(In addition to my article which is taken from my book Earth Restored, 2002; that's how long ago I warned people of a plan to overcome private property rights, PLEASE watch the full video below of how the city of Vero Beach, FL, overcame this anti-American agenda).
In his booklet, The Decline of Property
Rights and Freedom in America, Dr. Michael S. Coffman, president of
Environmental Perspectives, details the original intent of the Founding
Fathers, who saw our God-given right to own land as one of the foundational
elements to freedom. Coffman also provides an overview of the systematic
erosion of the right to private property in America, which has come at the
hands of government interference and its usurpation of individual rights. I
strongly recommend the reader get a copy of his booklet. The gist of Coffman’s
thesis is that America is presently witnessing a move toward a “new feudalism.”
Complete centralized control over most of this nation’s landscape will have the
nefarious effect of elevating the federal government, and perhaps the United
Nations, as the ultimate power over the lives of Americans. Personal liberty
will be a thing of the past.
In an article for Mining Voice, Dr.
Coffman, notes, “With the Grand Canyon National Park as his backdrop, President
Bill Clinton used the 1906 Antiquities Act to set aside one million acres of
land into three national monuments in Arizona, Nevada, and California on
January 11 [2000] this year.”30 This
action was not done with the approval or review of Congress. In addition to the
federal government’s unprecedented lock-up of public lands, “more than 20
million acres of private land could be purchased over the next decade with no
congressional oversight.”31 Using
the Clean Water Action Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency and the
Department of Agriculture plan to administratively shift “water protection from
point source pollution (a single factory or city) to non-point source pollution
over an entire watershed.”32 Consequently,
federal land use jurisdiction will extend to all of the 2,100 watersheds in
America, including private property. This use of the Clean Water Action Plan
will affect a total of “48 million acres of private property.”33
Just three days before leaving the White House,
former President Clinton created seven new national monuments and expanded an
eighth on January 17, 2001. All totaled, the Clinton administration designated
more than three million acres as national monuments in 2000 and 2001. U.S.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton has indicated that President Bush will not seek
to reverse Clinton’s land-grabs, but only adjust them so oil drilling, coal
mining, and other development can take place.
Moreover, the U.S. government is working to
implement the UN’s Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity
(Biodiversity Treaty), which was introduced during the June 1992 Earth Summit
held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “Agenda 21 is a 40-chapter tome focused on
reorganizing society around ‘sustainable’ use and development of the planet.
Based on socialist principles of equal sharing of all natural resources, Agenda
21 sets a goal to control all human activity to protect the Earth’s ecosystems
and biological diversity.”34 Implementation
of Agenda 21 and the Biodiversity Treaty in the U.S. is currently being sought
through The Wildlands Project, which is designed “to transform at least half
the land area of the continental United States into an immense ‘eco-park’
cleansed of modern industry and private property.”35 This
will be accomplished through the creation of “reserve networks” across America.
These reserve networks will be made up of “cores,” and “corridors,” a mixture
of both private and public lands. As a result, 50 percent of the U.S. continent
will be restricted or considered off-limits to the public!
The Wildlands Project is essentially the pet
project of David Foreman, the principle founder of the eco-terrorist group,
Earth First. Foreman summarizes the strategy as an effort to “tie the North
American continent into a single Biodiversity Preserve.”36 John
Davis, editor of Wild Earth, is more to the point, when he says the
Wildlands Project seeks “the end of industrialized civilization...Everything
civilized must go.”37 This
Orwellian nightmare would close many U.S. industries, block or remove highways
and roads, stop all timber harvesting, and what is more, force many hundred of
thousands of Americans to relocate.
It is in this context that Coffman urgently
calls us to rebuild a system where government exists to protect absolute
private property rights limited only by the principle of “harm and nuisance.”
This is a system that places control of the environment at the local level,
where it is regulated by a strict system of checks and balances. In “The
Decline of Property Rights and Freedom in America: The Destruction of Our
Founder’s Intent for the U.S. Constitution,” Coffman observes, “In turn, common
law nuisance and harm provisions limit the rights of a property owner to harm
their neighbor. Therefore, if an activity or use of property clearly causes
harm to a neighbor by causing harm to the environment, the property owner must
pay the cost of mitigation or restoration. These activities can be established
in regulatory statutes where the regulators are accountable to those within
their jurisdiction. However, if a regulation benefits the larger (i.e. a
“public good”) without a clear and definable harm, reduction of property value
must be compensated according to the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Finally, if an activity or use does not cause a definable harm by itself, but
does when added to all similar activities or uses preceding it, both the
property owner and society should share the cost of diminished property value.
Society must bear responsibility because it contributed to the problem as much
as the proposed activities or use of the current property owner. Partial
compensation according to the Fifth Amendment should be required.”38
He concludes, “In the final analysis, it is
private property rights as constrained by common law and significant harm that
is the ultimate answer to environmental protection. A continued reliance on
heavy-handed laws and regulations will only serve to devastate landowners and
deny them the ability and desire to develop creative solutions to our
environmental problems. It will also deny them the incentive to creatively
provide the natural resources this nation must have to provide the security and
standard of living we all enjoy.”39
30 Michael S. Coffman, “Globalizing Mining in
America: Is It Environmental Concern That’s Driving Mining Out Of The United
States Or Rather Politics On The Grandest Scale?” Mining Voice, March/April 2000.
(http://www.nma.org/FEA-Globalizing%20Mining.html; Internet).
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid. ???
37 Ibid. ???
38 Michael S. Coffman, “The Decline of Property
Rights and Freedom in America: The Destruction of Our Founder’s Intent for the
U.S. Constitution” (Bangor, ME: Environmental Perspectives, Inc., 1996), 38.
39 Ibid, 17.
Thanks for the great piece documenting the severity of Agenda 21 and Seven50. Please fight Seven50 at http://stopseven50.com
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