Moderator Debra Potter: This teleconference has over 400 participating organizations at 39 sites. Experts agree that meeting the needs of both people and environment is important, but for communities to thrive, they must adopt the principles of environmentally sustainable development. The 1987 Brundtland report defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of the future generations. To promote a healthy environment, citizens must be involved.

David Brower, President of Earth Island Institute: To achieve our goal of sustainable development, some things must grow; others, such as pollution, waste and poverty, must not. You can have development without growth, but not development with growth at this time on this planet.

Christine Ervin, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Energy: The term growth is meaningless, the question is what kind of growth. The myth of having to make a tradeoff between development and environment is outdated.

Dr. Michael Stegman, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): We have found connecting residents with opportunity is more important than growth, a rising tide does not necessarily lift all boats.

Michael Collins, Thomas Jefferson Sustainability Council, Virginia: Growth is not the issue, the key is maintenance of quality of life for ourselves and the planet. Growth may create wealth, the key is what kind of wealth do we want?

Question from Tennessee: We don't want a no-growth strategy, can we have a quality-growth strategy?

Emanuel Cleaver, Mayor of Kansas City: In the movie "Wall Street," Michael Douglas says growth is great. But some people say growth is bad. I believe there is a nexus between growth and environment, we need healthy growth in tune with the environment. A healthy environment with no growth will not meet the needs of the people. We must have both, but we must have a lessening of greed, municipalities must lose some tax dollars at times to prevent unhealthy growth.

Brower: The United States has used more resources in the last 50 years than all the people of the world have consumed in previous history. We are suffering from greed problem.

Cleaver: We cannot take things out of balance, the nations of the world are going to need development, but we need to take the environment into account. Kansas City takes pride in being an attainment city, we believe we can have sensible growth within our limits.

Brower: We have to think of other methods to meet people's needs. The U.S. has squandered the resources of the world. For example, our former 6,000 miles of salmon streams are down to 300 miles.

Question from Minneapolis: Who will form the vision for America?

Stegman: There is a national role in any area of conflict, presidential leadership in articulating a national vision, and we need bring about a political consensus to conform to that vision. This June in Istanbul will be the world UN conference on cities, discussing how to meet the rapid urbanization of the world, national leadership is essential that we not compromise the Rio principles on environment and development.

Collins: We are looking at horizontal spatial and temporal connections. We see that localities and states must have partnerships with the federal government, e.g. categorical grants or integrated programs. If you are talking about sustainability, people need to talk about a common vision, including the faith communities, women, poor, businesses, etc. Government's role must be to listen, to form partnerships, to dissolve the categorical lines from the past.

Question from Piscataway, NJ: Some utilities are taking steps to reduce global warming, what are the most effective ways to proceed?

Ervin: Yes, the utilities are responding, already over 600 utilities have signed agreements to reduce greenhouse gasses emissions. Oregon was first state to do an inventory of gas emissions and develop programs to reduce them. In addressing this issue, governments, utilities, and consumers all have roles. Energy produces more environmental damage than any other activity. In some areas state and local governments team with the utilities to retrofit buildings to make them more energy-efficient. The Rebuild program leverages $60 of local funding to every federal dollar invested.

Question from Arkansas: How can we prevent development of farms that are put up for sale?

Collins: A healthy community means more than an absence of disease. In our area we began in 1991 to do studies on our local environment with the objective to enhance both the environment and the economy, to have both wealth and health. Our Council is in a 3 year mission to define a vision, indicators, bench marks, etc. We are looking at sustainability accords, using comparative risk assessment, to determine the most important long-term multi-sectoral issues to deal with. With a community consensus land use approaches can be helpful.

Stegman: In the abstract, housing is not good or bad, but today we must involve local, regional and state planning bodies to totally rethink the foundations for local growth patterns.

Cleaver: In the past we have made tragic errors in development. For example, the development of circumferential highways has encouraged growth into the suburbs, leaving poverty in the inner city. But the suburbs are now experiencing the problems they tried to flee.

Ervin: Building highways became the end rather than the means to the purpose of providing transportation. We have designed our communities so only the auto is suitable transportation.

Cleaver: We have focused on moving automobiles rather than moving people.

Question from Yuma, AZ: How can we reduce the foreign use of pesticides that are banned in the U.S.?

