Guest essay by Charles Battig, MD | The alchemists of old were diligently ambitious in their goals. These antecedents of modern chemistry were not hindered by a lack of knowledge of atomic structure and physical chemistry when it came to setting priorities. Lacking a nuclear reactor and knowledge of atomic reactions, they postulated the existence of “The Philosopher’s Stone.” This mythical substance was thought to be able to turn base metals into gold, and endow eternal life and wisdom to its discoverer.
Another magical substance hypothesized was the “universal solvent.” Such a substance would be able to dissolve all other substances, including gold. Philosophical discussions over what container could hold this universal solvent must have been lively. Aqua regia, a mixture of concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids, was eventually discovered, and comes close to the definition. This “royal water,” named by the alchemists because of its ability to dissolve gold and the noble metals, was also thought to have therapeutic healing properties as well.
Far from the realm of primitive physical sciences, another universal solvent has been created by the progressive social engineers. It is able to limit personal freedoms, diminish private property rights, destroy the useful products of civilization and their means of production, deprive humanity of natural resources and their access, and impose hardship on the least prosperous members of humanity. I term it “The Progressives’ Stone,” as it can do all this and more. Regrettably, it is real and not mythical. It permeates all levels of our government.
“Sustainability” is the embodiment of the planner’s “Progressives’ Stone,” a universal societal solvent… infinitely elastic and open-ended in its ability to justify most any action taken in the name of social and environmental justice. It is the societal equivalent of the ancient “royal water” in its corrosive properties when employed against our constitutionally mandated unalienable rights of ordinary free citizens.
Documenting the origins of the “Philosopher’s Stone is a task for historians probing the Middle Ages. “The Progressives’ Stone” has a more recent and defined linage. British economist Barbara Ward’s 1966 book “Spaceship Earth” advocated for sustainable development and a new international economic order linking the global environment and social justice. Population control was an inherent part of the message.
On this side of the Atlantic, Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring” laid the groundwork for a message that found a receptive audience in guilt prone readers. She put a human face on the claimed crimes against the environment. Misuse of insecticides was translated into a fear of all insecticides at any level. DDT was made the poster child for environmental destruction. Bird deaths and egg thinning were offered as evidence. Years later, many of the claims in her book were termed “lies,” once they were subject to scientific review. In the interim, millions of innocent children have suffered Malaria-related deaths in Africa from prohibition of DDT use, and the term “eco-imperialism” became a book title.
As a formalized political doctrine, “Sustainability” was introduced by the 1987 “Our Common Future” report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, authored by Gro Harlem Bruntland, VP of the World Socialist Party. The official U.N. website contains the “Sustainability” definition: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The capitalized “S” serves to distinguish the U.N. definition from the mundane usage indicating “lasting or continuing for a long time.” The U.N. pre-supposes an all-knowing ruling class that has unique knowledge of the present and of the future. In reality, the needs of the future are subject to change, and planning now for an unknowable future is the planner’s folly. Fredrick Hayek aptly described this as the “Fatal Conceit.” Who knew a century ago, that commonplace sand (silica) would become essential to our transistor and integrated-circuit world of today?
Much of the U.N.’s vision of “Sustainability” was eventually incorporated into official U.S. Federal policy by President Clinton. He established the “President’s Council on Sustainable Development” by executive Order No. 12852, dated June 29, 1993. It published the 1999 report “Towards A Sustainable America…Advancing Prosperity, Opportunity, and a Healthy Environment for the 21st Century.” Perhaps well intentioned in its Utopian vision of our future, it has become a weapon of mass destruction against many of the visions of our Founding Fathers, and our basic freedoms.
Professional planners have adopted these precepts, and their official organization, the American Planning Association, has a formalized policy guide. The Environmental Policy Agency has its own. Business has learned how to make a profit from it. Enthusiastic application of sustainability concepts has provided the commercial world with financial rewards. Do-more-with-less is the way to greater profits and positive public perception.
