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.

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To: California Air Resources Board

Subject: Comments on Scoping Plan - Regional Transportation Target

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When I delivered the three absentee ballots from my household to my poling place on Tuesday morning, November 4, I told the election workers I was from Chicago and so I was following the adage, "vote early and often." At first they weren't sure whether to laugh or call the cops.

Barack Obama's choice for his chief of staff of fellow Chicagoan, Congressman Rahm Emmanuel, known for his tough, competitive, but smart style, reminds me that for good or ill, all the presidents in my memory have relied upon an inner circle of aides from their region -- people they knew or knew about and felt they could trust. Kennedy had his Ivy Leaguers and large family, Johnson his Texans, Nixon and Reagan their Orange County crews, Jimmy Carter -- alas, Ham Jordan and Bert Lance, Bush 41 establishment conservatives and Bush 43 Texans and neocons. The Clintons drew both from their Ivy education and Arkansan experience, which may account for their many paradoxical qualities. The political culture of the president's people is rooted in their place of origin, and shapes the political culture of the nation for the term of that presidency.

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