Brower: We seem to want world trade even without justice, or environment care. We are in a circle of poison, outlined so well by Rachel Carson in her book. We need to look at stabilizing population and consumerism at the same time. During the period 1972 to 1992 the U.S. put one-seventh of the world's soil out of commission. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." There are opportunities for meeting people's needs that are sustainable, but the earth cannot take any more of the treatment we have been subjecting her to. We need to redesign our systems, because our previous systems did not consider the consequences of our impact on the environment.

Stegman: Stabilizing population in the urban sense means stopping the leaving of jobs from inner cities. We need to not extend out the infra-structure and further pauperize our cities.

Cleaver: We have a war between cities and suburbs over attracting new businesses. Both are giving tax breaks and reducing revenue for maintaining the infrastructure. If we don't stop this war the suburbs will weep tomorrow just as are the cities today.

Question from Oklahoma: How do military installations become more involved in this issue?

Stegman: Military installations should be good neighbors. The Department of Defense is cooperating with communities on environmental issues -- there are restoration advisory boards that ought to work with installations in their area. Our consolidated planning process for base re-use can work well today, with our decentralized approach.

Brower: The military can help restore the environment on their installations.

Potter: The military has helped some towns to become more energy efficient.

Ervin: We have designated our Denver office of the Department of Energy as the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development to provide assistance to communities. We provide an Internet home page which lists 70 studies of environment communities, sources of grants for communities, examples of sustainable city codes, ordinances, a technical manual on how to construct green buildings, etc. This is not a grant-making program, it is an educational program only. It will promote practices recommended by the President's Council on Sustainable Development.

Collins: We would like staff from the Department of Energy to help local communities. Virginia is interested in solar energy, can you help us?

Ervin: Bill Becker is heading up the Denver Center of the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development and can be reached at 800 357-7732. We have many programs to could help communities, we are starting with Denver and Albuquerque to offer a menu of programs to meet community needs.

Question from St. Louis: The brownfield sites in cities, where industries left contaminated earth that requires cleanup, are forcing developers to build in the suburbs. How can we solve these problems?

Stegman: The problem of developing brownfields is critical. Before now cleaning up brownfields was not eligible for funding under the Community Development Block Grant program, but now it is. We are proposing in the 1997 budget a performance fund attached to the block grant to compensate communities that do well in brownfield clean up. Also last week the President urged the Congress to approve a second round of Empowerment Zones which will help cleanup brownfields.

Cleaver: The Empowerment Zone is very important. We need funding to clean up brownfields. We have two sites in Kansas City that will produce 1500 jobs, and we also need to develop industries in rural areas that have brownfields. The requirement for huge public participation is key.

Question from Portland, OR: What changes in the tax code are needed to help sustainability?

Cleaver: We need to have more money go to cities than to the federal government. There is no need to revise the tax code for cities as long as we have Enterprise Zones to have reduced state and federal taxes in those areas.

Question from Seattle: What are new ways to use present technology rather than waiting for future technology?

Collins: There is a lot of discussion about population issues, the question is what kind of technology can be sustainable. Appropriate technology is helpful.

Ervin: We need both use of present technology and development of new technology. We need integrated technology to meet the need of the future, but today's technology needs to get into the marketplace. For example, a simple technology like orienting your house to face the sun could reduce energy use by 15%. Using light-colored roofs and planting trees could be the most effective way to reduce air-conditioning costs. If everyone did this in Los Angeles, it would be equivalent to taking 1.5 million cars off the road.

Cleaver: We need to reframe the discussion. It ought not to be economy vs. environment, but to be sustainability vs. stupidity. We must search for common ground, because we all lose if the environment goes downhill.

Stegman: At the June United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in Istanbul, there is a "Best Practices" competition for the most effective ideas for improving the quality of life in towns and cities. The 25 winners in the U.S. were announced two weeks ago at the UN, there will be over 500 announced in Istanbul. We have an Internet Web site for sharing experiences on a global basis.

Question from Abilene, TX: How can we move away from personal auto use?

Ervin: We need to address issues of both demand and supply. The very low price of gasoline has fueled the demand for auto use. We also need cars to be as clean-burning and efficient as possible. We could triple the gasoline efficiency of the average car. Currently only 20% of the energy in the gasoline reaches the wheels.

Brower; Autos have severely damaged the environment of communities and the world. We should add those environmental and health costs into the price of gas, which is happening in other countries.