Like a Madison Avenue brainstormed advertising mantra, “Sustainability” now appears throughout the media and in governmental policy requirements. If it is not “Sustainable,” it must be stopped, altered, or mitigated, until the project has met prescribed guidelines. “Sustainability” has been elevated in governmental policy to a level higher than our Constitutional unalienable rights. Unlike the business model, “Sustainability” in the governmental sphere has uses beyond a more efficient government. Henry Lamb and others recognized the threat to personal property rights early on. Tom DeWeese has been sounding the alarm for decades.
A visit to your local governmental planning board or board of supervisors should convince you that “Sustainability” is the universal solvent able to shut down private property rights. Want to build a home on your dream location? No…it is not sustainable to the environment. Want to add on to your home…no, it imposes non-sustainable burdens on the wildlife. Nor are golf courses, ski resorts, livestock , soil tilling, fences, industry, septic fields, roads, logging, dams and reservoirs, power line and fiber optic projects “Sustainable,” if so designated by local or Federal government. Get out of “Sustainability” Jail cards are called proffers or mitigating off-sets; such extra costs make surviving projects more expensive for the increasingly poor taxpayer.
Increase your chances of living a sustainable life as envisioned by our Founding Fathers by challenging “Sustainability” as envisioned by government planners. Private property rights are an endangered species not protected by “Sustainability.”
Originally published in American Thinker August 26, 2014
Charles Battig, MD , Piedmont Chapter president, VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.com
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Having grown up in the “Limits to Growth” era I got very depressed. I snapped out of it when I read “The High Frontier” by Gerard K O’Neill. It changed my whole outlook and I’ve never looked at an insolvable problem the same way since.
We can solve anything. What we need are resources to do it. We currently are in a planetary arms race that spends more than a trillion dollars a year. I’ve yet to encounter a problem that can’t be solved with even a fraction of those resources thrown at it.
The problem is that governments and their owners (not you and me) don’t want to solve problems. They see us as the problem and their solution to “us” problem is virtual genocide by various means. The whole tax CO2 is just the latest scam to achieve that goal. When it fails they will just move on to their next scam and keep as many gains as they can.
“diminish private property rights”
Private property ceased to exist in the US ever since Kelo v. New London. Governments now own all property, and can take it at will through eminent domain. We all occupy our homes at official sufferance.
Sad but true. George Carlin was right (again) “you have no rights”.
The Fabian Socialists’ holy icon is that of a red-hot Earth placed on an anvil in front of a giant forge being beaten into submission by men wielding sledge hammers…
An appropriate and descriptive depiction of what has happened during the “Progressive Era” over the last 100 years. The tremendous economic, scientific and social advancements made possible under free-markets, free societies and free men have been utterly destroyed and replaced by massive centrally-planned economies, oppressed societies and over-taxed workers paying for enslaved welfare recipients that exist to vote for more “goodies” stolen from those still naive enough to remain in the workforce.
The CAGW scam was a brilliant Progressive scheme giving governments ultimate control over energy and generating $trillions in CO2 taxes for wealth redistribution on a global scale, all under the guise of “Saving the Planet” (TM).
Fortunately, the Progressive Era has orchestrated its own demise. The national debts of Socialists countries now exceed governments’ abilities to finance them, and the temporary fix of money printing has destroyed their respective currencies. The CAGW scam is also collapsing as empirical evidence has, for all intents and purposes, disconfirmed this silly and untenable hypothesis.
In about 5~10 years (perhaps sooner), an economic collapse brought about by 100 years of Progressive fiscal and monetary insanity is imminent. After the collapse, the world will have two choices: 1) rebel against Progressivism and restore severely limited governments and return to free-market economies, maximum personal freedom and personal responsibility or 2) allow totalitarianism to rule and control what’s left after the chaos.
History shows door #2 is the most likely scenario, but, as Cajuns love to say, Ya neva know…..
“personal freedom and personal responsibility” 🙂
All too often people forget that other side of the coin. They want freedom to do whatever they want but want someone else to pick up the tab when things don’t go well. Ya #2 in the guise of “we are here to help you” and “we know how to fix this” will probably win. Sad but not inevitable. Never give up just because others do.
But Trap #2 is the Progressives’ aim. They are totalitarian but need to break the ‘mold’ of the current ‘free world’ systems and ethos as put forward by the Fabian’s. To quote Kruschev:
““ ‘You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.’”
Perhaps Kruschev was aware of the huge assistance that would be given to the destruction of the ethos and economy of the United States by adherents to Alinksky and Cloward and Piven
Nothing is allowed in the UK unless it is “sustainable”. The National Planning Policy Framework says:
“At the heart of the National Planning Policy Framework is a presumption in favour of sustainable development, which should be seen as a golden thread running through both plan-making and decision-taking.”
There has been an engineering concept of sustainability based on scheduled maintenance of equipment and civil works infrastructure.
Investing in equipment and civil works infrastructure gets nowhere if as soon as assets are acquired they are allowed to rundown as a result of not being maintained in a way to ensure they deliver services during their normal economic life. Failing to maintain assets is the opposite of investment; it is dis-investment.
In assessing development projects, I ignore “Sustainability” in its political form and interpret the term “sustainability” to mean “engineering sustainability”, which is far more important in developing countries where dis-investment almost always follows investment.
Countries borrow money to invest and then immediately ignore maintenance. Typically, in developing countries physical assets have an economic life only half their rated economic life. Under-provision for depreciation is the norm.
I though aqua regia was a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids. So far I like the essay.
Aqua rigia is a mixture of concentrated nitric and conc.hydrochloric acids.
We have had a universal solvent for eons—water. In the earths crust it will dissolve anything at the right temperature and pressure.
“Sustainability” sounds so good and reasonable. That is by design, so that people don’t recognize the danger of it. The problem is, when the Humpty Dumptys who are in power use the word “sustainable” it means whatever they choose it to mean — neither more nor less. The phrase “climate change” belongs in the same category. All the better and easier to control the sheeple.
Check out “Sand is the New Gold,” here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-29/sand-new-gold
If you haven’t read it, you should. It is a non-fiction thriller that is impacting every single one of you.
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&nr=23&type=400&menu=35
Because I only know what I have read, I suggest you read this newly arrived book yourselves:
http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/tyger-growl-knowing-of-burt-rutansince.html
Best currently available Reality Check IMHO
“Because I only know what I have read”
Well that’s kind of a loaded interest catcher…
It is the old feudal and surf system resurrected. The land lord overseas the populace who own no such land, though they live on it and till it. All productivity and daily life is targeted towards the whims and profits of the master, seemingly benevolent, dictates, not for individual thinking, growth, or mistake making. So we submit calmly under its perfect rules and regulations thinking, eventually, that our collective ship will come in and we will all get an equally large slice of the pie. We could not be more blind if we were to gouge out our eyes and lobotomize our brains.
Author Michael Crichton had something to say about “sustainability”:
See? Sustainability will get you into Heaven.
I like the way that the APA starts off with the bold statement of “Democracy” and “economic growth” before going on into “sustainability” which will do away with both of the above with the steady erosion of private property rights and personal freedoms.
APA is definitely a worthy disciple of Agend21, this agency is the father and mother of “sustainability” as it is touted AND the mother and father of “Anthropogenic Global Warming”, which also deserves it’s parentheses.
This is where our efforts need to be marshalled – see my blog for more info.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
As an Alchemist I can assure you we do not try to transmute Lead into Gold. It’s metaphorical – we are attempting to turn matter into spirit.
