An Iowa Republican lawmaker running for the U.S. Senate vowed in a recently posted video she would overturn United Nations plans to strip private property rights to promote environmental protection laws.
“The United Nations has imposed this upon us, and as a U.S. Senator, I would say no more,” said state Sen. Joni Ernst. “No more Agenda 21.”
Glenn Beck and other conspiracy theorists have warned darkly about this international plot to take away individual rights, but the plan is no more than a bullet point in a list of suggestions that don’t have to be followed.
Agenda 21 is a nonbinding action plan adopted in 1992 by delegates at the U.N. Conference on Environment Development to promote aspirational goals for sustainable development.
But many conservative Tea Party types – such as Ernst, who said she attended a conference on Agenda 21 last year – fear the UN uses the measure to control local zoning decisions, promote “green” clubs at schools, and track individual energy consumption and somehow punish Americans who use too much.
“All of us agreed that agenda 21 is a horrible idea, and I’m sure most of you have followed that,” Ernst said in video from a November campaign event posted online Thursday by the Iowa Democratic party.
Ernst won the Republican nomination last week to face off against Bruce Braley, the Iowa Democrat vying to fill retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin's seat.
She warned the measure was part of a United Nations plot to eliminate rural and suburban living.
“One of the implications to Americans, again, going back to what did it do to the individual family here in the state of Iowa, and what I’ve seen, the implications that it has here is moving people off of their agricultural land and consolidating them into city sectors and then telling them, ‘You don’t have property rights anymore,’” Ernst said. “These are all things that the UN is behind, and it’s bad for the United States, it’s bad for families here in the state of Iowa.”
Watch video of her remarks posted online by the Iowa Democratic Party:
[Image via Facebook]