Question from Wright Patterson Air Force Base: If sustainable development is not a fad, why is the environment on the budget chopping block?

Stegman: Sustainable development is not a fad. The President is urging getting to a balanced budget in a way that protects our priorities, including the environment, which is responsibility of all of us.

Ervin: The support of environment should be a bipartisan issue, because it is in the interest of us and our children.

Brower: The question is, "What is the long term cost if we don't protect the environment now?" I can save money in the short term by not sending my children to school, but what is the long term cost. If I don't put oil in my car it saves me money, but not for long.

Question from Golden, CO: How can local communities encourage sustainable businesses?

Cleaver: We must develop a waste exchange economy, such as businesses that make recyclables into usable products. This gets minorities and women into a new area of the economy and deals with economic and social problems. We also need to create opportunities for governments to win. In Kansas City we have put out a request for proposals for a materials recovery facility that could produce hundreds of jobs and clean up the environment.

Question from Jacksonville FL: How do you enlist groups opposed to environmental efforts?

Brower: Let's get conscience back into corporate behavior by stimulating the conscience of investors and stockholders.

Stegman: Quality of life issues are important for businesses. When the marketplace values good environmental quality, behavior will change, but it will be difficult. Businesses need incentives to do the right thing. Our government is creating the climate for good cooperation with business.

Collins: Part of the problem with sustainability is it is not seen as a total system. Twenty years ago, human health efforts concentrated on diseases, now we look at sustainability of the total person. For years we have been building roads, but now we see transportation as a systemic problem. The issue is what kind of economic development do we need for sustainability?

Stegman: The concept of sustainable development is relatively new, although Seattle and Portland have been doing well for years. We are trying to change national values. It seems there is more experience dealing with sustainable development in an international context than here in the U.S.

Question from Phoenix, AZ: How urgent is it to develop sustainable communities?

Brower: It needs to happen as soon as possible.

Ervin: The Dutch Shell Company forecast that renewable energy will meet 50% of the world's energy needs by 2040, so why not move as quickly as possible in that direction now?

Collins: Our population working group is looking at the erosion of our quality of life, such as air quality, traffic congestion, etc. We find it is easier to measure sustainability than unsustainability.

Potter: How do we measure sustainability?

Cleaver: Just continue to address the problems confronting your community as best as you can. But yet Congress is doing dumb things like ending the Urban Mass Transit Administration which puts more cars on the road. We need to make funding mass transit a priority.

Brower: There are boundaries around cities, creating injustice by racial discrimination.

Stegman: The conditions in inner cities are getting increasingly desperate, the clock is running out to increase opportunities, education is in a crisis.

Ervin: It is dangerous to think of sustainability as a fixed place, because it is always evolving. I believe if you enhance economic well being, environmental well being and quality of life, then you are sustainable. There are some strange ideas around, like the article in the Atlantic Monthly, October 1995, that says crime is good for the economy.

Potter: How are we doing on green accounting?

Stegman: We are providing a databook on indicators, with hundreds of indicators for every community, so communities can define success according to their own values. We have tried to increase gasoline taxes and we proposed a BTU tax as ways to reflect real costs, but they have not had sufficient support.

Question from Fort Drum, NY: Is there any pending federal legislation to increase federal and state cooperation in integrated resource management?

Ervin: We need to enhance awareness and commitment to opportunities for integrated resource management. The Department of Defense, is the largest single energy user in the U.S. We have a goal to reduce energy use by 30% over the next ten years. The Federal Energy Management program is working on this. For example, Ft. Luce in Washington state is reducing its energy bill by $1 million per year at no cost through a partnership with local utilities in which they advance the capital to put in energy saving technology.

Stegman: We are reinventing government to make it possible to move federal funds among different categories. We are also consolidating offices to be more in partnership with communities.

Cleaver: Every community is doing its own version of reinventing government. In Kansas City we are increasing partnership for sustainability. Our vice mayor works with the County to consolidation services to save money.

Brower: Reinventing government has been going on for a long time -- the Declaration of Independence was a way of reinventing government.

Question from Camp Lejune, North Carolina: What level of government should discuss sustainability?

Stegman: It should start at the community and regional level. At the federal level we are not imposing solutions, but providing flexibility in response to the community level.

