The Dark Side of Sustainable Development

and the Regional One Bay Area Plan

Posted on September 14, 2014 Written by Heather Gass, East Bay Tea Party

Over the past few years, I and many oth­ers in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area have been fight­ing against a plan that seeks to socially re-engineer our lives: the One Bay Area Plan. Over the next 25 to 30 years it will trans­form the lives of over 9 mil­lion peo­ple in 9 coun­ties by cre­at­ing high den­sity stack-and-pack hous­ing next to mass tran­sit, all in the name of sav­ing the planet by reduc­ing GHGs (Green House Gases). Never mind that global warm­ing has already been debunked by thou­sands of sci­en­tists not on the UN’s pay­roll. The sky is not falling, but our rights are being sys­tem­at­i­cally eroded. Pri­vate prop­erty out­side of city and county urban limit lines will be highly restricted and/or declared com­pletely off lim­its as part of the first ever statewide re-wilding and “cor­ri­dor” sys­tem in Cal­i­for­nia is cre­ated. The crazy thing is that most peo­ple know noth­ing about all this. Bay Area res­i­dents and tax­pay­ers have been inten­tion­ally kept out of the process. Most have never heard of the regional unelected bod­ies push­ing these plans or the leg­is­la­tion we are now being asked to fol­low, yet we all will be affected by it in some way in the near future.

Although I will be focus­ing on the regional plan in the Bay Area, this is hap­pen­ing all over the state and coun­try under dif­fer­ent names, so don’t feel left out if you don’t live in the Bay Area. I have done thou­sands of hours of research over the past few years and have dis­cov­ered the gen­e­sis of these plans and who is behind them. I am hop­ing that by pro­vid­ing the his­tor­i­cal time­line and links to back up my find­ings, that it will become clear that these plans, although now being pushed by local munic­i­pal­i­ties and state level man­dates, they orig­i­nated else­where. These plans were hatched long before the state leg­is­la­tion was enacted by a small group of NGO’s (Non-Governmental Orga­ni­za­tions), stake­hold­ers, foun­da­tions and regional unelected bod­ies funded with tax payer money.

There are three main pieces of leg­is­la­tion that are being used in Cal­i­for­nia to com­plete the trans­for­ma­tion and socially re-engineer our lives; AB32 (2006 Global Warm­ing Act) , SB375 (2008 Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties Strat­egy), and AB2785 (2010 Cal­i­for­nia Essen­tial Habi­tat Con­nec­tiv­ity Map). All of these bills were signed into law by Gov­er­nor Schwarzeneg­ger. The global warm­ing bill calls for a reduc­tion in GHGs to 1990 lev­els by 2020. The SB375 bill links land use to trans­porta­tion and spec­i­fies the major­ity of future con­struc­tion be com­pact, high-density, low-income hous­ing next to mass tran­sit, in order to force Cal­i­for­ni­ans out of their cars and sin­gle fam­ily homes to osten­si­bly reduce GHGs. AB2785 iden­ti­fies (maps) an ani­mal and veg­e­ta­tion cor­ri­dor sys­tem through­out Cal­i­for­nia, con­nect­ing large blocks of government-regulated land through pri­vate prop­erty that must be taken in some way to com­plete the Cal­i­for­nia Wild­lands cor­ri­dors. This map is most egre­gious in that it casu­ally illus­trates (with a slid­ing scale of less to more cost) how much it would cost our gov­ern­ment (in terms of dol­lars, con­ser­va­tion ease­ments, emi­nent domain, zon­ing to open space, etc) to take the land from pri­vate indi­vid­u­als in order to com­plete this map. Cal­i­for­nia plan­ning orga­ni­za­tions are expected to use it in their plan­ning for land use and trans­porta­tion process. What peo­ple don’t real­ize is that this map is NOT about pre­serv­ing land (Open Space) for ani­mals, plants, and people’s recre­ation. These land masses that are being set aside are being incor­po­rated into giant land trusts for the pur­pose of sell­ing car­bon cred­its in the tril­lion dol­lar Cap n’ Trade scheme that recently started in this state. A few large land trusts and foun­da­tions will be the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this giant piggy bank. Here’s a list of land banks. The CARB board will be giv­ing many of the cred­its away to pre­ferred cor­po­ra­tions and to entice coop­er­a­tion in the pro­gram. This is a fraud­u­lent pay-to-play scheme and giant land grab, not an envi­ron­men­tal initiative.

