agenda 21 and crank magnetism

What with WAVES, and anti-1080 groups, and Rethink Fluoride (which, like FFNZ, opposes water fluoridation), there’s quite a lot of ‘alternative’ activity on-line these days. It’s actually quite interesting to look at the similarities that you can see in attitudes & opinions expressed on those sites.

I mean, Agenda 21, anyone? Back when Making Sense of Fluoride was first set up, we had a regular commenter (hi, Ray!) who was most insistent that fluoridation was all part of an Agenda 21 plan to depopulate the planet (& also to dumb us all down).

Now, here in the Tron the City Council is a signatory to Agenda 21. In fact, back when we signed up to it, I had a look at what we were – as a city – committing to. It turns out that Agenda 21 is a non-binding United Nation action plan that sets out goals for sustainable development at a global level. Each participating local government body’s expected to draw up its own, locally-applicable, document.

The original UN document has 4 main sections, the first of which is Economic & Social Dimensions of sustainability. This section discusses achieving a more sustainable human population – which, in Ray’s opinion, seemed to mean “depopulation”.  In fact, if you google the phrase “what does agenda 21 say about depopulation”, you will find a veritable cornucopia of fear-filled beliefs. Mind you, I’m not sure how many of those espousing these beliefs have actually read the source document. It has a lot to say about things that might slow (& even stabilise) human population growth (eg improving access to reliable contraceptives), and the need to understand cultural norms and behaviours and how these are related to demographic dynamics, technology, natural resources and ecological life support systems. And it’s quite explicit that

Awareness should be increased at all levels concerning the need to optimize the sustainable use of resources through efficient resource management, taking into account the development needs of the populations of developing countries.

This is rather different from a nefarious master plan to kill us all off!

However, the belief that it is seems to be widespread across the ‘anti’ groups. For example, commenters on the WAVES Facebook page seem to think that vaccines will result in depopulation:

And here’s Brown again:

What Gates has actually said is that global uptake of vaccination may well see the world’s population growth slow, or even stop, as people may well have fewer children if they know that most will survive into adulthood. Scientists are somewhat divided on how likely that is to happen.

Commenters on MSoF and on the Fluoride Free pages have also talked about depopulation resulting from fluoridation, along with claims that fluoride in municipal water supplies is intended to ‘dumb us all down’. (They obviously haven’t heard of the Flynn effect.) And some in the anti-1080 groups take the same line – that 1080 will reduce both our intelligence and our numbers, and is used to that effect.

All I can say is that they may wish to think again, in the light of evidence that their supposed depopulation agenda is obviously not going well. (In 1966, when we got serious about vaccinating to eradicate smallpox, the global population stood at 3.4 billion.)