Cleaver: Local government is on center stage, because we deal with problems long before they get to the federal level. We have a program "Bridging the Gap," with 500 companies, including 5000 people involved in a voluntary recycling program. Solutions should come from the local level, rather than be imposed on the local.

Brower: It is not either/or, it is both/and.

Ervin: Sustainable development happens on a block by block basis, but it needs partnership with the federal government.

Potter: For more information, contact Renew America at www: soltice.crest/ renew_america or call 800-922-RENEW.

Los Angeles Panel Discussion at CalPoly Pomona

Moderator Dr. Leroy Graymer, Director of Public Policy, UCLA Extension: How can we make sustainability work, what are some incentives to change the planning time horizon to consider future generations, so people and organizations receive some reward for being sustainable?

Christine Bogdanovich, Southern California Director of Global Cities Project: Global Cities is an environmental information service to help cities progress environmentally and economically. We provide examples from what other cities have done. Information is the key to define what needs to be done and develop good implementation plans. We are preparing a database and putting it on line.

Rick Cole, Southern California Director of the Local Government Commission (LGC): The LGC includes 400 elected city and county officials throughout the state. Local government is one of the fulcrums for sustainability efforts. We are related to the International Conference for Local Environment Initiatives, which shows us the variety of approaches around the world. The government of Jakarta, Indonesia reports that their recycling program is based on the 20,000 people who live on the dump. We want to support people to take on the holistic task of building sustainable healthy local communities.

Kathleen Gildred, Executive Director of the Southern California Council on Environment and Development: SCCED is a local follow-up to the UN Earth Summit in 1992. We bring different sectors together for sustainability, knowing a healthy environment requires a healthy economy. As the logo of Earth Summit said "It's in our hands." We cannot expect national governments to adopt policies until they are proven to work on the local level. The key is partnerships among the sectors to sustainably manage our resources.

We have held six conferences that have defined principles, challenges, measurable objectives, strategies, and tactics for the region. The follow-up work is done in task forces that bring experts together in key issue areas and develop policies for the region.

The Transportation Task Force identified lack of public participation in regional transportation planning as a major problem, so we brought in the Surface Transportation Planning Project (STPP) and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and have many local organizations involved. The Water Task Force has prepared a paper on water recycling and proposed a resolution which has been adopted by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). The Waste Task Force pulled together a high level thinktank on green waste recycling and is working on information sharing between recycling coordinators and siting urban composting facilities.

Our local City Summit prepared ideas for Los Angeles as well as the UN City Summit, including goals, measurable objectives and strategies and are looking to implement the ideas.

Graymer: How can we move ahead on the transportation issue?

Question from Audience: How much authority does the federal government have over local zoning laws? The Clean Air Act, if enforced, would have closed 20% of every parking facility.

Graymer: What local activity shows a way to encourage people to get out of their cars?

Frank Hotchkiss: The Bus Riders Union has filed a lawsuit against the MTA under the Federal Civil Rights Act to stop all rail construction in L.A. saying 94% of transit users ride the bus. A study for SCAG reports you will not get people out of cars without an improved bus system. This is a systemic issue.

Gildred: SCCED is bringing people from different perspectives to look at all the facts and find different possibilities for the future. Rather than a law suit, we are looking at a facilitated consensus-building approach.

Question from Audience: Let's stop looking at economy vs. environment, and bring all the resources of the community together, so that special interests are not controlling the future. Zoning laws are the result of past viewpoints, we need to relook at them.

Cole: Who ought to control local zoning? Local communities can creatively deal with laws requiring parking spaces. Since 40% of the cost of development is to supply parking, Pasadena adopted a shared parking strategy, so that all businesses create a parking plan for a district, with day and evening businesses sharing the same parking lots, saving money and land.

Graymer: Developers are only concerned about their tenants having adequate parking. How can we get a broader frame of reference?

Cole: Pasadena revised its General Plan, establishing seven guiding principles for development. The Fourth Principle was, "Pasadena will be a community where people can circulate without cars." This was a broad community consensus, which involved the community in moving away from a policy of providing 7 parking spaces for every car. Local people can understand the connection between parking and broad social costs.

Barclay Hudson: The country of Holland looked at a plan, based on ecological principles, to allow only bicycles and public transportation in the major cities. As a result the government fell but the plan was adopted later anyway. In San Francisco, BART has transformed the city. If we put rail in L.A. we will grow the infrastructure to relate to it.

