Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of offi­cials in oth­er states, law­mak­ers in Texas intro­duced leg­is­la­tion that would pro­hib­it some state and local gov­ern­ment par­tic­i­pa­tion in the deeply con­tro­ver­sial Unit­ed Nations “sus­tain­abil­i­ty” scheme known as Agen­da 21. With bills tar­get­ing the UN pro­gram intro­duced in both hous­es of the leg­is­la­ture and out­rage about Agen­da 21 still grow­ing across Texas and the nation, activists and law­mak­ers are hope­ful that the state will suc­ceed in pro­tect­ing prop­er­ty rights, self-gov­ern­ment, and eco­nom­ic free­dom from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion-backed UN scheme. How­ev­er, ele­ments of the estab­lish­ment media and UN-lov­ing forces in Texas and beyond have already made clear that they intend to fight back. 

The anti-Agen­da 21 leg­is­la­tion, filed last week by Repub­li­can State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mol­ly White in the House and GOP State Sen­a­tor Bob Hall in the Sen­ate as S.B. 445, take aim at state and local gov­ern­ment fund­ing to UN-linked orga­ni­za­tions involved in impos­ing the plan­e­tary scheme. “A gov­ern­men­tal enti­ty may not enter into an agree­ment or con­tract with, accept mon­ey from, or grant mon­ey or oth­er finan­cial aid to a non­govern­men­tal or inter­gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion accred­it­ed by the Unit­ed Nations to imple­ment a pol­i­cy that orig­i­nat­ed in the Agen­da 21 plan adopt­ed by mem­bers of the Unit­ed Nations at the Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ence on Envi­ron­ment and Devel­op­ment in June 1992,” the bill explains.

While the leg­is­la­tion is not near­ly as strong as Alabama’s ban on Agen­da 21, sup­port­ers of the mea­sure in Texas say it is a good start at the very least. If signed into law by pop­u­lar Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott, a strong pro­po­nent of sov­er­eign­ty, the mea­sure would, among oth­er points, restrict state and local offi­cials’ fund­ing or imple­men­ta­tion of the UN scheme in the state. Sen. Hall, who intro­duced the Sen­ate bill, said it tar­gets “city orga­ni­za­tions and cities that are adapt­ing the UN pro­grams.” Rep. White, mean­while, spon­sor of the leg­is­la­tion in the House, was quot­ed as say­ing that the mea­sure would pro­tect Texas and Tex­ans from the “glob­al agen­da” prop­a­gat­ed by “a hand­ful of unelect­ed, unac­count­able people.”

Indeed, the UN’s Agen­da 21 does rep­re­sent a glob­al agen­da, and it is being advanced most­ly by unelect­ed and unac­count­able forces — pri­mar­i­ly from the shad­ows under mis­lead­ing names, for now. First adopt­ed at a UN “sus­tain­abil­i­ty” sum­mit in Brazil more than 20 years ago, the far-reach­ing agen­da was described on the dic­ta­tor-dom­i­nat­ed glob­al body’s web­site as “a com­pre­hen­sive plan of action to be tak­en glob­al­ly, nation­al­ly and local­ly by orga­ni­za­tions of the Unit­ed Nations Sys­tem, Gov­ern­ments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts [sic] on the envi­ron­ment.” To under­stand the scope of such an agen­da, con­sid­er that the UN con­sid­ers car­bon diox­ide — a gas exhaled by human beings and required by plants — to be a “pol­lu­tant” in need of reg­u­la­tion and tax­es because it alleged­ly harms the envi­ron­ment. Indeed, lit­er­al­ly every human activ­i­ty has some impact on the environment.

Signed by then-Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush for the Unit­ed States, Agen­da 21 has nev­er been rat­i­fied by two thirds of the U.S. Sen­ate as con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to be valid. Still, using exec­u­tive orders, grants, coun­cils, pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships, tax­pay­er-fund­ed “non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions,” fed­er­al bureau­cra­cies, and more, ele­ments of the glob­al agen­da are being imple­ment­ed all across Amer­i­ca and world­wide. Local gov­ern­ments, too — par­tic­u­lar­ly those involved with the Agen­da 21-pro­mot­ing out­fit ICLEI — are imple­ment­ing the UN-backed schemes in com­mu­ni­ties nation­wide. Sev­er­al Texas cities have with­drawn from ICLEI, but many of the state’s largest cities remain members.