The few reg­u­lar cit­i­zens who have found out about the One Bay Area plan have been hor­ri­fied at what they dis­cov­ered as they attended work­shops and hear­ings in an attempt to stop this plan from being adopted. Where did this plan come from? And why are unelected regional agen­cies dic­tat­ing how and where the peo­ple of the Bay Area will live in the future?

Over the years the two main bod­ies push­ing this plan MTC (Met­ro­pol­i­tan Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion) and ABAG (Asso­ci­a­tion of Bay Area Gov­ern­ments) have pointed the blame at either local juris­dic­tions or at state leg­is­la­tors as the respon­si­ble par­ties. At times they claimed it was an organic, bottom-up plan that the local munic­i­pal­i­ties want and were ask­ing them to imple­ment. Then on other occa­sions, they claimed they were only fol­low­ing state-level man­dates and that if we had a prob­lem with this plan we should be tak­ing it up with the leg­is­la­tors who voted for the bills. How­ever, the truth is that ABAG and MTC were behind this plan way before the leg­is­la­tion was enacted and have been qui­etly involved in the form­ing of this plan for almost 20 years; if you include inter­na­tional con­nec­tions it is even longer (See U.C. Berke­ley PhD. Judith Innes White Paper). ABAG led the effort, and along with other agen­cies they engaged in back­room secret meet­ings, formed inter­na­tional alliances, as well as regional com­pacts with stake­hold­ers and NGOs in an effort to reach their goal of trans­form­ing our cities and towns into the United Nations vision of Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties. This ulti­mately led to the pas­sage of AB32 (2006), SB375 (2008) and AB2785 (2010): leg­is­la­tion that cod­i­fied this agenda in Cal­i­for­nia. The fol­low­ing time­line will illus­trate how this so-called regional plan came about and who is behind it. You will learn, as I did, that this plan is not a grass­roots effort and was not orig­i­nated at the state level. It is an inter­na­tional plan from the United Nations and is referred to glob­ally as Agenda21 Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment. Again, it is not about the envi­ron­ment; that is a ruse. It is about con­trol­ling our soci­ety and our lives, cur­tail­ing our free­doms, and alter­ing our fun­da­men­tal Con­sti­tu­tional right to own property.

These regional agen­cies are uncon­sti­tu­tional and the elected offi­cials appointed to them have in my opin­ion vio­lated Arti­cle 1, Sec­tion 10 of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion by join­ing an inter­na­tional alliance with ICLEI (the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil for Local Envi­ron­men­tal Ini­tia­tives) and should be at the very least inves­ti­gated and/or abolished.

I have included links through­out so you can check the facts for yourself.

This plan is being dupli­cated all over the coun­try and all over the world, but the Bay Area is one of the four ini­tial pilot pro­grams within the U.S. The pilot areas were Den­ver, Atlanta, Chicago and the Bay Area. In my research I found a white paper about the Bay Area Alliance writ­ten by Judith Innes a PhD from UC Berke­ley (white paper “Get­ting Seri­ous about the Three E’s”). She fol­lowed the alliance process from 2004 to 2007 and val­i­dates my find­ings. Although she was seem­ingly onboard with the plan­ners, she points out how flawed the process was with vir­tu­ally no experts being used to pre­pare data and reports and how the stake­holder work­shops were mis­lead­ing and out­comes were con­trolled and predetermined.

1987 – The term “Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment” was adopted at the Brundt­land Com­mis­sion meet­ing in 1987 as part of the “Our Com­mon Future” out­come doc­u­ment. The offi­cial def­i­n­i­tion of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment is “devel­op­ment that meets the needs of the present with­out com­pro­mis­ing the abil­ity of future gen­er­a­tions to meet their own needs.” The term Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment encom­passes three main prin­ci­ples: Equity, Envi­ron­ment and Econ­omy. Econ­omy is the key word used to describe replac­ing free mar­ket prin­ci­ples with PPPs (Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships), as in Com­mu­nism and Fas­cism. The Envi­ron­ment is used as a cat­a­lyst for change and Equity describes the “social and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice” that is really about the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Of course, Amer­ica is founded on equal rights under the law, and equal oppor­tu­nity, not equal out­comes. Social equity is the dri­ving fac­tor being used to alter the func­tion of law to impose social require­ments, replac­ing the indi­vid­ual rights on which our Con­sti­tu­tion and free Repub­lic are based.

