Smart Growth Network
In 1993 when Clinton and Gore came into office, they considered they had a mandate to redesign the American government and to establish systems to restrict the use of our nation's resources. In June of 1993, Clinton signed Executive Order 12852 establishing the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). The objectives of the Council were:
- advise the President on matters involving sustainable
development and recommend an action strategy
- advise the President on fashioning an annual Presidential Award
recognizing exemplary efforts toward the achievement of sustainable
development goals
- advise the President on conducting public awareness and participation campaigns on the importance and appropriate uses of the nation's natural and cultural resources.
To make the public feel as though they had input to the process, the reinvention teams held "laboratories" for "visioning sessions" while the real systems designers were actually doing the work of redesigning the systems of government. The PCSD held many such sessions and in 1996, published their first report:
From the report:
Definition and Vision Statement
Definition of Sustainable
Development
"...to meet the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
--The World Commission on Environment and Development
(The Brundtland Commission), Our Common Future
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 43
Our vision is of a life-sustaining Earth. We are committed to the achievement of a dignified, peaceful, and equitable existence. A sustainable United States will have a growing economy that provides equitable opportunities for satisfying livelihoods and a safe, healthy, high quality of life for current and future generations. Our nation will protect its environment, its natural resource base, and the functions and viability of natural systems on which all life depends.
--The President's Council on Sustainable Development
The Brundtland Commission, later renamed, "World Commission
on Environment and Development" was established in 1983 to
produce "a report on environment and the global problematique to
the year 2000 and beyond" including proposed strategies for
sustainable development". The report, "Our
Common Future" was transmitted to the United Nations
General Assembly and is published in resolution A/43/427, August
4, 1987.
In 1988, Theresa Heinz, wife of Senator John Heinz (R-PA) was a board member of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). She and fellow EDF board member Wren Wirth and husband Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO), EDF staff member David Roe, and Senator John Heinz himself, decided to launch Project 88 for the purpose of framing "environmental issues and innovative solutions" for the next presidential election. Of course, "innovative solutions" is code for technocratic solutions - control systems.
Financial support for Project 88 was provided by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Family and Associates, and Keystone Center/Madison Associates. The Environmental Policy Institute served as fiscal agent for the project as part of an effort to stimulate diverse points of view about environmental problems.
The main idea of Project 88 is "polluter pays" - you live, you breath, you're a polluter and you're going pay for it. The punitive fees for use of resources - including air - are intended to change behavior because as a part of the environment, their goal was and is to implement systems to control every aspect of your life via the "environmental protection" con game of fees, taxes and restrictions. See The August Review articles on Technocracy written by Patrick Wood.
The following is an excerpt from a speech given in 2009 by John Kerry (D-MA), Theresa's current husband. It is posted on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) website:
Some of us have been at this for a long time. In 1988 on an already hot June day Al Gore and I held the first hearings on global climate change. And Jim Hanson appeared and he announced to the country that global climate change was not a theory; it was here.
The Canadian International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) had a definitions for 'sustainable development' posted on their web server several years ago. The definition included the following:
"In 1992 leaders at the Earth Summit built upon the framework of Brundtland Report to create agreements and conventions on critical issues such as climate change, desertification and deforestation. They also drafted a broad action strategy—Agenda 21—as the workplan for environment and development issues for the coming decades."
Gro Harlem Brundtland
Agenda 21 is a
comprehensive plan of action to be taken
globally, nationally and locally by
organizations of the United Nations System,
Governments, and Major Groups in every area in
which human impacts on the environment.
By 1996, the enviro-psychos were ready to start trying to change life in America by implementing the systems of control defined in Agenda 21. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) became Smart Growth Central - coordinating and funding the implementation of Agenda 21 using the Smart Growth network as social change agents in our communities:
From the EPA website:
The Smart Growth Network (SGN) is a partnership of government, business and civic organizations that support smart growth. Since its creation in late 1996, the Network has become a storehouse of knowledge about smart growth principles, facilitating the sharing of best practices and acting as a catalyst for implementation of ideas.
The Smart Growth Network is led by a core group of partner organizations. The SGN Web site, Smart Growth Online, features an extensive array of smart growth-related news, events, information, research, presentations, and publications.
