Thursday, November 19, 2009

Sustainable Development is wealth redistribution

Your wealth into a giant green rat hole. I must get 3-4 items a week in my e-mail on sustainable development, buildings, products, and life style, both for my husband (architecture) and me (librarianship and news releases from OSU). As Christians, we are huge supporters of conservation and stewardship of God’s creation, but “sustainable” has become a code word for something much more sinister.

Both prophets and pundits, right and left, whether Glenn Beck, Tom DeWeese, Bill Maher or Van Jones , know "sustainability" calls for changing the infrastructure of the nation, away from private ownership and control of property to central planning first by our government, then by a world governing body--whatever entity the United Nations will evolve to. When you see the word “sustainable,“ you can safely substitute “wealth redistribution.”

We fought a few wars to defeat the centrally planned economic disasters based on the theories of Marx and Engels. You’re too young to remember millions of starving Ukrainians declared wealthy because they owned a cow or a wheat field, but the same thing has been going on for years in Communist North Korea. Those plans evolved and then failed in the USSR, its Eastern European satellites and Maoist China (which now under a cloak of capitalism owns us and is cautioning our president to cut back on his insatiable appetite for debt).

When our home grown Communist sympathizers found out that “revolution” wouldn’t work because the workers and labor unions of the USA already had too much freedom, material goods and wealth and were loyal to American ideals, they just drilled from within, driving our businesses off shore, and in 2008 we elected them (with a very long lead in from socialists and progressives in the government)! But for those who weren’t swayed at the polls or by campaign promises, there is always the great green hope and hype.

However, that hyped hope (cap and trade based on phony CO2 scare tactics) is death for the poor of developing countries. Did you see our food prices rise almost over night in 2007 when the bio-fuels fever really took over and land was being taken out of production for food and turned into bio-fuel for automobiles? We saw our price of bread, meat and milk go up a few pennies to a dollar, but in poorer nations, they were having food riots and killing each other as a shortage of wheat turned into a shortage of rice and cooking oil.

Tom DeWeese cautions us to pay attention to the language--we’ve been hearing some version of this since the 1930s--pausing only briefly as we finally dropped the cloak of protectionism after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941
    "We now have a new language invading our government at all levels. Old words with new meanings fill government policy papers. The typical city council meeting discusses "community development," "historic preservation," and "partnerships" between the city and private business.

    Civic leaders organize community meetings run by "facilitators," as they outline a "vision" for the town, enforced by "consensus." No need for debate when you have consensus! People of great importance testify before congressional committees of the dire need for "social justice."

    Free trade, social justice, consensus, global truth, partnerships, preservation, stakeholders, land use, environmental protection, development, diversity, visioning, open space, heritage, comprehensive planning, critical thinking, and community service are all part of our new language." Tom DeWeese
I wrote on this topic about a year ago, Prize for the most green words. Really made an architect unhappy; he thought he needed to attack me, instead of the topic at hand.

6 comments:

Drew said...

So... how do you square these two statements: 1) "China owns us" with the fact that
2) they largely have a centralized, planned economy?

I agree, their human rights are abysmal. Their ecosystems are in shambles - largely as a result of their planned economy. Millions of their people live in poverty (although they've also brought millions more out of poverty). And as much as I wouldn't want to be a Chinaman, even one of the one's that's come out of poverty, the fact remains: their economy has been doing much better than ours for a really long time.

it would not appear that central planning dooms a country to failure.

Corruption yes. A complete lack of reward for effort deployed: ditto. Near as I can tell, the jury is still out on central planning.

Norma said...

Until Mao died and China opened a window to capitalism--American and European businesses--it hadn't succeeded at all. I personally would call killing 70 million of your citizens a failure of policy, and their current abortion policy is definitely causing serious problems and is being reevaluated. Now you may not consider that "economic" but it is.

Drew said...

I actually strongly agree with you.
I maintain that time will tell whether or not China - and to a certain degree the E.U. with its centralized planning structure - will survive or crash. I remember the early days of the E.U. and the introduction of the Euro when we were almost at a 2:1 euro/dollar value. My, how times have changed.

I'm also not sure that I agree with the author of this piece when he says that defeated commie sympathizers are responsible for off-shoring production and destroying American jobs.
Seems to me there's a simpler answer that has nothing to do with communism

Drew said...

Sorry - I hadn't realized who the original poster was!

Anonymous said...

Your argument loses some of it's credibility when you quote Tom DeWeese. In reality, he's nothing more than a person who can't help but imagine a sinister conspiracy behind whatever he disagrees with.

Norma said...

I have no idea who he is, but I was giving examples of different points of view, left and right. Bill Mahr and Van Jones are certainly not credible viewpoints, in my opinion, but they do represent the views of a few.

The issue, if you wish to speak to that and not your own dislike of certain people, is the current meaning of "sustainable."