Free Republic

Madison - In another late-night session Tuesday, the Assembly approved major changes to wetlands regulations to ease restrictions over development in Wisconsin. The bill passed on a voice vote and now goes to Gov. Scott Walker, who has said he will sign it. The Assembly also unanimously passed legislation Tuesday adding cellphone text messages to the state's no-call list. The vote Tuesday on the wetlands legislation follows action in the state Senate on Feb. 15, when senators voted, 17-15, to approve the wetlands bill. Realtors, builders and property rights advocates pushed for the legislation, saying current law hamstrings development. The...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/19/epa-ponders-expanded-regulatory-power-in-name-sustainable-development/?test=latestnews What is Sustainable Development? "Sustainable Development" is the UN Agenda 21 "Plan For The 21st Century" It is the UN plan to manage and control ALL human activity under Marxist/socialist principals. Re-distribution of wealth is a built in feature of it. In practicality, it is a direct economic attack on the United States. In fact, Maurice Strong was the Chair of the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Rio where Agenda 21 was introduced. He made the intent clear when he was quoted saying that it was their responsibility to bring about the collapse of the industrialized countries. It has...

Where did governments – at every level – get the idea that they are supposed to manage the affairs of their citizens? Governments were first created in America to serve their citizens. Now, citizens must ask their government for permission to build a house, to drive a car, to open a business, or to buy a gun. The role and authority of government has changed over the years from an entity that serves the needs of its citizens to an entity that manages the affairs of its citizens. In recent years, especially since the emergence of 21_07.shtml>Agenda 21 in 1992,...

If you don’t mind an old saloon and two empty jails then this historic ghost town in South Dakota is for you. For sale: The majority of the land within the Township of Scenic, South Dakota, totaling about 46 acres. Over the years, since 1906, it has been a thriving town mostly of visitors for the convenience of fuel, groceries, hunting, fossil hunting and the world famous Longhorn Saloon. And the price? $799,000. Population: 9. The nearest town might be 50-miles away, but reporters, television crews, and millionaires are making plans to visit this small town located on the edge...

Sustainable development is based on a set of principles found in Our Common Future, the report of the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development. Sustainable freedom is based on a set of principles found in the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress July 4, 1776. Sustainable development is based on this belief: “From space, we see a small and fragile ball dominated not by human activity and edifice but by a pattern of clouds, oceans, greenery, and soils. Humanity’s inability to fit its activities into that pattern is changing planetary systems, fundamentally. This new reality, from which...

Current policy and political process incapable of dealing with environmental crisis

University of Minnesota faculty, staff and students will all be part of a federally funded plan meant to kick-start the Central Minnesota economy that begins taking shape next week. The first part of the plan begins next week in Baxter, Minnesota, with working groups made up of area residents set to focus on the state's economy and sustainable housing and transportation. The university says the meetings, which begin Tuesday, May 24th, are the first step in a two-year effort to help provide direction in areas such as transportation, housing and land use. The work groups are the result of an...

The UAE’s trade with the rest of the OIC countries has witnessed tremendous growth in the past five years, and the OIC Expo presents an opportunity to give a further fillip for intra-trade among Islamic countries, according to senior officials attending the show that got under way today (April 24) at Expo Centre Sharjah. The 13the edition of the show was inaugurated by H.H. Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohammed Bin Sultan Al Qassimi, Crown Prince and Deputy Ruler of Sharjah. The intra-trade among member countries has touched US$ 550 billion in 2009 and this is in for a 20 per cent...

"Sustainable Development" (SD) is basically a slogan without a specific meaning.  Linked to Earth Day (April 22), it masquerades as a call for clean air, green energy, and suggests a pristine bucolic existence for us and our progeny -- forever.  But in reality,  it has become immensely useful to many groups who use the slogan to advance their own special agenda, whatever they may be. The term itself was invented by Gro Harlem Bruntlandt, a Norwegian socialist politician and former prime minister.  After her term there, she landed in Paris and, together with Club of Rome veteran Alexander King,...

The unrest engulfing the Middle East and North Africa shows that more inclusive and sustainable development is crucial for countries around the world, and more progress should be made in creating more economic, education and civil opportunities for common people, World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick said here on Wednesday. "There are lessons here for the region, for the world, for governments, for development institutions and for economics," Zoellick said at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. The region has the highest unemployment among developing regions, the highest jobless rates among the best educated as well as the lowest...

