Top California officials Thursday laid out a vision of a reduced-carbon future that included some very un-California-sounding notions, such as denser cities and cars driven fewer miles.
“I’m not even sure this is politically helpful to you,” California Attorney General Jerry Brown told about 200 local government officials and planning experts at a gathering in Oakland. “It may actually be harmful.”
But Brown and Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, outlined similar notions of the challenge facing the state as it grapples with reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and the 2006 emissions-cutting law AB 32. The simple message: Patterns of development and urban and suburban living likely will have to change, possibly dramatically.
Both Brown and Nichols have been deeply involved in the effort for some time, although they have not always seen eye-to-eye. Brown, under the auspices of the California Environmental Quality Act, has been pressuring local governments and industry to come to grips with greenhouse emissions and the mandates of AB 32 in planning efforts and when contemplating new facilities. The board Nichols chairs has been given primary responsibility for carrying out the greenhouse gas law, and by this June is expected to unveil a proposed blueprint for achieving the statute’s requirement that emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. Thursday’s session was the first of five workshops on the issue planned for local government officials this spring.
Although Brown, among other actions, has already sued and settled with one California county (see also press statement), and struck a separate legal deal with a major petroleum company (settlement and press release), he received a generally warm welcome from the officials. He even drew laughter when he told them his office would “help” them move forward by suing their city councils.
Brown advocated what he called “elegant density” in urban areas as a primary means of achieving lower emissions by reducing the time people spend commuting in their cars. According to California Energy Commission estimates, nearly 41 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas pollutants come from transportation.
“It’s up to you. You’re the custodians of land use and land use is connected to vehicle miles traveled,” Brown said in outlining his anti-sprawl agenda.
“The biggest thing of all is to shift the outward pressure and make it turn inward to a more elegant dense vibrant urban experience. That’s what local government has to do,” he said. “Now we have to get people from the suburbs to start coming back.”
Brown noted with some bemusement that when he was mayor of Oakland he advocated attracting 10,000 more residents into the central urban area but was met by opponents wielding CEQA challenges. He also noted that the slumping housing and construction market could actually give local officials some breathing room to “align land use with the need for a lower-carbon future.” Local officials, he said, need to include the new concepts in the design of general plans and city zoning, rather than waiting until they are presented with specific development projects.
Brown, a former California governor, noted he has long been talking about limits on growth and consumption, sometimes to little effect.
"Turns out that California never grew so fast as when I declared we were into an era of limits," he joked.
Nichols, who in the past has criticized Brown’s legal tactics in his push to force consideration of global warming in long term development, transportation and industrial plans, nevertheless echoed much of his theme in her remarks. She said that unlike previous attempts to control other forms of air pollution, “we can’t get there from here with technology alone.” Part of the reason for that, she said, is the length of time it takes to replace the existing fleet of vehicles on the road.
“For the first time under AB 32 we are going to have to take action that limits the growth and amount of use of [vehicle miles traveled],” Nichols said. “That’s the little hidden fact that’s not being talked about as much when people talk about the global warming problem.”
She noted that the state has in the past not had a lot of success in promoting so-called smart growth, and she recalled that some “brute force” attempts to limit vehicles, such as through fees and bans on parking, have been rejected “pretty roundly.” But she suggested much of that might have to change.
“We’re going to have to find some ways to create new incentives as well as, I think, potentially new directions that we’re going to be developing in this area,” she said.
Local government representatives in the coming weeks and months will be getting a big dose of global warming. On Friday, they were invited to attend another meeting in Oakland with officials putting together the air board’s AB 32 blueprint, or “scoping plan.” In addition, four more workshops in the series kicked off Thursday were scheduled for April 3 in Sacramento, April 24 in Visalia, May 15 in Los Angeles and May 23 in Monterey. More information is available from the Local Government Commission.
(Photo of Jerry Brown via Wikipedia)
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ion, and once was part of it, has concluded that state lawmakers handed Attorney General Jerry Brown a victory last year when they passed a new law in reaction to his controversial greenhouse gas litigation.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown