Agenda 21 | Think Globally, Enslave Locally, Q&A with Thrive

Hey, Foster, I heard about a program called Agenda 21 that seems focused on Sustainable Development and preserving nature. What do you think of it?

Agenda 21 | Think Globally, Enslave Locally, Q&A with Thrive

CURIOUS: Hey, Foster, I heard about a program called Agenda 21 that seems focused on Sustainable Development and preserving nature. What do you think of it?

FOSTER:  So glad you asked! My research reveals that Agenda 21 is a dangerous plan that appeals to our glaring need to protect the environment, but actually threatens to move us even closer to a police state. Let’s unpack it and do some critical thinking.

Agenda 21 was birthed at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development as a tool to “further sustainable development”. It naturally appeals to many environmentalists because on the surface it seems to address critical issues, including combating deforestation, conservation of biological diversity, control of pollution, changing consumption patterns, promoting health, and achieving a more sustainable population. Of course, those are all important. But let’s dig deeper.

Agenda 21’s plan for Sustainable Development includes:

A “Wildlands Project” to “protect wildlife habitat and corridors”. This can sound appealing given that so many species are dying due to irresponsible human development and the destruction of natural habitat. However, the ultimate goal of this is to erase any sign of human activity (houses, roads, trucks, etc.) from wildlands so eventually humans will be pushed out of wildland areas completely. This project allows people’s homes and land to be legally taken from them in the name of conservation, similar to the way “eminent domain” works now. Note that nothing about corporate pollution, fracking, coal or nuclear waste is addressed, nor the lack of choice people would have over their housing. I am confident that there are better solutions that protect wildlife and people’s rights, such as “trusts” to manage environmental resources that we share in common. You can learn more about them in our article on Environmental Solutions (scroll down to “Stage 2” to learn about successful trust programs).

Monitoring of everyone’s activities through “Smart Growth”, the federal Real ID Act, and the installation of “Smart Meters” on homes around the world to oversee and regulate energy consumption. Utility companies and Agenda 21 proponents claim that “smart meters” will make energy use more visible to the consumer in real-time, and this data can be used to lessen our impact on the planet. Again, this might sound attractive to some, but in reality “smart meters” are a danger to our health (they emit harmful radiation); allow for increased surveillance of our homes (every time a light bulb, appliance, or TV is used, that information is sent to your utility company — and can be shared with other companies and the government); and any appliance can be turned off remotely. To learn more about smart meters, and how you can stop them from being installed on your home, see my “Smart Meter” blog here.

Population control. Again, some people may agree that there are too many people on the planet and that our current rate of growth is unsustainable. However, Agenda 21 promotes forced sterilization and forcefully limiting the number of children per family. Research shows that populations stabilize naturally in relation to their environment when there is ample education, health and prosperity — all of which thrive in a truly free society of voluntary association — but flounder in totalitarian police states. As we have moved closer and closer to tyranny, our education, health and prosperity have all declined. More tyranny is not the answer.

The adoption of Common Core Standards (CCS) in public schools around the country. The stated goal is to mold children into “equals” by nationalizing standards, which proponents say is to lessen the “achievement gap”. In practice it allows the lowest common denominator nationally to determine the standard locally — an essentially socialist model of citizenship.

Agenda 21 seeks to make these policies involuntary. You and your family could be forced to fund Agenda 21 through taxation — as many already are — and then those dollars would be used to enforce environmental regulations that violate your rights. This has happened throughout history with governments around the world. But now we have a chance to say “NO” and choose a course that deals with environmental concerns in a responsible, ethical way, that doesn’t violate our rights by giving even more control to a centralized authority.

CURIOUS: But isn’t the central authority the United Nations? Don’t you trust them to watch out for our best interests?

FOSTER:  Do you know who created the United Nations?

CURIOUS: I assume lots of nations came together to try to collaborate for world peace.

FOSTER:  After WWI the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers funded meetings to try to create the League of Nations. It failed. After WWII they tried again, calling it the United Nations. The Rockefellers donated the land in New York City. This was part of the Council on Foreign Relations plan to create a front for the eventual one world government they were planning, as documented in THRIVE.

