America into sustainable Communities.

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Col 250 (October, 1997)

Transforming a republic

By Henry Lamb

Elected officials appear to be falling all over themselves in a rush to transform local, state, and even the federal government, into nothing more than administrative units for the United Nations.

A UN treaty produced America's wetland policy. Another UN treaty produced America's Endangered Species Act. Another UN treaty banned freon in America. The UN Climate Change treaty now threatens to control America's energy use, and the UN's Agenda 21 is being transformed into another treaty -- the granddaddy of them all -- called the Covenant on Environment and Development. With the emergence of each new treaty, America's laws and regulations are conformed to meet the expectations and requirements of the international community. Bit-by-bit, America's great Constitutional Republic is being transformed into a social democracy headed by non-elected, self-appointed, environmental elitists.

Elected officials in America appear to be in awe of international treaties and policy declarations such as Agenda 21. The idea of "Sustainable Development" has been presented to the world in such a positive light, that few elected officials have bothered to look behind the shallow declarations to discover just what the international program means.

A major objective of the international community is to transform the public policy decision-making process in America. Americans have too much freedom. We are free to propose and support, or oppose and destroy any public policy idea that may come along. That freedom is unacceptable to the international community. People should be free to comment on, and otherwise improve the ideas proposed by government, but should not be allowed to have ideas of their own.

Therefore, the new decision-making process called "collaborative consensus building," is systematically replacing the process of free and open debate among elected officials, concluded by a public vote for which elected officials can be held accountable.

The only way to ensure that government remains under the control of the people who are governed is to ensure that public policy (laws and regulations) are created only by officials who are elected for that purpose. The function of appointed bureaucrats is to implement the policies that are enacted by elected officials. Appointed bureaucrats should never be allowed to make public policy. Nevertheless, we have entered an era in which even the President's Council on Sustainable Development has called for a "new decision-making process." That new, consensus-building process is being utilized by the Gore/Clinton administration, and by government-funded front groups all across America.

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Typically, an organization such as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), the United Nations Association, or The Nature Conservancy, will help organize, fund, and staff a local organization for the purpose of implementing the recommendations of Agenda 21 in a local community. The local organization then carefully selects individuals to participate in what is loosely called a "visioning process" to create a picture of what they want the community to be like in the future. The visioning process claims to be all-inclusive of the stakeholders in the community, but in reality, only those individuals who are in agreement with the agenda are welcome. Dissenters are frequently marginalized, embarrassed, or both, until the dissenters decide to stay home.

Eventually, a community plan will emerge which miraculously parallels the recommendations of Agenda 21. Invariably, the plan will embrace more than one political jurisdiction, often embracing several counties. In some instances, where it is deemed possible, the organization may attempt to have local government authorities adopt the plan as the official guide for the local community. Where there is opposition among elected officials, or even the possibility of defeat, the organization will frequently ask for a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) which recognizes the organization as the community-based "Coordinating Agency" to ensure the governments within the plan area coordinate their local policies in compliance with the objectives of the regional plan.

Prior to the "new decision-making process," public policy was developed in response to the expressed needs of the people governed. Policy proposals were debated in public where any citizen had equal right to express an opinion and work for passage or rejection of any proposal. The new decision-making process assumes that a need exists to transform the lifestyle of all Americans, and it systematically excludes those who are most directly affected while claiming to represent the community that is essentially excluded.

Elected officials who buy into this process, at whatever level of government, are aiding and abetting the transformation of a Republic.

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Col 251 (October, 1997)

A Sustainable Community By Henry Lamb Santa Cruz County California, and its municipalities, is preparing to become a "Sustainable Community." The closing gavel had barely fallen on Rio de Janeiro's 1992 Earth Summit, at which 179 nations adopted Agenda 21, when a group of self-appointed individuals began to develop a "Local Agenda 21" for Santa Cruz County. An ad hoc organization called "ACTION - Santa Cruz County" was assembled, and the process of transformation was launched. Five years of constant effort has now resulted in a final plan which will, in fact, transform not only the entire community, but the concept of sovereignty and freedom as well.