1990 – The United Nations’ accred­ited NGO (Non-Governmental Orga­ni­za­tion) ICLEI (Inter­na­tional Coun­cil for Local and Envi­ron­men­tal Ini­tia­tives) was founded in order to estab­lish Agenda 21 cam­paigns through­out the globe. The ICLEI Charter/Constitution defines a “world con­gress” of may­ors and elected offi­cials work­ing together with ICLEI serv­ing as the inter­na­tional agent rep­re­sent­ing the mem­bers of the world con­gress through­out the globe. ICLEI serves as liai­son between local gov­ern­ments and inter­na­tional gov­ern­ments. ICLEI mem­bers pay dues and must explic­itly adopt the ICLEI Con­sti­tu­tion which fol­lows the 16 prin­ci­ples of the Earth Char­ter and a model of global gov­er­nance. This inter­na­tional mem­ber­ship by cities and coun­ties vio­lates Arti­cle 1, Sec­tion 10 of the United States Con­sti­tu­tion0 “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Con­fed­er­a­tion… with a for­eign power”. The ICLEI head­quar­ters in North Amer­ica is in Oak­land, Ca. Assem­bly­woman Nancy Skin­ner founded ICLEI USA1. ICLEI is respon­si­ble for inject­ing inter­na­tional cli­mate, land use and other poli­cies into local gov­ern­ments. Many cities, coun­ties and regional bod­ies across the coun­try are con­tract­ing with ICLEI. Very likely your own city is a dues-paying member.

1992 – UN Agenda21 Earth Sum­mit hosted by Mau­rice Strong was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At this sum­mit the term “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” was adopted as part of the global Agenda21 cam­paign. 178 nations pledged their sup­port for Agenda21. Pres­i­dent George Bush, Sr. signed on to this for the U.S. Although this is tech­ni­cally a non-binding soft law, since Con­gress did not rat­ify it, Agenda21 and Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment have been incor­po­rated into every aspect of our gov­ern­ment through Exec­u­tive Orders, the EPA, ICLEI and other reg­u­la­tory agen­cies, bod­ies, boards and com­mis­sions. The fol­low­ing is a quote by Pelosi address­ing Con­gress in 1992:“The Earth Sum­mit Envi­ron­men­tal Lead­er­ship Act, as this is known, presents us with an oppor­tu­nity to fol­low up on the impor­tant work of the Earth Sum­mit to develop its blue­print, Agenda 21, for global envi­ron­men­tal action. House Con­cur­rent Res­o­lu­tion 353 out­lines a com­pre­hen­sive national strat­egy for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment in accor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of Agenda 21 to be coor­di­nated under the lead­er­ship of a spe­cific office at the direc­tion of a high-level gov­ern­ment official.”

1993 – Pres­i­dent Clin­ton signs Exec­u­tive Order 12852 cre­at­ing the President’s Coun­cil for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, effec­tively bypass­ing Con­gres­sional approval of Agenda21. This coun­cil was tasked with inject­ing Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and Agenda21 into all lev­els of our gov­ern­ment nationwide.

1994 – APA (Amer­i­can Plan­ning Asso­ci­a­tion) April News let­ter arti­cle by Robert Odland clearly links the U.S. V.P. Al Gore, Clinton’s President’s Coun­cil on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, Agenda21, the APA, the UN, the RIO Earth Sum­mit and con­nects them directly to the Bay Area Sus­tain­abil­ity Plan writ­ten by David Early of Urban Ecol­ogy (aka DCE Plan­ning Cen­ter). (See arti­cle)

1996 – Richard Clarke, retired Chair­man and CEO of PG&E and Michele Per­rault, Inter­na­tional V.P. of the Sierra club (both mem­bers of the President’s Coun­cil for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment) present the idea of a regional sus­tain­able devel­op­ment ini­tia­tive to the ABAG gen­eral assem­bly and to other NGO’s and stake­holder groups.

– David Early, Urban Ecol­ogy pub­lishes the Draft Blue­print for a Sus­tain­able Bay Area— The Final Plan (1999) is the basis for the One Bay Area Plan.

