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.
Thresholds of Significance for greenhouse gas emissions retain local discretion in proposed SB 97 CEQA Guidelines revisions
First published in California Planning & Development Report, January 9, 2008
To: California Air Resources Board
Subject: Comments on Scoping Plan - Regional Transportation Target
National Business Institute is offering "Climate Change: Local Government Response" on December 12, 2008 at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel, 1230 J Street in Sacramento.
The faculty for this seminar are land use and environmental attorneys Timothy D. Crimin of Meyers Nave, Eric W. Davis of Somach, Simmons & Dunn and Joel Ellinwood, AICP Lawyer-Planner. Topics include Planning, Land Use and Climate Change; Local Government Operations and Initiatives and CEQA and Climate Change. You will hear about the latest developments in this rapidly evolving field including a review of the AB 32 CARB Scoping Plan, SB 375 Regional transportation, land use, housing and greenhouse gas reduction coordinated planning, and the status of revisions to the CEQA Guidelines mandated by SB 97.
[first published in California Planning & Development Report on October 30, 2008]
The old joke about the man on the street who asked a scientist for the time and instead got a two-hour lecture about how to build a watch (and the poor fellow never did find out what time it was) was played out again in Sacramento this week when the California Air Resources Board staff released its "Preliminary Draft Staff Proposal Recommended Approaches for Setting Interim Significance Thresholds for Greenhouse Gases" on Friday and presented it in a workshop on Monday. The twenty-page document leaves most of the spaces for benchmark numbers blank, while proposing an elaborate process amounting to a new categorical exemption with CARB squarely at the controls.
I spent the Thursday afternoon after the election at a meeting of Northern California homebuilders listening to presentations on the economic outlook for the coming year. The CEO of a large national homebuilding company and one of the most highly regarded locally based builders both acknowledged that green building, infill development and other more sustainable practices are, "the right thing to do." They made references to being stunned reading Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded, and one joked that their 11-year old was reading An Inconvenient Truth and they didn't snatch it away and burn it. Four years ago the same group might have burned Al Gore in effigy.
The builders on the panel struggled with the fact that consumers balked at paying for solar options, rued lagging sales of projects with enhanced green features that have higher costs and prices. A vision of future homes with zero net energy demand was articulated, if somewhat wistfully. They are looking for a way to solve these problems and not make sustainability bear a market penalty. They look forward to higher volumes of solar and other green technology resulting from broader acceptance to bring down costs. They want acknowledgment that today's building codes bring new development to market at a fraction of the energy consumption of homes built before 1990, and that rates of new construction since the 1970s, even in the boom years of the housing bubble, amount to only about 1% annual addition to the existing housing stock, while the state's population continues to increase at significantly higher rates. They fear mandates to place the burden of past sins in energy-profligate planning and development patterns on future projects will make homes even more unaffordable to Californians in comparison to most of the rest of the nation, when expending less resources on retrofitting older homes will bring much greater efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction than trying to wring the last ounce of carbon out of new construction.
These are accepted as challenges and not dismissed as barriers. I asked myself if government regulators and environmentalists used to demonizing developers as despoilers of the earth are capable of hearing this radical shift in tone and be equally willing to accept the challenge of forging practical, cost-effective solutions to housing Californians while fighting global warming? I didn't want to spoil the moment by saying aloud what echoed in my head, "Yes, we can."
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.