Famed for having the steepest wine-growing mountains in Europe, the Rhineland county of Cochem-Zell is engaged in an uphill climb to ward off climate change - by working to become a carbon-neutral region by 2050. Cochem-Zell's 2008 declaration that it intended to become a zero-emissions county generated great regional fanfare in southwestern Germany. Curiously, this county of 65,000 residents in the Mosel River Valley just south of Cologne has attracted surprisingly little national, much less international, attention. The initiative is well-known, however, within the insular community of climate change researchers and policy-makers. It is also playing a starring role in...

Africa is well poised to take advantage of a host of opportunities on the continent for building a ‘green economy,’ one that generates decent jobs in an environmentally sustainable way, a senior United Nations official said today. “This continent is in many ways the envy of the 21st century world,” Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), told African ministers of finance, planning and economic development gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “Africa is rich in the kinds of natural resources that in many parts of the world have been over-exploited and diminished by centuries of unsustainable development,”...

Four communities have rejected “Sustainability” since the first of the year. More will surely follow. To confront sustainability in your community you should learn everything you can about it. More than 600 American communities have entered into agreements with ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives), an international non-government organization created by the United Nations. ICLEI-USA was formed in 1995. ICLEI is a tool of both the U.N. and the federal government, used to transform American cities into “Sustainable Communities.” What is, and is not, sustainable is defined in Agenda 21, a 40-chapter document adopted in 1992 by the United...

The Inter-American Development Bank annual conference kicked off Friday in Calgary, Canada. The meeting is focusing on the sustainable future for emerging cities. Our CNC correspondent Al Campbell has more details at the scene. STANDUP: AL CAMPBELL, CNC CORRESPONDENT "Sustainable emerging cities was very much the focus of the Inter-American Development Bank conference being held here in Calgary, Alberta, on Friday afternoon. IDB president Luis Alberto Moreno spoke about how there was 3,500 emerging cities around the world. Each of these cities has a population between 100,000 people and two million people. He says that their sustainable development was vital...

One of the last runs of wild coho salmon in California has surged into the Lagunitas Creek watershed in western Marin County, bringing renewed hope to fisheries experts, watershed managers and those who have devoted their lives to salmon procreation. The endangered fish had all but disappeared over the past two years, creating fear among biologists that the species was in the midst of a death spiral. Then, during rains this past week, the fish arrived and began laying eggs in the creek and tributaries, which wind through the lush San Geronimo Valley. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/16/MNCS1GQ185.DTL#ixzz18ac9iEgg

The July 2010 Dice Report shows that software development skills in general and C# skills in particular are more in demand this year, making Dice's top 10 list of in-demand skills. In addition, Dice reports that there are more open full-time IT positions this year than last year at this time. But the numbers are still a far cry from the number of open positions in July 2008. The July 2010 Dice Report shows that software development skills in general and C# skills in particular are more in demand this year, making Dice's top 10 list of in-demand skills. In...

High-tech carts will tell on Cleveland residents who don't recycle ... and they face $100 fine Trash carts containing more than 10 percent recyclable material could lead to a $100 fine, according to Waste Collection Commissioner Ronnie Owens. Recyclables include glass, metal cans, plastic bottles, paper and cardboard. City Council on Wednesday approved spending $2.5 million on high-tech carts for 25,000 households across the city, expanding a pilot program that began in 2007 with 15,000 households. The expansion will continue at 25,000 households a year until nearly all of the city's 150,000 residences are included. Existing carts might be retrofitted...

Far from defeating terrorism, today’s government-to-government foreign-aid system can actually incite it by propping up corrupt and repressive one-party states. Fortunately, there is a strategy that could subvert global terror by providing hope and opportunity in the Third World — at the expense of corruption and despair

Chris Dodd bows to global governance . There is nothing ambiguous or uncertain about this statement: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. (10th Amendment) Where in the Constitution does Sen. Christopher Dodd find any authority to even propose his "Livable Communities Act"? Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, authorizes Congress "to lay and collect taxes for the common defense and general welfare" of the United States. The next 17 paragraphs define the specific area of activity the founders...

Shale Gas has the potential to bring manifold benefits to Americans: cheap and plentiful, relatively green and clean burning, located in vast swaths underneath our feet (and not offshore or in foreign lands filled with people happy to take our money but who also hate us and who can who can turn the spigot off at will). All good reasons in Majority Leader Harry Reid's mind to sabotage our tapping of this vast reserve of energy: The fight over the Senate offshore drilling "spill bill" shifted Wednesday from the Gulf of Mexico to the mountains of western Pennsylvania, as Republicans...