Despite the threat of the scheme being down­played by igno­rant or agen­da-dri­ven reporters and UN sup­port­ers, pro­po­nents of Agen­da 21 read­i­ly admit the mas­sive scope of the glob­al agen­da. “You’re talk­ing about a doc­u­ment that cov­ers every­thing from healthy liv­ing, pre­vent­ing child abuse, pro­mot­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion,” Chris What­ley, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Unit­ed Nations Asso­ci­a­tion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, was quot­ed as say­ing this week by the Texas Tri­bune. “If you specif­i­cal­ly write a real­ly big bill that says the state of Texas can’t work with any of those orga­ni­za­tions and it can’t work with any­thing that’s includ­ed in that doc­u­ment, that 350-page set of sug­ges­tions, it could lead you into ter­ri­to­ry you don’t antic­i­pate.” It was not clear why What­ley thought the UN, dom­i­nat­ed by ruth­less auto­crats, should be involved in pol­i­cy­mak­ing in Texas.

Even sup­port­ers of the leg­is­la­tion to rein in the UN scheme in Texas have sug­gest­ed that pro-Agen­da 21 offi­cials may be able to find loop­holes in the lan­guage to con­tin­ue attack­ing pri­vate prop­er­ty rights and self-gov­ern­ment. Indeed, with so many names and out­fits being used to con­ceal Agen­da 21’s ten­ta­cles in Amer­i­ca, the bill may leave numer­ous avenues for con­tin­u­ing imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21-linked schemes. Still, numer­ous Texas activists and lead­ers who spoke with The New Amer­i­can said the mea­sure was worth sup­port­ing for a vari­ety of reasons.

“I view this bill as anoth­er tool to help edu­cate peo­ple on how the UN is exploit­ing envi­ron­men­tal­ism to gain con­trol of com­mu­ni­ties,” said Frank Koch, the founder of Stop Agen­da 21 Texas. “UN Agen­da 21 is sold under such names as ‘smart growth’ or ‘sus­tain­able devel­op­ment’ and offer benign sug­ges­tions like more bike paths and recy­cle pro­grams to ‘save the earth,’ but the objec­tive is to get UN ten­ta­cles and infra­struc­ture in place for the future. As the ten­ta­cles become more pow­er­ful, the ideas morph into pass­ing laws deal­ing with car­bon tax­es, lim­it­ing pri­vate prop­er­ty, and pop­u­la­tion con­trol as a means to ‘save the earth.’ We Tex­ans care about the envi­ron­ment, clean air, and using nat­ur­al resources more effi­cient­ly, but we don’t need the Unit­ed Nations telling us what to do.”

Of course, notwith­stand­ing the estab­lish­ment media’s pro­pa­gan­da — some par­tic­u­lar­ly decep­tive UN sup­port­ers even dis­miss the UN plan post­ed on its own web­site as a “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry” — oppo­si­tion to Agen­da 21 is about as main­stream as can be. Con­sid­er that every state law­mak­er in Alaba­ma, includ­ing every Demo­c­rat, vot­ed to ban the UN scheme across the state in 2012, and the gov­er­nor signed the bill into law. Numer­ous oth­er state leg­is­la­tures and local gov­ern­ments have also passed bills and res­o­lu­tions attack­ing the UN “sus­tain­abil­i­ty” scheme as a dan­ger­ous anti-free­dom pro­gram that must be opposed.

While many Democ­rats also oppose Agen­da 21 — includ­ing the group Democ­rats Against UN Agen­da 21 — oppo­si­tion to the UN scheme is strongest among Repub­li­cans. The Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, for exam­ple, adopt­ed in 2012 its plat­form that specif­i­cal­ly oppos­es Agen­da 21 and a broad range of UN schem­ing. “We strong­ly reject the U.N. Agen­da 21 as ero­sive of Amer­i­can sov­er­eign­ty,” the nation­al GOP declared in its plat­form. The lan­guage echoed anoth­er nation­al Repub­li­can Par­ty res­o­lu­tion describ­ing Agen­da 21 as a scheme of “extreme envi­ron­men­tal­ism, social engi­neer­ing, and glob­al polit­i­cal con­trol” which would be “accom­plished by socialist/communist redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth.”

