Local sustainability programs are branded as UN one-world-government plots.

Evidence

Some critics of environmental initiatives view them through a conspiratorial lens. The way this view plays out at the local level is illustrated in a controversy over an environmental initiative planned by Carroll County, Maryland. More than 20 years ago the United Nations developed Agenda 21, which includes a set of nonbinding principles and plans for promoting sustainable development at local, national, and global levels. Those who consider the UN to be bent on one-world rule regard these principles as a scheme for global control over people’s lives (Strzelczyk & Rothschild, 2009). Activists who share that view are quick to brand and denounce local conservation programs, such as introducing bike lanes, expanding public transportation routes, and preserving open space, as applications of the UN’s hidden agenda (Kaufman & Zernike, 2012). One of the attendees at a local planning meeting in Virginia expressed her fear over the usurpation of her rights: “They get you hooked, and then Agenda 21 takes over. Your rights are stripped one by one.” It is not just a few extremists who hold this view. Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas and a 2016 presidential candidate, pledged to fight the “dangerous United Nations plan,” which he regards as bent on abolishing “golf courses, grazing pastures and paved roads” (Collins, 2012a). He pointed to the Democratic financier George Soros as the man behind the alleged scheme. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2540

Categorization

• SEED: An essay contrasting how the same local initiative (bike lanes, transit) reads as civic improvement to one audience and conspiratorial control to another — the rhetoric of post-policy publics.
• CANDY: Ted Cruz’s warning that the UN plan would abolish ‘golf courses, grazing pastures and paved roads’ is a bonkers, tweetable political quote.