In 1976, the Club of Rome then came up with the notion of controlling people’s lives through environmental regulations. Who wouldn’t go for less pollution, better city planning, and reduction of carbon emissions? It was a brilliant ploy, but with truly sinister motives.

The plan for global social engineering was conceived in the mid-1980s, and launched by the UN in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The primary mouthpiece was to be Maurice Strong, a Canadian oil tycoon. He was a Rockefeller agent, member of the infamous Bilderberger secret society, the Club of Rome, the Committee of 300, and the Aspen Institute (formed by fellow Bilderberger Robert O. Anderson of ARCO oil — whose logo is a missing capstone with an all-seeing eye). I wasn’t surprised to find Strong’s connections to these secret societies or families — in fact, it’s quite predictable. As explored in the movie, THRIVE, when you follow the money behind all major industries and sectors of human endeavor, it inevitably leads to big banking families including the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, and Morgans. Strong appears to be yet another puppet in their game of enforcing environmental rules and regulations that look good on the surface and appeal to well-intentioned people all over the world, but in reality slowly chip away at their rights — and get us used to it.

My research indicates that Agenda 21 is a primary part of the blueprint of the New World Order agenda we describe in THRIVE. 178 national governments signed on to the 288 page “programme.” President George H. W. Bush signed on behalf of the United States. Since Agenda 21 was “soft law” and not a treaty, Congress had no role to perform. Instead, the cabinet agencies of the Executive branch of government were charged with implementing this ‘global to local’ program. In 1993, President Bill Clinton established, by executive order, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. Since Clinton’s order, every cabinet agency has quietly done its part to advance this plan. There are 600+ cities and towns already signed up in the US and 109 of them are in California, where I live.

CURIOUS: That’s a little scary. How is it funded? Is it with dues?

FOSTER:  Yes, thousands a year from each town, paid with all of our property taxes, plus millions in subsidies from the Federal Government — once again taxpayer’s hard-earned income.

CURIOUS: I didn’t know that.

FOSTER:  They would prefer that we didn’t. Do you know what their main stated goals are?

CURIOUS: Well, I think it’s to save natural resources and reduce population, right?

FOSTER:  The architects of the plan rally around the concepts within their “three E’s” symbol. The three E’s are: social Equity, prosperous Economy and quality Environment.

Sounds good, right? But they are simply appealing to our need, and desire, to transform our troubled world by using the usual Orwellian double-speak, just as they did with “No Child Left Behind”. “No Child Left Behind” appealed to people’s desire to have schools do a better job of educating children and assuring that teachers were doing their jobs. But in practice, NCLB actually:

  • Imposed a rigid one-size-fits-all framework that now relies solely on test scores to measure children and schools.
  • Instigated teaching to the test and a more dumbed-down curriculum.
  • Imposed high stakes testing which has increased the drop-out rate at schools across the country and has lead more schools to “push out” low scoring students to protect their “numbers”.

This same kind of disguise happened with the Clean Air Act, the Patriot Act, Operation Iraqi Freedom, among many others. We would be wise to discern the difference between how something sounds and what it actually achieves.

What might Agenda 21’s Three E’s actually mean if they just said it straight?

  • What they seem to mean by “quality Environment” is reserving natural resources and pristine eco-systems for corporations and the financial elite, while preventing citizens from being able to own and protect their own properties, instead driving them into urban environments and stacking them upon one another in high-rise dwellings, whether they like it or not.
  • Their idea of “prosperous Economy” means further centralizing control over money and trade rather than eliminating our fake, debt-based monetary system run by a private corporation (the Federal Reserve), or encouraging a true, un-subsidized, free-market in currencies, pricing and voluntary exchange.
  • Their version of “social Equity” is to further authorize the government to take people’s personally hard-earned money to re-allocate at their own discretion regardless of individual rights. It doesn’t empower people with strategies for increasing access to the money they earn.

Some call it the “Re-distribution of wealth through stealth”. I see it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

CURIOUS: But when proponents of Agenda 21 go around to different cities, they hold open public meetings, where people get to give their input and actually be involved in the decision-making.

FOSTER:  Let’s pause for a moment and make sure we’re being discerning here. Is there evidence that the banking elite behind the UN, the carbon tax, and cap & trade have taken our interests to heart? They are the same ones who are behind Agenda 21, after all. If they got away with manipulating us for their own gain before, does it make sense that they might just keep doing it until we stand up and say no?

