The Agenda 21 logo
by James A. Bacon
Finally, someone has responded to a bizarre sub-current of the conservative movement, the anti-Agenda 21 crowd. Wendell Cox, Ronald D. Utt, and Brett D. Schaefer with the Heritage Foundation have published a paper arguing that the anti-Agenda 21 movement is a distraction from the larger task of opposing “destructive smart growth programs.”
A handful of activists, including here in Virginia, have been raising the alarm in conservative circles about Agenda 21, a plan of action adopted by the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development calling upon governments at all levels to support sustainable development. Conspiratorial-minded anti-Agenda 21 activists have conflated all local “smart growth” movements, regardless of philosophical stripe, with the social-engineering approach of Agenda 21. They have made it difficult to have an intelligent conversation in some conservative circles about land use issues.
“If opponents focus excessively on Agenda 21,” write the Heritage scholars in a gentle reproach, “it is much more likely that homegrown smart-growth policies that undermine the quality of life, personal choice, and property rights in American communities will be implemented by local, state, and federal authorities at the behest of environmental groups and other vested interests. Preventing American implementation of Agenda 21 should therefore be viewed as only one part of a broader effort to convince U.S. government officials to repeal destructive smart-growth programs and prevent the enactment of new ones.”
It’s good to see conservative scholars try to rein in the anti-Agenda 21 zealots, who only muddy issues relating to transportation, land use and growth management. The zealots have thrived, I believe, because most Tea Partiers are new to politics and public policy, know next to nothing about how transportation and land use decisions are made and find the conspiratorial Agenda 21 narrative to be vaguely plausible, while responsible critics of smart growth have, until now, retained an embarrassed silence for fear of offending conservative constituencies.
So, I applaud the Heritage trio for writing the paper. However, I do have to take issue with the paper’s underlying assumption that everyone within the broader smart growth movement, from Greenpeace to New Urbanists, favors the mobilization of government power to impose a vision of squeezing Americans into compact communities and taking away their cars. Without question, more radical elements of the smart growth movement would happily trample on property rights and individual liberties in pursuit of their utopian ideal. But many do not. The fact is, “smart growth” encompasses a wide spectrum of views.
More to the point for this blog, the organizations promoting “smart growth” in Virginia are not big-government liberals who seek to bludgeon Virginians into being environmentally virtuous. Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time hob-nobbing with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Piedmont Environmental Council (a Bacon’s Rebellion sponsor), the Virginia Conservation League and others, and I can say with total confidence that (1) they are not taking their marching orders from the United Nations and (2) many would disagree with Agenda 21 on many of the particulars.
Indeed, I would classify myself a member of the smart growth parade, though I’m certainly not representative of the mainstream. I have devoted this blog to showing how the application of the principles of free markets, fiscal conservatism and respect for property rights can be reconciled with smart growth ideas. I find considerable overlap in my thinking and that of many smart growth activists in Virginia.
Tea Party activists in Virginia need to switch their focus from the Agenda 21 boogie man to understanding the way growth and development issues play out in the real world. There is no such thing as a “free market” in real estate development. Land use is more heavily regulated (by zoning codes and comprehensive plans) and subsidized (through transportation policies, infrastructure funding, housing subsidies) than almost any other sector of the American economy. Only the education and health care sectors, also known for being dysfunctional, are worse. Politics in the statehouse and the courthouse have been dominated for years by business interests seeking to manipulate the system to their advantage, stymied mainly by anti-growth (not smart growth) populists who make things worse by adding layers of heavy-handed and arbitrary restrictions.
Many of the smart growth supporters I talk to in Virginia view themselves as fiscal conservatives. They oppose wasting money on extravagant highway projects that enrich land speculators and developers. (Some, I’ll concede, fail to show the same skepticism regarding extravagant rail projects that also enrich land speculators and developers.) The thinking of the smart growth movement has evolved far beyond that of the old anti-growth populists. Virginia smart growthers (smarties?) do preach a vision of creating more compact, walkable communities with access to mass transit shared by all smart growthers (and Agenda 21) but they are more inclined to convert people through positive examples of successful development than to ram their ideas down the throats of a reluctant populace.
Be that as it may, I am hopeful that the Heritage broadside signals the marginalization of the anti-Agenda 21 conspiracy mongers in conservative circles and a revival of intelligent debate over how to handle complex issues relating to growth and development.
