Thread: Tea Party Booting Agenda 21

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Sustainable growth: Forward-thinking state mandate or misguided environmental mantra?




By Alex Breitler

Record Staff Writer

September 18, 2011 12:00 AM

For some, sustainable growth means jobs near their homes. It means easier access to trains or buses or bicycle trails. It means filling in cities instead of paving over surrounding farmland.

For retired engineer Ed Miller of Lodi, "sustainable" is a buzzword born of a 1992 United Nations document that lays out a worldwide vision threatening the sovereignty of the United States and the American way of life.

While cities across the state begin attempting to comply with new state regulations promoting sustainable growth, critics like Miller - many of them tea party members - are citing the U.N.'s "Agenda 21" in an effort to persuade elected officials to back off planning that would satisfy the new state laws.

And in one recent case, at least, those elected officials are listening.

On Sept. 7, the Lodi City Council delayed approving $120,000 in federal grants to write a climate action plan after hearing from almost a dozen activists, most of whom cited Agenda 21. The council asked city staff for more information about Agenda 21 and whether other cities are, in fact, digging in their heels against the new regulations.

City Manager Rad Bartlam made it clear at that meeting that if the council doesn't approve the $120,000, the city will pay for the plan eventually out of its own pocket.

And Lodi residents need look only a few miles south to find out what the state might do to those who ignore the law.

The Sierra Club sued Stockton in 2008 over its growth-inducing General Plan. Then-Attorney General Jerry Brown threatened to join the suit; a settlement required Stockton write its own plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which it is doing now.

Miller, however, takes his stand on principle.

"Cities need to band together and push back on the state and say, 'No, we don't want to do that, and if you want to sue every city in the state, have at it,' " he told the Lodi council.

Speaking out

The tea party's growing voice and, in some cases, influence over environmental policy, doesn't stop in Lodi.

The Mother Lode Tea Party successfully lobbied the Amador County Board of Supervisors to end its association with ICLEI, an international nongovernmental organization that assists more than 1,220 cities or counties in planning environmentally sustainable solutions.

In Calaveras County, one tea party member in March protested the Board of Supervisors' awarding of a contract to an engineering firm whose website mentioned sustainability.

Most recently, tea party activists in Contra Costa County dominated a May meeting of One Bay Area, a coalition working to comply with Senate Bill 375, the 2008 law requiring metropolitan areas to write "sustainable communities strategies."

Many of these activists refer to the mysterious sounding Agenda 21. But several elected officials and policymakers contacted for this story said they had never even heard of the document until last week's events in Lodi.

A summary of the massive report describes it as a "comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area" in which humans affect the environment.

The report was adopted by 178 governments at the U.N.'s Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. George H.W. Bush signed it, and his successors in the White House have likewise supported it.

Agenda 21 is not legally binding and does not threaten American sovereignty, said Gregory Weber, a professor at the University of the Pacific's McGeorge School of Law.

It does incorporate a changing philosophy about what development is, or should be, Weber said.

For most of human history, the focus has been on development solely for economic purposes, he said. More recent thinking is that development should also include social and ecological considerations.

Agenda 21 wasn't the beginning of "sustainable development," but it did bring together the nations of the world to affirm their commitment to it.

The notion that Agenda 21 would diminish U.S. sovereignty is a "conspiracy theory," Weber said.

"Agenda 21 is, in effect, an aspirational document," he said. "There's quite a lot, I can tell, that the tea party people are unhappy about in the document - it is not their vision for the world. I'm not entirely sure what their vision for the world is."

'Really wild stuff'

Ed Miller's vision of Agenda 21, should it be fully implemented, is that people from small towns would be concentrated into densely urban areas like the Bay Area or Los Angeles. Places like Lodi would cease to exist.

While some champion dense urban development as the means to preserve farmland, Miller said just the opposite would happen under Agenda 21. Farms would go bust; the open, rural lands in the San Joaquin Valley would be converted to wilderness where human land use is prohibited.

People would be demoted to the same level as animals or rocks or trees or blades of grass. Private property rights - a core value for Miller and others - would be undermined.