A carefully selected, 13-member advisory board has determined that "Cars are not a sustainable mode of transportation in Santa Cruz County." The plan requires the elimination of "all personal car use in downtown Santa Cruz and other cities, to be accomplished by the year 2010." People are to use bicycles and be transported by "ultra-light rail systems" that have rail cars designed to accommodate bicycles. Businesses and schools are to install free shower facilities for sweaty commuters.

By the year 2000, "at least 50%" of the county's teachers must be teaching "sustainability and global issues." The plan also envisions a transformation to "sustainable agriculture," which includes "edible landscaping." A reduction in the use of gasoline and electricity of 30% to 40% is called for by the year 2000, by using "economic incentives" which, in plan English, amounts to artificial, unnecessary, unwarranted taxes. Sustainable housing is "integrated" housing units concentrated in "core urban areas" which require ethnic and economic integration. Structures are to be constructed with "recycled and/or biodegradable" materials, use solar energy, and use only "non-toxic" household products and appliances. Housing needs are to be reduced by assuring "pro-choice majority among elected officials at all levels;" funding for family planning; sex education at all levels; and "U.S. involvement in pro-active international population programs."

Local Agenda 21 in Santa Cruz is a faithful conversion of the UN's Agenda 21, as reinforced by the President's Council on Sustainable Development, and is endorsed by their Congressman Sam Farr. Public policy in Santa Cruz is being developed by paid professionals who are guiding the "consensus building" process to impose the principles of a managed society upon people who are not even aware that their Constitutional freedoms are being ravaged.

The Santa Cruz initiative is being promoted primarily by the United Nations Association and by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), a so-called non-governmental organization that was, in fact, created at the behest of the United Nations, according to Jeb Brughmann, ICLEI's Secretary-General (see ecologic, March/April, 1997 p. 17). Local elected officials are often intimidated by the powerful political leaders such as Congressman Sam Farr, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton, to say nothing of organizations such as the United Nations Association. Too frequently, local officials simply allow these plans to be

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adopted without even looking to see how they were developed or how their constituents may feel about them. What's worse, too often, local taxpayers do not even know these plans are being developed or what the implications may be for their future. Sadly, Santa Cruz is only one of thousands of communities throughout America that is undergoing this transition to a managed society. Most communities choose a name other than "Local Agenda 21." In Yampa Valley, Colorado it's called "Environment 2000." In Piscataquis County Maine, it's called "Economic Renewal." In Charlotte, North Carolina, the multi-county sustainable community initiative is heralded as a new "Citystate." Throughout America, in small communities and major cities, the international community is exerting its influence in the development of sustainable communities -- as defined by Agenda 21.

In a nation that is supposed to be governed by free people who control and direct their governments, the United Nations has made incredible inroads. The Gore/Clinton administration is in full agreement with the UN agenda, and is actively working to by-pass elected officials in Washington and at the state and local levels. The transition to a managed society is well underway, even though it is only beginning to be recognized. There is only one power on earth strong enough to stop and reverse this trend: the power of ordinary Americans who are unwilling to be enslaved.

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Col 252 (October, 1997)

Sustainable Freedom

By Henry Lamb

The definition of sustainable development is: development that meets current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. At the very top of the list of the needs for future generations, should be the following items: individual freedom; private property rights; free market economies; and national sovereignty. These are precisely the values targeted for oblivion by Agenda 21, the President's Council on Sustainable Development, and the thousands of Local Agenda 21 programs now underway in America.

There is no individual freedom in a community that dictates where a person may live, what materials must be used in the construction of his home, what plants may be planted in the yard, whether or not he may drive a car, what his children must be taught in school, and what products may be purchased at the neighborhood grocery store.

Private property rights are a joke in a nation that requires a property owner to pay taxes on his property, but prohibits the use of the property if a threatened or listed species may wish to use it. Free markets are no longer free when Agenda 21 plans require artificial taxes on certain products while requiring the purchase of other products. National sovereignty fades into memory as the United Nations dictates America's level of energy use through international treaties.

