Agenda 21

"Consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and workplace air conditioning and suburban housing - are not sustainable." - Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, at the 1992 launch of the Agenda 21 initiative in Rio de Janeiro.

The Board of Chosen Freeholders, legislators of Ocean County, New Jersey, reportedly has passed a resolution last February calling the United Nations a "destructive and insidious" entity that plans to "ultimately destroy the sovereignty of the United States of America" 

Meanwhile, the city council of College Station, Texas, complains that the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives, which promotes Agenda-21, is "an insidious, extreme institution that does not represent our citizens". 

These resolutions, like others being promoted by right-wing groups like the Tea Party and the John Birch Society, forbids engagement in the UN's Agenda 21. Although many environmentalists regard the same initiative as wishy-washy, encouraging local authorities to think they can address the threat of ecosystem destruction merely by tackling the twin menaces of plastic shopping bags and kids dropping chewing-gum wrappers.  In the eyes of those who lauded the counter-resolutions, those who don't see Agenda 21 as a plan for world domination are probably themselves crypto-communists.

I think these views are based on a certain kind of xenophobia that sees the world divided into "us," or even I, and "others."  This view presupposes that each group is out for its own perceived self-interests, usually at the expense of the self-interests of others.

On the other hand, the Dalai Lama once said, "It is important to understand how much your own happiness is linked to that of others.  There is no individual happiness totally independent of others."  

And "Notions such as 'my country,' 'your country,' 'my religion,' 'your religion' have become minor.  We must, on the contrary, insist on the fact that the other person is as worthy as we are.  This is humanity!"

Buddhist author Sharon Salzberg once wrote, "Without the rigidity of concepts, the world becomes transparent and illuminated, as though lit from within.  With this understanding, the interconnectedness of all that lives becomes very clear.  We see that nothing is stagnant and nothing is fully separate, that who we are, what we are, is intimately woven into the nature of life itself.  Out of this sense of connection, love and compassion arise."

Finally, Jack Kornfield notes, "The laws that govern wise relationships in politics, marriage, or business are the same as in inner life.  Each of these areas requires a capacity for commitment and constancy."