With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at those “community meetings” you mentioned, to see if the customary deceptions might be lurking in the shadows once again when the light of truth is shown on them.

The organization designed to micromanage communities around the globe is called ICLEI — The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. Once again at first glance, it can sound like a good idea. But when local governments sign up, they are in fact signing up to pay dues and adopt globalist policies through what is known as the “Delphi Technique.” This is a process developed by the Rand Corporation for the US Defense Department where a highly trained, “likeable” facilitator uses divisive processes and covert shills in the community “audience” to subtly guide discussion groups and group conversation to come up with certain ideas and initiatives that have already been predetermined prior to the meeting. This hides the coercive imposition of the agenda by clothing it in pseudo spontaneity and fake inclusiveness. Communities are not aware that they are being “directed” in this covert way.

ICLEI methods also include infiltrating local governments and influencing policy changes through the use of funding incentives and rewards.

These are subtle processes and are important to consider when we contemplate the possibility that the deeper agenda might be to seize people’s homes, the natural resources, and increase control over people’s lives — under the guise of environmentalism. It’s a mixture of socialism and communism, referred to as “Communitarianism.” Of course, communities are wonderful…but as anyone in a socialist or communist community will tell you, the determining factor is whether or not what you are doing is mandated by a controlling government, or if it is voluntary.

CURIOUS: But we have to make sure that we steward the environment sustainably somehow, right? And share resources, and don’t overrun the planet with too many people? So how would we do that without programs like Agenda 21?

FOSTER:  Yes, of course…but not in a way that would use the effort as a fake excuse to take over everyone’s lives, privacy, rights, and property! That’s where we have been heading with the New World Order. The economy, the ecology and the society are on the verge of total collapse leading to a totalitarian police state. Agenda 21 is just more of the same, perpetrated covertly by the same would-be controllers. We need to wake up and start asking the missing questions on which the survival and thriving of our species and planet depend:

  • Is it voluntary?
  • Does it violate our hard-won individual rights?
  • Does it honor the wholeness of individuals and ecosystems alike?
  • Is it honest?

Every “resource” we use alters the environment, but we can do it in a way that sustains the wholeness of the vital eco-systems on which life depends. This is not a free-for-all. If systems are violated in unsustainable ways, then the responsible individuals need to be prosecuted — instead of hiding behind corporate liability protections or being able to buy their way out. Imagine the leaps forward we would make in terms of pollution and protecting ecosystems if individuals inside corporations were held accountable for the actions of the corporation.

There is plenty of food to feed all the people on the planet and more if it weren’t for government subsidies and controls limiting distribution and honest trade. There is plenty of water for everyone if the people running corporations were prosecuted for fouling it. The release of “New Energy” technologies currently being suppressed by the state would eliminate quickly most of the coal and nuclear pollution.

A free society is not one without regulations. But the regulations need to be protective — of individual rights, voluntary association and honest interchange. The rules are to protect against fraud, counterfeit, theft, coercion, violence, breach of contract etc. They are not arbitrary opinions of politicians about how other people should live.

Which Philosophy?

Natural/Unalienable Rights
US Declaration of Independence
Community Rights/Agenda 21
UN Declaration of Human Rights


Protect unalienable rights of individual Control the individual for the greater good of a global community

“Congress shall make no law …” Rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations”

You’re born with rights, government exists to protect them. You and the product of your labor belong to you. Government grants, restricts, or withdraws your rights according to its needs. You and the product of your labor belong to the community.


For Solutions strategies, tactics and groups operating in alignment with these principles, I recommend immersing in the Thrive Movement website.

Let me ask you…Which is more important to you — individual rights or protecting eco-systems?

CURIOUS: What an awful question. We shouldn’t have to choose between our rights and a healthy environment.

FOSTER:  Well said. And that is exactly what I am getting at. Restoring and protecting our environment can’t happen at the expense of human freedom, personal ownership and voluntary exchange — or we will be trading one catastrophe for another.

