"ICLEI Agenda 21 Consumes Suffolk County, Long Island"

Submitted by mdefarge on Mon, 12/10/2012 - 16:09
Politics, General + Law(s)
New York

"Governor Cuomos is turning New York into an Agenda 21/ICLEI paradise. Not everyone is going along with him. Westchester County just bowed out – lucky Westchester!

Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a fiscal conservative, terminated ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability when their paid membership came to an end. Four years ago, Westchester enthusiastically joined ICLEI’s Climate Action Plan, which is the brainchild of UN Marxists.

Astorino believes that Westchester can protect the environment without outside influences.

Unfortunately, Suffolk County, Long Island has chosen a different path.

Long Island seems to have a death-by-spending wish. They even went beyond Cuomo’s costly plan for new ICLEI roadways.

The Suffolk County Legislature voted last Tuesday to adopt Long Island’s first county-wide Complete Streets policy. The policy requires that all roads – not just those receiving state or federal funds as is mandated by the New York State Complete Streets legislation that went into effect in February 2012 – consider the safe accommodation of bicyclists, pedestrians, transit users and motorists alike.

The local government is manufacturing a crisis to do this. They are pretending Suffolk County has the most dangerous streets in the nation and that complete streets are necessary.

Redoing every street is going to be extremely expensive at a time when the economy is poor and Suffolk homeowners pay some of the highest residential taxes in the nation. Suffolk County also has a huge budget deficit of over $300 million.

Complete Streets is the brainchild of UN ICLEI..."

Read more: http://www.independentsentinel.com/2012/12/iclei-agenda-21-c...

See also:
- "Count Executive Rob Astorino Terminates Westchester Membership in ICLEI"

http://www.newrochelletalk.com/content/county-executive-rob-...

- "Governor Cuomo is Turning New York into an Agenda 21/ICLEI Paradise." (Providing various links, )

http://archive.constantcontact.com/f...07983/archi...
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As an environmentalist, I do not necessarily disagree with all of the proposals discussed in Governor Cuomo's green plans for New York, i.e., these proposals in and unto themselves.

For instance, in the long run - if we wish to sustain the FOOD CHAIN - we do need large tracts of *contiguous* forested land (wilderness) vs. towns' "green space" or even protected areas under state jurisdiction that simply cannot sustain healthy and sufficient wildlife. (It doesn't matter whether some seem more concerned about the animals or the trees over people; in the grand scheme of things, we're all connected.) But, something of that nature can be accomplished voluntarily and without the U.N./ICLEI involved, as has been done in New England. (See Reading The Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England, by Tom Wessels - a fantastic "interdisciplinary" read, by the way!)

It's the same with local ordinances. IF local residents wish to adopt certain changes within their own communities (townships, cities, or counties), that can be achieved through local boards without involvement from larger government or quasi-government entities. For instance, where I live in Rockland County, because of the initiative of one resident, our county-owned properties no longer use toxic pesticides/herbicides.

Unfortunately, in some cases well-meaning planning boards simply don't understand what they're getting into when they sign up for membership in ICLEI, namely, the rights/power (that belongs to the citizens or a community) they can be giving up. They may well not even know the connection to the U.N. and Agenda 21 and *ultimate* goals of ICLEI proposals brought to their attention, nor the potential consequences, namely where property rights are concerned. Those who raise the issue can count on being called "conspiracy theorists," but by now there is plenty of evidence that can no longer be denied. So beware! ICLEI now operates under different guises. For one, is your town an official "Green Town?"

The bigger issue is philosophical. The following are quotes from one of the articles linked at the above website: "GOVERNOR ANDREW COUMO TO IMPLEMENT UNITED NATIONS’ AGENDA 21 IN NEW YORK STATE VIA REGIONAL PLANNING GROUPS"

"1. “Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective.” – said Harvey Ruvin, Vice Chairman, ICLEI. The Wildlands Project. (You can’t get more socialist than using the word ‘collective’ in a sentence).

2. “We must make this place (the earth) an insecure and inhospitable place for Capitalists and their projects – we must reclaim the roads and plowed lands, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness tens of millions of acres or presently settled land.” - Dave Foreman, Earth First. (He’s talking about humans who work for a living and build things - that’s you and I)

3. "It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable.” – Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the UN’s Earth Summit, 1992."

(Source http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_32309.php?utm_s...)

I do not deny that there are environmental issues that need to be addressed. But while I do believe that local government can have a role to play, that is, as representatives of the people and able to be voted OUT by the people (unlike these regional environmental planning boards), there are also FREE MARKET SOLUTIONS to environmental problems.

No one has been more of a champion of this than Amory Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and author of (for one) "Natural Capitalism." [A consultant to both government and industry here and abroad, Lovins is also a proponent of decentralization related to national security. There are multiple reasons to want a decentralized society.] I urge you to check out the work of The Rocky Mountain Institute. Their website's well-organized "Knowledge Center" has hundreds of archived articles providing both the rationale behind, and practical applications of, free-market business solutions.

Rocky Mountain Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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