1997 – ABAG and sev­eral dozen NGOs around the Bay Area sign a Com­pact form­ing the BAASC (Bay Area Alliance for Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties) (See Com­pact for Sus­tain­able Bay Area). This doc­u­ment specif­i­cally states that MTC and ABAG as well as other groups joined forces to imple­ment a regional plan for a Sus­tain­able Bay Area. The doc­u­ment states “It is founded on the prin­ci­ple of the Three Es of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment – pros­per­ous Econ­omy, qual­ity Envi­ron­ment, and social Equity.” It also states “The Bay Area Alliance adopted the def­i­n­i­tion of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment endorsed by the United Nations’ World Com­mis­sion on Envi­ron­ment and Devel­op­ment.” And goes on to clearly point out “The Bay Area Alliance also oper­ates within an inter­na­tional con­text. The Earth Char­ter Ini­tia­tive is an out­growth of the 1992 Earth Sum­mit in Rio de Janeiro and has many prin­ci­ples sim­i­lar to the visions and com­mit­ments con­tained in this Com­pact.” Sunne McPeak rep­re­sented the Busi­ness (Econ­omy) side of the Alliance. Sunne McPeak also served on the ABAG board, Bay Area Coun­cil and she over­saw the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (Cal­trans), the Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment, the Cal­i­for­nia Hous­ing Finance Agency, the Depart­ment of Real Estate and many oth­ers. She was a key player in push­ing the SB375 leg­is­la­tion behind the One Bay Area plan.

1999 – Five regional agen­cies MTC, ABAG, BAAQMD (Bay Area Air Qual­ity Man­age­ment Dis­trict), BCDC (Bay Con­ser­va­tion and Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion) and RWQCD (Regional Water Qual­ity Con­trol Board) were work­ing on Smart Growth Strategies

– The BAASC (Bay Area Alliance for Sus­tain­abil­ity Com­mu­ni­ties) plans “Regional Liv­abil­ity Foot­print” Project, a pre­ferred land use pat­tern that dic­tated where devel­op­ment could occur in the Bay Area

– These two groups merged, cre­at­ing the Smart Growth Strategy/Regional Liv­abil­ity Foot­print Project

– The Bay Area region and the BAASC were selected as one of four regional pilots in the nation by the Part­ner­ship for Regional Liv­abil­ity, a con­sor­tium of major foun­da­tions and fed­eral agen­cies ded­i­cated to advanc­ing “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” and “smart growth.”

– “Final Blue­print for a Sus­tain­able Bay Area” is pre­pared by David Early of Urban Ecol­ogy (one of the orig­i­nal stake­hold­ers in the Alliance). David Early also founded DCE Plan­ning, which cur­rently con­sults with local cities and coun­ties to ensure the imple­men­ta­tion of the plan locally.

2000 – Assem­bly Speaker Robert Hertzberg launched SCOR (Speaker’s Com­mis­sion on Region­al­ism) to pro­mote region­al­ism and col­lab­o­ra­tion across Cal­i­for­nia. Sunne McPeak rep­re­sent­ing the Bay Area Coun­cil, and many of the BAASC, NGOs and stake­hold­ers, were part of this new group. Its main pur­pose was to push for leg­is­la­tion insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing region­al­ism through­out Cal­i­for­nia. Sunne McPeak was also the ABAG President.

2001 – First Round of stake­holder work­shops (approx­i­mately 1000 par­tic­i­pants) from all 9 Bay Area coun­ties. These meet­ings were mostly attended by ABAG and MTC offi­cials, plan­ners, devel­op­ers and social / envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice advo­cates who were stake­hold­ers in the BAASC.

2002 – Sec­ond Round of stake­holder work­shops (approx. 1000 par­tic­i­pants). Three Regional Sce­nar­ios are pro­posed (Cen­tral Cities, Net­work of Neigh­bor­hoods and Smarter Sub­urbs). The pre­ferred sce­nario was Net­work of Neigh­bor­hoods. ABAG devel­ops policy-based pro­jec­tions using the Smart Growth Sce­nario as a start­ing point.

– Pub­li­ca­tion of “Shap­ing Our Future” was the result of this coalition.

2003 – ABAG Exec­u­tive Board adopts policy-based pro­jec­tions aban­don­ing the trends-based pro­jec­tion model used in the past. This approach forces devel­op­ment to occur based on the pre­ferred land use and trans­porta­tion sce­nario. MTC’s RTP (Regional Trans­porta­tion Plan) is based on ABAG’s projections.

2005 – Gov­er­nor Schwarzeneg­ger passes Exec­u­tive Order S-3–05 to reduce GHGs in Cal­i­for­nia to 80% below 1990 lev­els by the year 2050.

