John Birch Society: ‘Agenda 21’ is Stealth Plot to Steal Freedom
For all the seeming urgency, Agenda 21, it turns out, is old news; it dates back to 1992 and the Earth Summit in Rio. Signed by 178 world leaders, including President George H.W. Bush, the thousand-plus page document, “binding upon all living things on the planet,” is the United Nations’ program on “sustainable development.” Depending on whether you believe the UN or the John Birch Society, it’s either a much-needed strategic plan to scale down the use of fossil fuels and other natural resources to levels that meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” - or a Trojan horse that will give the UN complete control over every aspect of American life.
Flashing slides of Karl Marx and Alger Hiss, the accused Communist spy who helped draft the UN Charter, Shurtlef painted a lurid picture. Agenda 21 explicitly calls for “a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced,” he said. Its goal, he falsely claimed, is the de-population of rural regions. Foreign bureaucrats, Shurtlef added absurdly, will mandate family size here in the United States, imposing forced abortions as they do in Communist China.
If UN environmentalists have their way, he went on, the expansive American way of life, in which everyone can aspire to the dream of owning a house with a big yard and two cars in the driveway, will be replaced by one in which increasing numbers of us are crammed into urban and suburban “pack ‘em and stack ‘em” apartment complexes, and forced to use mass transportation and live according to a “communitarian” ethos. Already, Edison’s great invention, the incandescent light bulb, has been banned. Thanks to Agenda 21, Americans are being forced to purchase expensive, compact fluorescent lightbulbs that are manufactured in Communist China.