By Henry Lamb ——Bio and Archives--April 17, 2011
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“Please come tomorrow (Monday, April 4) to the Las Cruces City Council meeting. Mr. Harbison intends to expound on the nonsense that Sustainability standards are a UN plot to take away our property rights and create a "one world government." You may have already seen press reports that a few Midwestern municipalities have defeated or eliminated sustainability programs because of these bizarre beliefs. I urge YOU and all my well-educated, literate, critically thinking friends, to turn up in force because it is anticipated that the Tea Party Crackpots will be there to support Harbison. The meeting starts at 1 PM, this Monday, April 4 at City Hall. Remember: this will be televised on city ch. 20 and covered by local media which have been complicit in spreading this claptrap so let us demonstrate that there is indeed a sane Majority -- us!” Thank you. Charlotte LipsonThe Las Cruces experience is quite typical. In community after community, local elected officials deny that their sustainability plans have anything to do with Agenda 21 or the U.N. They also tend to ridicule and denigrate opposition, as does Ms. Lipson. Fortunately, more and more communities are learning the truth and are terminating their association with ICLEI and shutting down their sustainability office. It may be too late in Las Cruces. The government already controls virtually every square inch of land in the entire county. In the first place, 86.7 percent of the total land area in the county is owned by state or federal government. That leaves only 13.3 percent of the land in private ownership. And even that land is controlled by government. According to Chapter Two of the Las Cruces Vision 2040 – Regional Planning Project, “Performance districts regulate all privately owned areas…. All uses are permitted in these areas….” The Sustainability Plan recently adopted by Las Cruces goes way beyond the control of land use, and seeks to regulate the behavior of previously-free people. The plan contains 8 objectives and 99 actions to be taken over the next three years. Each of these actions will impose some limitation on the freedom of individuals and/or cost additional tax dollars taken from individuals and companies to achieve goals that are, at best, questionable. Some progress has been made, however. City Manager, Robert Garza, announced after the April 4 presentation by Jim Harbison, that the city of Las Cruces would not be renewing its agreement with ICLEI. Regardless of the spin advocates put on sustainable development, the concept and the process replaces individual decision-making about, and control of, the use of privately owned property, with government regulations enforced by fines and other penalties. A much more detailed analysis of sustainable development, complete with several examples of its negative impact, is available here.
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Editor’s Note: Henry passed away in 2012. He will be greatly missed.