2006 – AB32 leg­is­la­tion passed – calls for a reduc­tion in GHGs to 1990 lev­els by 2020. CARB (Cal­i­for­nia Air Resources Board) is appointed to over­see and mon­i­tor state level GHGs.

2007 – Cal­i­for­nia Cen­ter for Regional Lead­er­ship hosts a meet­ing at which then-Assembly Mem­ber 11th Dis­trict DeSaulnier (co-author of SB375 with Dar­rell Stein­berg) and Van Jones both speak about push­ing regional leg­is­la­tion. (http://calregions.urbaninsight.com/regcivic/bln/20071126/index.html)

– SB375 leg­is­la­tion intro­duced (Assem­bly­man Mark DeSaulnier was one of the co-authors of SB375 with Assem­bly­man Dar­rell Stein­berg). Mark DeSaulnier served on the fol­low­ing boards ABAG, MTC, CARB and BAAQMD (Bay Area Air Qual­ity Man­age­ment Dis­trict) all pro­po­nents of this legislation.

2008 – SB375 leg­is­la­tion passed – Links land use to trans­porta­tion. Directs regional agen­cies to cre­ate blue­prints focus­ing devel­op­ment in PDAs (Pri­or­ity Devel­op­ment Areas) next to mass tran­sit for the pur­pose of reduc­ing GHGs based on AB32 legislation.

2010 – AB2785 leg­is­la­tion passed – Cal­i­for­nia Wild­lands Act. The Cal­i­for­nia Essen­tial Habi­tat Con­nec­tiv­ity report spon­sored by DOT (Dept of Trans­porta­tion), Cal­Trans and DFG (Dept of Fish and Game) shows many maps of the intended wildlife cor­ri­dor sys­tem through­out Cal­i­for­nia. This doc­u­ment is qui­etly being used by all plan­ning, trans­porta­tion agen­cies and com­mis­sions through­out Cal­i­for­nia with­out the public’s knowledge.

2010–2012 – MTC/ABAG and a host of paid stake­hold­ers and NGOs launch a series of pub­lic work­shops. This time the pub­lic really engaged in oppo­si­tion to the plan. 

of cit­i­zens oppos­ing the plan at a work­shop held in the County of Alameda in Jan­u­ary of 2012.

As you can see, the One Bay Area Plan did not orig­i­nate as an organic bottom-up plan, nor did it start with state-level leg­is­la­tion. The President’s Coun­cil on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment brought the idea to the regional agen­cies. The regional agen­cies then joined forces with local NGOs, stake­hold­ers and foun­da­tions. The plan to socially re-engineer the Bay Area was going on long before the leg­is­la­tion (SB375, AB32 and AB2785) came to pass. This first-ever regional plan in the Bay Area is sched­uled to be adopted by the JPC (Joint Pol­icy Com­mit­tee) of MTC and ABAG in June of 2013 and if and when it does, local juris­dic­tions will become vir­tu­ally irrel­e­vant. When money and power are con­cen­trated at higher and higher lev­els by unelected regional boards, bod­ies, and com­mis­sions, the end result is uncon­trolled power and cor­rup­tion. Some­day the cit­i­zens of the Bay Area and through­out Cal­i­for­nia will won­der what hap­pened to their beau­ti­ful unique towns and sub­urbs and go look­ing for answers. I’m hop­ing my research will give them the answers they seek and help them hold those behind this plan accountable.

No one knows how this will end…. But region­al­ism is tak­ing over and the result is loss of local con­trol for the peo­ple. This is not about right and left any­more. This is about right and wrong.

Related Posts

• ICLEI Mem­bers Admit Bait and Switch to Boost Cli­mate Agenda
• How MTC sneaked Vehi­cle Miles Trav­eled tax into One Bay Area Plan
• United Nations – Agenda 21 – Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and the Regional One Bay Area Plan
• Local com­mu­ni­ties face onslaught from self-anointed planners
• Agenda 21: Home Sweet Home in Freight Ship­ping Containers
• United Nations’ (U.N.) con­nec­tion to Agenda 21 and sus­tain­abil­ity and how it directly affects prop­erty owners.
• Gov­ern­ment Funded Bul­let Trains Will Con­nect Amer­i­can Agenda 21 Megacities
• The Night­mar­ish Megac­i­ties of the Near Future
   
  Source: http://agenda21news.com/2014/09/dark-side-sustainable-development-regional-one-bay-area-plan/