Graymer: Who can help us think 20 years ahead?

Kim Poser, Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA): In St. Paul, Minnesota, a downtown business group working on envisioning what kind of city they wanted, decided they needed to know more about the future of business for the city. So a consulting group had a lot of open forum discussions. After they looked at energy consumption and the drain of money to the suburbs, the city decided to do an energy survey on who needed what help to do what. The local electric power company said we have a lot of excess heat so they established a co-generation plant, with steam pipelines into the local community in the inner city to provide subsidized heat for local businesses.

Question from Audience: Because of the National Parking Association, California requires businesses to provide 150% of normal parking free to visitors and employees.

Bogdanovich: Public education is a key strategy to progress. We need to tell the public and the government about available alternative programs, and show strategies that have worked elsewhere. Global Cities has information from cities around the nation. Currently we are working with Seattle, Santa Monica, Los Angeles and San Francisco. We hope other cities will be able to access the data for a yearly fee. We are linked with Bill Becker, at Denver Center of the Department of Energy, so we will use the same information. We have data in ten categories, including water efficiency, water quality, energy efficiency, transportation, urban forestry, open space, etc.

Cole: When was the last time you had a conversation with your friends about the issues of water quality and urban forestry? What can we do to create an event that goes beyond conferences like this to reach school children and voting citizens to help them demand their governments take advantage of these opportunities? Earth Day involves millions of people around the world every year -- we've had 35,000 people attend in Pasadena. A World's Fair can help people envision the future. The Local Government Commission is looking at creating an historic event for L.A. around the 21st Century to help people contribute to a new direction for the future.

Gildred: SCCED is developing a task force on Education for a Sustainable Society to look at how do we educate ourselves to educate others. We need to look at games like SimCity to see projections of L.A. 50 years ahead: what it could look like and what decisions do we need to make today to get the future we want?

Graymer: We need the catalytic event that lifts the eye above the day to day activities. What experiences could help people see this new future?

Hudson: Let's get environment materials to schools that raise good questions, such as the story of the Iroquois Indians who considered future impact for 7 generations. The kids get it very fast, they find illustrations from the newspaper about how we are not doing that.

Question from Audience: Marty Wax and I put together an analysis of transportation during the L.A. Olympics and how to build cooperative measures for effective transportation planning. In the first week there was so little traffic on freeways that people returned to their cars the second week. It seems in emergency situations people do plan for alternatives.

Ralph Schloming: We can look at the community in the 3 stages of life: as a student you work where you live, as an adult you do not live where you work, and at retirement you again live where you work. We are looking at the dilemma of the poor aged, and think the best place for seniors to live is on an urban campus where they can live and learn and share their knowledge. Look at the article, "The Strange Disappearance of Social America," by Robert Putnam.

Graymer: Another book is "On Heavenly Cities," on what it takes to create community.

April Smith: Let's look at how to get people to think 20 years forward, because they don't think long term. We've found people can relate to things in a hands-on way. As a student in college, a large event like Earth Day would make me feel empty unless I knew how to participate myself. At UCLA students did an environment audit of the university, a study that provided a model for student action all over the world, because showed tangible solutions for student involvement. We are working on a national program to make the Habitat for Humanity program more "green," to incorporate energy-efficiency for only $1800 additional cost. This will make more people eligible for housing subsidy, creating an incentive for the developer to reduce energy costs.

Question from Audience: The League of Women Voters studied the effects of population growth on L.A. County, creating a consensus on population reduction.

Question from Audience: What catalyzes social change? We can't increase consumption and population at the current rates. We need to do an ecological footprint analysis on the amount of land and water consumed per person. We need a media strategy to get them to present success stories to people across the country.

Cole: There is a continuum between inspiration, knowledge and implementation. The LCG is working with agencies to implement the best ideas. Let's look at what's working and make it work better and in more places. It is in our collective hands to make it work.

Question from Audience: We should work with existing communities to promote local partnerships, such as community gardening.

Ron Ketcham: The Think Earth program is in 70% of the schools in Southern California, we are getting the kids involved.

Graymer: We have talked about ways to create sustainability. Fundamental changes have occurred, and we need to institutionalize the changes by technical interventions, such as pricing methodologies, reclamation of water, use of energy efficient devices, etc. Solutions will require increased economic incentives. We need to get financing calculations built into the process. We could get the attention of the publi