The proponents of sustainable development have been extremely shrewd in the presentation of their agenda. They simply claim that their agenda is necessary to save the world from biological impoverishment and a global-warming meltdown. They have created advocacy groups such as the Union of Concerned (confused) Scientists to give their claims the color of science while castigating real scientists who challenge their conclusions. Then through carefully constructed "visioning councils," they develop policy remedies that are said to be the "consensus" of all the "stakeholders" in the community.

Ordinary people are not stupid, and they are beginning to wake up. Ordinary citizens are beginning to learn about these "visioning" meetings that are taking place. Ordinary citizens are beginning to attend these meetings and ask painful questions about how private property rights will be protected; how markets can remain free if the plan requires the purchase of only "approved" products which have been granted a "green label."

Ordinary citizens are beginning to ask their elected representatives why non-elected, self-appointed professionals are being allowed to develop public policy documents that are presented for approval, rather than being developed in the light (and heat) of public debate. Ordinary people are organizing into community groups, affiliating with state and national organizations and are experiencing a measure of success. The last three UN Biosphere Reserve nominations were defeated by ordinary people acting in concert. As the result of local citizen action, several

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Congressmen have opted out of the President's American Heritage Rivers Initiative after local citizens demonstrated how the President's program is nothing more than another effort to by-pass elected officials in an effort to further erode private property rights and expand the management capability of non-elected bureaucrats.

Far more important than any clean water standard or clean air regulation, far more important that any single species of bug or plant, is the principle of government empowered -- and directed -- by the people who are governed. The first responsibility of such a government is to protect, maintain, and enhance the freedom of its citizens. Agenda 21 is a 300-page document embraced by 179 nations that is designed to empower international agencies to manage the daily affairs of every citizen on earth. As bizarre as that may sound, the transition from individual freedom and self governance is taking place in communities across America, as Local Agenda 21 programs are being devised.

The United Nations is restructuring itself right now -- behind the guise of reform -- to solidify its legal and administrative ability to enforce the management policies set forth in Agenda 21. When adopted in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Agenda 21 was what is known as a "soft law" document, that is, nothing more than guiding principles to be adopted voluntarily. Even then, in 1992, a new international treaty was under development to convert the "soft-law" document into legally binding requirements for all nations. That treaty has now emerged as the "Covenant on Environment and Development." It has not been presented for adoption yet, but will be when the UN believes the world is ready to accept its stringent provisions. For example, it would give the citizens in developing nations the authority to sue individuals in America for damages incurred from global warming. And that's just a sample of the draconian enforcement and compliance mechanisms developing in UN documents.

If the world is to escape the iron-clad rule of global government administered by socialist-thinking, non-elected, environmental elitists, it will take the extraordinary effort of ordinary Americans. The time is short; immediate action is required by all who cherish and want to sustain freedom.

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Col 253 (November, 1997)

New Treaty Looms

By Henry Lamb

A new UN treaty, under development since 1989 but not yet introduced to the world, would authorize individuals in developing nations to sue individuals, industries, and/or the governments of developed nations for damages resulting from polluting the global commons. The case could be tried by the International Court of Justice or the Tribunal for the Convention on the Law of the Seas. The new treaty is called the "Covenant on Environment and Development." It was developed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Council of Environmental Law and the United Nations Environment Program's Environmental Law and Institutions Programme Activity Center.

The treaty essentially codifies, or writes into international law, the provisions of Agenda 21, a "soft law" document adopted in Rio de Janeiro and the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Moreover, it will give individuals and nations direct recourse for what may be considered environmental damages -- as defined by Agenda 21. Simply put, a small island state could collect money damages from the United States for sea level rise that it claims is the result of global warming caused by the United States' excess emissions of greenhouse gases. The case would be adjudicated by an international court. The World Trade Organization already has the power to levy sanctions on nations and could be used to put teeth into the court's verdict.

