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"Growing Greener" Jeopardizes First Principles The hype and hoopla surrounding Governor Ridge's "Growing Greener" initiative, ignore America's founding principles and denounces dissent as demagoguery. Government, at every level, exists first to protect the principles of self-governance on which America was founded, one of which is free speech and honest debate. Ridge's 21st Century Commission concluded that "Urban Sprawl" is the state's number one environmental problem. Nowhere in the "Urban Sprawl" discussion, is there concern about protecting the fundamental principle of individual freedom, the principle that respects an The "American Dream," the engine that pulls the American economy, is in great danger of becoming a nightmare for those who cherish individual freedom. The hope of building a better home, a bigger home, on a small plot of land, where the children can play safely in their own yard, have pets, or perhaps, a few chickens and a garden, is being demonized as "Urban Sprawl," the state's number one environmental problem. Which is more important, to live in a land where people can live where they choose, or live in a land where people are forced to live where an unelected commission dictates? The fundamental principle of free markets is turned on its head by an unelected commission that dictates where homes may be constructed and where land must be left undeveloped. The moment a "green belt" is designated around a "sustainable community" the value of the designated land plummets. Who is responsible for that loss of value? Perhaps more important, future generations are deprived of their freedom to live where they choose, and are forever forced to live with the unwise decisions of the current unelected commission. Sustainable Development is defined: "...to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Do future generations not need the freedom to choose where they want to live; the freedom to choose where they want to work; the freedom to choose where their children will go to school; the freedom to choose whether they will drive a car or ride a bicycle or ride mass transit? These freedoms are unimportant, and mostly unknown, to the originators of the Sustainable Development concept. The idea emerged from the 1987 UN's World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, then-Vice President of the World Socialist Party. The concept evolved through the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, chaired by Maurice Strong, who declared that air-conditioning, single-family homes, automobiles, and convenience foods -- are all unsustainable. By Executive Order, the President created his own President's Council on Sustainable Development to refine the anti-freedom concept to America. Governor Ridge further focused the concept on Pennsylvania with the creation of his 21st Century Commission. The principles which underlie the concept of "Sustainable Development" are inherently incompatible with the fundamental principles of individual freedom, private property rights, free markets and national sovereignty. There is no individual freedom when people are prohibited from choosing to live in the suburbs and are forced to live in high-density, ethnically/economically integrated public/private-partnership housing projects constructed on former urban brownfields. There is no free market when land use is dictated by an unelected commission, rather than by the supply and demand forces of willing buyers and sellers. There are no private property rights when an unelected commission dictates how a landowner may or may not use his own property. National sovereignty vanishes when national policy is conformed to comply with the dictates of an international authority. Writing in Update, the publication of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, Thomas Hylton says: "Sprawl is ugly, it's inefficient, it's damaging to the environment, and it is not sustainable." Prior to the UN's condemnation, what is now called "ugly sprawl" was called economic expansion; what is now called "damaging the environment" was called "highest and best" land use; what is now called "not sustainable," was called freedom. "Growing Greener" is relentlessly painting over what's left of America's red, white, and blue. By Henry Lamb, |
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| "Serving Destin, Ft. Walton Beach, Panama City, Pensacola, Crestview, Eglin AFB, Hurlburt Field and all points in-between..."
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