Excerpt: One of the major impediments, the study says, is created by America’s “basic framework of government, established by law,” which is “one of separated and dispersed authority,” in which “government agencies at all levels — federal, state, local, tribal and even international — can only do what they have been authorized to do by their governing authorities — namely, Congress, state legislatures, etc.” — not to mention the U.S. Constitution. The new system of government organization, the study says, would bring federal, state and local branches of government together with “stakeholders,” activists and other interested parties in ways that would not depend on the old legal restrictions and facilitate new methods of dealing with the problems of creating a “sustainable society.” The main instrument for accomplishing that change would be a new National Sustainability Policy that could be created by presidential executive order, similar to a National Ocean Policy created by the Obama administration two years ago.
The Obama administration should dramatically reorganize the relationships between America’s federal departments and agencies, and overcome legal barriers to help install the nebulous principle of “sustainability” across government, the economy and society at large, according to a new National Research Council study sponsored by many of the federal departments that would be most affected.
The study also calls for installing sustainability in the “culture of government” and recommends that the U.S. look for inspiration to a number of “national sustainable development strategies” adopted under the United Nation’s controversial Agenda 21, a highly detailed blueprint for reworking the global economy and environment that was reaffirmed at last year’s Rio + 20 summit on sustainable development.
