The EPA has decided that it needs more power over the economy, our living spaces, and our lives. They are about to declare that the US should be on put on a path of "sustainable development" -- just like any other third world country -- and want the regulatory authority to make it happen.

Fox News:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to change how it analyzes problems and makes decisions, in a way that will give it vastly expanded power to regulate businesses, communities and ecosystems in the name of "sustainable development," the centerpiece of a global United Nations conference slated for Rio de Janeiro next June.

The major focus of the EPA thinking is a weighty study the agency commissioned last year from the National Academies of Science. Published in August, the study, entitled "Sustainability and the U.S. EPA," cost nearly $700,000 and involved a team of a dozen outside experts and about half as many National Academies staff.

Its aim: how to integrate sustainability "as one of the key drivers within the regulatory responsibilities of EPA." The panel who wrote the study declares part of its job to be "providing guidance to EPA on how it might implement its existing statutory authority to contribute more fully to a more sustainable-development trajectory for the United States."

This is the logical, inevitable outgrowth of state power. And what they propose should send a shiver down the spine of anyone who cares about liberty:

Jackson compared the new approach, it would articulate to "the difference between treating disease and pursuing wellness." It was, she said, "a new opportunity to show how environmentally protective and sustainable we can be," and would affect "every aspect" of EPA's work.

According to the study itself, the adoption of the new "sustainability framework" will make the EPA more "anticipatory" in its approach to environmental issues, broaden its focus to include both social and economic as well as environmental "pillars," and "strengthen EPA as an organization and a leader in the nation's progress toward a sustainable future."

Whatever EPA does with its suggestions, the study emphasizes, will be "discretionary." But the study urges EPA to "create a new culture among all EPA employees," and hire an array of new experts in order to bring the sustainability focus to every corner of the agency and its operations. Changes will move faster "as EPA's intentions and goals in sustainability become clear to employees," the study says.

The international "sustainable development" freaks want to do stuff like control the size of populations, minimize industrial activity, destroy the corporation, make governments responsible for literally everything, and give the UN a bigger role in economic activity. They believe that a "sustainable" world population is about 900 million. What their plans are for the other 6 billion of us have not been announced.

This has to be nipped in the bud. Ordinarily, congress would bring the EPA administrator in for a tongue lashing. But as long as Obama is president, the EPA will have carte blanche to gather as much power as they can and traditional American liberties be damned.