by Tara Dodrill
While the mainstream media has ignored the freedom-infringing nature of Agenda 21, the world’s leaders and the United States have passed another “biodiversity” plan which many are calling the current program’s “evil twin.”
The newest program is called Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, and it was passed this fall by United Nations members with barely a mention on any mass media outlet.
The Heartland Institute think tank calls it a “rebooting” of Agenda 21, and it has the full support of the Obama administration.
“2015 is a pivotal year for global development,” the White House said in a statement. “The adoption of the 2030 Agenda, which sets out a global development vision and priorities for the next 15 years, captures the hopes and ambitions of people around the globe for meaningful change and progress, including here in the United States.”
The Heartland Institute even calls Agenda 2030 “Agenda 21 on steroids,” and the document itself seems to acknowledge that.
“This is an Agenda of unprecedented scope and significance,” the Agenda 2030 preamble states. “It is accepted by all countries and is applicable to all, taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities.”
Agenda 2030 has 17 goals, some of which may seem innocent on the surface but which, once implemented, will erode liberty, said Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center.
For example, the first goal is to end poverty everywhere:
“The only answer the plan offers for eliminating poverty is redistribution of wealth,” DeWeese wrote at AmericanPolicy.org. “The document calls for ‘equal rights to economic resources.’ That means government is claiming an absolute power to take away anything that belongs to you to give to whomever it deems more deserving.”
Another goal is to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”
“This is Smart Growth which promises a utopia of families and neighbors playing and working together, riding bikes, walking to work in stress free communities,” DeWeese wrote.
“It really means the end of private property rights, single family homes, and stack and pack high rises where residents are over taxed, over regulated, rents are high and individual thoughts and actions are viewed as a threat to the “well-ordered society.”
Sustainable development, the preamble says, is the primary goal.
“All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan,” it reads. “… We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind.”
Agenda 21 was launched in 1992, with the United States government a signatory to the “voluntary, non-binding” action plan.
“While Agenda 21 focused mainly on the environment, Agenda 2030 encompasses far more and is touted to be the ‘new universal agenda’ for humanity,” Nancy Thorner and Bonnie O’Neil of the Heartland Institute and the Illinois Review wrote. “It professes to be an altruistic plan that will benefit future generations. The reality, however, is that U.N. Agenda 2030 will rob individuals of most every freedom through its imposed mandates.”
They added that “American citizens need to wake up to the fact that their American sovereignty is being challenged by the United Nations.”
The Agenda 2030 plan clearly states that it is a “new universal agenda” for all of humanity.
Even though the phrase “Agenda 21” remains largely unfamiliar to the vast majority of Americans, its dictates are already impacting their lives.
More than 500 cities and towns across the country have passed some version of the global biodiversity plan as enacted by the United Nations.
