Obama Puts Agenda 21 On Steroids

President Obama mentioned recently that he is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on climate change before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways. It should have. I highly doubt he will implement his plan via a bill that congress must approve. He is much more like to do it through an executive order.

Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online tells about Obama’s next steps toward stacking you and packing you in high density urban centers (Agenda 21).

Last Friday’s headlines focused on President Obama’s address at Argonne National Laboratory, where he proposed to spend $2 billion on an energy-security trust fund for renewable fuel research. Obama boldly pledged “to shift our cars entirely . . . off oil.”

…on the day of Obama’s Argonne speech, the Department of Energy released a series of coordinated reportscalled “Transportation Energy Futures” (developed in cooperation with Argonne). This DOE project explores a variety of strategies designed to curb America’s greenhouse gas emissions up to 80 percent by about 2050.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t hear about these DOE reports. I guess the MSM didn’t think they were very important. So, what is the DOE up to? Kurtz explains:

Arguably the most controversial of those reports covers the “effects of the built environment on transportation.” To put it plainly, the “built environment” report lays out strategies the federal government can use to force development away from suburbs and into cities, supposedly for the sake of reducing carbon dioxide emissions given off by all those suburban commuters. The Obama administration wants to force so-called smart growth policies on the country: get out of your car, stay out of the suburbs, move into small, tightly-packed urban apartment complexes, and walk or take public transportation instead of driving. (Bold added)

You can see what is coming, can’t you? The only projects that will get approval will be those in the cities. A developer wants to build a new subdivision in a suburb will find the permits denied or delayed indefinitely while the impact on climate change is reviewed and reviewed again. Need to add roads or schools to a suburb? Sorry! It would produce too much green house gases. The idea will be to make too expensive to live in the suburbs.

And, of course, there are all those federal grants that local politicians can’t turn down.

Kurtz has some thoughts on how to fight back:

How can these changes be fought? Publicity helps. Controversial policies like “smart growth” often operate under the public’s radar. Obama wants the energy debate to focus on benign-sounding research plans, while his administration’s interest in placing the massive power of federal funding behind urban densification strategies goes unnoticed.

The other way to block Obama’s plans is to have Congress cut funding for the Sustainable Communities Initiative. In particular, future funding for the Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant program ought to be eliminated. Although the cost of these planning grants is small, their potential impact is large, especially if the administration follows through with the built environment report’s option of conditioning a wide range of federal aid on local adherence to so-called smart-growth planning. (I described these troubling “sustainability” grants in “Obama’s Plan for Ohio.”)

Yours truly is not very optimistic that the House Republicans will use their power over the purse. All indications are that once again there will be no budget passed on the 27th of this month. That means there will be another Continuing Resolution passed to fund the government through September. The House Republicans could include no funding for “climate change reviews”. They could eliminate funds for those pesky government grants. They could cut funding for the DOE programs. And, of course, the Democrats could say no and shut down the government and blame it on the Republicans, in which case, the Republicans will fold in a heart beat.

So, the ultimate in central planning, Agenda 21, marches on.

Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?

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