[snip – wildly off topic -mod]
The Progressive’s Stone goes far, far back. A landmark was Plato’s Republic, where Plato argued that a gentle totalitarianship of philosophers ought to rule society. These clever rulers would figure out where everyone else would fit in society, as warriors, shop-keepers, and so on. Fast-forward to Brave New World, Walden II, and Farenheit 451, and it is all generally the same.
Charles Fourier is a likely recent landmark, with an influence felt directly to today. He believed in planned communities organized to keep people healthy and productive.
The concept of environmental degradation gets added with Malthus. Some Marxists pay attention only to wealth and labor, but others realize anything can be over-simplified into the “good guy-bad guy” morality most of us outgrow by adolescence, as we see shades of grey. The Progressive’s Stone here gets formed from a blend of Scientific Utopianism and Marxism. The theory of evolution helps a lot, as some can now scientifically be more equal than others.
From there, the line of thought and activity is steadily sustained by many, either Scientifically-Inspired Utopians, Marxists, or those who are a blend of both. In the 1940s, Ellsworth Huntington writes “The Wellspring of Civilization.” This may be the first presentation of the idea of the environment as Gaia, an entity itself to be revered and feared.
Nukelar scientist Harrison Brown, after helping develop the nukelar bomb, decides he is one of the ruling philosophers, and puts out a series of popular-press books declaring that we need to have a group of intellectual elites rule us, or we will all end up dead from some catastrophe, such as nukelar war.
He is also able to prop up evolutionary theory: since he and his fellow travelers have to, for philosophical reasons, believe in a very old earth and very old universe, he fosters Clair Patterson to whisper to a meteorite and discern that the universe if 4 billion years old. This is confirmed by – wait, there is no way to confirm this, since no one was around then. OK, well it is accepted as dogma since it holds the intellectual elites in place to decides who gets to live and reproduce.
Harrison Brown is declared by Science Czar John Holdren to be his intellectual hero. In tribute, Holdren joins up with Ehrlich to figure out how to put birth control in the water, set up an approval process to be a parent, and so on.
The rest is history.
Oh – I left this out: Marx, yet another philosopher-king, was directly inspired by Hegel, who took the intellectual “dialectic” and applied it to social issues, and repeated Plato’s idea that the warrior or business classes should not rule, and was also directly inspired by Fourier. That is how Fourier ties in.
Some might enjoy this 90s project – do not hear about them today – why?
http://ag.arizona.edu/oals/ALN/aln36/Clark.html
Sustainable community planning
by Kenneth N. Clark
The western U.S. city
Recent developments in energy-conscious planning
A holistic approach to planning and architecture
Civano: Tucson’s solar village
Conclusions
Reference & further reading
Author information
The energy crisis of the 1970s brought the industrialized nations of the Western Hemisphere face to face with a new reality: their cities, especially those in the United States, are poorly positioned to deal with a growing population in a future of diminishing fossil fuels.
Attempts by architects and engineers to design for this new reality have led to a renewed interest in the potential of solar energy and energy conservation to meet the needs of an uncertain energy future. The worldwide experiments of the late ’70s and early ’80s brought about an interesting juxtaposition of high-tech/low-tech engineering solutions, as well as a new attitude about energy responsibility in architectural design. A common ground for these diverse attitudes to saving energy was to examine successful historical precedents for clues to low-cost, energy-saving design strategies. Possibly the most enduring results of the energy crisis have been the continuing experiments with alternate sources of fuel (primarily solar and wind), alternate types of building construction (adobe, rammed earth, straw bale, and others), and the many and varied energy-conservation programs sponsored by local utilities.
But have we, as environmental designers, really learned from the energy scare of the 1970s? Or have we once again become consenting handmaidens to economic and development interests? In the United States, where nearly 60 percent of the energy consumed goes to transportation, it is imperative that we combine land use and transportation design to achieve a sustainable balance. Superficially, the specter of dwindling energy resources has been pushed aside by development of more energy-efficient automobiles and by government assurances that we have, by political means, secured the sources of fossil fuel energy.