Got a millennium gift picked out yet? Better hurry - there are less than seven hundred shopping days left until January 1, 2000. Millennium Institute claims "there will be a deep yearning on the part of individuals, communities, countries, and national and international organizations to mark the new millennium with significant action." Those actions will be in the form of "gifts that will help ensure a sustainable Earth for the people of the next century and their descendants in the centuries beyond." Examples include Ted Turner's $1 billion donation to the United Nations, and the United Methodist Church's apology to the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes for the slaughter at Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864. (The massacre was led by a U.S. Cavalry officer that happened to be a Methodist lay preacher.)

President Clinton jumped on the millennium bandwagon in August 1997 when, at a White House press conference, he announced his "gifts to the future" -- improving the U.S. educational system, preserving American culture, heritage and history, expanding AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, rededicating the United States to space exploration, engaging the nation in a "conversation on race and reconciliation," and making sure that "the land God has given us is preserved for generations to come." (This wish list was repeated in his January 27, 1998 State of the Union Address.) On the land preservation issue, the President noted that his administration had "already acted to protect some of our most treasured places" -- namely, Lake Tahoe, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Florida Everglades. "Ultimately, every American must decide what gifts he or she will give to the future," Clinton told his August press conference audience, "but each has a responsibility for our common destiny." That responsibility, says Millennium Institute, is "to make a lasting improvement in the quality of life for the future inhabitants of Earth" by promoting economic and social equity, preventing and eliminating pollution, conserving natural resources, and protecting biodiversity.

Stripped of fuzzy rhetoric, the millennium gifts program is a not-so-veiled attempt to promote sustainable development initiatives. When Earth Summit participants endorsed Agenda 21 in 1992, they promised "to ensure socially responsible economic development while protecting the resource base and the environment for the benefit of future generations." (President Clinton later added a third "e" -- equity -- to the sustainable development equation.) What is less known is that signatories also promised to prod local authorities into developing Agenda 21 programs at the community level before the turn of the century. Clinton's millennium gifts are an attempt to jump start this process in the United States.

The United Nation, however, has taken a more pragmatic approach to promoting local Agenda 21 programs. It created the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). ICLEI's job is to provide technical support to local governments as they implement Agenda 21 principles, as well as to monitor their progress. To date, almost three hundred international communities have signed on with ICLEI. Twenty six U.S. cities and counties have committed themselves to Agenda 21 implementation: Aspen, Colorado; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Berkeley, California; Boulder, Colorado; Burlington, Vermont; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Chicago, Illinois; Chula Vista, California; Dade County, Florida; Denver, Colorado; Los Angeles, California; Louisville, Kentucky; Jefferson County, Kentucky; Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota; Muncie, Indiana; Newark, New Jersey; Olympia, Washington; Overland Park, Kansas; Portland, Oregon; Public Technology Inc. (Washington, DC); San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Monica, California; and Tucson, Arizona.

What Agenda 21, "sustainable" attributes do ICLEI communities possess? Burlington, Vermont -- more affectionately known as "Latte Town" to David Brooks of The Weekly Standard -- is a place where "gay and feminist concerns are at the top of everyone's agenda, where liberalism is a dominant lifestyle as well as the unchallenged ideology . . ." People who live in Burlington, "have constructed their own ethos of environmentalism, healthism, [and] egalitarianism that makes it bad form to spend money lavishly or live ostentatiously." Brooks says these folks "believe in living modestly . . . Their homes may be expensive, but they are not lavish." They "emphasize quietude and . . . though they are wealthy, they still associate elitism and affluence with immorality, so the richest of them dress in cheap T-shirts and jeans." In Burlington, automobiles are "ethically inferior," while bicycles have "inherited the earth."

Sustainable communities also look like Portland, Oregon where the Cascade Policy Institute claims, "growth management has become a moral crusade." In 1979, Portland planners drew a line around their city and declared that no development could occur beyond it. "The Great Wall of Portland," as William Claiborne of the Washington Post calls it, was supposed to protect farms outside the boundary from urban sprawl. Instead, 11,000 acres of agricultural land were doomed to development inside the circle. The result of this planned land scarcity is an increase in the value of an average home in Portland from $50,000 at the time the growth boundary was drawn, to about $225,000 in 1996. According to an October 1997 study done by Hobson Johnson & Associates, "a significant component of households will [soon] be priced out of the ownership housing market. The [Portland] metropolitan area will face a severe and increasing affordability problem [that] will negatively impact economic growth and development and may lead to a regional economic depression."

Then there is Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. In an attempt to address economic "disparity" among regional communities, Minnesota adopted a tax base sharing system. Almost two hundred municipalities contribute forty percent of their commercial and industrial tax base to a "regional pool" that is re-distributed back to communities whose tax-bases fall below the regional average. Minneapolis takes in about $5.7 million a year in re distributed tax revenues, while St. Paul gets more money than any other community -- $28 million in 1996. "It's just welfare," said one unimpressed Indiana city council member. Minneapolis and St. Paul seem to be "sustainable" thanks only to the charity of their more affluent neighbors.

Regional approaches to sustainable development are an integral part of Agenda 21 because economic, social and environmental issues are said not to recognize jurisdictional boundaries. Coordination and collaboration among competing government authorities is considered critical for the efficient use of financial, human and natural resources. Yet in September 1997, Miami, Florida residents rejected an attempt to dissolve their inefficient city government in favor of a Dade County-controlled regional government. Miami is plagued by a $68 million deficit, political corruption and poverty ( it is the 4th poorest city in America), yet its residents were willing to endure these problems in order to preserve local autonomy. Miami voters rightly perceived that, in exchange for efficiency and "sustainability," the voices of 375,000 residents would be drowned out by 2.1 million Dade County inhabitants. Voters rejected the dissolution proposal and, instead, increased the mayor's governing authority and directed that the city's five commissioners represent specific districts rather than operate at-large.

Gene Stearns, a local attorney, remarked that, despite the vote, a Miami-Dade County merger was inevitable. "Eventually, people are going to realize that their pocketbooks and quality of life [are] more important than ethnic politics," he said. It may be, however, that Miami's population -- mostly refugees from Castro's Cuba -- value a strong political voice more than they do the nebulous rewards of sustainable development.

In February 1997, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives reported to the UN that the biggest obstacle to local Agenda 21 implementation was a lack of funding. ICLEI also observed that "local governments only succeed in Local Agenda 21 planning where a cooperative social and political climate exists." In the United States, President Clinton is working to remedy both situations. His 1998 State of the Union Address was replete with requests that Congress allocate federal money for projects normally funded at the local level -- like 100,000 new teachers and 5,000 more schools. (He also told Congress "it's long past time to make good on our debt to the United Nations.") Moreover, his "reinventing government" program seems to echo calls by ICLEI and other sustainable development advocates to "rethink the entire national power structure as it relates to the relationship between national and local authority . . ." Like ICLEI and the UN, the president seems to believe sustainable development is a necessary outgrowth of the "competing and failed ideologies" of socialism and capitalism.

In July 1997, Jeb Brugmann , ICLEI's secretary general, wrote that "sustainable development is a big mandate -- in essence, another utopia," where equal attention must be paid to building "social wealth that derives from equity, education, respect for human rights and meeting basic needs; economic wealth that creates the wherewithal to achieve social objectives; and ecological wealth secured through the preservation of ecosystems that provide the resources . . . and conditions for . . . life on earth." These phrases were echoed almost verbatim by the president in his August 1997 press conference and in his January 27, 1998 State of the Union Address. It appears that William Jefferson Clinton's place is history will be marked by his millennium gift to America -- Agenda 21.

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