He believes this all sprouts from the "religion" of environmentalism and climate change, the science of which is denied by Miller and many other tea party advocates.

He said the whole thing sounds like a "really bad Hollywood movie."

"This is really, really wild stuff," Miller said in an interview. "I sort of sit here and I have to put my mind around it. You think this has got to be a hoax. Nobody can be this crazy. But apparently, they are."

Other speakers at the Lodi meeting questioned climate change, deviating into such topics as how many bathrooms are contained in Al Gore's house and whether he eats steak. Their fundamental message, however, was that Agenda 21 is slowly being infused into every level of American government.

Sustainable growth

That brings us to the Smart Valley Places Compact.

The compact includes 14 cities in the San Joaquin Valley - Lodi, Stockton and Manteca are among them - along with California State University, Fresno, and other organizations. It's an offshoot of the Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, formed by then-Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005.

The compact's goal is to form a regional plan for sustainable growth over the next 20 years.

To get started, Smart Valley Places was awarded $4 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That money is being distributed to the 14 cities to help write climate action plans or to come up with other initiatives to comply with state law.

Lodi joined the compact last year, but it balked when it came time this month to use its share of the money.

At the recent council meeting, activist Kim Parigoris read a list of the partnership's goals: building a 21st century transportation system, growing a diverse and globally competitive economy, creating a model public education system, developing high-quality health and human services, cleaning the air and implementing a framework for sustainable growth.

"If that isn't total control of our lives, I don't know what is," Parigoris told the Lodi council.

She said the language on the compact's website appeared to be "full of nothing but Agenda 21 rhetoric."

No so, Smart Valley Places Vice Chairman Mike Dozier said.

"I had to go Google 'Agenda 21' when I first heard this," Dozier said. "It's hard to believe that what we're doing is likened to socialism. I'm baffled by that. I'm almost offended by it, because I don't consider myself to be a socialist ... None of us wears a red star."

While Lodi debates whether to use the grant money, Stockton has already accepted $200,000 for its climate action plan. And in Manteca, a planning official said the city has committed to accepting - but has not yet authorized spending - $200,000 to help fund a bicycle master plan, a climate action plan and work to comply with state flood regulations.

No one complained about Agenda 21 in Stockton. In Manteca, the only reference was made by longtime gadfly Georgianna Reichelt at the Sept. 6 City Council meeting.

As for Tracy, one Lodi activist pointed out the south county city is not participating in the compact.

But that's not because of Agenda 21, Tracy Director of Development and Engineering Services Andrew Malik said. It's because the city was already pushing ahead on its own sustainability plan, which is already finished.

Bottom line, the Valley compact is not an effort to implement Agenda 21, Dozier said.

"It comes down to having bicycle trails and jogging trails, walkable communities, things like that," he said. "It's to have better neighborhoods. It's to have all the things you need within a neighborhood.

"The whole purpose of Smart Valley Places was to have the cities assist each other," he said. "I guess that's socialism. I just thought it was being good neighbors."

Environmental activist Eric Parfrey of Stockton said he's surprised there hasn't been more pushing back against smart-growth laws, given the hard times.

"It's disappointing that a lot of the recent opponents seem to be basing their opposition on just folklore and not science," he said. "We seem to be entering a period where people are very suspicious of intellectuals and scientific theory."

Not picking a fight

Lodi's not about to take on the United Nations, said Mayor Bob Johnson, whose council voted 4-1 to learn more about Agenda 21 before using the grant money.

"That's promulgated by something that's well beyond our pay grade," Johnson said. "That's an international issue that I'm not too sure the city of Lodi and the City Council wants to wrap our arms around it."

But like the tea party critics, Johnson worries about burdensome state and federal regulations. And he wants to know if other cities are declining to participate, as those critics claim.

"The thing that intrigued me is, are there communities willing to step to the plate for whatever reason - whether you believe in Agenda 21 or disbelieve in Agenda 21 - to say, 'Enough is enough?' " Johnson said. "If we have to do this, to go through the process, that's one thing. But is there an alternative that puts an end to what I consider an absolute ramrodding (of legislation) down the cities' throats?"

The awakening!!!!!!