In the article recently published in the California Real Property Journal, Vol. 26 No. 4, (January 2009) I explain the problem of governance that combating global warming through more efficient land use and development practices poses for California. The California Constitution directly establishes the police power of cities and counties, and state statutes enshrines the principle of local control for all land use, planning and zoning issues. The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (better known by its bill number, AB 32) commits the state to reducing greenhouse gas emission levels equivalent to those as they existed in 1990 - a reduction of roughly 30% from the average in 2004-2006 -- by the year 2020. This puts local control of land use on a collision course with centralized state command & control regulatory regime that AB 32 creates to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction mandate.
AB 32 assigns the principle responsibility for developing an overall plan to accomplish the GhG reduction goal to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). CARB has the authority to adopt regulations needed to meet it, and to impose fines and/or injunctions or other penalties for failure to comply. CARB is also to recommend measures to further reduce emissions by another 60- 80% by 2050, in line with the Kyoto Protocol and recommended by the vast majority of climate scientists as necessary to keep human induced climate change from spiraling out of control and causing hugely disruptive changes in the earth's climate and sea levels.
To: California Air Resources Board
Subject: Comments on Scoping Plan - Regional Transportation Target
Seven hundred billion dollars, the price tag for the congressionally-approved financial market bailout, is an awful lot of money. It's over $2,000.00 for every single man, woman and child living in the United States. Can there really be that much money loaned to people on their homes who can't pay it back? In fact, there isn't - not even close.
"Sub-prime" mortgages have become the media shorthand for the cause of the crisis. The blame ends up placed on the greed or stupidity of home borrowers living beyond their means. To some, foreclosure is just the tough-love consequence for those who haven't learned to mind their money. It is also perceived as an "opportunity" by the untold number of acolytes of the foreclosure investment seminar industry. You've seen the info-mercials for these "get rich quick, no-money down, I'm teaching you my secret method" hypes on TV. Rescuing unqualified borrowers from foreclosure is against the laws of nature (or at least the capitalist nature) and deprives these "investors" of the red meat on which they think they can thrive. The image of bad mortgages as the root cause spreads the blame to lots of poor folks or is as diffuse as the American materialist culture - "we're just all responsible," so goes the line. Main Street and Wall Street are joined at the hip, tisk, tisk.
[first published on the California Planning and Development Reporter on October 7, 2008 http://www.cp-dr.com/node/2152] by Joel Ellinwood, AICP
With news of yet another Wall Street icon or banking giant tumbling arriving on an almost daily basis, the Congress and Bush administration enacting a massive $700 billion bailout to prevent a complete meltdown (which probably is only the first installment), and the stock market gyrating wildly with each new shockwave, planners may wonder what all this may mean for planning practice (that is, after they finish anguishing over their own pension plan or investment portfolio).
and Use Regulation in California encompasses General and Specific Plan Adoption and Amendments, Zoning Ordinances, Conditional Use Permits, Variances, Subdivision Maps, Development Agreements, Mitigation Fee Act Compliance, Reimbursement Agreements, Annexations and special district formation through local government proceedings as well as voter initiative and referendum. Specialized processes frequently come into play in different areas of the state or when particular issues are involved. such as the Coastal Zone, Lake Tahoe region, Bay-Delta area, surface mining, air and water quality regulation, habitat protection, airports, fire safety, flood control.
