We’ve got water up the wazoo. We’ve got failing drainage systems. We’ve got ever more frequent street flooding. We’ve got salt water pushing into the aquifer.

Rising sea levels are already a measurable phenomenon in South Florida. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that we’ve got more — much more — to come.

Last fall, the Florida Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University warned local governments in a report that they face a daunting challenge in the coming decades. “As a consequence of climate change impacts, Southeast Florida water utilities will face a number of challenges, including inundation of low-lying coastal areas; saltwater contamination of well fields; malfunction of septic tanks and drainage systems; reduction in soil capacity to store rainfall, and reduced efficiency of storm water drainage canals and flood gates.”

It would amount to malpractice for local governments to ignore this stuff. They’ve got to face reality.

But on Tuesday, as Broward County commissioners considered the effects of climate change in county planning, they faced something quite apart from reality.

A cabal of the weird showed up to warn that the county had been sucked into a United Nations conspiracy. That global warming was a hoax, part of the U.N.’s secret plan to impose “one world order.” The conspiracy theory evolved from a 1992 U.N. resolution, known as Agenda 21, that encouraged nations to use fewer resources and conserve open land.

“They truly believe that we’re under siege by some U.N. force seeking world domination,” said Commissioner Stacy Ritter. “They believe that the slogan, ‘Think globally, act locally,’ comes out of some one world government conspiracy.”

The commissioners approved eight separate items within a “framework for integrating the economic, environmental, and social factors of climate change.” Before each vote, the protestors lined up, six and eight deep, to repeat their conspiracy theories.

The problem is that even if there was a U.N. conspiracy, it’s difficult to imagine how such a famously inefficient institution could pull it off. This is the same outfit, mind you, that has dawdled for a year, unable to figure out how to stop civilian massacres in Syria. “When was the last time the U.N. did anything?” Ritter asked.

None of this stuff was new. In February, the New York Times reported, “Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.”

They’ve argued against the approval of smart meters on home appliances: “The real job of smart meters is to spy on you and control you.”

Even against bike trails. That’s undoubtedly the very invasion route that army of lying climate scientists and sneaky water managers and U.N. soldiers will use when they come pedaling down America’s bike lanes on their way to one-world government.