Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists are silly

To quote RationalWiki, "Agenda 21 is a set of hopeful guidelines for environmental action and social justice established by the United Nations in 1992 at a conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[1] It sets out a variety of goals for public policy at all levels and for civic action by non-governmental organizations. These include fair trade practices, sustainable energy and urban development (i.e. more efficient zoning), and debt reduction for the developing world. Like most such sets of guidelines, it was happily agreed upon and happily ignored for many years, except for ne'er-do-wells like Sweden."

Multiple sets of conspiracy theorists picked up on Agenda 21 (perhaps because its name sounds like the kind of thing a Bond villian would come up with?). Beliefs about it include that it's a secret plan to create a socialist world government. I responded to one such conspiracy theorist recently, who posted (amongst other things) that Agenda 21 is designed to "accelerate the death of ~40 million people in the UK, ~150 million in the USA". When challenged on this, he responded:

Agenda 21 is aimed at creating sustainable economies using no fossil fuels. That means subsistence agriculture, over two generations going back to the farming methods of the 18th Century. This is because you can't have tractors based on batteries and windmill power: gotta be horses or oxen. And you can't have artificial fertilisers so yields drop dramatically. This is why sustainable UK population in the information pages of Population Matters is specified at ~20 million.

Putting aside the idea that the only way to achieve a lower population is to kill off existing people (rather than having a lower birth rate and letting population fall naturally), I responded:

Agenda 21 only mentions fossil fuels in two paragraphs, and nowhere does it say that they have to be 100% eliminated. The first relevant paragraph starts as follows:

"The basic and ultimate objective of this programme area is to reduce adverse effects on the atmosphere from the energy sector by promoting policies or programmes, as appropriate, to increase the contribution of environmentally sound and cost-effective energy systems, particularly new and renewable ones, through less polluting and more efficient energy production, transmission, distribution and use."

It follows with:

"This objective should reflect the need for equity, adequate energy supplies and increasing energy consumption in developing countries, and should take into consideration the situations of countries that are highly dependent on income generated from the production, processing and export, and/or consumption of fossil fuels and associated energy-intensive products and/or the use of fossil fuels for which countries have serious difficulties in switching to alternatives, and the situations of countries highly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change."

To express the relevant points more concisely - we should move as much as possible towards less polluting forms of energy production and more efficient use of energy, but the need for adequate energy supplies must be taken into account.

The second relevant paragraph states:

"rural energy policies and technologies should promote a mix of cost-effective fossil and renewable energy sources that is itself sustainable and ensures sustainable agricultural development"

Sounds pretty pragmatic to me - not at all the doomsday scenario of returning to the 18th century.