U.N. agenda for sustainable growth riles El Dorado County residents
By Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee
The United Nations is haunting El Dorado County.
Critics of a 20-year-old U.N. document called Agenda 21 are becoming more vocal, blaming it for any number of ills in the county.
Agenda 21 came out of a United Nations conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It recommends a framework for nations to develop and grow sustainably – that is, with minimum damage to the environment.
Although it was accepted by presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, it carries no force of law here.
According to local critics, however, Agenda 21 is environmental extremism responsible for U.S. Forest Service road closures, onerous regulations on family farms, high-density low-income housing projects, a ban on dredge mining, a Highway 50 wildlife crossing, unemployment and maybe even traffic roundabouts.
Those issues resonate with many of El Dorado County’s 180,000 residents. The county has growing suburbs near its border with Sacramento County, but is largely rural, and largely federal forestland, as it climbs the Sierra to Lake Tahoe.
Is there no end to political diatribe, as if everything can be solved by choosing one side (“as long as it’s mine; no others need apply”) over the other. . .
Existence itself has no Republican or Democratic ties to being conducive to life; we as Americans don’t like to have decisions forced upon us, which will happen if some of these folks don’t wake up to the issues affecting our time. . .
The difference between being sustainable and unsustainable is in being well-informed, as most of these complaints are not . . .the systems of the earth are at a breaking point, and even climate change is only a symptom, not a cause. . .at this point in time, there exist many symptoms, and not a lot of attention paid to their cause, except if it happens to be about money.
Hallelujah !!
Money will be a poor substitute for life, once gone. . .as money does not exist in nature, the system that actually supports us. . .