Holdren Sought Making U.S. Government Subject To U.N.-Run Apparatus

White House science czar John Holdren has called for the United States to surrender sovereignty to a "Planetary Regime" armed with sufficient military power to enforce population limits on nations as a means of preventing a wide range of perceived dangers from global eco-disasters involving Earth's natural resources, climate, atmosphere and oceans. Reporters have obtained and reviewed a copy of the 1970s college textbook "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment " that Holdren co-authored with Malthusian population alarmist Paul R. Ehrlich and Ehrlich's wife, Anne. The authors argued that involuntary birth-control measures, including forced sterilization, may be necessary and morally acceptable under extreme conditions, such as widespread famine brought about by "climate change." On page 943, the authors recommended the creation of a "Planetary Regime" created to act as an "international superagency for population, resources, and environment." The authors argued, "Such a Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist." (Emphasis in original text.) In the next sentence, the authors specified the following conclusion: "Thus, the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and the oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans." Arguing in their 1970s textbook for passage of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty and for a proposed complimentary United Nations Law of the Atmosphere Treaty, Holdren believed the Planetary Regime could be developed out of the U.N. administrative apparatus established to administer the treaties as well as the United Nations Environment Program and various unspecified U.N. population agencies.Holdren acknowledged the U.S. would have to surrender sovereignty to the Planetary Regime and that the Planetary Regime would need military arms for the envisioned super-government to succeed. Writing on page 917, the authors expanded the concept to envision "an armed international organization" that would function as "a global analogue of a police force" to enforce global nuclear disarmament. "The first step necessarily involves partial surrender of sovereignty to an international organization," the authors contended, qualifying their conclusion by noting "as long as most people fail to comprehend the magnitude of the danger, that step will be impossible." Holdren clearly specified the Planetary Regime would be charged with global population control. On page 943, Holdren continued: "The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime should have some power to enforce the agreed limits." The St. Petersburg Times' fact-check website, Politifact.com, argued that in his Senate confirmation hearings, Holdren disavowed "optimal population" targets, a central thesis of the 1970s textbook, as a proper role of government. While Holdren may have abandoned "optimal population" targets as a principle of public policy, an address he gave as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, subsequently published in Science Magazine in January 2008, shows he has adopted instead the standard of "sustainable well-being" as a guiding principle that could be utilized to set targets for acceptable population growth. In that article, Holdren listed "continuing population growth" as a shortfall making the goal of realizing "sustainable well-being," a point he supported by footnoting Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book "The Population Bomb," thereby linking his current thinking with his 1970s-era thinking. In that footnote, Holdren wrote that the "elementary but discomforting truth" of Ehrlich's 1968 book "may account for the vast amount of ink, paper, and angry energy that has been expended in vain to refute it." Holdren's "sustainable well-being" appears a nearly identical concept to what is known as the United Nation's "Agenda 21" articulating the concept of "sustainable development" that is currently institutionalized in the Division for Sustainable Development of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.