the return of the earth hour conspiracy

Believe it or not, but not only is the Earth Hour Conspiracy alive and well, but it’s thriving and growing enough to start rearing its head in the news again. What exactly is this sinister plot? Why to end sovereign statehood and turn over all control to international agencies managed by the U.N. under the guise of combating climate change and promoting sustainable development. Tea Party activists and conspiracy theorists on the political right are fuming about the document they believe proves that the conspiracy theory is in fact a very plot and it’s even outlined in a publicly available document known as Agenda 21 hosted on the U.N.’s website. Yes folks, this is how comfortable the New World Order has become. Rather than conspiring in the shadows of Masonic temples to divide their ill-gotten loot and make plans to depopulate the world through vaccinations — more on the one in an upcoming post by the way — they just post their nefarious machinations on the web for the Newt Gingriches, Glenn Becks, the Rush Limbaughs to casually peruse while hyperventilating from either fear, fury, or a mix of both. But should we really kill national sovereignty goodbye and live in fear of the U.N.’s plans?

Well, you see, the lengthy exhortations of Agenda 21 call for sustainable development, women’s rights, aid to the developing world to mitigate the massive gaps between the haves and have-nots, and some rather basic conservation efforts and sustainable development. All of these are very liberal and vaguely noble goals which contain some basic guiding principles many of us can agree to be at least of some importance. Furthermore, to help pry corrupt officials in the developing world from imposing their will and crippling anti-poverty efforts routinely underway in their fiefdoms, Agenda 21 calls for expanded political roles for NGOs and charities. That would be the part that has the right wing all hot and bothered, assuming that international agencies could just waltz on down to their houses, decide that their land isn’t being used properly, take it, and do with it what they want. Maybe they’ll make a collective farm, a new branch of a bank that funnels laundered NWO money, or an insidious FEMA camp for the reeducation of those who don’t want to go along with the plan. It’s really coming together now, isn’t it, orchestrated, premeditated order out of the seeming chaos of our world, isn’t it? Why we would be at the mercy of whatever the U.N. throws at us and since the agenda was adopted in 1992, we have endured three presidents who quietly implemented this sinister anti-sovereign agenda. So, panic?

Not exactly. You see, there’s a catch to this scary, 40 chapter list of globe-spanning international ambition. It’s not legally binding. Even if you are a signatory, should you decide not to follow any of the agenda’s guidelines in practice, you’ll face absolutely no consequences. None. Funny enough, there are sections in the document promoting more balanced free trade zones and tut-tutting the kind of protectionist mercantilism that actually accounts for many jobs lost through globalization, something conservatives should be trumpeting since it would help bring back jobs to abandoned red state factories and bolster local economies. After all, this agenda implores governments to lower trade barriers and come to a reasonable balance between protecting jobs and allowing access to its markets, not regulate existing businesses into how to trade or call for more regulations. Wonder why no one in the Tea Party saw these pro-free trade, pro-market sentiments and made a note of them rather than pouring over the blue-sky foreign aid and environmental aspirations and looking for a loophole they think will let the government seize their property and sent them to re-education camps in the middle of nowhere. It’s as if they’re more concerned with justifying their fears of being purged by evil liberals rather than the matter at hand or actually taking the agenda for what it’s worth, that is, a lot of fluffy ideas kicked around for decades.

But hold on a minute, what about the supposed local-level implementations of Agenda 21? What about green city designs and new environmental codes? Allow me to answer a question with a question. Why is a city that want to be more environmentally friendly or rezone themselves necessarily following it? Because of a chapter which says that encouraging environmental friendliness is important? By that logic we can tie virtually any action to virtually any document and call conspiracy. Hell, this is exactly what conspiracy theorists do on a regular basis with their selective quote mining and using correlation as causation. Here’s an example. Once upon a time, a diplomat wrote a lengthy but vague document pondering about how one could venetually build a Eurozone-like North American Union. Sometime around that, NAFTA was adopted. Therefore, using a pinch of conspiracy logic, NAFTA must’ve been the first step in creating it. Claiming that a city trying to borrow ideas from around the world for better design and sustainability must be a sinister NWO plot because there’s a document which encourages that, is exactly the same error. And considering that we live at a time when we are so interconnected that a decision by a Chinese trade clerk about where to build a factory in his city directly impacts your job and the prices you pay for certain goods, thinking globally is actually a good thing.