EPA is one of the founding partners of the Smart Growth Network....
In 1998, the EPA initiated the Sustainable Development Challenge Grant (SDCG) program. In the first paragraph, notice the reference to a 1995 report and the first sentence of the second paragraph. The 1995 report gives the background thinking that served as a predecessor for the grant program. Below on the left, is the report section referenced. On the right is the grant summary.
The important thing to recognize about the refer back is to know that when the grant applicant does the refer back to the 1995 report, it would be with the understanding that it wasn't just the one item pointed out in the summary that is of importance, it was the entire report because the report in it's entirety was the conceptualization of the environmental agenda for the present and future.
1995 - Reinventing Environmental Regulation
High Priority Actions:
7. Sustainable development grant challenges.
Action: Encourage community, business,
and government to work cooperatively to develop flexible,
locally-oriented approaches that link place-based environmental
management with sustainable development and revitalization.
Background: Significant accomplishments to improve the environment have
occurred over the past 20 years. To ensure continued progress in
environmental protection, EPA wants to help localities develop
comprehensive, placed-based management strategies that relate
sustainable economic development with sound environmental practices.
The concept of this pilot grants program is to challenge communities
to produce their own coordinated programs within legislatively-set
national objectives.
The intent is to spark innovative and sustainable economic
development which is linked to comprehensive ecosystem management
and environmental performance. These grants will provide seed funding
to catalyze formation of a coalition of stakeholders who will develop
and implement a program to comprehensively address local
environmental problems.
Description: Patterned after the Empowerment Zone/Empowerment
Community Initiative, this sustainable development challenge grant
will be a nationwide competition, with awards based on the proposed
project's level of stakeholder involvement, project funding requirements
and the proposal's demonstration of availability of other sources of
funds.
The process will be open to states, regions, or localities. The
application process would include demonstrating the relationship of the
project to a comprehensive, cross-media, environmental needs assessment
of the area, the preparation of which would necessitate local
stakeholder participation and involvement. Challenge grant
recipients must leverage direct private sector investment in place-based
environmental protection. Any variance from the approved needs
assessment would be reviewed at the regional level. Eligibility for
all subsequent challenge grants will take into account the demonstrated
effectiveness of prior challenge grants.
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Continuing with the 1998 Sustainable
Development Challenge Grant, the following is another excerpt - and a
very significant one because it ties the entire environmental agenda of
the Clinton Administration to socialist, global under the section
titled, "Linkages to Other Initiatives", it includes the following:
Linkages to Other Initiatives
The EPA initiated the SDCG program as a pilot effort in 1996 and funded ten of the 600 proposals for a total of $500,000. In 1997, the Agency received 962 proposals requesting $38,000,000 in assistance and selected 45 of the proposals for funding at a total of approximately $5,000,000. Project descriptions are available via the Internet at
http:www.epa.gov/ecocommunity.EPA and its state and local partners continue to refine how environmental protection is accomplished in the United States. The Agency recognizes that environmental progress will not be achieved solely by regulation. Innovative attitudes of regulatory agencies combined with individual, institutional, and corporate responsibility, commitment and stewardship will be needed to assure adequate protection of the earth's resources.
The Sustainable Development Challenge Grant program is consistent with other community-based efforts EPA has introduced, such as the Brownfields Initiative, Environmental Justice Small Grants Program, Project XL, the President's American Heritage Rivers Initiative, Watershed Protection Approach, Transportation Partners, the $mart Growth Network, the Community-Based Environmental Protection Approach, and the Sustainable Urban Environment effort.
The Sustainable Development Challenge Grant program is also a step in implementing "Agenda 21, the Global Plan of Action on Sustainable Development,'' signed by the United States at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. All of these programs require broad community participation to identify and address environmental issues.
Through the Sustainable Development Challenge Grant program, EPA also intends to further the vision and goals of the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), created in 1993 by President Clinton. EPA is coordinating existing urban environmental programs within the Agency and with other federal, state and local agencies. The President charged the Council, composed of corporate, government, and non-profit representatives, to find ways to "bring people together to meet the needs of the present without jeopardizing the future.'' The Council has declared this vision...[Refer back to the top of this web page.. vision statement in the Sustainable America report.]
http://www.gcrio.org/about/index.htm