The treaty would complete the transition of the mission of the United Nations from what was originally intended -- to provide collective security for member states -- to its new mission -- to provide individual security for the people of the world.

The UN's mission creep is not an unintended consequence. Our Global Neighborhood, the report of the UN Commission on Global Governance, discusses in great detail the need to expand the mission of the UN to embrace "the security of people." It is the objective of the UN to provide for the social welfare of all the world's citizens by redistributing the wealth of developed nations to the people in developing nations. The politically-correct buzz-words used to describe this procedure are "assuring that all people share equitably in the earth's resources." To achieve this objective, the politically-correct buzz-words include "sustainable development," which is another way of saying "manage the affairs of people to ensure no one uses more resources than they are entitled to." Who decides how much of the earth's bounty a person may be entitled to? Who else -- an agency of the United Nations.

In a long list of documents, the United Nations has set forth how they think the world should be governed. It is a vision of global welfare, with the United Nations as the tax-collector and the administrator of benefits. Taxes are to be collected from the developed nations and redistributed to the developing nations. Nowhere is this principle more clearly illustrated than in the recently adopted Kyoto Protocol. Thirty-four developed nations are forced to severely limit their use of

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fossil fuel energy while 137 developing nations have no limitations at all. In addition, the Kyoto Protocol creates a "Clean Development Fund," into which developed nations must pay prescribed amounts to be redistributed to developing nations to help them develop the technology to burn fossil fuels which have been denied to the developed nations.

The new Covenant on Environment and Development writes this principle into international law. No one knows when it will be presented to the world for ratification. The Convention on Biological Diversity was first proposed by the IUCN in 1981 and was not presented to the world until 1992. The new Covenant on Environment and Development goes far beyond any other treaty in terms of the consolidation of power into the hands of the UN. The current draft was completed in March, 1995. While there is no way of knowing when it will be presented to the world, one possibility may be the "Millennium Celebration" scheduled for the year 2000 when the UN's new "Assembly of the People" holds its inaugural session.

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The U.S. and the UN

By Henry Lamb

The United States is the envy of the world. The United States leads the world in everything from military might to personal prosperity. The United States should be leading the world toward the prosperity it has achieved during its short history. Instead, the United States is being lead into a system of global governance conceived in the womb of socialism, fabricated with the principles of Marxism, and displayed to the world behind the banner of "sustainable development." Why?

The people who represent the United States at the more than 130 United Nations organizations and agencies, reflect the will of their employers. Since 1992, the UN agenda has advanced further that it had during the previous 20 years. The accelerated advance is because the United States' representatives to the UN have allowed it. In fact, to a very large extent, they have been the foot on the gas pedal. Timothy Wirth, former Undersecretary for Global Affairs, actually agreed in 1995, to accept whatever mandate came from the Kyoto Protocol without any knowledge of what the requirements would be or how much it would cost. Vice President Al Gore called for a "globally coordinated program to eliminate the internal combustion engine" by 2017. He personally, instructed the U.S. delegates to accept a Protocol in Kyoto that was far more severe than the President said he would accept. Why?

The President matters. Those people who do not vote in Presidential elections are responsible for the President who was elected. Because people have given up on politics and choose not to vote, a President was elected who saw fit to appoint U.S. representatives who support the UN agenda rather than the values guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. It is not a Democrat or Republican issue. It is an issue of the U.S. or the UN. Suppose someone such as Senator Chuck Hagel had been appointed Undersecretary of State instead of Timothy Wirth. America would have never had to deal with the Kyoto Protocol. The person elected President -- whether Democrat or Republican -- must first and foremost, advance the values guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The United Nations provides the United States with an excellent opportunity to share our values with the rest of the world. But we don't. The United States should insist that UN programs utilize those principles that made America great. For example, the principle of free markets should be promoted around the world. Instead, the United States supports the notions of "using market forces" to manipulate both the economy and social engineering. The Kyoto Protocol provides another excellent example. It was the United States that insisted on some form of "emissions trading" as a scheme to prevent global warming. The scheme is said to be "market based" and utilizes "market forces" to affect global greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the program is another politically-correct buzz word for carbon tax. It forces industries in developed countries to pay a fee to developing countries for the privilege of doing business. The scheme actually penalizes free markets to subsidize socialist dictators and communist regimes.