The Texas Repub­li­can Par­ty also offi­cial­ly oppos­es Agen­da 21. In a 2012 res­o­lu­tion, the state par­ty said Agen­da 21 is “designed to destroy our fun­da­men­tal rights and lib­er­ties as a peo­ple, hith­er­to enjoyed under our sys­tem of just gov­ern­ment, in order to trans­form us from men made in the image of God to men re-made in the image of com­pelled beings, oppressed, hav­ing no acknowl­edged rights or lib­er­ties held invi­o­late; all designed by the ene­mies of life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness in order to reduce us to mis­ery and bondage, with­out hope or God or nat­ur­al moral absolutes.”

The peo­ple of Texas, the res­o­lu­tion observes, believe in “free­dom and prop­er­ty and self-gov­ern­ment under Nature and Nature’s God, and thor­ough­ly reject the tyran­ny of glob­al­ism in the form of Agen­da 21, Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment.” So, the par­ty resolved to pro­tect the God-giv­en rights enshrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion “in order that our fun­da­men­tal rights and lib­er­ties shall be held invi­o­late for­ev­er, stand­ing in oppo­si­tion to all forms of reli­gious, social, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal glob­al­ism as set forth in the Unit­ed Nations Agen­da 21 Pro­gram.” All Texas Repub­li­cans are expect­ed to fol­low the party’s lead. Count­less states, coun­ties, cities, and state Repub­li­can par­ties have also adopt­ed res­o­lu­tions with sim­i­lar language.

Mean­while, pop­u­lar con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz (R‑Texas) has also been an out­spo­ken oppo­nent of Agen­da 21. “Under the guise of world sus­tain­abil­i­ty the plan estab­lish­es a regime of rules that attempt to bypass Con­gress and the Amer­i­can peo­ple, hand­ing … pow­er over vast areas of the U.S. econ­o­my to unelect­ed UN bureau­crats,” explained Cruz, wide­ly viewed as a lead­ing poten­tial con­tender for the 2016 GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. “Agen­da 21 is wrong, and it must be stopped.”

A sep­a­rate Texas bill intro­duced by Repub­li­can State Sen. Don­na Camp­bell takes aim at anoth­er UN scheme tar­get­ing the Lone Star State. Dubbed the “Pro­tect the Alamo Act,” the leg­is­la­tion would pro­tect the his­toric San Anto­nio mis­sion turned fortress from the UN, which is con­sid­er­ing the land­mark for adop­tion as a so-called “UNESCO World Her­itage Site.” Sen. Camp­bell was quot­ed by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press as warn­ing that the UN schem­ing “could cre­ate a con­flict regard­ing future man­age­ment of the San Anto­nio landmark.”

Oth­er states includ­ing Mis­sis­sip­pi and Mon­tana are also con­sid­er­ing laws to pro­tect cit­i­zens from Agen­da 21 and its myr­i­ad ten­ta­cles. Alaba­ma passed the tough­est law yet against UN Agen­da 21, the “Due Process for Prop­er­ty Rights Act,” that for­mal­ly pro­hibits the adop­tion or imple­men­ta­tion of any Agen­da 21 schemes that infringe upon the right to pri­vate prop­er­ty. As out­rage and aware­ness of the plan grow, ana­lysts expect oppo­si­tion to con­tin­ue building.

Activists say numer­ous UN Agen­da 21-linked plans, includ­ing what the UN calls a “bicy­cle shar­ing scheme” for “sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty,” have been and are being imple­ment­ed in some areas of Texas. UN-inspired attacks on pri­vate prop­er­ty rights, water rights, rur­al land own­ers, and self-gov­ern­ment under the guise of “sus­tain­abil­i­ty” are unfold­ing nation­wide. Whether Lone Star State law­mak­ers will take seri­ous action to pro­tect Texas and its cit­i­zens from the UN plan under all of its names, though, depends on how much Tex­ans are will­ing to do to pre­serve their rights.

by Alex Newman
for The New American