The United Nations wants to abolish private property worldwide. UN Agenda 21 is their tool—and local governments are already cooperating.

What is UN Agenda 21?

UN Agenda 21 means “Agenda for the Twenty-first Century.” It is the environmentalist agenda of the United Nations. In 1992, the UN held a Conference for Sustainable Development—another nice-sounding catch phrase—in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Most people remember this conference as the “Earth Summit.”) The UN set out UN Agenda 21 in the “Rio Declaration” at that conference, and set up a Division of Sustainable Development to carry out their plan.

“Sustainable development” means human action that does not harm the environment long-term—but who decides “harm” or “long-term” has always been in dispute. In fact, the UN never says what “sustainable development” means. Joan Veon sounded this warning before she died: “sustainable development” means “control,” and the dictatorship of the environmentalists.

The United Nations says little in public about UN Agenda 21 beyond the Rio Declaration. That document makes general statements that sound pleasant and reasonable. The core publications of the UN Division of Sustainable Development speak of conservation and environmental stewardship—virtues that almost everyone would appreciate. They also speak vaguely of encouraging member countries to invent new ways to “manage” development, get rid of toxic or radioactive wastes, etc.

UN Agenda 21 in detail

To see what UN Agenda 21 really means, read the Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide. This 241-page book talks of balancing the needs of the economy, the community, and the environment. But a close read makes the real goal clear. People would lose many of the rights to their properties—and so would not really have property at all. In fact, people would have no inherent rights to anything.

Francis Bacon said it best:

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Sue Ann Penna of the Essex County (New Jersey) Tea Party Coalition last night distinguished between conservation and environmentalism. The first means taking care to use natural resources without ruining them for the next person. The second says that mankind has no rights and suggests that any use of any natural resource causes damage.

Land use planning

Sue Ann Penna, Chairman, Essex County (New Jersey) Tea Party Coalition, describes what UN Agenda 21 means in local terms.

A new activist group describes UN Agenda 21 in stark terms: it is land-use planning. That kind of planning is always a problem in a free society. But this planning is far more radical than a simple zoning rule. It means seizing private land and forcing people to move to very dense settlements. UN Agenda 21 even has a new name: “islands of human habitation.”

Penna described what such an “island” might look like. More than 350 of New Jersey’s famous small towns have signed on to a plan called “Sustainable Jersey.” Many of those towns have already restricted or stopped development of single-family homes. In the centers of the towns, one sees a new kind of hybrid building. It has street-level storefronts and several floors of apartments or condominiums on the floors above these stores. This is a new version of the dingbats of the 1950s and 1960s: apartments built atop street-level carports. But these dingbats have no carports, nor indeed any place to park. The notion, says Penna, is that the people living in those condos will not need a car to run their daily errands—and will not be able to keep a car for any other reason.

Already, Sustainable Jersey encourages its member towns to “hassle” motorists at every turn. First comes making it a moving violation to idle your car for three minutes. Next comes making parking more and more expensive—and scarce. With the result that those people would be far less able to take trips or to assemble outside their home towns or neighborhoods.

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Hoboken, New Jersey, is a prize example. Hoboken now limits parking to residents who have bought the city’s parking permits, expensive municipal garages, and the small number of spaces in select institutions (like the Stevens Institute of Technology). The only convenient way to visit Hoboken is by mass transportation. Once in Hoboken, one must walk or take a taxicab. And, as Penna described, most of Hoboken’s housing consists of apartments and condominiums built above street-level stores, barber shops, restaurants, and the like.

Bicycles are another UN Agenda 21 favored vehicle. The official reason: bicycles do not pollute, and a bicyclist gets exercise while riding it. The real reason: bicycles can’t get you nearly as far as a car can.

The “island” metaphor is important for another reason. It means that most of the land will go wild again. The UN has a Wildlands Project to set aside land where no human (except, for a short while longer, a backpacker) may venture, much less live.

Presidents supporting UN Agenda 21

The elder President Bush attended the 1992 Earth Summit, after he failed of re-election. Every President since has supported UN Agenda 21 to one degree or another. The man now holding office as President, Barack H. Obama, signed Executive Order 13575. (See text here.) That order sets up a Rural Council with direct orders to carry out UN Agenda 21. Its effect: to push or chase people off their small farms and out of their farming towns, and into the cities.

Fighting UN Agenda 21

Several groups are actively watching UN Agenda 21 and suggesting ways to fight it. All activists emphasize one thing: Agenda 21 is not a treaty or UN convention. It is “soft law.” That is why Presidents Bush (Senior and Junior) and Clinton, and now Mr. Obama, could carry it out without going to the Senate. But Agenda 21 is not yet binding on US law in any way.

The most important thing is to remember your rights to life, liberty and property, and not to surrender them because someone says that “the environment” will suffer if you do not. “The environment” is only a pretext. The real purpose is control. Control is much easier if people live in crowds and have no independent way to travel.

The irony of UN Agenda 21, when the FAA and the NHTSA have just “cleared” the world’s first road-legal private airplane for production, is exquisite. The idea of a vehicle that can move through air or land almost at will can only make the UN planners shudder. Moreover, the man who developed it, did so to make people freer. The UN planners would shudder even harder if they really saw what that implies. The FAA and NHTSA must not see it, either—and neither must the Obama administration, or they would have made sure never to allow it. It is a sign that Americans still want to be free. One can only hope that they want it badly enough to fight for it.

Featured image: the flag of the United Nations.

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