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U.S. representatives to the UN should insist on programs that respect and expand the concept of private property rights. On the contrary, our representatives support programs such as the UN Biosphere Reserve Program and the global network of protected wilderness areas prescribed in the United Nations publication Global Biodiversity Assessment. Vice President Al Gore publicly ridiculed then-President George Bush for not signing the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. After his election, he began personally to implement the programs required by the Convention even though the Convention was not ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Instead of leading the world to a better understanding of the idea that government derives its power from the consent of the governed, the United States is being lead into a system of governance in which the government, specifically the United Nations, is omnipotent and free to grant -- or deny -- freedoms and rights to the people who are governed.

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A Sustainable World

By Henry Lamb

The perfect world, as visualized by those who drive the UN's global agenda, is difficult to describe, and even more difficult to document, because it is a work in progress. The UN has now published enough literature, however, to draw a rough picture that suggests where the world is headed.

First, there would be no national boundaries. "Pollution doesn't stop at national borders," is the phrase that justifies programs such as "Border 21," which is a first step toward dissolving the border between the United States and Mexico. The UN mission is no longer to provide services to its member states, but to provide "security for the people." It may be coincidental, but in the U.S. State Department's press briefing room, the decoration on the wall is a silhouette of the western hemisphere -- without any borders separating the countries. In Europe, CNN International weather forecasts show Europe -- without any borders separating the countries.

In North America, instead of 48 contiguous states, there would be 21 "bioregions," if the Sierra Club proposal prevails. The bioregions would be defined by ecosystems and watersheds which do not respect the political boundaries of states or counties. Bioregions would be zoned to include core wilderness areas, buffer zones, and zones of cooperation in which sustainable communities would be located. The core wilderness areas, off limits to humans, would constitute "at least half" of the land area, and would be interconnected by "corridors of wilderness" constructed around "American Heritage Rivers" and closed "Scenic Byways." The Blue Ridge Parkway in western North Carolina has been proposed for such a corridor to connect wilderness areas throughout the Southern Appalachian Biosphere Reserve.

Buffer zones surround the core wilderness areas and are target areas for "restoration" of ecosystems to their pre-settlement condition in order to enlarge the wilderness areas. The balance of buffer zones are to be managed first, for "conservation objectives," but could also support some "sustainable agriculture" and managed forest and mineral harvesting.

The "zones of cooperation" which surround the buffer zones are to be "laboratories for learning" the virtues of sustainable living. It is here that "sustainable communities" are to be developed. Each sustainable community is to have its "visioning council" consisting of non-elected, carefully selected individuals from "civil society" who utilize the consensus process to create a vision of the future. Local government entities are to become the administrative authority to execute the policies of the visioning council. "Stakeholder" councils and "Watershed councils" will perform similar functions in the areas outside sustainable communities and the buffer zones. From these various "civil society" councils will be selected the individuals to serve on the bioregion council, which will have responsibility for coordinating the activities within the bioregion.

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Representatives from the bioregional councils around the world will be selected to participate in the recently announced "Assembly of the People," which will meet for the first time in the year 2000. A soon-to-be-created "Petitions Council" within the UN will receive "petitions" directly from the various councils at the bioregional and community level, for screening and referral to the appropriate UN agency for direct response by the UN, either from its own staff, or through the federal or local administrative units, formerly called local, state, and federal government.

Sustainable communities will consisted of ethnically-balanced, income-integrated, high-density, low-rise "living centers," some with community kitchens and laundry facilities. Transportation will be by foot, bicycle, or "light-rail" mass transportation systems. Food will be produced "organically" in community gardens or provided by "sustainable agricultural" operations in nearby buffer zones. Living centers will be constructed only from materials that bear the government-approved "green seal" and landscaping must be from native plants with a prescribed percentage of edible plants. Schools will be required to teach "sustainable living" with emphasis on the "good of the community" rather than on individual achievement. Life will center around what is good for the community and future generations -- as determined by the visioning council.

