The Green Tsunami: A Tidal Wave of Eco-Babble Drowning Us All (7 page)

Another huge international, environmental group is The Nature
Conservancy. As of 2009, they boast of assets of $5.64-billion. Leading
the Nature Conservancy is President and CEO Mark Tercek who was
once a managing director at Goldman Sachs. With over one million
due paying members in 30 countries, the organization claims it has
protected 119 million acres of land throughout the world and 5,000
miles of rivers and streams since it began operations in 1951.

Dozens of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) bring their
environmental agenda and substantial financial support to fund the
work of ICLEI. Their websites make no secret of how they raise
money by declaring “We have a wide range of international partners
that collaborate on our programs and campaigns, including national
governments, academic institutions, local project-specific partners such as foundations and non-governmental organizations, and
dozens of national, regional and international associations of local
governments.”

ICLEI is another U.N. organization headquartered outside of the
United States in Bonn, Germany. With offices in 12 major cities dotted
strategically around the globe, ICLEI directs their work through
regional offices in Oakland, California; Capetown, South Africa;
Toronto, Canada and Tokyo. The European Secretariat is located in
Freiburg, Germany and the Latin American and Caribbean Secretariat
is in Sao Paulo Brazil. There are other offices in Mexico, Melbourne,
Australia; New Delhi, India; and Manila, The Philippines.

On January 1, 2013, Gino Van Begin took control of the international ICLEI operations. Since 2000, he served as the regional director
of operations at the ICLEI European Secretariat. Before that appointment, he served as the head of the EU’s Environmental Centers in
Russia, at Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg. Born in Belgium, Van
Begin co-drafted a document known as “The Aalborg Commitments
on Urban Sustainability”, a regional planning program that currently
includes 600 cities and towns.

Van Begin was preceded at ICLEI by the former World Secretariat,
Konrad Otto Zimmerman, who was installed as the first ICLEI
Chairman when the U.N. group was launched in 1992. A lifetime
environmentalist and like Van Begin an urban planner, he is a member
of the United Nation’s Program for Environmental Governance and
the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council.

Every three years, ICLEI stages a large World Conference and
according to their website connects “experts and peers from around
the globe to share challenges and learn the most successful strategies
for local sustainability and forge common solutions”.

Tactically, in America ICLEI implements their globalist environmental agenda through regional planning groups. Many of them
bypass locally elected officials. City and County planners subscribe to
ICLEI’s guidelines and when, for example, they apply for state and
federal funding for regionally-planned projects, ICLEI membership
virtually assures funding.

ICLEI’s United States President and Board Chairman is a notso-well-known and remarkably unlikely U.S. mayor, by the name of
Patrick Hays, from the city of North Little Rock, Arkansas. He is
assisted by the ICLEI-U.S.A. Corporate Secretary, Pegeen Hanrahan,
former Mayor of Gainesville, Florida and ICLEI-U.S.A. Corporate
Treasurer, Frank Cownie, former mayor of Des Moines, Iowa.

Are all of these small town politicians and regional urban planners
a network of Global Environmental Conspirators bent on undermining U.S. sovereignty and creating a New World Order? Of course not.
But, like many government officials all over the world, they became
convinced during the 1990s that the goals of “Agenda 21” and the
United Nations could solve the international environmental crisis of
“Global Warming”.

ICLEI is very active across America. While they might seem relatively benign at first glance with a global environmental agenda as
their goal, here are a few of the more enticing ICLEI news story headlines listed on their website.

• “Carpentaria, CA Switches to LED Street Lighting to Cut Costs”
• “Seattle’s Green Building Evolution”
• “Earth Day Network announces cities that will participate in
Clinton Global Initiative”
• “Ithaca, NY goes 100% renewable”
• “Learn more about your state and local GHG emissions with
EPA’s new map tool!”

Remember, most of the ICLEI goals and strategies are being implemented, not at the federal or state level, but by regional planning
boards bypassing local voter accountability.

Consider the story of the city of Danville, California where this
town’s general plan was put together by an unelected Regional
Planning Commission. As introduced, the proposal will guide the
city’s development for the next 20 years. Danville has joined a regional
group known as the “Association of Bay Area Governments” and the
group’s bonding commitment is the implementation of the U.N.’s
“Agenda 21”.

One Danville resident who studied the regional plan observed it
is full of “eco-babble”, the same eco-babble that has become familiar to all of us through the mainstream media. The planners address
the usual list of environmental issues like “sustainable action, environmental preservation and reducing greenhouse gases”. The regional
planners, determined that downtown Danville will become “a priority
development area”, designed a network of transportation corridors
that will enable the city to compete for federal, state and local funds
for road maintenance and improvements. In the downtown area, the
city also plans to set aside more than nine acres of prime real estate for
new high density and affordable housing located adjacent to public
transportation stops. This is an “Agenda 21” concept known as “pack
and stack”—high rise apartment living. Global environmentalists
believe it will be the future of urban housing.

Like Danville, cities across America are adopting the same concept.
Regional planners are creating networks of transportation corridors
that embrace the U.N.’s “Agenda 21” sustainability goals, including
public transportation systems that will have not-too-frequent stops
at stations where low income, high rise housing (environmentally
engineered apartments) will be located. ICLEI’s goal for the current century is to popularize communities where cooperative “global
citizens” won’t demand private transportation and certainly won’t
demand an energy gobbling, 2300 square foot private home. Instead,
they will live happily in an 800 square foot apartment, stacked one
atop the other. The green citizens of the future will happily walk to
the nearest public transportation stop where they can catch a ride to
work or to shop. Better yet, they can bike to their destination on new
taxpayer-supported bike paths. A “Green Utopia” will have finally
come to our planet.

