Every once in awhile, I'll get something in the mail that annoys me enough to comment on it in this blog. The last time, I think, it was from a guy running for office in North Carolina who assumed I'd agree with him about the sodomites....

This time, it's a slick, professionally done brochure from my state assemblyman, one Daylin Leach. The trouble is I can't tell whether it's campaign literature or one of those informational deals that politicians send to their constituents. It's titled "Going Greener II" (or "GGII") and most of it consists of Leach bragging about what he has done for "the environment." All fine and good, I guess. No time right now to read through the bureaucratic rules and regulations in store. I just got back from another all day drive to New Jersey, and I am sick of everything.

But there's one little irritating detail that just stuck in my craw.

Under a section titled "Preserving Open Space" the following claim is made:

Nationally, Pennsylvania ranks second in land consumption per person and fifth in land area converted to development, despite being 49th in population growth. Each year, the state loses nearly 120,000 acres of open space to development.

What is "consumption"?

According to most dictionaries, consumption in the economic sense means "the using up of goods and services by consumer purchasing or in the production of other goods." I'm assuming that the idea here is to characterize land as something which is used up by being purchased, but that's not true, as the land is always there. It might go up in value or it might go down, but unless it's in the flood plain or in New Orleans, it isn't going away.

Yeah, I know, there's Atlantis. I guess you could say Atlantis was "consumed" -- but I suspect that's not what they're talking about.

So what are they talking about? "Land consumption" seems to be an environmentalist term of recent origin -- sort of code language invented by the people whose cause is fighting "sprawl." (Regular readers know that I'm starting to growl, because I hate code language.)

Here's a definition -- from an anti-sprawl site -- called "Understanding Per Capita Land Consumption":

Per capita urban land consumption is not limited to the size of a person's house lot or to a person's proportion of the land covered by an apartment complex. It also includes a portion of all the other land that has been converted from rural to urban use to provide for jobs, recreation and entertainment, shopping, parking, transportation, storage, government services, religious and cultural opportunities, waste handling, and education.

So the level of per capita land consumption is based both on direct individual decisions and behavior, and on collective decisions made through the government and the marketplace.

The effect of all urban planning, development and transportation decisions shows up in the per capita land consumption figure.

Among the factors that influence per capita land consumption are urban planning, zoning, transportation and other infrastructure investments, consumer and builder preferences, the vitality of central cities and affluence.

I'll have to look elsewhere, as there must be a real definition.

Well, here's the European Environment Agency's definition:

'Consumption' of land cover means: (a) The expansion of built-up area which can be directly measured; (b) the absolute extent of land that is subject to exploitation by agriculture, forestry or other economic activities; and (c) the over-intensive exploitation of land that is used for agriculture and forestry.

That doesn't sound like something that any government would want to stop. Not if it wanted to protect its tax base.

Anyway, there's more than one definition of land comsumption. Get a load of this:

The virtual void of population-stabilization plans within the anti-sprawl programs around the country is related to a belief that population growth can be accommodated without causing sprawl.

Theoretically, that is possible – for awhile: All new residents would have to move into the existing urban area, and none of the previous residents could move to the edge of the city. Such an occurrence over any period of time could happen only through the continual demolition of existing housing to make room for higher-density cluster houses, condominiums or apartment buildings; the demolition of apartment buildings to build higher apartment buildings; higher occupancy rates in existing structures, including some structures not intended for residential use such as garages, and building on any remaining vacant land.

Even if Americans were to accept the escalating governmental regulations that would be required to handle each year's population growth within existing boundaries, such a success would not ease the massive "ecological footprint" on the rural areas of the country.

It is important to recognize that the per-capita-land-consumption figure upon which nearly all conventional anti-sprawl efforts focus includes only the land consumed by an average resident inside his/her own Urbanized Area. It does not include all the rural land in other parts of the country that is required to obtain the food, fiber, minerals and energy for that resident, and to dispose of that resident's wastes – termed the ecological footprint of the Area.

A study of sprawl nationwide released in March of 2001 failed to find any American community that has shown an inclination to adopt the regulations and make the personal behavior changes that would counteract the effects of population growth for even a few years, let alone in perpetuity – which essentially is what would be required if current national population policies stay in place.

Los Angeles is a prime example of the limits to how far Americans will go in packing additional people into their neighborhoods. No city in America may be a better model of the goal of attempting to restrain sprawl by channeling population growth into ever-denser settlements, both in the urban core and throughout the suburbs. Between 1970 and 1990, per capita land consumption fell until the L.A. Urbanized Area was the most densely populated in the country. Many people find this hard to believe because of Manhattan's skyline. But New York's suburbs are only 60% as dense as those of Los Angeles. No other Urbanized Area provided so little land per resident as Los Angeles (0.11 acre). Most American communities have refused to come anywhere near the L.A. densities.

Yet despite accepting the densest living conditions in the country, the Los Angeles Area sprawled across another 394 square miles of orchards, farmland, natural habitat and other rural land. The reason? The addition of another 3.1 million residents.

But that's what this "land consumption" label is all about. They don't want land to be used in ways they disapprove. Some people's land, that is. Once a farmer, always a farmer. But don't try "developing" your land. Don't try using it for anything else.

Am I crazy, or does this resemble serfdom? If they want a farmer's land to stop "sprawl," let them pay for it like anyone else, and pay what it's worth.

I don't like sprawl either. I hate traffic, and I dislike seeing beautiful farmland turned into tacky developments just as much as anyone. But I also hate seeing old buildings torn down to make way for new ones. Why should that give me the right to stop it?

Thomas Sowell touched on this in his column recently:

An editorial in a recent issue of the National Geographic's "Traveler" magazine complained that kayakers in Maine found "residential development" near national parks and urged its readers to use their "influence" to prevent such things.

"You are the stakeholders in our national parks," it said.

Really? What stake do kayakers and others of like mind have that is not also a stake held by people who build the vacation homes whose presence offends the kayak set? Homeowners are just as much citizens and taxpayers as kayakers are, and they are even entitled to equal treatment under the 14th Amendment.

The essence of bigotry is denying others the same rights you claim for yourself. Green bigots are a classic example.

(Aren't the anti-sprawlers all living on once-undeveloped land onto which people sprawled? Who preordained their rights?)

But I'm digressing from the Going Greener II brochure. (Maybe I'm not.) Apparently missing the implications of what he says, my assemblyman claims that

the state loses nearly 120,000 acres of open space to development.

And what about the word "lost"? Again, it's enviro-code language for the use of farmland or previously undeveloped land for other purposes like housing or industry. An assumption is being made that when land is used for a new purpose, that it is somehow irredeemably "lost." But history shows that farmland comes and goes, as does urban and suburban land. Land can fall into disuse or become abandoned, yet it's still there forever. It is human economic use of the land that changes, or ceases.

For one man, open land might be seen as "nothing there" or "the middle of nowhere" or even "a vast wasteland." For another, a desolate swamp might cry out for government protection. And for another, the same swamp might be seen as the perfect location for a fish farm. I've driven across the country more times than I can remember, and except for the cities, there are huge, huge areas of undeveloped land. I guess it's nice, and I guess if enough people liked it they could buy it and keep it that way, but I think there's an element of sentimentalization in all of this.

Development is only seen as an evil thing in certain areas -- notably in recently rural areas within driving distance from large, sophisticated urban areas. I didn't hear anyone complaining about sprawl in small town and rural Indiana the last time I stayed there. (All people talked about was how to get people or businesses to move there and bring jobs.)

Sprawl only seems to matters to people who live in or near the sprawl they complain of.

I sometimes wonder whether the goal is to keep people imprisoned in cities.