This picture of the perfect world comes in bits and pieces from such documents as Global Biodiversity Assessment, Our Common Future, Our Global Neighborhood, a variety of UN Treaties, a variety of documents from the U.S. Department of Interior, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of State. The future is arriving daily.

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A Sustainable Future

By Henry Lamb

The perfect world, according to day-dreamers, is a world where individuals cooperate with one another through mutually beneficial agreements without the need for punitive laws for contract breakers. In a perfect world, families would cooperate with one another, through mutual respect, without regard for color, race, or creed. A perfect world would host many nations that take pride in their nationality and at the same time, honor the nationality of others. In a perfect world, defense would become an obsolete term, replaced by such novel concepts as help, cooperation, and mutually beneficial service.

Such nonsense may be the babble of day-dreamers, but then so was the Declaration of Independence when it was written. So was the U.S. Constitution when it was written. Both documents contained ideas as strange to the 18th century, as is the perfect world of the 20th century day-dreamer. If there is to be a sustainable future, somehow, people must learn to live more like the vision of the day-dreamers.

The seeds of a sustainable future are contained in the U.S. Constitution, beginning with the realization that all government should be empowered by the consent of the governed. Few nations in all of history have ever experienced such an idea. In America, it is an idea our forefathers died for, but one which we take for granted. It is a powerful idea, fully capable of dissolving kingdoms, felling dictators, and collapsing collectivist regimes. It is the only principle of self-governance sufficiently strong to support a sustainable future. This principle, though, is only the foundation for a sustainable future. The foundation must be established around the world, not just in America. There is much work to do on the foundation.

Upon that foundation can be constructed a shrine to individual freedom that can reach heights not yet imagined by the most serious day-dreamer. But there is no blueprint for the shrine. Each block and two-by-four must be crafted by hand and put in place through the painful experience of trial and error. Each individual must experience for himself the pain of failure and the joy of achievement. Each individual must pay the price for taking short-cuts to realize the benefits of doing the job right the first time. Each individual must come to the realization that every other person in the world must be granted the same rights that he claims for himself.

A world filled with people who shared such values would, indeed, be near perfect. But such age is not the world of the 20th century. Because such a world is still for day-dreamers only, individuals must be constrained by laws and coerced to do what, in a perfect world, might be voluntary action. In order to build a sustainable future, laws must be crafted by the people who are governed and who submit to the constraints imposed upon them voluntarily. Any other system of legal constraint is dictatorship -- regardless of the name used to describe it.

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The world outside of America, the world that has never experienced individual freedom that comes from government limited, and empowered by the consent of the people, must have an example to follow and they must see the benefits that flow from that system. Americans have spilt their blood, time and time again to defend our system of government from those who think they know better how Americans should live. If there is to be a sustainable future for the world, America must maintain its vigilance and invest whatever it takes -- blood, money, or time -- to not only defend our system of self governance, but also to convince the rest of the world that individual freedom is better than tyranny.

Those who think they know best how Americans should live no longer wave swastikas or launch armies against us. They come bearing promises of world peace, and remedies for non-existent environmental problems. They call prosperity greed and condemn personal achievement as irresponsible unconcern for the poor. They label non-conformity as intolerance and individuality as uncivil.

A sustainable future must be constructed with individuals who come voluntarily to a course of action that allows the full realization of potential greatness. That course of action necessarily allows every other individual the freedom to pursue his own greatness. Such a future is worth the blood, money, time, and effort it requires. It is the only route to a sustainable future. Individuals whose lives are constrained by unlimited government power are destined to never realize their potential greatness. A nation that limits the potential greatness of its individual citizens is itself, limited to the recycling of its government's leaders. A sustainable future will be constructed by individuals in pursuit of personal excellence, whose government is allowed to come along for the ride.