With three quick steps on the internet, you can read about ICLEI
for yourself:
• First: Enter ICLEI.org in your browser to get their website.
• Second: Look for the tab labeled “Programs” and click on it.
• Third: Scroll down until you find Agenda 21 and voila!
From sea to shining sea, citizens in western cities from Spokane,
Washington and Santa Rosa, California to east coast cities in states like
Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, residents are getting informed
about the globalist intentions of the U.N.’s ICLEI program. They are
learning how these plans are being subversively implemented, bypassing their locally-elected officials.
ICLEI’s “Think globally—Act locally” slogan doesn’t make sense
to most Americans. Our nation’s long history of individual freedom
and representative democracy is at odds with the ICLEI concept of
elitist government policy from the top down. And in America’s current economic climate, tax dollars are in short supply. When local
citizens learn their local government is sending membership dues to
ICLEI, either through the U.N. headquarters in New York or the
ICLEI headquarters in Germany, citizens are outraged and demand
it be stopped.
As regional planners realized they were under attack, their national
umbrella organization, The American Planning Association (APA),
issued a list of “talking points” explaining their work in glowing terminology in an effort to help local planners defend themselves from
outraged citizens. “APA members help create communities of lasting
value,” the directive begins. “Good planning helps create communities
that offer better choices for where and how people work and live. And
planning enables civic leaders, business interests and citizens to play a
meaningful role in creating communities that enrich people’s lives.”
The APA’s “Glossary for the Public” document goes on to say
that “some opponents of planning argue… that sustainable development… adversely affects not only an individual’s rights and freedoms
but also true local control. Given such a perspective, it is imperative
that planners frame discussions about sustainability, regionalism, livability and the like (see trigger words below) in a way that emphasizes
the economic value, long-lasting benefits and positive outcomes that
result from good planning and plan implementation.”
APA’s CEO Paul Farmer, who obviously understands the coming
wave of public criticism has sent his talking points memo to hundreds
of regional planners to arm them in public debate. “As planning and
planners have become targets of suspicion and mistrust, it is more
important than ever to avoid polarizing jargon, to focus on outcomes
important to local citizens and to maintain a fair, open and transparent
process,” Farmer’s talking points document states.
Still, citizens who have investigated these regional planning groups
and their embrace of the ICLEI goals of “Agenda 21”and sustainability read Farmer’s words and strongly disagree. To the average citizen
who learns his tax dollars intended for road repair and construction of
freeways, are being diverted to pay for ICLEI membership and a U.N.
environmental/globalism agenda, see nothing fair, open or transparent in any of the APA’s eco-babble.

Before we connect the dots between globalism, regionalism, the
United Nations, Agenda 21 and ICLEI, any comprehensive review of
sustainable development’s growth the last 15 years would be found
lacking if it did not include the “environmental skullduggery” of Al
Gore. As reported earlier, his 1990’s book “Earth in the Balance”
became a game changer in the campaign to popularize the pseudoscience of “Global Warming” and “Climate Change”.

Historically, when Al was defeated in the 2000 Presidential election by a few “hanging chads”, many believed he was cheated out of
the presidency. With a giant block of public sentiment behind him, Al
got a boost with his soon to be post-presidential careers as an environmental venture capitalist and a preacher of his “Global Warming”
gospel. Al was a natural draw for earnest young college students who,
by nature, mistrusted government institutions. A candidate swindled
out of the presidency was someone they welcomed and earnestly listened to.

In 2004 while speaking on the UCLA campus in Southern California,
Al drew the attention of an environmental activist in the audience,
Laurie David. She was the wife of Larry David, renowned television
producer of the shows “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. Mrs.
David suggested for Al’s talk to reach a much larger audience it needed
to become a major motion picture. With Laurie David as a member
of the Board of Trustees for the aforementioned Natural Resources
Defense Council, Al’s subject matter fit perfectly with Mrs. David’s
and the NRDC’s agenda. Laurie’s use of her considerable connections in both Hollywood and New York and all the glitz and star
power she could muster contributed to Al’s power point presentation
becoming the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”. An Oscar and Nobel
Peace Prize followed and Al and “Global Warming” had hit the street
running.

Candidly, behind every gleaming moment of Al Gore’s successes,
there has always been a shadow of misfortune. Since his early days in
politics to his most recent network television enterprise, miscalculation and mischief seem to follow him wherever he goes.

During his presidential campaign, one such bizarre incident involved
a typical luncheon fund raiser at a Buddhist Temple in Hacienda
Heights, CA, a small community just east of downtown Los Angeles.
Among other guests, Al’s audience included the saffron-robed monks
who take an obligatory vow of poverty as they become priests in their
religious order. Yet somehow, Gore’s presidential campaign managed
to collect contributions at the luncheon of more than $100,000.

An investigation soon followed. The monks were called before a
Congressional Investigating Committee asking them who arranged
the function and most important who donated all that money? As a
result of the investigation, twenty co-conspirators (fortunately none
of them Buddhist monks) went to jail for their part in the fiasco. Many
suspected a sinister plot by the Chinese government to exert influence
on America’s presidential election was somehow behind the scam. Al
publicly mumbled something about “no controlling legal authority”
and the mainstream media and the U.S. Congress gave Al and his
presidential campaign a free pass.

Even Al’s Nobel Peace Prize was tainted, as he shared it with the
now-disgraced U.N. organization, the International Panel on Climate
Change (the IPCC). You remember them, the U.N. scientists who
cooked the “climate books” all those years in favor of “Global
Warming”.