CURIOUS: I didn’t think of it that way before. Sometimes you sound like a Republican and sometimes like a Democrat and sometimes like a Libertarian! I would call myself a Progressive Democrat — a true Liberal, and we are for saving the environment for the good of the group. We all have to pull together. But I don’t want to give up our freedoms to do that. Are other political activists also against this?

FOSTER:  I am not an adherent to any political party. I believe in Liberty, of a truly transpartisan nature. But I realize we have to start where we are to get to a truly free world, and for that we need to take the best of what all parties, and world views, have to offer.

In terms of Agenda 21, during the last decade, opposition to Agenda 21 has increased within the United States at the local, state, and federal levels. During a space of 18 months in 2011 and 2012, 138 ICLEI member organizations woke up and quit. In July 2013, ICLEI USA removed their membership list from their website. The Republican National Committee has adopted a resolution opposing Agenda 21, and the Republican Party platform stated that “We strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty.” Several state and local governments have considered or passed motions and legislation opposing Agenda 21. Alabama became the first state to prohibit government participation in Agenda 21. Many other states, including Arizona, are drafting, and are close to passing legislation to ban Agenda 21.

Democrats are resisting, too. More and more people are realizing this isn’t a partisan issue. It’s an issue of intrinsic and unalienable human rights. The political parties are being played off against each other once again, while the controlling elite take over the money, the land and the people. Rosa Koire, a leading activist on this issue maintains a website called, “Democrats against U. N. Agenda 21”.

Her book, Behind the Green Mask — U.N. Agenda 21, recounts her own discovery of the true agenda and her courageous attempts to keep it out of her community. She and Albert Burns have both delineated clever, effective ways to expose and dissipate the manipulative techniques used by the Agenda 21/Delphi facilitators.

Agenda 21 is a very shrewd and comprehensive approach — but I am convinced that the unstated goal is further coercion, domination and control. What is needed in response are equally comprehensive, whole-systems strategies — but ones that focus on liberation and restoring wholeness to both individuals and to eco-systems — without violating anyone in the process.

CURIOUS: What about “Transition Towns?” Isn’t it a good idea to “transition” to more sustainable ways of living?

FOSTER: Of course, we need to develop sustainable practices. We nonetheless need to be discerning about government-imposed “solutions”. A key to understanding Transition Towns is recognizing that the organization was founded and operated out of the United Kingdom as a creation of the British Fabian Socialist Society. Transition Initiatives require local communities to conform to “Energy Descent Action Plans”. The same people who are imposing this Plan are the ones suppressing “new energy technologies” — technologies that obsolete the notions that energy is scarce and that using it has to be intrinsically polluting. We live in a boundless sea of energy that can be accessed cleanly, safely and inexpensively.

Could the “Energy Dissent” serve as a disguised means of maintaining the old paradigm of scarcity, limiting access to energy for poor and middle class people while the elite corporate controllers (and polluters) continue unrestrained?

We need to go beneath the surface language and ask, “transition to what,” “by whose authority,” and “by whose funding?” And how do we avoid simply replacing one problem (pollution) with another (tyranny)?

If your own research convinces you that Agenda 21 is a threat, here is a collection from some of the experts, of specific action steps you can take.


SOLUTIONS — 10 Action Steps

Strategies and Tactics to Defeat Agenda 21

  1. Get informed.
  2. Take back language like “sustainability” to make sure it is based on the non-violation of human rights.
  3. Spread awareness on blogs, social media, and post flyers around your town.
  4. Connect with others in your local or virtual communities who don’t want their liberties and property taken away.
  5. Go to local meetings and expose the true agenda.
  6. Get good lawyers on your side and take action — here’s a good place to start.
  7. Educate your local politicians.
  8. Refuse local government receipt of federal or state money for new Sustainable Development programs because they breach the principles of liberty and suck money out of your communities.
  9. Avoid local government partnerships with the federal government, NGOs, foundations and corporations that advance the anti-liberty Sustainable Development Agenda.
  10. Learn and teach about human rights and the “non-aggression principle.” Do no harm. Reject transparent theft like “Eminent Domain.”

This entire mock dialogue is just a brief introduction to this critical and urgent issue. I invite you to dive deeply into it so that you won’t be duped to give up even more of your freedom while turning over our natural environment to the governments who are run by the corporations and banks.

Here is a short list of resources you might find useful: